You may well have tech savvy fans who never actually visit your site, they just read the RSS feed. On the other side, most of your visitors don't really get what RSS is all about. Bridge the gap with a Feedburner RSS feed and bit of code from classy Springwidgets



Above is the RSS feed for our recent web and tech news articles. The widget can be sized and styled to fit in sidebars and in colors to suit any theme - even your theme if you have a blog!

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John Chow used his evil streak to questionable effect when he tried to outsmart Technorati with some deceptive pinging software. The bottom line is, he got caught.

Imagine if someone else had pulled the same beat the Technorati ranking stunt. In a short space of time they got found out, played dumb with Technorati, in order to get reinstated - and then admitted to the deception publicly before it came out by mistake.

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There are plenty of opportunities on the web to make money, or get something for nothing or at a great deal. But there is usually a catch, no doubts.

Sitepoint's bona fide design offer

According to a Sitepoint review in Webby's World, you can run a contest asking designers to submit a logo, a set of stationary or even a coded theme for your blog/website. If everyone enters into the spirit, a snazzy new look or even a fully functioning theme could therefore be yours for not a lot of money. Factor in the designer's added bonus of a platform for their work on one of the web design sites on the web - it all sounds brilliant, and so it should be for most participants.

Pitfalls to a bona fide offer

Knowing how human nature is, and being a cynical git, I can just see a pitfall that would make me wonder if it was worth it.

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You may recall the heatmap statistical analysis tool called Crazy Egg. A graphical view of how visitors interact with a web page. ViewFinder is another GUI heatmap option that requires no installation on your server, just plonk it in Firefox or in this case, a blog post, and publish.

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Going viral is a fast way way to attain on-line riches. The creator of bla.st has a potential virus on his hands. Euhh.

Bla.st is a sophisticated webby 2 re-work of the simple business card idea and looks set to make web site owners the world over salivate with envy and think "If only I had thought of that!"

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After sifting through the Technorati lies, Alexa damn lies and Google/Awstats statistics, this is The Pisstakers' 6 month stock take, plus an appraisal of where our future lies .

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The world renowned internet traffic tracking powerhouse, Alexa, has analysed the visitor demographic for very major website that has a pulse. But should they be believed?



What do these statistics taken directly from our servers tell you? To Alexa it says that more Brits and Australians have visited the Pisstakers than Americans. Sounds like a statement saying that the 20% minority visitors from the Commonwealth are more worthy than 80% of our visitors from the US!!.

Maybe they are adopting a tried and tested marketing ploy from the USA. Say something outrageous enough times with enough conviction, and eventually it will become accepted as fact. Alexa is accurate, Alexa is accurate, Alexa is... nope still reads like a pile of manipulated bull.

Gudday and cheerio chin chin oh Ozzie and Brit minnows.

Well, well, after getting a bit irate at Technorati and their rankings, it is time to clap them on the back and thank them for a really good laugh.

Thanks to Techboggle, I was mesmerized then tantalized by the article on the Windows Vista kernel. After adjusting the text size so I could actually see something that looked neat AND legible on the page, I got stuck into the techno babble written on I/O and Superfetch. It may as well have been written upside down and out of focus for all that I understood.

It was all gobbledygook, but on balance it was tantalizing. After reading that arcane and implausible blurb from a Microsoft guru with their head up their corporate kernel, I can't wait to use Mac Leopard's slim line, streamlined and much more obvious approach to memory-handling. Somehow a dose of Reality Distortion Field is far more appealing.

Bombproof kernel, just don't mention the cache.

Apple will tell you that OS X doesn't really crash. It's true, and instead of quoting memory protection and re-routed in out oojymaflips at xyz mhz per millisecond:

Imagine a hand with 4 fingers and a thumb. The palm is the Operating System, the fingers are the applications. If you break a finger, no way can it break the palm of your hand, and as fingers work independently of each other, one defective finger can't break other fingers either. So if an app crashes, only it is affected and the OS and all other processes continue uninterrupted. Simple see.

Microsoft, wisely stick a thumb up their ass praying Vista doesnt crash during the Powerpoint demonstration, reminding Apple fanbois of the cache issues with OS X. Once the caches build up, the machine slows and the kernel may as well crash. Nobody is perfect.

Technorati ranks 63 million websites according to link popularity. Apparently the higher up the list you are, the more blogs and sites link to you. The higher your rank, presumably the more popular, useful and wonderful your website. I say bollocks!

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Search plus wiki =swiki. A Swiki cloud is one of the search options on The Pisstakers and the feature has been evolving quietly but very positively. Looking around the Swiki site, the developers really did live up to their tag at the bottom of every page - working hard and asking for ways to make Swiki better. Yo swicki, wazzup?

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Scary to think that 2 million people downloaded the Zwinky drag n drop toolbar on day one of its release. Why is that scary? In case you didn't know, Zwinky is an avatar creator, ie the tool of preference for social MySpace networkers who, not content with simply inventing on-line personalities, can also now create 3-D versions of themselves.

Now that is scary and we would advise you to drag 'n drop Zwinky straight into the trash and at least keep some semblance of reality in your real-world life.

The on-line reality for webmasters is that many nasty hackers are out there lurking, just waiting for an opportunity to render your blog unreadable. When attacked by experts, your site can be sucked dry of text, rejigged into a pile of pixels or literally left smouldering. So how do you protect yourself from such an attack? Forewarned is forearmed! This is what the Pisstakers had to recover from at 12.40am last night.

First sign of trouble

Some unknown graphic appears on screen, unannounced.

The first clue that this is bad news

There is text floating past this window. I recognised solitaire, and many other words associated with The Pisstakers

Worst case scenario - total text removal

At 12.40, the Pisstakers was no more. Thank you Net Disaster!

How to avoid a Net Disaster

Back up, back-up, back-up. Please make sure you check the Deal of the Day for a huge hard drive so you can back up your blog many times over. We did and were back in operation a few seconds after being denuded.

Do not surf irresponsibly. Rest assured, any one of dozens of destructive endings could be yours, if you click willy nilly!

Do not complete the following form!

The Pisstakers are to consumerism what Bill Gates is to social skills. The world would grind to a halt if we had our hands on the purse strings. Nonetheless, shopping carts and other options for gouging money from blog traffic is a fascinating subject, so we updated our blog on shopaholix and offer it out there as a starting (and maybe finishing point!) for webmasters short of ideas.

Wil Wheaton, an experienced blogger, has finally had enough of what he describes as thuggish Digg behavior in the comments section of the uber tech news site. It sounds like he has written some thought-provoking posts in the past, and been on the wrong end of effing and blinding. As a relatively serious writer, that is clearly not to his liking. But does he need to thicken his skin a little? Probably not, unless he becomes a desensitized stone.

Wil Wheaton received a lot of stick from a small pack of dogs recently, when, for some reason, boredom, 4 Diggers made unprovoked adverse personal comments about his showbiz past. These comments followed his observations about the bygone days of arcades. Ooh, now I can see that topic would make any teenager's blood boil! Rather than just roll their eyes at the nostalgia, and move on, it looked like they targeted him. Not very becoming of a snazzy site like Digg, I thought. But then again...

Recently, I was justifiably pissed at Comcast. and having joined a Digg mob gunning for their corporate asses, I admit there was quite a sense of community and it felt good to vent. Personally, I wasn't exactly aggressive, it doesn't prove anything where I come from, (and part kharma, part luck, I actually got an offer of help from a Comcast tech!) but there were plenty of really vocal effers not interested in reconciliation of any sort. They were just plain fucking rude.

I suppose that just like Comcast, Wil Wheaton was there to be criticised for the content he provided. And unlike the smarmy teflon-coated staff at a faceless organisation like Comcast, his behavior didn't seem to merit any personal attacks. But he sure as hell got them.

After reading Wil Wheaton's recent post highlighting that event, and some other disturbing trends in bad on-line behavior, the word is out, suggesting that the Digg management make a stand and ask their fans to tone it down a bit. Maybe grow up when expressing their opinions?

Should be interesting to see just how quickly Web 2.0 technology can make 13 year-olds grow up. Maybe offer designer steroids per post?

KishKish Lie detector offers you a tool to detect the stress level in the voice of the person you communicate with over Skype. Just when you think the person who answered your random call on Skype thinks you are Brad Pittt or Angelina Jolie, they utter the immortal words, "You've been kish-kished, liar!".

Our fabled HP PSC 1510 scanner printer cleverly logged every power outage in the recent storms to hit the East coast of the USA. How so?

Thanks to yet another inexplicable software glitch, every time it starts up, the bastard machine prints the test page with all the color bars and weird text that proves the printer is fully functioning. So we came home to 10 pages of perfectly produced evidence that the powerlines faded in and out 10 times between 3 and 6pm Tuesday. The low ink button is flashing too!

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According to Digital Journal, a Canadian firm is claiming to have taken a quantum leap in technology by producing a computer that can perform 64,000 calculations at once! Yeah, so what! Isn't that a real dummy compared to the human brain that invented the computer? Admittedly, the supercomputer could probably kick the ass off Babbage's machine, but beat Babbage or any drunk, I don't think so.

The Pisstakers conclusion - not impressed.

According to our technical advisers over at Techboggle, Motorola is showing off a new phone named the "Motorizr Z8" . This latest model would appear to be continuing the trend for Moto names that are almost unpronounceable in Spanish. Nevertheless, everyone both sides of the border will be looking twice at this iPhone killer!

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Everyone is blabbing on about the fabled Agloco pay-to-surf scheme, but what about Blingo? Ever heard of their win-prizes-for-search deal? Do a maximum 10 searches a day from their google-driven search bar and have a chance at winning anything from a car to a cinema ticket. Crazy isn't it, but according to CBS Philadelphia it is true.

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The doubters out there who say that there is no real cash in blogging, take heart. John Chow, a highly successful and self-professed internet mogul, has created a money-making blog monster at johnchow.com. A multi-topic blog that has been years in the making was finally unleashed as a monetizing business idea in September. The blog about tech, life and all sorts of "things" is already showing an income trajectory that is heading off the chart and out into the giddy heights of the blogosphere.

The feel of john chow dot com

Starting from the top, the scene is set with high quality artwork depicting the ultimate in automotive extravagance. Nice if you are into cars. A bit naff if you are into cycling.

Reading through various posts, all written with a high degree of honesty and openness, you can see that excessive materialism features heavily in John's daily life too - including blowing a grand for dinner. Blimey, he must have had a ton of french fries with that bucket of caviar. Known for his frankness, has he ever disclosed the cost of the anti-indegestion pills?

Marketing the content of john chow dot com

There are plenty of well-written, informative and entertaining blogs on-line but content alone will not produce a winner. We know! But then there is John Chow, the man who has everything it takes to monetize a blog.

Dollar for dollar, this guy can market the ass off of Google. Just by asking for reviews in exchange for a link, John has nabbed over 150 blogs' worth of traffic for almost no effort. And that traffic is seduced by smartly placed Adsense and the pay per impression ad campaigns that a 200,000 readership enables him to participate in. And regularly updated content to attract you back. Cute.

Is john chow dot com any good?

In closing, yes, it is good. Take the plunge and join the throngs who read him every day, you won't be disappointed. Look, learn and laugh, make his blog better than number 515 in Technorati, increase his monthly income another few cents... What more do you want!

Until we signed up to them, Comcast were just a faceless name in a sea of ISP's advertising on TV. But we signed up. and just like when you buy a new car, suddenly you see your Comcast everywhere. The latest scandalous Comcast incident is the discovery by Tech basic of a supposed monthly bandwidth cap

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David Pogue is one of the most highly respected tech journos out there. The NY Times reporter must be good because he was one of the few to have a personal demo of the iPhone and play with it - in the hallowed presence of Señor Steve Jobs. Building on his knowledge of 21st Century iPhone, he did a podcast on the pros and cons of internet phones. We learnt quite a bit, re-engineered some ideas and came up with the following.

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The following graphic could be your warm fuzzy feeling too, cheering you up as you bare your soul posting and tweaking and improving your blogging window on the world. A combination of Technorati ranking, smoke and mirrors, it is quite groovy, innit!



If we were to add in the escalating, hopeful valuation of our search swiki and we are scheduled to take delivery of a yacht and give up blogging in 13 years time. It certainly doesn't beat working, as it can be really hard going at times, but blogging may have a future yet. Hello YAHOO!!!!!!! we aren't for sale - yet.

Comcast offer insanely fast internet, high definition cable TV and a digital phone service for $99/month in year one/$130 per month. thereafter. With such high tech services you would think they could do their investors a favor and employ courteous sales staff and helpful techs to maximise the returns on investment. Sadly, they have a monopoly in many parts of America, and Comcast treat their customers like shit.

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Connected to a mega expensive internet connection, I hit the buttons to a few iTunes podcasts and hoped I would get something decent to take away with me listen to on Sunday. They were all techy titles, but to be fair, Scott Johnson and Co are naturally funny, Paul Boag is prone to bouts of British wittiness, Leo Laporte is a great mimic, and Adam Christianson... he turned out to be the most engaging podcaster of the lot today, for good, as well as debatable reasons!

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Sites like Digg get visits in the hundreds of thousands per day. Good luck to them and their particular success related issues. Sorry little bloggers like us get what traffic we can, especially early on in a blog's life. We are delighted to announce our best ever month, with 2144 uniques ie traffic is up 30% on last month, which was up 30%

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Thanks to a house move and merciless inefficiency from Comcast, there is no internet here. If Comcast ever get their corporate asses out of a sling, The Pisstakers will resume their normal blogging service forthwith.

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