Call me old fashioned, but isn't the Web 2.0 trend sort of too new to be brushing under the carpet already? I just got the hang of big fonts, rounded corners and Ajax all over the joint and it seems quite useful, social and robust. But in progressive Holland, they are already hosting the Next Web show!

...how new technology, business models, innovation and culture-changes affect the direction of the web and the way we do business. The Conference for web industry thought leaders, leading companies, innovative Startups, visionaries, seed funders and real Web savvies.

The Dutch have a habit of getting in ahead of the curve, but not necessarily setting trends to be proud of. They legalised drugs and became experts in finding that legalisation of heroin doesn't curb heroin abuse. They have great ideas about porn, but they don't have any famous porn stars, and now they are going head on into developing ideas about web 2.0 the old man of tech, before web 2.0 has even reached puberty.

Be careful, participants, you may be signing up for something that sinks you without trace in a blaze of glory.

Calm down, people, take a few moments to just enjoy the moment and relax, instead of laying the foundations for another social experiment that sounds great, but won't necessarily be so. Next!

There has been a splurge of articles recently, all highlighting RSS, (Really Simple Syndication) the golden child of blog marketing. The Pisstakers have been guilty too of writing about RSS, the Really Snappy System for helping new and regular visitors subscribe to/stay informed about the latest updates on their favorite blogs. We explained RSS for dummies in words of one syllable too But RSS ain't all great.

The chosen few are into RSS

Tech whizzos know what it is all about, the rest of the world hasn't got a clue - yet. But just like it took years for everyone to move from letters to email, so, one day, we will all be RSS junkies and wondering how on earth we ever got along with bookmarks in browsers, omg how 90's! But until then, the lack of general acceptance is creating skewed results, showing misleading numbers about a blog's quality (ie popularity = good content, usually!) Low numbers, low popularity, crap content!

Typical Feedburner addiction

The blogging world and his wife love widgets, and tend to go, go, go straight to Feedburner to create an orange icon from 16 to 116 pixels square that they then plonk, usually, in the wrong place, on their blog. Voila, they are real bloggers now!

Once they have achieved the basics, it is back to feedburner to put their Rather Snazzy Sign (RSS) feed on speed. It can take hours to go through all the options to optimise, pubilcize and radicalize the basic xml code. But how satisfying to end up with scrolling flashing emailing publicly humiliating variations on that stat counter.

Feedburner can be publicly humiliating?

What's that all about? Feedburner is the mutts nuts of RSS, right? Yes. And it is (justifiably) viewed as the benchmark service for getting the most out of your feed? Well yes, and people like John Chow with 3500 daily visitors, ProBlogger with 21,000 and Carsonified with over 2000 proudly displayed in their Feedburner widgets have nothing but good things to say about RSS the Feedburner way. Yes, because they have a lot to brag about, and they and their readers know that Feedburner is just a reflection of loads of other visitors via other feed readers and direct visits from browsers.

Success breeds success and who wouldn't think of joining their readership masses. But As BlogAboutYourBlog webmaster, Matt, realised, after a very biting (but accurate comment), the Feedburner icon can turn traffic away from a site too.

RSS feed widgets should be saved for later

An RSS feed with 40 subscribers gives a poor impression. 40 isn't exactly 400 or 4000. It gives the same impression as a naive new hardware store I recall opening in our local town. They were in a great location, had lots of cool ideas and knew what they were doing. Only handicap to their plan for instant world domination (which they did eventually achieve) was to open up with a skeleton stock on the shelves (because it was all they could afford without getting any stock on credit). Most of the first wave of curious customers who called by took one look at the half empty shelves and left. Fortunately, a few supportive folks asked, Have you got a drill bit? No, but we will get one in. They did as they promised and they gradually built up a clientele, but what a risky way to get people coming back

And so it is with blogs proudly saying, Hey, we only have 40 regular feedburner visitors (but don't be put off by the sad first impression, because behind the scenes we have a lot going on ie 200 people who call every day, loads of authors, articles and features to woo you with.)

The final feed word

A paltry Feedburner feed sort of detracts from the punchy first time experience, and I wholeheartedly agree that until you have some bragging rights, keep Feedburner quiet, and maybe create a daily widget of your unique visitor count. Or to be really braggy and all smoke and mirrors, get a widget showing your hits!

A prominent and passionate tech blogger, Kathy Sierra, who, I admit I never heard of before, was the victim of some nasty and threatening on-line posts and comments. The threats were of the death variety, and the tone of the comments was up there (or is it down there?) with the sort of depraved dialog you would expect to read on some sicko pron site. The long and the short of it is, she has been scared shitless, cancelled speaking engagements and clearly isn't too enamoured with her on-line life, right now.

Bloggers cannot say what they like without responsibility

Although bloggers have immunity from publishing views on sensitive news already in the mainstream, they aren't immune from assaulting people with words and suggestive threats. So, Kathy Sierra isn't without options to get this mess sorted out. The law is on her side and the police are involved.

I doubt Kathy is the only one sleeping badly as a result of the pending repercussions of this escalating blog slander. I say this because a blogger who was associated with one of the offending attack sites, has quickly disassociated himself from the rest of his gang. Too little too late as the noose tightens around the necks of the perpetrators?

How should you react to threats?

It is always best to tell someone. A problem shared is a problem halved.

Where do you go from here?

I don't know what the police will do - maybe prosecute the prominent ones - but there are others who were involved by association whowill not be touched by the law, and that is where lots of Kathy's on-line friends come in handy. In an eloquent but firm way, they should make it uncomfortable for members of the blogs where the threats were hosted. Remind them that Instead of following it all, they should have said something against the bloggers. The readers were just as wrong as the writers for not reacting at the time

Blogospherical campaign against nasty bloggers

In the big picture, if enough people write how intolerant we all are to this sort of nasty on-line bullying, the less likely it is to happen again. Only a tiny minority of impressionable people get the urge to join a cruel or personal attack blog, and usually some warning shots across the bows will sends 99% of those wannabe bullies scuttling for cover. (Just like if everyone had to take responsibility for what they said to drivers from the haven of their car, the ensuing silence would be deafening!)

My parting shot from the soap box is to say that the time has come for the nasty bloggers to say farewell, and for Kathy to take heart that the nerviness will subside over time. And at some stage she will get back in the saddle, so to speak, stronger and wiser and more passionate than ever.

To learn about web search the Rollyo way ie search in a focussed, targeted and personalised manner, check out our Web search section.

In the world of internet, RSS means Really Simple Syndication. Before you glaze over, all that means is one anonymous click gets you instant notification of updates on your favorite blogs - like The Pisstakers.

What RSS means for visitors to sites

For the average visitor, RSS means if you want an easy way to read everything new written by your favorite writers, it is a good idea to sign up to our RSS feed or any other blogger's feed.

For the info addict RSS means instant hit.

I read of one guy who has 750 feeds that he scans every day... he has a huge furrowed forehead and lots of conversational material for when he leaves his basement.

What RSS means to blog owners

For a blog or website owner, RSS can be crap because our fans may never again see the fantastic theme we spent months and millions designing.

Also every Feed reader seems to have a slightly different way of presenting the information, so our feed may look good in some cases, totally unappealing in others. Oh well! btw, Newsgator or NetNewsWire are pretty damn good feed readers.

Don't rely on RSS for all your news

RSS is basically essential in today's saturated blog world, but there is stuff that RSS readers miss. Like this

And some clever sites don't let you see all their articles via an RSS feed. Or at least, not without paying them some money or supporting them in some practical way. Members of Daring Fireball for instance, see things we don't!

RSS has become another bragging right.

RSS widgets can be encouraging or misleading.

Hey, dude, I have like 346 Feedburner subscribers, and you only have like 7. You're a loser.

Well, my man, I actually have 1000 subscribers to the xml non-Feedburner RSS feed on my site and 7 subscribers to Feedburner. Sounds like Feedburner is the loser round here, marn.

I am not into bragging rights, but I would still like to be able to compile all the subscribers to The Pisstakers and put that number in a widget, but I don't know how. If anyone does, let me know. Thanks.

And if you want to subscribe via the feedburner widget or your news reader, or via Firefox or Safari or IE, please, be our guest - but do call by now and again to the real site.

RSS post inspiration

RSS is a taxing issue Thanks to money making Ja Kel Daily dot com for prompting this post with his own kick up the pants post, advising bloggers like me how to make the best of RSS.

While I am at it, Ja Kel Daily Dot Com eventually wants to make money and is offering to link to blogs reviewing his blog. Check it out, he is one to watch. Hell, he needs to make money to put gas in that car of his.

Jeff Kee really had a field day with his post on Mac users v iFag mac users. It made my juices flow for sure!

When I switched to a Mac powerbook in 2003, I became an iFag. It was an awesomely easy and productive time for me, after having as much luck with Windows as Mac addicts in basements have with girls. I had to tell the world about the joy of Mac. Noone listened till I got to Spain, and then everyone bought one! I had been right all along. iFagdom was the way.

I still wouldn't have a PC if you paid me, and after a bad time with a G5, neither would I have a Mac tower. But now I think, after experiencing all the quirks and spinning wheels on a little 867MHz Titanium painted Powerbook, I have achieved proper mac user status. It feels good to be in balance, ommmmmm.

In my 5th year of daily Powerbook beatings, I can't make it crash, but I acknowledge the limitations of a Mac, - one button, eye candy, no paper clip, and dialog boxes that glide not pop. Rather than be an ifag and ignore them, or worse, laud them as "made by design" I try to help others by explaining how I get over the niggles.

A single button mouse or trackpad is a non-issue with a piece of software, sidetracker, installed. Eye candy is a non-issue too, with my new found and healthy hatred of style. I spit on drop shadows and high definition widgets. I admit, I miss the Windows paper clip, so I have a surrogate titanium-coated one blu-tacked rather stylishly to my screen for old times sake. As for smoothly opening dialog boxes, maybe I lied, I will never get over those elegantly unfurling boxes. So I disconnected the freeware to open a box super snappy, Windows style.

Jeff Kee was right to highlight the Mac cult kids, but deep down, he knows he missed out and should have invested at least 2 more years of his life learning an intuitive Mac OS X.

Happy daze.

Update I think I was being too subtle, because 2 years to learn something intuitive was meant as a joke/contradiction in terms.

Hey ho, it's Sunday, MyBlogLog Sunday at the Pisstakers, in fact. I got my lazy butt into gear and true to form, at 10.34 Eastern coffee time I took a snapshot of the 10 MyBlogLog bloggers who last visited the Pisstakers.

And the point of MyBlogLog Sunday?

This latest must-have feature is my way of saying thanks to the busy bloggers who called by recently to see what we are up to. In return, I am in the process of going to their blogs and finding some interesting and funny stuff to report back on for today's front page. It is a bit of work for me, doing all that reading stuff, but it is rewarding, and it does break the cycle of lazy "Hi and bye" networking. With plenty of linking and larfing and something permanent and interesting to refer to forever in the archives, this is true link love at work, people!

What on earth is MyBlogLog?

In case you didn't know, MyBlogLog is Yahoo's latest golden social network child, geared up for bloggers to meet and interact with other bloggers. Good if you have a website, but so what, say the people with no blog! My reaction was the same.

When you think about it, though, it is a good idea for everyone. The sidebar widget in many of your current preferred sites, identifies bloggers also curious about your preferred sites. Presumably some of them will have written something that will interest you too? So, if you see a widget, go click on them and check their sites out and maybe discover bloggers that really twiddle your knobs with their style and content.

I am not much of a club person, but I do try to push myself to be sociable! You know, BAYB, Brohans, Techboggle are all on-line buddies I have come across at MyBlogLog, else I would never have met them, probably. We like 'em, and can say we knew them before they were famous! I check them out periodically and then tell you guys about any articles that you might be interested in reading. They mention us.... it's a hoot!

Joining MyBlogLog?

On the back end there thousands of groups of like-minded bloggers theoretically interacting, encouraging, critiquing and promoting each other. In our case, The Pisstakers MyBlogLog community consists of about 40 people running their blogs about tech and money-making and humor. They have said hello, joined my gang, and some have even called by here and left a comment, which is a real boost to the flagging spirits at times. You could do the same if you are interested.

And if you want to be featured in next week's MyBlogLog Sunday, get on the widget around 10am!

And here's a bit of useless trivia. Last week, MyBlogLog was the 34th most visited webspace on the internet. Proof that it has plenty to offer surfers as well as lonely hearts blogmasters looking for inspiration and camaraderie. Join if you dare.

So you want to know how much your website is worth? The good news for The Pisstakers, and presumably everyone else with a blog or website, lies over here!



For a more sobering / depressing / suicide-inducing / motivation-sapping slap in the face (or better idea of where you are standing) in the entrepreneurial pile, absorb the stats at dnscoop. Judging by the way their code renders in Firefox, and the importance attached to Alexa, I hope their $600 valuation is invalid in the real world.

I have been posting at least one article per day in the web tech section of The Pisstakers since we started in August 2006, but alas nothing seemed to get pinged yesterday. Sorry. The wonders of technology, it was taking 2 hours to upload a file that should have taken a couple of minutes. And the kicker - total failure to publish the rss file.

So, apologies to you and sorry to everyone who got in the way of my bad mood yesterday. I was at my limit of patience watching 3-word test emails time out! But I found a solution.

Fricking Comcast and their hi tech hardware. Don't you just love trouble-shooting damn fancy modems! Instead of falling out of sync for no reason, why couldn't it have flashed a light to say that it was out of sync. Perhaps I would have rested easier, had I thought it was a simple push of a reset button.

Download performance, or lack of it

Just to give you your money's worth of ranting, let me add another article to the Comcast archive. Below is a graphic of our 100mb/sec service performance. 5.6Mb/sec download speed. Hmmm. And upload speed? Apologies - but it was too embarrassing to print! 312kb/sec upload barely made a mark on a graph. Fricking pitiful. (Click on the graph to check your own speeds out.)

Slow internet cripples a nation's progress

Sorry to tarnish a whole nation with one Comcastic brush, but, if this is the best there is in the whole continent, the US is screwed in its capacity as an international economic power. I may be a Pisstaker, but I do know a bit about what goes on in the outside world. Internet provision is essential for future economic prosperity. Internet provision in USA is abysmal. Americans claim to be a world leader in technology. Sorry, that adds up to a horrible dose of reality by 2020.

It doesn't really bother me, because, hey, I already have an education and only need to publish a poxy blog with one small image per post. But what about the youngsters and technology-based ie nearly all companies that rely on the internet to conduct their business? They are working with one hand tied behind their back.

Wii-ing in the wind

And enough already of falsely congratulating the wonders of free markets as a solution to everything. Japanese Wii-playing internet providers and suicidal Swedes didn't get first and second in the list of high speed internet because their leaders held up their arms and allowed a free for all! But Comcast have got rich and uber powerful because US authorities did, and look where they are in the list!

Rather than picking on America, every English-speaking government really needs to step up to the plate and make sure free competition isn't quite so free, because if Swedish or Japanese become the primary languages on the internet, what have English-speaking countries got to fall back on for a marketing edge in the world of business? Certainly not a workforce capable of communicating in two or three languages. "2 languages in the same head? Noone can live at that speed!" (Eddie Izzard.)

Our life in the hands of Comcast? Ouch!

Every comcastic consumer in the US is definitely getting screwed one way or another already, but worse, the future kids, due to become captains of industry as well as pawns, are coming into line to be screwed royally too. It isn't good enough to be happy with lightening fast Wii's and slow-loading on-line timetables for the bus to the unemployment office. More than any generation before them, people will need access to a snappy and world-beating internet set-up. If not, a whole country could be left in the dust.

See, I am back full swing into the ranting with a happy heart, because the internet works!

Bloggers are coming up with loads of ways to attract attention to their sites. Friday, Wednesday and weekends are popular getting, although Mr Linky has a load of variations on a daily theme!

Comment Friday

Over at Blog About Your Blog, Matt and Lee are constantly pushing the envelope with ideas and have recently seen their Comment Friday come of age. Someone suggested Comment Wednesday, but that doesn't rhyme so well.

Basically you visit their site, leave a comment about ANYTHING, and Matt will call by your website and leave a comment there, an intelligent one, of course, even more intelligent than the one you leave, perhaps. If you are an intriguing blogger like Ryan. or a bad ass Washington intern you may win a back-link to BAYB.

Thankful Thursday

I'm all for giving thanks on Thursday, and if you are too, write a suitable article and notify the good folks over at Sting My Heart

Wordless Wednesday

A picture is worth a thousand words. Is this link to Wordless Wednesday HQ worth a thousand links to The Pisstakers lazy ass blog roll?

Tackle it Tuesday

If opening your closets to the world is for you, then so is Tackle It Tuesday

Manic Monday

This looks like a set of random posts and questions, but there seems to be an underlying hidden romantic theme?!

Mybloglog Sunday

Never ones to be left out, The Pisstakers are spreading some link love on what amounts to the day of rest for many MyBlogLog members. If noone else visits between now and Sunday at blog time for Ed, these guys will have a quick line written about them.

If you want to nudge them off, come again before Sunday.

On Sundays, this homepage will be dedicated to the MyBlogLog members... All Pisstakers homepages are archived, for eternity.

Sod it Saturday

Seeing as most people either spend Saturdays shopping in the real world or on-line, bloggers should give up hope of people reading their wise witty words. Get down the pub or out into the country and let the world wash over you for 24 hours.

So ends the week in Mr linky meme land

The internet is all about sharing and offering information. On a blog, it is great to hear from readers, even if the feedback is negative! Comparing various blogs/websites, I noticed a few different attitudes towards correspondence.

The Pisstakers

Use our snazzy contact form and we will get back to you the same day, because we really value your input and interest. This is the voice of sincerity (for once) from Ed the Editor.

Daring Fireball

John Gruber is a busy and upfront blogger. The Mac guru admits it can take a while (if ever) to get round to his email duties. He writes enough as it is, I guess, with loads of posts every day, and tends not to leave any questions unanswered in his trademark tech essays. Also he does offer the option for mega encryption messaging, presumably his stand to confound the spooks sucking up and listening to everything going down the tubes these days. Consequently, we will let him off his less than on the ball admin.

Spanish ignorants

I can't tell you how many times I emailed companies in Spain asking for information on their products. Since 2003, bike bit and foodstuff empresarios with some of the world's best designed websites have lost hundreds of euros of business from me. I waited bloody days and days for a response, beating myself up that perhaps they didn't understand my textbook Spanish. But no, there is a mañãna attitude that has gone beyond culturally cute, and entered the realms of taking the piss. So I sourced products from real world stores that gave a damn about their customers.

It would almost have been better to disconnect their Contactenos link and saved us all the trouble, cabrones.

Anyway, by far the best contact form in the world comes from Dave Barnes. I have never used it, but I am sure it works!

What is the worst online correspondent or worst attitude to email you have encountered?

Search is an important part of a blog, and in an effort to be good webmasters, we have a swicki option and Google search incorporated in the Pisstakers Search. The human mind is a curious entity, though. judge larry, satire essay, mums, ass linking, and mobog are just a few of the the latest search queries. Wow. How diverse, or is it perverse?

Judge Larry

We post 6 or 7 new articles every day, and so it is easy to forget some of the old posts, but Judge Larry? Who the hell is he? Looking at the Google search result for Judge Larry Pisstakers, the law man seems to be a composite character, like something out of those kids books where you can mix and match heads, torsos and legs. That is quite an achievement for Google - they spend hundreds of millions on search algorithms to invent entities like a Judge called Larry (Page)?

Ass-linking

We do have a Lazy Ass links page, our satirical stab at blog rolls, but I really don't know that I ever wrote an indepth study of how to co-join anuses. And why would you want to know about that sort of thing anyway? Is there a group of office workers somewhere trying to dream up the weirdest search term, and the winner gets to sneak off work an hour early? If so, the winner deserves their medal for ass linking.

What is the most bizarre search term you have sitting in your statistics?

This isn't about the cost of broken relationships from over-work, ulcers from worry and liver problems resulting from the celebrations of the first big sales contract. This is a link to some amazing transparency from the developers of DropSend, Freshbooks, Maya's mom, Mobissimo and Wesabe. The cost of production, so to speak.

Perhaps when you next think of using an app and not paying for it, spare a thought for the guys who invested some fairly serious money (and time) in offering you the wonderful user experience.

In the spirit of the exercise illustrated by Ryan Carson it has cost $860 to get The Pisstakers to its current state - and on the plus side of the equation, there is zero income but a Technorati-based net worth of about $20,000. Cuckoo, cuckoo.

I was listening to another entertaining podcast from Boagworld. It was recorded in Austin, Texas at this year's SXSW (South By South West is a show for web designers and developers. Everyone Paul and Marcus interviewed was having a good time. Plied with beer and free t-shirts, interviewees plugged their presentations or enthused about meeting barely famous people, learning from other experts, networking and handing out their business cards, blah blah hic.

I can see the fun involved with such a gathering, but it made me realise, I have never seen the business appeal or the benefits of such conferences. It did, however, give me an outline for an idea on how conferences should be run in the 21st century!

btw, I have organised a few events in my time, so I sort of know what I am talking about.

The old-fashioned way

Back in the day of phone calls and hand-written letters, I could see why conferences would have helped to get industry people face to face to exchange and disseminate information. But even then, I never understood the business sense in paying vast sums to get your work force pissed up, over fed, and occasionally laid on company time. Crazy thinking.

The old ways are still the best?

Conventional conferences are an even crazier notion in this day and age of ultimate communication. Why do I need to haul my ass half way across the world to listen to someone who is going to upload a full stereo audio recording (minus the coughs and erms) hours after the talk has been delivered? Or worse, pay for someone else to have a good time while I am sat at home listening to the recording. Or even worse than that, listen while sat at my desk, toiling away to earn the money to pay an employee/co-worker's damned expenses bill!

If it is all about a holiday for the boyz and gurlz, hmmmm, Austin, a holiday destination? If it is all about the atmosphere and excitement of real life presentations, fair point, but at such expense? There is a far better way of giving web businesses what they want, I think.

What is so bad about video conferencing?

Technically there is nothing wrong with videos. Afterall, any decent sized audience at a popular event will have a big screen to help them see better what is going on on-stage.

Conference organisers are probably going to scream at this preposterous idea of using technology wisely. Afterall, they make a living, getting thousands of displaced professionals under one roof to consume as much as possible for as long as possible. Whilst good for the economy of Austin, SXSW is a lost opportunity for the bosses of the speakers and staff sent out to prowl. And a lost opportunity to boost the local economies from where the speakers and visitors partying out in Texas, come from.

The conference content

Web designers and developers want access to cutting edge and entertaining info before the masses get a hold of it? Well, our cost effective approach to providing content would be to contract professional videotapers local to each of the guest speakers. (Money for local media firms, little or no travel to worry about / minimal time off work for the talkers.)

The gurus would record their speech/discussion, and field questions sent in ahead of time by interested parties. That is the content sorted out!

Conference income creation

We'd distribute the whole "conference" in the form of pay per download. The exclusivity / scoop factor for the conference participants would be assured with a registration process, just like a ticket deal for conventional conferences. Then at a later date, the material, maybe slightly hobbled would be put on the internet for free for the public.

We would pay the speakers for their time and travel expenses to their office by way of a cut of download revenues. If you are a boring speaker, noone will pay to view, and you only lose your time and a bit of pride. Scintillate and you will attract plenty of dough!

Business owners would incur a fraction of the expenses of a traditional conference, and with some imagination (provided below) would in fact win brownie points with the workforce and create work within their local economy.

Ding ding, clear up time for everyone concerned, except for unemployed conventional conference organisers, out-of-state hotel chains, airlines and caterers.

Pay per download, I don't think so!

Detractors may say that noone will pay decent bucks for downloaded video conferences. But let's face it, knowledge is power and if you can be ahead of the game for the sake of a few bucks, wouldn't you prefer to pay for a download, rather than a mile long tab of business expenses, lost workforce... Anyway, if your judgement is clouded by dreams of foreign travel, the beancounters will surely advise you to move money dedicated to travel, accomodation, food and booze bills into payments for downloaded conferences.

Afterall, some of the speakers could be your own employees, so let them reap the rewards with a cut of download monies. Keep the money in the local economy.

Virtual conferences are boring!

Only if you have no imagination! Make a day of it, locally. Hire a room and big screen, let ALL your employees benefit, not just the chosen few. We'll go mad and include a barrel of beer with each Platinim package download if you want to recreate a party atmosphere. Hell, even a bucket of chilli, if you insist. It is still cheaper than flying a couple of your folks half way around the world.

What about the lost networking angle?

Yes, networking is oh so important, but, if tags and email and social bookmarking are really as useful as the people attending web related conferences claim - do I have to continue?

Whichever way you cut it, real life conferences are sooooo early Web 2.0.

Not wishing to put the virtual cat among the pigeons, but personally, I think that traditional conferences are an exercise in making money for conference organisers and associated suppliers off the back of deluded businesses. Conference organisers had all better re-think their employment prospects, because Pisstakers All Points North virtual conferences are going to be the next marketing paradigm of the 21st century - and everyone involved is going to clear up!

If you are interested in All Points North 2009, rather than All Heading SXSW 2009, drop us a line.

Good to hear from CC Tech that Google Privacy policies are changing. It is a good step in the right direction, and now the scammers and nasty folk only have 18 to 24 months to do as they please with your online traceable info.

John Chow dot com tells us How to make a great first impression with our blogs. For first time visitors to his blog today, the first impression is that he has guest writers doing all the work?

Pay Per Post has gone mad according to this snippet from Daring Fireball. (Take a deep breath because not even 2 commas help your lungs out much)

it’s unseemly that Larry Lessig’s op-ed piece in today’s New York Times, in which he argues against the merits of Viacom’s billion-dollar copyright infringement lawsuit against Google, doesn’t disclose that Google has pledged $2 million to support Lessig’s Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University.

Social Media Websites in Illustrated Form

READ THE ARTICLE AT DRIVL.COM

Running through the old Net News Wire reader, I found an article on Blog About Your Blog, that took me to The Gospel According to Rhys, which encouraged me to follow my nose to Drivl.com. I'm glad I was such a sleuth so early in the morning because I like Drivl, and this is is a sample of website visualisations I found, in this case, relating to Reddit.



If that tickles your fancy, click on the image for more side swipes at Web 2.0 bastions. Also Rhys is running with the idea and seeks other wannabe cartoonists' impressions.

If you can draw a picture that says, cynical observer of all things serious, wannabe tech head and visionary who is creating a viable blog-based business so he can sail round the world with his wife - that is a visualisation of how I see The Pisstakers. Although, with one rotating banner 106 x 42 , and not a trace of Adsense, the current visual impression is something different, probably!

Seth Godin has built on a foundation of research by others to come up with a top 1000 web 2.0 websites. Google cannot play because they don't let you interact, but they got top spot via Youtube, ahead of the big guns like MySpace, Digg (way down there), Feedburner, Photobucket, kayak.com (travel cost comparison site) and all sorts of social bookmarkers like Reddit, furl, delicious...

It is interesting to see a success being made of something as banal as t-shirt designs at Zazzle, self publishing with LuLu, and even the Alexaholic listing itself, receiving several hundred visitors per million of all the surfers on the internet.

Maybe this list should be called A cross-section of internet users' brains. Seeing as I haven't heard of a fraction of these web 2.0 big hitters, I suppose the cross-section of my Homer peanut brain reflects the number of people who visit The Pisstakers?

I am all for web creativity and technology and all that wow factor flash stuff, but I can't recommend callling by Yugop if you just woke up on a Sunday morning. Monochrome, motion and nauseating dialling tones. Let me out of here.

The Pisstakers Spanish department believe that the head of Google Iberia has let slip a telephonic secret of importancia enorme. While boozing at a sangria fest in his pueblo, the swinging Spaniard and soon-to-be-fired executive, babbled at high speed, Googlay is on the brink of bruising their way into the developing world via an ad-laden telephone.

iPhone 1 - Google phone 2

Not everyone is convinced that this leak means much, commercially, for the second most popular computer-oriented company on earth (after Apple (hehehe)). Roughly translated from drunken Castellano into perfect English by The Register,

Google's phone is unlikely to generate the media hype induced by the iPhone - which outside the style-starved USA looks like a toy in search of a wealthy fool

That is a bit harsh, both under-blowing and over-blowing the iPhone's capabilities and looks, and ignoring some iPhone killer features of great economic importance to Google phone allies.

When demonstrating Google maps on the iPhone, Steve Jobs ordered 4000 lattes from Starbucks and then hung up. If Larry Page has his way, his keynote will upstage that stunt: he will order 4000 coffees on a Google phone, and get a cut of the order as kickback for using the search function. Neat

Adios Google phone amigo

If the Spanish guy who leaked this news has any sense, he will make sure his father's bar is indexed on Google maps. Life as a waiter is hard, and every bit of custom will help him make ends meet in his enforced early retirement.

So what will this baby look like? Hopefully better than the pre-iPhone mock-up.

Slashdot reported a Microsoft patent that will encourage students to view ads, and in return the advertisers will offer subsidized or free computers to schools. Gorilla sushi had an indepth article on the ramifications of face recognition software that will ensure that kids give adverts their undivided attention before starting their on-line day.

They made plenty of good points about the bad side of forced corporate intervention. Worse was the likelihood of schools rolling over to the advertisers' demands to keep kids' faces glued to a screen. How reassuring to have such faith in administrators responsible for setting behavioral standards for future generations.

Personally, I feel sorry for the guys making adverts for an audience that couldn't give a flying fig about their product.

Update: What do you think to this example of on-line papal crud? You would have thought the guy who used to run the Vatican, Pope John Paul 2, would have had the best marketeers in the business - what with selling god and other dodgy religious concepts in the hi tech 21st century. Not so fast with those assumptions, designer boys and girls.

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Funny how Viacom waited till Youtube was bought out by a bottomless financial pit before getting assy with the posting of copyrighted material.

Viacom's double hit on Youtube

Maybe Google made promises to Viacom and haven't kept them since taking over the reins at the video host monster site, but even so, $1bn worth of broken promises? And why did Viacom wait till hundreds of millions of views of viacom material had been logged before also asking Youtube for a massive compensation deal into the bargain? Fishy as hell.

Viacom's illogical corporate decisions

I would suggest Viacom reconsider because, lets face it, who the hell logs into viacom to watch videoclips? And how stupid is the Viacom guy who decided to take on all the web hosting fees willingly covered till recently by Youtube? Crazy decisions in the name of control.

If it were Microsoft behind Youtube, I could see Viacom's worries, but Google are surely a decent guardian of so much power. Obviously I have no clue as to the motives of Viacom, and the full story behind Youtube's broken promises is confidential, but...

... it seems to be Viacom the dinosaurs taking on Google, the new and open minded visionary kids on the block. There is only one loser, and it begins with "V".

Plug-ins can add massive amounts of entertainment value to a web site - visitor numbers, latest comments, "Bad music I admit to listening to", the time on Mars... but sometimes the flashy features can slow your site to a crawl, destroy the formatting, or add nothing positive to your site, whatsoever.

A poll plug-in that went horribly wrong

Polls are a good way to get visitors to interact. What is the saying? An opinion is like an asshole, everyone has one. Well, I would like to talk to the asshole who wrote the poll plug-in that wrecked our web pages in Firefox.

Unique plug-ins are few and far between

You have to have something special if you want to attract visitors. So that cuts out the ubiquitous "Press the fart" button, or a drag and drop Zwinky (get a life) avatar tool bar. Everyone has one of those, right! I came up with the idea of an "I'll guess your weight" plug-in, but I am yet to find a way for visitors to sit on my face.

Worst ideas for a plug-in.

Name and shame the Worst Commentator
Erroneous Statistics to make you feel good about 3 visitors a day
Back up and destroy to delete your worst posts and keep them out the public domain.

Got any more Worst plug-ins ideas? What is the hands up best ever plug in?

This is clever. Is Beggr for real, at over £800-worth of donations?



There was once a radio station that collected £10k from listeners who responded to a plea, "Send in money to the station." No explanation was given as to what the money was to be used for! They returned every penny, after a good laugh.

I learnt something today after watching a stodgy hour on Washington Today. Pretexting is the illegal acquirement of personal records.

It has been revealed that a financial company has been stealing phone records of 6 members of a trading company that criticised their practices. The violated consumers found out by accident and the errant company had to be subpoena-ed before even admitting that agents had falsely acquired the phone records.

It transpired that these agents ( a woman, no less) had opened a secondary account in the customer's name, by quoting SS numbers and personal details to the telecoms companies. Once in the system, they accessed the customers' main phone records. Amazing, just like a John Grisham movie, except real, and no Tom Cruise character to save the day.

Pretexting question opens up doors on telecoms marketing tactics

The telecoms insist that they don't give out personal phone call info. Maybe, but it is quite revealing to see telecom bosses squirm under very innocent questions. Like, "What is the big deal with marketing to existing customers without using the specific details of phone calls?"

On another occasion, the telecoms spokesman forgot the basic difference between personal customer info and call-related info. It was an unbelievable blooper in his good guy argument, when he said something like, "Why would we market to every customer on our books, when we (can use more personal info) to target a certain sector?

Good answer - not. What he meant to say was, "The telecoms have a job to do, and too much personal privacy of customers just gets in the way of our expansion programs."

How I would use phone call info

If you have a big customer database, you can sell them all sorts. Telecoms therefore have tens of millions of opportunities for extra sales.

A subsidiary of a baby bell suspects that there is a bigger picture hiding behind basic phone account details. On the surface a 2 adult household probably doesn't want their latest Mickey Mouse package, but they know that if they checked personal phone calls more carefully, maybe they would spot that one of the adults has a child-like mind. Make a call to the parent phone company asking for a quick look at the phone bill, and the long slippery slope to riches continues.

Truly, you cannot trust humans seeking profits to do the right thing, unless there is accountability. And even with all the legislation in the world, I wouldn't trust a telecoms guy as far as I can throw the monthly check.

I was going to write about the RIAA offer of a $3k per student settlement, you know, the usual scary story that makes all music file sharers think, "It'll never happen to me." But you know what, at the bottom of the article it says there is no way Jose you can use the story without paying for it.

So I am not going to mention another word about their pissing in a haystack suing campaign. The RIAA are on their own with this one, so no change there.

The official line:

With Versomatic installed, all file changes are catalogued and archived automatically in real-time without you even noticing. Then go back at any time and view or recover a needed earlier version of a file instantly. Versomatic can even recover previously deleted files regardless of when they were deleted

Sounds impressive, and no reason why it wouldn't work well.

The Pisstakers line on Versomatic

Back-up, back-up, or hiccup. So when was the last time you saved a copy of your hard disk, just in case Judgement Day comes early and all your data is terminated without notice? Probably not in living memory!

Let's be honest, with almost no practicing cloners out there, there are more HDD accidents waiting to happen than stars in the skynet. But that doesn't mean you have to be one of the stats, ie one of the users left with an achey feeling in their stomach, due to a bad dose of If only-itis.

Versomatic is a system-wide option

We aren't just talking about filing, deleting then rescuing a love letter to your dishy Aunt Nellie. You can restore all those system files you screwed with on a drunken trip through your Mac the day after you bought it. On the downside, obviously the files you want to retrieve have to be stored somewhere, so Versomatic is yet another reason to head on over to the Techboggle Deal of the Day for a cheap Hard Drive.

Versomatic is pretty but old

This app all looks very pretty in a minimalistic right click dialog box kind of way. The graphic to explain the selection of old versions is a bit prettier, I guess..



But hello, isn't it a bit obsolete already? Time Machine is a major feature of the upcoming Leopard Operating System due this year.



That will presumably be the new Back-up system of choice, but for the oldies on Tiger, Versomatic will have to do. And for the even older oldies like us on Panther, as you were! Back-up, back-up, back-up.

Comcast again prove they are the biggest bunch of time-wasting arrogant shites you never want to do business with. The phone, the final third of our internet/cable/digital voice package was installed today, 3 weeks after the first couple went on line. Yeehah, plop.

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