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November 30, 2004

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Netscape!

The new prototype includes the ability to swap rendering engines, using Internet Explorer in lieu of Mozilla's Gecko.

I think this is a mistake... but nobody asked me. You can read more about it here.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 11:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

MSN Readies New Blogging Service

Look out Blogger.com (Google)

Microsoft hopes their blog service will be a direct competitor to blog-creation and hosting tools, such as Blogger, Blog*Spot, LiveJournal and TypePad.

| More from eWeek |

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 11:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

All I Want For Christmas is a Little Work

A lot of times people think that operating a home business means you can work when you want, take as many vacations as you want and pretty well lead a leisurely lifestyle.

I've had friends (who don't own their own business) comment to me that "I have it too easy" but I beg to differ.

Some of us could be workaholics as pointed out by an article I read this morning...

In an article by Eugene Raudsepp titled Are You a Workaholic? Take This Quiz to Find Out, he suggests "There is a line to be drawn, however, between healthy, ambitious work habits and workaholism."

The page links to a quiz you can take which will offer you an assessment. My assessment said:

You scored 91 out of a possible 147.

Your score in this range means your career is of major importance to you and you derive most of your personal identity from it. Such a high involvement may mean that you base too much of your well-being on your career, excluding other important areas of your life.

Beware: Exceedingly high commitment may make you susceptible to unacceptable self-imposed stress and eventual burnout. Successful individuals who sustain their career motivation maintain other interests besides work. These allow them to develop a more balanced life, which results in fewer illnesses, healthier relationships and steadier career achievement.

If you scored above 115, you may feel like a victim of pressures, incapable of controlling your time, energy and life. You need to learn to decrease the pressures, workload and stresses you experience in your work. You also need to explore how to make your time and energy contribute more to your overall well-being.

I never cared too much for quizzes like this. For example, "Beware: Exceedingly high commitment may make you susceptible to unacceptable self-imposed stress and eventual burnout," makes me wonder how they know what I perceive to be "unacceptable self-imposed stress" as opposed to "acceptable self-imposed stress."

I wonder who writes quizzes for people who write quizzes? I guess whoever wrote this one would tend to disagree with my friends who think I don't have a real job.

OK... folks... 'nuff fun n' games! Everybody get back to work.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 09:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How about Getting a little Publicity?

A good article I read called "How to Build Credibility Through Bylined Articles" by Sally Saville Hodge says that most people thinking about PR think of press releases. For any of you have written press releases, you know how hard it is to try and make it sound as if it isn't an ad. Sure, it would help if we were all Dr. Paul Hartunian, but since that isn't going to happen any time soon... what can we do?

Sally's article talks about writing op-ed articles — articles that appear opposite editorials, trend articles, which could be anything that might affect the general public, and "how to" articles. She claims a strategy of submitting articles is "a successful strategy for various types of consultants."

I really like this idea. You can read the full article here.

Yes, a little experience wouldn't hurt either. I've tried sending out press releases, submitting articles to magazines, etc, and now every time I think about it I feel like Snoopy from the Charlie Brown series where Snoopy would sit at his trusty keyboard typing out"

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

The good news is... persistence will pay off. Yes, some might accuse me of "being a Pollyanna" but after successfully discovering what doesn't work, after awhile you have to learn what does.

Another inspiring read last week came from Joan Stewart a.k.a the The Publicity Hound's newsletter about a Publicist Robert Smith who wanted something more than the standard brochure to set himself apart from all the other public relations practitioners in the U.S. So he called the local cable company and got his own TV show.

I know... hard to believe! Entrepreneur Magazine is going to be sorry for rejecting my articles once they see me on TV. ;-)

With Joan's permission, here is the story...

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 06:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 29, 2004

Organizing your Mastermind Group

Have you read Jim Straw's The Most Powerful Wealth Secret Ever Told? Jim talks about using a notebook to create what he calls a Mastermind group which is a list of like-minded individuals who have been willing to share information with you over the years.

The link above is to a PDF file; you may wish to right click on it and save it to your hard drive.

Jim claimed he kept detailed information in a Notebook with a page dedicated to each individual, and notes in the sidebar which outlined anything cross referenced.

This was a bit of a turn-off for me. Oh no! It isn't because I don't like the idea. I think it is a great idea. But if Jim could see how I keep notes... I was envisioning a note book filled with arrows, (see page...) and entire entries crossed out, for some reason or another. Yes, I could imagine the whole thing becoming quite a mess...

This made me think about ways the information could be organized. That's when I thought about TreePad. Although they offer paid variations on the original program there is still a freeware Lite version for Windows users which would be perfect for this task. You can read more about the features to see if it might work for you too. From the features page it says:

With the look and feel of the familiar Windows explorer, editing, storing, browsing, searching and retrieving your data can not be easier!

There is also a page of documentation including a PDF manual you can download. But I think once you play with the program for a few minutes, you'll catch on. It isn't hard at all to use.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 08:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

ReBlog other people's blog posts

Debbie Weil wrote about a plugin for MovableType and WordPress called reBlog which she says "enables you to re-publish snippets of content from other blogs you find interesting and useful." Here are the instructions for installing it as a plugin. Don't forget to see the README file.

My first thought is "who would want to use it?". But if you look at the homepage it says:

reBlogs are useful to individuals who want to maintain a weblog but prefer curating content to writing original posts. They can also enable organizations to tap the contributions of their employees, members, and communities-at-large in order to easily redistribute relevant content.

Thanks to Debbie for the tip! Some of you might find it very useful.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 28, 2004

Adding Audio to Your Website

I recently spoke to someone about putting audio on their website, and more and more I find myself doing this for clients. Here are some tips I'd like to pass on.

Mp3 files, and generators are great for short intros on websites (if you want to use them). I have clients who have signed up for this or that persons audio generator service and using this third party service I was able to add audio to the clients website without any problem.

Most of these services use Mp3 audio format, and although it offers exceptional audio quality it isn't needed for audio which contains mostly spoken material and consumes 10x the bandwidth of other formats such as Windows Media and Real Audio.

If you were to offer me guitar lessons over the web and I had to be able to pick out each note in fast lick that was accompanied by background music you would want to use Mp3. But if you have a 1 hour teleseminar where the content is spoken, Mp3 is overkill. You could include it in this format for those who would like to download the file and burn it to CD for listening to later.

For those that want to listen to the file in real time, large Mp3 files are a nightmare for your users who are accessing the Internet from a 56 dial-up connection. A 1 hour teleseminar could easily exceed 100MB as an Mp3 file, and even if you try and stream it... those with a 56K dial-up connection cannot download the file any faster then 13MB/hr which means a lot of interruptions while they are trying to listen to your file. Then... 13MB per hour is based on an optimal connection, and I've never had a dial-up account where I got over 10MB/hr. This means your listener (with a 56K dial-up connection) may have, up to, a 10 hour download, before they can listen to the file without it breaking up.

For clients you want to stream audio to, the best format, in my opinion, is to use Real Audio, which has support for all flavours of Windows, and installations for Mac and Linux operating systems too. When encoding an audio file to be optimal for a 56K connection, you can turn that 1 hour, 100MB Mp3 into an 8MB real audio file that will allow users with less then perfect 56K connections to listen to the stream in real time, with a lesser chance of having the audio breakup while they are listening to it.

The difference in sound is negligible and it means you will have a lot more happy listeners and pay a lot less for bandwidth.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 10:32 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 25, 2004

I'm stinkin' filthy RICH!!!

No... I didn't win a lottery.

I read Don MacLeod's Thanksgiving blog post... that beside other things to ponder, says:

If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes in your closet, a roof overhead and a place to sleep... you are richer than 75% of the world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace... you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthiest.

You understand it isn't Thanksgiving here in Canada... that was last month, but still, always a good idea to reflect upon your blessings.

Mostly... I'm one of these guys that you never hear about. I'm not an overnight success, and I don't make TONS of money... well... compared to the 8% Don speaks about. I make a good living from developing websites for mostly US based clients. They send me the work, and I get to work out of my office in my home. I've been doing this since 1998. So I suppose if you consider the amount of people out of that 8% who make their living online, I'm in the top 1-2%.

Some days... my only stress is worrying about which car I'm going to drive, or worry about the time wasted at the garage while I'm having one of them fixed. Or taking the time to go shopping for groceries! I really despise grocery shopping, but a large percentage of the world would feel blessed if they had my problems.

I'd just like to give thanks to all the wonderful people who have continuously sent me work over the last several years. Just so you know... I still have family members asking me if I have "found a job yet," which means that some people close to me don't understand how I can sit at home and "play" on the computer and still be so much "better off" then they are.

Thanks to Don for his post. It reminds me of just how fortunate I am.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 06:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 24, 2004

Tuesday's random thoughts

Some people will do anything to make a dollar. Thats just what I though when I found out that Google is suing Auctions Expert International LLC for clicking on their own AdSense links. An eWeek article says "Not only can click fraud lead advertisers to pay for fraudulent clicks, but competitors also can use the tactic in an attempt to game the auction-based model used to determine the positioning of ads in pay-per-click programs, search-engine marketers said during the conference."

But Google isn't the only one handing out law-suites these days. Google is being sued by an adult website owner.

Apparently, according to Norm Zada of the offending website (pun intended) Google has been giving away "free peeks" of a password protected area that the website charges about $25 per month to access.

Well... well... nothing like the Christmas season coming on to bring out the worst in some people. But you don't have to be at your worst! And if you're thinking of sending all of your clients Christmas cards to tell them they are special you might want to read Holiday Card Games to make sure you're not upsetting the very people you don't want to.

Me? I'm just going to let my clients know I adopted a stray cat in their honor.

Really though... Bob Bly, although he has openly trashed the idea of blogging, has just launched his own blog with an article about How Direct Marketers Think. Regardless of what he thinks about blogs, he does offers some useful tidbits. I heard Bob Serling recommends Mr. Bly, and said that he never misses an issue of Bob's newsletter.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 23, 2004

Very few XHTML editors

Dan Wellman is a contributing author for www.devarticles.com and his latest article reviews a few html editors capable of producing valid Xhtml. He claims there are few choices so far, which may have something to do with Xhtml being "relatively" new.

But the good news is... it might not cost you anything.

He said:

I have attempted to weed out the good and the bad and to explain why, and after looking at and using all of these applications myself, I can safely say that I see no reason why money need be spent at all when deciding to switch to an XHTML editor.

Dan recommends HTML Gate 2005 from MPS (www.mpsoftware.dk) so I decided I had better have a look at it. No doubt about it. It does come with an impressive list of features and what's more you can set it to a DTD of Xhtml 1.0 strict and set the program in WYSIWYG mode. Of course... you may have to do some editing to the code produced it you hoped to validate it.

Here are some of the features:

There is a lot more to it then what I've listed here. To be honest, I think it would take me a few days playing with it to see how much I liked it. There aer too many features and tools to learn them all by simply editing one quick webpage with it.

Maybe this is the THE development tool for 2005. Download a copy since it is free. Post your comments here if you want, telling me what you liked or disliked about it.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 06:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 22, 2004

Evaluate Your Web Site's Credibility

How Do People Evaluate a Web Site's Credibility?

Consumer WebWatch released a report after surveying 2,684 people to find out how people evaluate a website's creditability. This group was made up of, Female: 58.1%, Male: 41.9%, Average age: 39.9, Average use of Web: 19.6 hours/week.

According to the study:

"...nearly half of all site evaluators (46.1%) used visual cues, such as the site's overall design or look, to assess a site's credibility. This happened slightly more frequently with finance (54.6%), search engines (52.6%) and travel (50.5%) categories, and less frequently with the health (41.8%) and news (39.6%) categories."

Ahh! but the kicker is... some really slick looking sites received negative comments such as "It looks like it's designed by a marketing team, and not by people who want to get you the information that you need." This means you definitely want to keep away from having a site designed that is too brochure like and make sure it is engaging to the visitor.

Since they found that looking good is often interpreted as being good and being credible, an evaluation of your site now, might mean you can budget for a re-design in 2005. Even if it just means removing dated content, checking to make sure links are functional, and to give it the over-all appearance that everything is current.

When I was so busy with my website that sold advertising to used car dealerships, I fell behind a bit in keeping this website updated. Some of the content was dated, some of the links were bad, and things looked stale. I received a number of nasty comments by email, and had people making jokes about my site that were posted to my discussion forum. I felt a bit offended by this, but... thanks to the negative comments it prompted me to re-design the site and get it back on track.

The result has been a lot more traffic and business.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 08:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 18, 2004

Do you like to write and get paid for it?

This week in the HomeBusiness Websites Journal I wrote about niche markets. One of the topics I should have covered too is about writing. Since the Internet is a medium that is mainly read, this means if you're going to have a web presence you will have to write. Some people "don't mind" writing, some hate it, some love it... and there are a few who just can't write enough because they love to write.

If you love to write, there is a good chance that you don't need to worry about making an income. Your passion will pay your way. There are lots of way to write and get paid for it on the Internet.

If you click the thumnail to the left, a new window should open with an eBook written by Chris Carlsson. Chris sells a paperback of this eBook for $11.25 plus tax and postage online and can be ordered here. The novel is about:

A teenage arsonist threatens a partially submerged mid-22nd century San Francisco. As a Public Investigator "tryout" seeks evidence across the utopian city full of canals and veloways, political and social conflicts erupt. When there is no such thing as property, what is crime, and how does a utopian society protect itself from bad behavior? Should scientists be as free as artists to create? What is a "free market" for work without and money and commodities?

I must admit I don't know why he offers it for a free download, unless it is to encourage off-line sales, but the whole point is, if you like to write, the Internet is a perfect medium to explore, develop and sell story ideas, eBook and novels. I fancied myself as a bit of a writer when I was a teenager. This hobby was soon abandoned in my later teen years in favor of becoming a rock n' roll musician.

There are also other way to get paid for writing too. There are tons of magazines, journals and websites that often pay people for writing. For example (when this post was written) JournalismJobs.com offered a job from Media Life Magazine where the job description was/is, "Media Life covers the media industry, from TV to magazines and newspapers to radio and out of home advertising. We are a web site that is up five days a week with news stories and features. We are looking for reporters who can cover one or more areas of media. Good pay, live where you please."

A good place to keep updated on freelance writing job opportunities is to bookmark my Freelance Writing page which is a newsfeeed that gets updated every week or so. This is a great resource for those who want to be freelance writers.

You know what I would like to do if I had the time?

Write eBooks with pictures taken with a digital camera that show all the neat but lesser known cool spots to explore in Nova Scotia. This is something I can't picture myself doing right now because of my current business. But tourists who come in the summer time often spend thousands of dollars on travel, lodging, entertainment, and various activities such as hiking, white water rafting, and bycycling. It would seem reasonable that if you're going to rent a cottage that costs you a few hundred dollars for the week, the same people might buy a $20 eBook that shows them some of the really cool spots and activities they don't want to miss.

I would sell these books from Clickbank and talk to website owners who have cottages, accommodations, or anything tourism related, about being an affiliate of the eBook and ask them to promote it on their site.

What a great job that would be! Spend the Summer "taking in the sights" and then in the evening, or days you are resting up, write about what you have seen.

If you can think of other things you might write about, you are encouraged to leave your comments if you want.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 09:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 17, 2004

Blinkx's smarter desktop search

Blinkx Inc is releasing what may be a smarter desktop search tool using smart folders which are intelligent folders that automatically update their content as new information becomes available based on the ideas contained within the content of those files.

Matt Hicks, of eWeek says:

"...users can automatically populate a folder with Web and local content based on the context of the documents in the folder or a description of the folder's purpose."

How does it work?

Smart folders are created when a user right-clicks on a normal folder. This creates a desktop smart folder that then implicitly, persistently and automatically populates similar documents from your PC, news articles from the Web, TV, radio or video clips. In fact, anything from anywhere you specify can be added to a smart folder. Alternatively, users can explicitly create a smart folder by typing in a keyword, phrase or clicking on the document you are currently reading or writing. Similar information will then be added to the smart folder automatically as soon as it appears.

Apparently Microsoft and Apple have both entertained the idea of creating something like this but it looks like Blinkx is one step ahead of them.

Blinkx is a free download that integrates with Windows applications and Web browsers

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

MSN's desktop search

Details of MSN's desktop search were leaked Sunday and posted to the neowin website complete with screenshots. It looks like Microsoft is starting to get more then a little concerned with Google's activities lately. I still believe Google will release its own browser next year, built on top of the Gecko rendering engine that powers Firefox, Mozilla and Netscape. (The Gecko engine powers other browsers as well).

What does Microsoft say about this leak?

A post to the msnsearch's WebLog says:

While we're flattered by the attention and interest, this was an unauthorized disclosure.

We plan to release the beta bits only when we feel they are ready from a quality and completeness standpoint, and we’re looking forward to getting feedback from beta users at that time.

Should be an interesting year up ahead of us in 2005. Microsoft is desperately hoping to unseat Google from the dominant search engine position with their own MSN search engine.

You know, years ago the search engine AltaVista was pretty well the top search engine and I remember at one time, they had a program you could download to search all of your local files and drives. It was handy, no doubt about it, but it sure chewed up the system resources. I recall I had mine set to re-index the hard drive nightly.

Of course things change...

If any of you try one or the other, feel free to post a review of it here.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 06:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 16, 2004

CSS Boxes around Testimonials

Many websites these days bear witness to the popularity of colored boxes used for quotes, testimonials and other places where the authors want the text to stand out from the rest of the page.

Over the years there have been a number of hacks to create this type of effect using Tables, but some of the attributes used in the making, such as leftmargin, topmargin, marginwidth, marginheight and bordercolor, have never been part of a formal specification.

The markup might look something like this:

<table align="center" cellpadding="15" cellspacing="0" width="300" style="bordercolor="ff0000" border="1" bgcolor="#0000ff"><tr><td><font size="+1" face="Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif" color="#ffffff"><i>Some text</i></font></td></tr></table>

All it takes to start making a mess of your web page is to forget to close one of these tags. We all know that is easy enough to do. Luckily there is a much better way using CSS. You can replace all of the markup up above with:

<div class="myblock>Some text</div>

The beauty of this method is you only have to create the style information once and then you can call the style into your page as many times as you like. Lets look at the CSS:

.myblock (
font-family: arial, verdana, sans-serif;
font-size: 10pt;
color: navy;
border: solid 1px black;
background-color: #C8F8E8;
margin-left: 5mm;
margin-right: 5mm;
padding: 15;
)

Of course you can always add additional properties and values or remove ones you don't want. Using this this type of construct saves you from using invalid markeup and depreciated tags and attributes. You are also less likely to make a mistake when re-using <div class="myblock>Some text</div> in place of tables.

If you would like to see an example, see this article on my blog:
http://www.homebusiness-websites.com/myarchives/2004/11/get_positioned.html

I've modified the stylesheet so that any time I use blockquote tags in my articles it puts the text in a neat blue box.

If you would like to know more about this method please see the URL below for reference:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/box.html

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Grisoft Updates Free AVG Anti-Virus Tool

For anyone using the AVG virus protection software, there has been a new update that you should download. Older versions won't be supported after Dec. 31 which means no more virus definition updates.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 06:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 15, 2004

Get a free copy of Seth Godin's The Bootstrapper's Bible

Seth says this book is for:

"...entrepreneurs who are working their butts off to start a great business from scratch with no (or almost no) money."

That would include most of the people I know? How about you?

It is only being offered for two weeks for free. Don't snooze and lose. Click here to read Seth's blog where he made this offer and download a copy.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 09:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Nine Years for Spamming. But...

Jeremy Jaynes gets nine years for spamming and Former St. Louis Blues player Mike Danton gets 7.5 years after he tried to hire a hit man to kill David Frost, his agent and Canadian youth hockey coach.

Barry Green is a District Attorney for the 271st Judicial District and he says:

"...a Defendant convicted of "plain" or "simple" murder is allowed the option of having the jury assess his punishment at anywhere between 5 years and life in the penitentiary."

Barmin Meiwes who killed and ate another man got 8.5 years. And... Meiwes is a sick, sick man.

Alexander Pring-Wilson was sentenced six to eight years in prison for fatally stabbing a teenage father who made fun of him.

What do you think this means?

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 06:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 13, 2004

Get a Clue

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.

These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked.

Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.

But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about "listening to customers." They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.

While many such people already work for companies today, most companies ignore their ability to deliver genuine knowledge, opting instead to crank out sterile happytalk that insults the intelligence of markets literally too smart to buy it.

However, employees are getting hyperlinked even as markets are. Companies need to listen carefully to both. Mostly, they need to get out of the way so intranetworked employees can converse directly with internetworked markets.

Corporate firewalls have kept smart employees in and smart markets out. It's going to cause real pain to tear those walls down. But the result will be a new kind of conversation. And it will be the most exciting conversation business has ever engaged in.

THE CLUETRAIN MANIFESTO
http://www.cluetrain.com

95 THESES

1. Markets are conversations.

2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are
conducted in a human voice.

4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives,
dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is
typically open, natural, uncontrived.

5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this
voice.

6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that
were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

8. In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked
employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new
way.

9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms
of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more
organized. Participation in a networked market changes people
fundamentally.

11. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far
better information and support from one another than from
vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to
commoditized products.

12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than
companies do about their own products. And whether the news is
good or bad, they tell everyone.

13. What's happening to markets is also happening among employees.
A metaphysical construct called "The Company" is the only thing
standing between the two.

14. Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new
networked conversations. To their intended online audiences,
companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of
business -- the sound of mission statements and brochures --
will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the
18th century French court.

16. Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the
dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.

17. Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that
used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves.

18. Companies that don't realize their markets are now networked
person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined
in conversation are missing their best opportunity.

19. Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If
they blow it, it could be their last chance.

20. Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At
them.

21. Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less
seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.

22. Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on
the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a
little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.

23. Companies attempting to "position" themselves need to take a
position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market
actually cares about.

24. Bombastic boasts -- "We are positioned to become the preeminent
provider of XYZ" -- do not constitute a position.

25. Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to
the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

26. Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are
deeply afraid of their markets.

27. By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant,
they build walls to keep markets at bay.

28. Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the market
might see what's really going on inside the company.

29. Elvis said it best: "We can't go on together with suspicious
minds."

30. Brand loyalty is the corporate version of going steady, but the
breakup is inevitable -- and coming fast. Because they are
networked, smart markets are able to renegotiate relationships
with blinding speed.

31. Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked
knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own
"downsizing initiatives" taught us to ask the question:
"Loyalty? What's that?"

32. Smart markets will find suppliers who speak their own language.

33. Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It
can't be "picked up" at some tony conference.

34. To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns
of their communities.

35. But first, they must belong to a community.

36. Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures
end.

37. If their cultures end before the community begins, they will
have no market.

38. Human communities are based on discourse -- on human speech
about human concerns.

39. The community of discourse is the market.

40. Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will
die.

41. Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a
red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than
against their own market and workforce.

42. As with networked markets, people are also talking to each
other directly inside the company -- and not just about rules
and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.

43. Such conversations are taking place today on corporate
intranets. But only when the conditions are right.

44. Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR
policies and other corporate information that workers are doing
their best to ignore.

45. Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are
built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct
something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate
conversation.

46. A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the
word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.

47. While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily
on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge.
They need to resist the urge to "improve" or control these
networked conversations.

48. When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and
legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage
sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked
marketplace.

49. Org charts worked in an older economy where plans could be
fully understood from atop steep management pyramids and
detailed work orders could be handed down from on high.

50. Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect
for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract
authority.

51. Command-and-control management styles both derive from and
reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of
paranoia.

52. Paranoia kills conversation. That's its point. But lack of open
conversation kills companies.

53. There are two conversations going on. One inside the company.
One with the market.

54. In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost
invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete
notions of command and control.

55. As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are
broken. Command and control are met with hostility by
intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in
internetworked markets.

56. These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are
speaking the same language. They recognize each other's voices.

57. Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable
to happen sooner.

58. If willingness to get out of the way is taken as a measure of
IQ, then very few companies have yet wised up.

59. However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now
online perceive companies as little more than quaint legal
fictions that are actively preventing these conversations from
intersecting.

60. This is suicidal. Markets want to talk to companies.

61. Sadly, the part of the company a networked market wants to talk
to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of
language that rings false -- and often is.

62. Markets do not want to talk to flaks and hucksters. They want
to participate in the conversations going on behind the
corporate firewall.

63. De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We want to
talk to you.

64. We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and
strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will
not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites
chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.

65. We're also the workers who make your companies go. We want to
talk to customers directly in our own voices, not in platitudes
written into a script.

66. As markets, as workers, both of us are sick to death of getting
our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless
annual reports and third-hand market research studies to
introduce us to each other?

67. As markets, as workers, we wonder why you're not listening. You
seem to be speaking a different language.

68. The inflated self-important jargon you sling around -- in the
press, at your conferences -- what's that got to do with us?

69. Maybe you're impressing your investors. Maybe you're impressing
Wall Street. You're not impressing us.

70. If you don't impress us, your investors are going to take a
bath. Don't they understand this? If they did, they wouldn't
let you talk that way.

71. Your tired notions of "the market" make our eyes glaze over. We
don't recognize ourselves in your projections -- perhaps
because we know we're already elsewhere.

72. We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are
creating it.

73. You're invited, but it's our world. Take your shoes off at the
door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!

74. We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.

75. If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it
something interesting for a change.

76. We've got some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some
better service. Stuff we'd be willing to pay for. Got a minute?

77. You're too busy "doing business" to answer our email? Oh gosh,
sorry, gee, we'll come back later. Maybe.

78. You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.

79. We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic
self-involvement, join the party.

80. Don't worry, you can still make money. That is, as long as it's
not the only thing on your mind.

81. Have you noticed that, in itself, money is kind of
one-dimensional and boring? What else can we talk about?

82. Your product broke. Why? We'd like to ask the guy who made it.
Your corporate strategy makes no sense. We'd like to have a
chat with your CEO. What do you mean she's not in?

83. We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take
one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.

84. We know some people from your company. They're pretty cool
online. Do you have any more like that you're hiding? Can they
come out and play?

85. When we have questions we turn to each other for answers. If
you didn't have such a tight rein on "your people" maybe they'd
be among the people we'd turn to.

86. When we're not busy being your "target market," many of us are
your people. We'd rather be talking to friends online than
watching the clock. That would get your name around better than
your entire million dollar website. But you tell us speaking to
the market is Marketing's job.

87. We'd like it if you got what's going on here. That'd be real
nice. But it would be a big mistake to think we were holding
our breath.

88. We have better things to do than worry about whether you'll
change in time to get our business. Business is only a part of
our lives. It seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who
needs whom?

89. We have real power and we know it. If you don't quite see the
light, some other outfit will come along that's more attentive,
more interesting, more fun to play with.

90. Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more
interesting than most trade shows, more entertaining than any
TV sitcom, and certainly more true-to-life than the corporate
web sites we've been seeing.

91. Our allegiance is to ourselves -- our friends, our new allies
and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Companies that
have no part in this world, also have no future.

92. Companies are spending billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can't
they hear this market timebomb ticking? The stakes are even
higher.

93. We're both inside companies and outside them. The boundaries
that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall
today, but they're really just an annoyance. We know they're
coming down. We're going to work from both sides to take them
down.

94. To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear
confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster
than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules
to slow us down.

95. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching.
But we are not waiting.

---

Copyright 1999 Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger

ringleaders@cluetrain.com

All rights reserved.

However, world rights granted for non-commercial use

on condition that this page remains intact,

including this notice.

Rip it, steal it, web it, mail it, post it.

This message wants to MOVE!

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 11:04 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Is your Homepage All WRONG?!!

Dana VanDen Heuvel recently posted about a free PDF called One Minute Site Manifesto in which the authors suggest that your content on your homepage may not be engaging enough to your visitors. Dana goes on to say:

This manifesto fits squarely into the way bloggers have treated their home pages for some time now. The home page is meant to 'engage your visitors personally - something that a blog is born to do! So many sites have brochure-ware remnants on their sites that are no longer applicable in today's web environment.

For the most part, I found myself starting to agree with this... before I even saw this post, but then something happened...

The authors of the One Minute Site Manifesto site can be found at www.oneminutesite.com and if this is designed with keeping their eBook in mind, I suggest that you have to read the whole webpage and still don't have a clear pictures of what it is all about. There isn't any compelling headline, or enticing body copy (which is all centered and hard to read). Really it makes a small business person wonder how they ever bothered clicking on a link to the site at all.

In defence of the "Manifesto" it does offer some food for thought. Creating immediate interaction with your site visitors is an intriguing idea, but using their site has an example of how this should be done isn't something I would advocate.

Larry Bodine, who is the Regional Director for North America of the PM Forum, a global organization of 3,000 marketers in law, accounting and management consulting was recently asked "Will a Company Really Decide to Hire Us Based on Our Web site?" to which he responded with:

Yes. Absolutely. Definitely.

Don't just take it from me. I've heard in-house corporate counsel say that when they are searching for a new law firm, they first peruse the Web sites of law firms on their short list. A mediocre Web site conveys that the will also give them mediocre work product. In-house counsel have told me that a bad Web site will disqualify a firm from further consideration.

The Globe and Mail recently published an article by Randy Ray who says:

Employers are increasingly turning to blogs during their recruitment process to learn more about prospective employees -- and for the growing number of bloggers, their efforts have become an on-line portfolio to showcase their talents, says Jim Elve, publisher of BlogsCanada.ca, a guide to blogs.

"If I am an HR director and I receive an application that says a person has a blog, I am going to take a look at it... I am going to see that this person is not hiding himself because he is saying 'go ahead and read my diary.' It gives me a pretty good glimpse into the personality of a person and shows how well he can put words onto paper," Mr. Elve says.

I think this confirms that the One Minute Site Manifesto is on track with their line of thinking, but as Larry Bodine implies, you only have one chance to make a good first impresson, so I wouldn't use the Manifesto website as a good example of how to do this. You need to quickly get to the point with a good headline, and a first paragraph that quickly identifies what you have to offer. Building interactivity elements into it can be links to blogs and discussion forums. If someone is interested in learning more about you or your services they will click the links, provided you have made a good first impression.

To do anything else, in my humble opinion, is pure suicide.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 10:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 12, 2004

HTML Utopia: Look Ma? No Tables!

Working as a web developer full time certainly gives me a very broad range of knowledge in how to use CSS and html to create tableless, CSS driven, XHTML documents. A good example can bee seen in my tutorials Building a SEO Template Part I and Building a SEO Template Part II.

But like you, I'm always looking at ways to improve my efficiency, and keep a watch for anyone who offers intriguing information. I may have found something...

As a subscriber to www.sitepoint.com I was recently introduced to a new book by Rachel Andrew called The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks and luckily you can download the first three chapters for free.

I found this more as a good primer to CSS, and as I quickly scrolled through the free chapters, I was saying to myself... "Yeah, I know this, and this.... and this..." — but it would be a great guide to anyone starting out trying to learn enough CSS to build a site with it.

Then I ran across HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS by Dan Shafer. In the section, about Dan it says:

He cut his teeth as the first Webmaster and Director of Technology a Salon.com, then spent almost five years as the Master Builder at CNET’s Builder.com division.

Anyone who is used to visiting the Builder.com website knows Dan is truly an expert... there isn't any doubt about that. I was quite excited about downloading the first three chapters of his book for free.

It is apparently a large book... 700 pages or so... and it would seem a lot of the stuff at the first of the book is filler — depending on your proficiency with CSS. But when he actually starts getting into the meat of the book, you can find some really useful information. I found myself learning something useful.

His method for creating multiple columns is so simple that I was amazed that I hadn't thought of the technique before. His information is creative and innovative and I was thoroughly enough impressed to order the book today. It is a hard copy book, so it might take a week or so to get here.

Seven-hundred pages? Gosh, that's a little scary. I'll post a review of it here if I ever get all the way through it.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 12:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Search engines and promotion

A beta release of the new MSN search engine is available on the web. My understanding is that it hopes to rival Google. You don't need to submit your sites to it. It has obviously borrowed its listings from other sources even though they claim it has built from the ground up on Microsoft technology.

If you URL is missing though, you can use this form to submit it.

Which brings me to today's topic about getting indexed.

I had some initial trouble getting my www.carsite-marketing.com website listed. Of course these days, getting listed is sometimes just a matter of getting other sites linking to you. The fastest way I found to do this was to write a couple of articles and submit them to some article directories.

Here is a list of directories I submitted articles to:

http://www.cashflowseller.com/ArticleSubmit.html
http://article-emporium.com/submit-article.cfm
http://www.allfreelancework.com/submitarticles.php
http://articlefinders.com/submit.html
http://www.articlecity.com/article_submission.shtml
http://www.articlewarehouse.com/SubmitArticle.aspx
http://www.awomaninbusiness.com/writers.html
http://www.boconline.com/sub-art.shtml
http://www.business-opportunity.biz/addarticle.php
http://www.businesstoolchest.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://www.ebooksnbytes.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://www.family-content.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://www.howtoadvice.com/Submit/
http://www.certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml
http://www.netterweb.com/articles/
http://ebusinesshelpsite.com/Articles/submit-article.htm
http://www.powerhomebiz.com/termsofuse/articlesubmission.htm
http://www.selfgrowth.com/artman/exec/admin.cgi
http://www.businessknowhow.com/newsletter/articleguidelines.htm
http://www.uniterra.com/submit-article.htm
http://www.vectorcentral.com/articles-form.html
http://www.webmasterslibrary.com/submit.shtml
http://www.web-source.net/article_submissions.htm
http://www.webpronews.com/submit.html
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.articlecentral.com
http://www.readycontent.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.advertisingknowhow.com
http://www.marketing-seek.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/articledir.php
http://www.1st-in-articles.com
http://www.ezinetrendz.com
http://www.submityourarticle.com
http://www.thephantomwriters.com
http://www.articletrades.com
http://www.articlehub.com
http://www.holisticjunction.com
http://www.kickstartyourlife.com/ezinesresources/articles.htm
http://prweb.com (must be press releases)

Nothing is so discouraging as typing your domain name into Google and having exactly zero results returned to you. This is what was happening to me. Now things are different. While it may not be a great listing yet... at least it is there.

I hope this list will help you with your promotions.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 11, 2004

Urlencoded problems

It was quite common over the last few years to urlencode a username and password into an URL to deliver a digital product. The release of SP1 from Microsoft prevents this from working in Internet Explorer. This is just a reminder to those of you who might be using this construct.

Here is an example of the URL: http://username:password@yourdomain.com/fd/some.pdf

A page on a client's site that seldom gets used incorporated this method for a didgital download. Since it worked in my browser (Firefox) I had forgotten about this problem. So naturally the fix is to send the, the password protected URL with the username and password not included in the URL.

If you have been having customer complain about not being able to access a download, it might be a good idea to check and make sure you're not using this method.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 10:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 10, 2004

Slammer People

You here a lot of talk on the Internet about niche markets. People wonder how they can find them, identify them, and market goods and service to them. A common trend I see with so many new people coming online is they want to learn how to use the Internet to make money but make the mistake of trying to market to the same crowd that taught them how.

Here is the problem with this...

Many of these people aren't credible. If one is desperately struggling to find a way to make an extra $500 per month on the Internet, it is hard to convince people to buy one's newly created info product promising the purchaser wealth.

Take the information that can be learned and set your sites on markets outside of the "get rich" crowd.

In the March 2001 issue of my HomeBusiness Journal I wrote about Cyberspace Inmates:

This site is run by a Missouri minister, Rev. Rene Mulkey, who posts inmates messages online and funnels responses back to the inmates. Her client list consists of 1,600 prisoners nationwide and she charges them each $10 per month to handle their accounts.

She claims lawyers use the site to find clients, religious leaders use it to minister to prisoners, and college students use it to study prison conditions and the death penalty.

I don't know how many inmates are currently subscribed but Rene says "I work at this full time ten hours a day seven days a week."

Since the site has won several awards, and has been featured on TV, talk shows, in many local and regional papers, talk radio and several magazines I would have to assume that her client list is well over 1600 by now, and for the money she is making it shouldn't be too hard of a job to find a few others to receive the emails, print them off and deliver them.

I hope this article will help to open you eyes to the possibilities.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 12:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 09, 2004

Plans Web Calendar

If you are looking for a nice web based calenedar you can access while on the road, or share with others so they can kepp updated on your schedule... look no farther then Plans.

Plans has several downloadable themes available based on CSS-based layouts which makes it easy to match the colors and fonts with your website. Plans can store data in flat files or an SQL database.

I looked at close to 100 calendar scripts and liked this one the best. It loads fast, and doesn't take hours to figure out how to use. I installed a calendar program one time, and got tired trying to learn all of the features that I had no use for... which is one of the main complaints I had about some of the scripts I looked at. Plans is really easy to use.

One of the things I liked about it was the right click option to add an event. No complications here. Just right click on the date you want to add an event to and you're there. You can aslo assign different background colors and icons, for fun or to show prioities.

When you click on a date a popup comes up to show you the event. If you want to print it you can choose Ctrl+P and it prints off perfectly without the background color or layout. The stylesheet is for media=screen so the when it is printed the color and layout is ignored.

Plans is licensed under the GPL. You can freely modify the code for your needs.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 07, 2004

Nigerian letters

If you are living in Canada and have been receiving some of these Nigerian scam letters there is a group called The Phonebusters National Call Centre (PNCC) which is is a joint partnership involving the Ontario Provincial Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The PNCC is very interested in receiving copies of any 'new' versions of Nigerian letter.

Please see this site for more information and instructions.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 11:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 06, 2004

Get Positioned For The Holiday Shopping Season

Yes the holidays are almost upon us again. Where does the time fly?

And according to an article at eWeek:

...it says "Forrester Research is projecting that online holiday sales this year will hit $13.2 billion, which represents a 20 percent increase compared with last year."

Willie Crawford offers this advice:

Now is the perfect time to add items to your product mix that will be popular holiday selling. You just need to do some research and get a feel for what will be hot sellers during the holiday season. While the offline stores and factories needed a long lead time in order to control inventory, etc. you can jump into practically any market in a matter of DAY.

Willie Crawford

If you need to hire someone to update your website for the holiday season it is important to get your requests in as soon as possible — don't leave it to the last moment. I don't know about other developers, but it was a madhouse around here last week. If this is any indication of what the next two months will be like, it may be hard to get everything done.

You have to count on everyone being busy and that there may be unexpected delays. Last week, beside my regular workload I had to deal with a few emergencies, doctor appointments (it is flue season, you know) and a car giving me a bit of trouble.

If projects have to be re-scheduled, it is better to have them bumped a few days now, then the week before Christmas. PLanning is everything, and planning for the unexpected is part of it ;-)

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 12:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 05, 2004

George Bush won -- OK, I'm moving to Canada

The CBC reported this morning:

OTTAWA - Canada is starting to look like a pretty good place to live for thousands of Americans who are unhappy about George W. Bush winning the presidential election.

Of course, I always have an opinion...

I was disappointed that Canada did not offer more support to the US after 9/11, in fact... I wasn't so proud to be a Canadian right about then. I felt that the government representing us had acted in a cowardly and shameful way and although I don't necessarily agree with their reasoning... I do at least understand it.

I would have been quite proud to be a US citizen. I know some fun has been poked about Bush stalling, shortly after he received the news... but anyone who has ever witnessed a tragic even knows that it takes time for shock to wear off, and it practically paralyzes you. So... the president is human, after-all.

And according to the CBC there were about 179,000 visitors to Canada's official immigration website following Bush's re-election.

Maybe this isn't such a surprise after-all. My understanding of married couples in the US show that over 60% of those that file for divorce are surprising their partner with the fact that they want a divorce and no attempt has been made to resolve the issues that drove the spouse to seek a divorce.

You know what? Maybe that 179,000 should be living in Canada. Americans have always been known for being people who will stand up for their rights, and die fighting for them if need be.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 01:07 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 04, 2004

Notespad: one of my favorite tools

Sometimes it is easy to take for granted the tools we use on a daily basis. I wanted to share with you one tool that I have been using for years. The company website no longer exists, it isn't supported anymore and it is hard to find. But for me... it is one of my favorite tools.

Notespad is a fantastic little text editor that is fast to load. I use it for numerous things including my newsletter. You can see from the screenshot below how you can have different tabs. These tabs with the documents will load automatically every time you start it up.

Just taking a look at this screen shot you will see I have a template created for my weekly newsletter. Through the week if I find something interesting or have an idea to write about something, I just dump it into this template, and save. I also have a template for a follow-up series I did with my autoresponder, and a template that I use when publishing articles to article directories.

I also use this program to print out my thoughts before posting to forums. It has a spell checker you can download and install to work with it. That's great. My fingers have a hard time keeping up, and when I am typing at full speed. I can create a number of typos. Much better to catch these now rather then after you have pushed the submit button on a forum.

I also use this program to format posts for my blog. One handy tip, if you are formatting articles that have been hard wrapped to 65 characters, is that you can highlight them in this editor and push Ctrl+J to un-format them.

You can read more about it and download this program from this site and you can find a list of dictionaries for it here.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 06:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

IceRocket.com... the place to promote your site

While promoting my site a while ago I ran across a search engine that is relatively new called IceRocket.com. You know... there are always new search engines springing up... but this one is different. I found for some of the searches I did, this engine was returning more relevant links then Google.

And there is more...

Plus, it returns quick graphic snapshots of the site, so you are not being suckered into clicking on directory generator link, or someone's, less then professional site, who was lucky enough to get it indexed well.

What really impressed me was after finding a link to IceRocket in the OpenDirectory as a place to list your blog (RSS) feeds, I couldn't find the link so I emailed IceRocket. I was expecting I would never receive an answer, but I got one back in 5 minutes. Blake Rhodes answered with:

This isn't the same as most blog directories

This one searches through all of the RSS newsfeeds to return fresh results relevant to your query... so you are always getting the latest news about any given topic.

Congratulations to www.IceRocket.com for providing the Internet community with such a cool tool!

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 01:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Next Version Of Microsoft Office

The next version of Microsoft Office looks like it may be shipped the summer of 2006 and is independent of the new OS codenamed Longhorn which will be released after Office. However reports I have been reading don't generate a lot of excitement about it.

When you're not an Office Power user some of the new features may not mean a whole lot to you:

• An updated version of Content Management Server (CMS)
• A new Excel Calculation Server (ECS)
• A new InfoPath Forms Server (IFS)
• An updated release of Project Server
• An updated release of SharePoint Portal Server (SPS)
• And some kind of centralized "Office Server Core"

Jason Brooks, eWeek writer, whose article "Office 2003 vs. OpenOffice.Org" tells the story of FN Manufacturing Inc., in Columbia, S.C, who tested Office 2003 against OpenOffice. These testers, who were used to older versions of Office said "there were few differences between Word 2003 and earlier versions of the Microsoft word processor."

If you are running a small business with a handful of employees or work in a home office, MS Word is likely the application from the office pak that sees the most use. If this is true in your office... there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of reason to upgrade from Word 2000.

And the testers from FN found the same thing during their testing. FN Manufacturing Validation Engineer Doug Shaffer said that Writer's "layout and command locations are similar to Microsoft Word's" and that it was "very easy to perform the standard basic tasks in Writer."

They were impressed with the Open Office processor to be able to save documents to PDF format which saves them a lot of time and money. For MS Word, this requires an expensive plugin.

If you are interested in reading the full article you can find it here.

My summary of it is that if you're not a MS Office Power user there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of reason to upgrade to either Office 2003, or Office 12 (the next version of Office under development right now) when Open Office might suit your needs just as well. You can download Open Office from here and when you visit take note of the Mailing List, articles, newsletters, and blogs that offer support.

This article isn't intended to bash Microsoft at all. Running a small office means there is always something to spend money on, but there isn't any sense in spending it on expensive software if you don't need it.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 09:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Guarding against Movable Type Spam

One of the RSS feeds I subscribe to, saw the owner disabling comments on his blog because of blog spam. At the time of this writing, this is something I haven't experienced because plugins that would allow this to happen weren't activated on my old blog. Now I'm using Movable Type 3.12 and features that would allow others to spam my blog are incorporated by default (more or less).

A gentleman by the name of Jay Allen has written a plugin for Movable Type called MT-Blacklist which is a plugin to eradicate comment and trackback spam. It features:

• Content-based comment/trackback spam blocking.
• Old entry moderation which effectively blocks the majority of all comment spam.
• Max URL moderation which effectively blocks all spam attempts with a large number of URLs included in the comment.
• Automatic master blacklist updates.
• Web interface for all plugin administration functions
• ...and much, much more
• Requires Movable Type 3.1 or better (although there is a compatible version for older MT versions). Also requires the Perl Storable module.

My first thoughts after learning about this was to disable Trackback altogether, but a lady who publishes a blog on Learning Movable Type offers some valid reasons why you wouldn't want to and explains the Trackback feature indepth:

Elise also offers some great tips on the different typed of MovableType blog spam and makes some suggestions on how to deal with:

There is also a good support forum for MovableType users.

Lastly, and thanks to Paul Short of GetBlogs.com for bringing this link to my attention, a great place to promote your blog can be found at www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/ which calls itself "RSSTop55 - Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites."

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 03, 2004

Firefox 1.0 will be released on November 9th.

Eric Hellweg, writer for technologyreview.com, says:

The browser was built from the ground up to protect against the top two scourges of the Internet: viruses and spyware.

...which means...

...that by helping to promote it to your friends and family you are helping them create a better Internet environment to protect them against viruses. This is good for you too. Many of the viruses sent to me have been from friends not realizing they were infected. This has likely happened to you too.

Two web sites that have been setup for those who want to help promote Firefox are www.spreadfirefox.com and www.browsehappy.com.

Let's face it! Since Microsoft won the browser war, development has stagnated, and it is falling behind in its support of web standards. So send your family and friends to www.GetFirefox.com today. They will appreciate you for it.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 02, 2004

Ben's Holsum 100% Whole Wheat Bread is Rancid

I have always been very fond of different types of bread, but until recently had never tried Ben's Holsum 100% Whole Wheat Bread. Afterwards, I threw out my mustard and a pound of baloney.

I quite often have a sandwich at lunch time. I bought some baloney two days ago. Yesterday I was having a sandwich while I worked, and noted a smell of some sort and a bad taste. I was working and eating at the same time so I didn't really pay too much attention to it, until I had almost finished the sandwich... thee was definitely something wrong.

The load of bread was fresh, and the baloney package was kept in the fridge and had only been opened for two days.

Something tasted rotten.

I took the baloney out of the fridge, along with the mustard and threw it in the garbage.

Today, my little girl stayed home. Had a sore stomach ;-) (no she didn't have any bread)

I was feeding us some "chicken noddle soup" for lunch and I decided to have a slice of bread with some butter on it too.

As soon as I opened the bag of Ben's it hit me. Luckily, I had bought two loaves and opened the second one. It smelled just as bad... but the bread was fresh...

What does Ben do to their Holsum bread? Do they make it from fermented wheat? Now that I think about it... that's exactly what it smelled like... spoiled grain.

You would think their Quality Control would have let that one slip by... unless it is supposed to smell that bad...

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 01:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Google Adwords Made Easy

A very Simple, Step by Step, Roadmap to Google adwords Success.

By Salihu Ibrahim
http://www.ebizstartups.com

Getting started.
The aim of any Google adwords campaign is to turn a profit. Whether tangible or intangible. Maybe you are looking to make more sales by generating very targeted traffic or have more visitors sign up for your ezine, download a free or trial software, free ebook etc. Ultimately the aim is to have a good return on your investment (ROI)

However, the immediate goals of your campaign is to
1. Have a high click through Rate (CTR)
2. and a low Cost per click (CPC)

These two parameters, together, put your ad in a good position (typical 1st to 6th position) on the search results page.
Google adwords is unlike other pay per click search engines where the highest bidder gets the highest position. Google wants to present the most relevant ads, matched with the keywords that generated these ads to searchers. So that a high click through rate means your ad is relevant to searchers even if the CPC is low.

If Your ad is presented (impressions) 1000 times and the CTR is less than 0.5% of the number of impressions, your ad gets slowed by Google and could eventually be disabled. If you ad is slowed you can edit it and run it again.

So here is your dilemma. To generate a decent CTR you need a good position. To get a good position you need a popular (competitive) keyword. Using a popular keyword means you will have to bid high. Yet you want a low CPC in the range of $0.05 to 0.10.

What to do? Look for not so popular keywords. Obscure keywords that few people use to search in your industry. Very few advertisers will be using them too. Identify many of these keywords. Make sure they are targeted. Add all the obscure keywords together. This will give you a good list that will generate a good amount of impressions, good CTR and at a low CPC.

Looking for good and obscure keywords

Use the keyword tools to check for currently used keywords, related keywords and alternative keywords. You can use the tools at:

1. Overture tool at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
2. Google tool at http://adwords.google.com/select/main?and=keywordsandbox
3. wordtracker at http://www.wordtracker.com
4. Espotting at http://www.espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp

How to discover your obscure keywords

There are various ways to discover obscure keywords related to your industry or search term.
1. Use keywords with very low search count at Overture keyword suggestion tool. These are not competitive Keywords. They are not often searched on. But remember you are trying to add all obscure keywords to make a great keyword list.
2. Add variations to the keywords generated above. For example market to markets, marketing, marketers marketable.
3. Check your website log and fish out keywords searchers are already using to locate your site or product. You will be surprised at what people type into search engines to locate your site.
4. Use the Thesaurus and dictionary to check for alternative words synonyms. You can use more than one type of dictionary. When checking for meaning of words, you will often see in the description, alternative words with same meaning as the word you are checking for.
5. Ask friends, family members, what words they will use when searching for your product or the theme for your Website.

NOTE: Always keep in mind that, what the keyword tools will give you is a tiny fraction of what millions of people use on the Web. The keyword tools at overture won’t give you those keyword count because very few numbers of people use them at a time or period.

Features Provided by Google to Achieve your desired CTR

(1) Exact Match
(2) Phrase Match
(3) Broad Match
(4) Negative Keywords

Exact Match: To designate your keywords for exact match, put them in brackets. For example, (niche markets). So your ad will only show if "niche markets", without the quotes, is searched for. It won’t show up for market niche. This is a highly targeted way of getting visitors to your site. Unfortunately, you will get very few impressions using the exact match feature. Though your CTR may be high.

How to use it

Use exact match feature when you are bidding on competitive keywords. Because of the low number of impressions exact match generates, not many advertisers maybe using it. So experiment and at the same time try to lower your cost per click (CPC).

Phrase Match: To designate your keywords for phase match include them in quotes. For example “niche markets”. Your ad will appear when these words are searched for at the search engine. Also when words are added to those. Example, “building niche markets” or “niche markets discovery”. The main keywords will always appear in the other which you set it. That is, niche markets and not market niche. Your ads will not appear for “niche successful markets”. The phrase match generates many impressions. Though not as targeted as the exact match, it more targeted than the broad match option.

How to use it.

This is the feature you will most likely be using often . Build a good keyword list. In the niche market example, you will not appear for niche marketers or niche marketing so include these and others in your keyword list.
One important feature you should use with your phrase match option is the negative keyword. This is explained below. Negative keywords help to make your keywords more targeted by allowing Google not to add them to your main keywords.When you designate a keyword as negative, Google will not add it when you are using phrase or broad match. If not, Negative keywords could make your keywords to have different meaning than what you intended. For example, a word like free. If you are not offering anything for free and free is added to your main keywords, then clicks to your site might be wasted and costing you money. So designating the word free as a negative keyword will make Google not to add it to your keywords

Broad Match: Broad match is the default setting for Google adwords and your ad is automatically shown for expanded match, plurals and other variations. So be sure to remember to change it when starting a campaign. Choosing the broad match feature allows Google to add other words to your main keywords. This makes this feature to be the least targeted. It produces the most impressions and probably the most CTR. But due to its non-targeted nature, could produce very low conversions or ROI. Using the “niche markets” example in broad match, you could have your ads displayed for searches on “locating niche markets”, “niche markets ideas, “succeeding in marketing niches” etc. your keywords will come out in many variations in plurals.

How to use it.

To have an appreciable success in using broad match, you need:
(1) To build three and four keyword phrases. This limits the number of words Google adds to your keywords phrases.
(2) Build a good and extensive negative keyword list.
(3) Use the Google keywords suggestion tool. It will show you words that will appear with your keywords. That is expanded matches.

Negative Keywords: This feature is used to eliminate words that could be added to your main keywords. For example, the word free. Just add a minus in front of the word ( –free ) to make it negative, this word will not be added to your keywords. Example, if your keywords are “niche ideas”. Your ads will not show for “free niche ideas”.
It is extremely important to use this feature so as to eliminate unwanted keywords, unwanted meanings and untargeted keyword phrases.
This is also important when you are dealing with children’s products. You will need to eliminate porn words so that your money is not wasted. Imagine a user searching for adult content and clicking to your site. Use of negative keywords is an additional way of making your keywords more targeted when you are using the phrase match or broad match options.
One tool you can use to search out negative keywords is at
http://www.ebooksdeal.com/cgi-bin/keywordtool/keywordtool.cgi.

How to build a good campaign structure:

A good campaign structure saves you loads of time and contributes immensely to a successful adwords campaign.

Campaign 1 Campaign 2 Campaign 3

Adgroup 1 Adgroup 2 Adgroup 3

Ads 1 Ads 2 Ads 3 Ads 4
Keywords keywords keywords keywords.

Google adwords gives you the flexibility to test your ads as much as you want. You can delete ads that are not giving you the right CPC,CTR or ROI. Create more ads to take the place of the deleted ads. Test as many ads as you like until you attain your desired CTR or CPC.

But you can only do this if your campaign is properly structured and set out well from the start.
You need to know what ads and in what adgroup(s), associated with what keywords, are giving you the required results. And those that are not. So that you can quickly delete the unwanted ads. On this basis you can set out your campaign structure as indicated above. For example, explaining campaign 1.
Start testing your large keyword list by distributing them among the different adgroups. Group keywords that are:

1. closely related in one adgroup.
2. group keywords that are highly competitive in another adgroup.
3. group keywords that are not competitive.
4. group keywords that are in plural
5. group keywords with misspelled words etc.

If you have different kinds of products with different keywords, create one adgroup for each product. This allows you to create ads specific to keywords for each product . So, you don’t have general ads which apply to all your keywords.

The general idea is to group your keywords as you like them so that you can easily identify which ones are producing the required results.

For each adgroup you can now create different ads. For easy management , 2 or 3 ads per adgroup is okay. I use two ads per adgroup in promoting my home base business ideas site. You can use the same set of keywords you have allocated per adgroup for ads 1, 2, 3. the only difference in the ads will be the title and description. At the ads level you can change any ad that is performing below expectation. delete and write new ads. If it is the keywords that are performing badly, delete that adgroup and create another. However, do not get into the habit of creating and deleting adgoups. If you test and track your results properly at the ads level you will not need to replace any adgroup after deleting it. Your result would have shown you that the keywords for that adgroup are not profitable and need not be used again. You then research new obscure keywords that you can use.

Note: If you use the same keywords for more than one adgroup only one adgroup will be shown at any point in time. Also Google optimizes ads on an adgroup basis not on keywords basis. Better performing ads gets shown more often. For example,

Keyword : “high heel shoes”
Ad #1 15% CTR
AD #2 5% CTR

When high heel shoes is searched on ad #1 shows more often than ad #2.

Keyword: “low heel shoes”
Ad #1 10% CTR
Ad #2 20% CTR

When low heel shoes is searched on ad #2 shows more often than ad #1.

However, you can choose to remove the optimization feature so that you can test all your ads equally.

Achieving your goals

(1) Producing your best impressions. You need to present your ads to the right searcher ( visitor ). This is important so your ads are not displayed to the wrong searchers, thereby generating wasteful clicks. For best impressions-
(i) good keyword research
(ii) good negative keywords
(iii) use phrase match

(2) Producing your best CTR. The click through Rate (CTR) is the number of times your ad is clicked on compared to the number of times it is viewed, in percentage. So if out of 100 impressions (views) your ad gets clicked once, your CTR is 1%. To produce your best CTR put your main keywords in the title and description of your ads. Example, keyword phrase is “niche markets”.

Title: Discover niche markets
Description: Download software for discovering
Niche markets fast.
URL: http://www.yourdomain.com/niche.html

A user searching for niche markets will be instantly drawn to your title because it same as what he is looking for. The title catches the eyes and the searcher is drawn in to read the description. The description also talks about niche markets. Before you know it…click… and one very targeted visitor has gone to your website. This type of keywords – title – description gets the most targeted clicks in a adword campaign.

(3) Achieving your best return on investment (ROI). To produce your best ROI you must apply the keyword – title – description approach described above. This gets the searcher to your landing page. The landing page is the page your visitor will first see after clicking on your ad. This page must be specific to the product you are selling or the action you want the searcher to take. Do not send the searcher to your home page unless the action you want the searcher to take is there.

So it is keyword – title – description – landing page. You don’t want the searcher looking all over your website for what has been described in your ad. Also do not frustrate the searcher by a slow loading page.

(4) Achieving your best cost per click (CPC). The ultimate aim of every advertiser is to have minimum CPC while maintaining a good ad position. Typically position 1 to 6. Even though writing good and enticing ads is the key to a good CTR, having a good keyword list is the key to many targeted impressions. A combination of these two will produce your best CPC.

Tips and Tricks

(1) Keyword variation. Here are some easy ways to generate variations in your keywords.

(i) Make keywords plural. Example, niche market to niche markets.
(ii) Adding the ing to verb words. Example, market to marketing.
(iii) Adding er. Example, market to marketer.
(iv) Adding or. Example, invest to investor.
(v) Adding ment. Example, invest to investment
(vi) Adding -. Example ebusiness to e-business.
(vii) Combining and separating words . Example, Web site to Website.
(viii) Common misspellings . Example, successful to successfull
(ix) Interchange words . Example, niche marketing to marketing niche.
(x) Replace words . Example, marketing niche to marketing segment.
(xi) Use American and English spellings. Example, vigor and vigour.

Use these anywhere it is possible in your keywords or keyword phrase.

(2) Tweaking your ad copy: Are your ads attracting enough clicks? . Here are some ways you can use to generate ideas for greater CTR ads.

(i) Study the ads of your competitors. Study the way title and descriptions are written.
(ii) look at the regular result pages when you type in your keywords at Google search engine. Study the description and the title of the sites that come up.
(iii) Use very specific words like download, free, trial etc if it is relevant to your campaign.
(iv) Include the price of your product if you know that it has a comparative advantage.
(v) Emphasize benefits to users in your ads.
(vi) Write out your ad in the best possible way. Do not, at first, limit yourself to the number of words allowed. When you are satisfied then try to reduce it to number of words allowed per line.

(3) Tracking: Tracking the results of your campaign is about the most important aspect of your adwords campaign after building a great keyword list. Tracking helps to indicate where your campaign is heading, good or bad. You need to carefully follow your impressions, CPC, position, etc. All these are present in the report panel of the adwords interface.

GOOGLE ADWORDS SCENERIOS

There are different situations you will find yourself as you try to achieve and maintain a profitable adwords campaign. Sometimes, you will find that adjusting certain parameters might improve or get worsen your the campaign. The trick is to test. Don’t be afraid to test . It is only by testing that you can really get to understand how adwords works and then master it.

Let’s look at some situations we might find ourselves in while running our adwords campaign.

1. LOW IMPRESIONS AND LOW CTR.
(a) This can happen when you are just starting your adwords campaign. You have probably not read enough about the Google adwords program before drawing up your campaign.
(b) Also it can be that you have not done your keyword research very well . You might be using keywords that people hardly search for.
(c) It could also be that your daily budget is so low that Google would not want to exceed your budget. So your ad is presented very few times.

SOLUTION:

i. Set your daily budget high. Do not worry. Google will not exhaust your daily budget. If your daily budget is set to $100 for example. You will be spending about $10 daily. Or if you set it at $20 you could be spending $5 to $7 daily. Setting the daily budget high enough gives you plenty of data to analyze your campaign. Your impressions will be high. CTR will be high too if your ad is well written.

ii. Brainstorm and research good keywords. Use the available keywords research tools to know which keywords searchers use to find your site .
iii. Write good ads that follow the keyword-title-description-landing page formula. This will increase your CTR and conversion.

2. HIGH IMPRESSION BUT LOW CTR

This is the situation new advertisers to Google adwords find themselves. Here you will be trying to convert most of your impressions to clicks. You can do this in two ways.
I. Increase your cost per click (CPC). Increasing your CPC places your ad in a high position which in turn generates high impressions. This will increase the cost of your campaign considerably. If your conversion is not good enough you might be running a loosing campaign.

II. Write better ads using the keyword-title-description-landing page formula. Searchers will be more likely to follow through from search results to clicking on your ad. This increases your CTR.

NOTE: If you have a keyword that is generating high impressions but low CTR , it is advisable to delete it. But if the keyword is important and related to your services or product you can create an adgroup for that keyword and also create ads for it. Then test and see which ad is producing the desired CTR. Further more, deleting poor performing keywords is like deleting your past poor performance. So that, the new adgroup will not be hindered.

Also, it not good to leave keywords that are not generating impressions. Delete them. Though Google will not penalize you for these keywords until the impressions have reached 1000, low impressions generating keywords will hinder keywords that are performing well. This is the case, because the Google adwords system budgets for all keywords and if your daily budget is low, your keywords, including the performing ones, will be shown less often. The system will not exceed your daily budget.

Bottom line: use fewer keywords for a low daily budget.

3. HIGH IMPRESSION,HIGH CTR GENERATED BY HIGH CPC.

Every advertiser wants high CTR with low CPC. Typically in the range of $0.05 to $0.10 per click. But in industries where there are heavy players with costly keywords, high CPC could be the order of the day. How will a small business compete in a situation like that ?

1. Again the answer is in keyword research. Extensive, in depth research will provide you with the obscure keywords that few people have discovered.
2. Another way to compete is to know how much a visitor is worth to you. You have to have a good conversion rate at your website.
If for example,

A click is $1 and you are converting at your site at 5% conversion rate. This means, for every $100 spent 5 visitors buy your product. For you to break even (that is, no profit no loss) your product must have a margin (profit) of $100/5 clicks=$20.

So if each product has a profit of $20 on top of the cost price, then for each $100 spent you will recoup $100. Anything less than $20 margin will mean a loss for you. And anything higher than $20 means a gain in your campaign.
However, due to fluctuations in ad position, CTR, conversion rate, competitive bidding by other advertisers, it is advisable to ensure that your visitors worth or click worth is such that the profit on each product is high enough to allow for these fluctuations. For the example, $35 to $40 margin would be good . I must stress that this depends on your product, industry, competitors etc. The example is to provide a general idea of what to do.

HIGH IMPRESSION AND HIGH CTR WITH LOW CPC.

This is the dream of every advertiser. Achieving this takes a lot of hard work and testing. Google adwords is unique in that your ads go online immediately. This allows you to test your ads as much as you want. When you are not satisfied, write new ads. You can also set CPC for campaign as well as for individual keywords.

One trick you can use to achieve this, is to initially set your daily budget high, CPC high, and write good ads. This will position your ad well, 1st to 6th position. Once you have achieved a good CTR (4% to 7%) gradually lower your CPC while retaining a high daily budget. Always remember that a high impression and CTR will get you a high position even if your CPC is low compared to your competitors’

HIGH IMPRESSION,HIGH CTR,LOW CPC BUT LOW CONVERSION.

In a situation like this, low conversion is due to several factors

1. Bad or wrong landing page. Your landing page must be directly related to your ad. Do not allow the visitor to search for the information which brought him to your site. Use the keyword-title-description-landing page formula. On how to create a landing page that converts very well go to http://www.wilsonweb.com/isalihu2001

2. Keywords that produce high impressions, high CTR but are not exactly related to the landing page. There are some keywords that are closely related but have different meanings. For example, the keyword phrase “web pages”. Your title and description could be for a software that builds web pages. But the searcher is looking for how to write web pages that sell. This results in many clicks to your site with very few conversion.
So you should make your title and description as explicit and direct as possible. This leaves the searcher in no doubt as to what is on the landing page.

GOOD AD POSITION.

A good ad position is from 1st to 6th position. A good ad position is obtained by having a high impressions and high ctr.

AVERAGE AD POSITION

This is typically between 7th to 10th position. A higher position is achieved by either increasing your bid or writing better ads for higher CTR

summary

1. Keyword research . Very important. The bedrock of your adwords campaign.
2. Good campaign structure as set out above.
3. Write good title, description with relevant keywords in them.
4. Follow the keywords-title-description-landing page formula
5. And test, test and test. Track your results efficiently.

This free report is by Salihu Ibrahim.
The author has worked online since 2000. The report is based on the author’s years of intensive Google adwords campaign experience. For more incisive articles on home base business ideas, check out his website at http://www.ebizstartups.com OR You can subscribe to his bimonthly newsletter BIZWISE by sending a blank email to bizwise@ebizstartups.com with subscribe as the subject.
_________________
For solid strategies on building a successful home base business, check out http://www.ebizstartups.com

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Quick Way to Get Started on the Internet

The last two weeks I spoke about building templates for your website. It is hard to please everyone. A few told me they liked the newsletter and a few others complained that although they enjoy it... sometimes it is too technical. Sometimes I don't stop to think that many don't live and breathe technology. That point was really driven home today, when a client wrote to me and asked me, "What is a Blog?"

So with Christmas coming up quickly... I'm sure some of you are probably wondering how you can make a little more money... and how can you use the web to do it?

If you wanted to sell an eBook and you don't know anything about programming, you would need to look at getting a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor to create a web page for it. If you are concerned about making your code standards compliant there is a free editor called XStandard, which claims to be the leading standards-compliant plug-in WYSIWYG editor for Windows and browser-based content management systems (IE/Mozilla/Firefox/ActiveX). The editor generates clean XHTML Strict or 1.1, uses only CSS for formatting, and ensures the clean separation of content from presentation.
http://xstandard.com

I haven't used the program, but if you're just trying to make a few sales for Christmas, I wouldn't worry too much standards at this point. The editor that comes with the full version of Netscape or Mozilla will serve your purposes quite well. You can drag images onto the screen and type in it using controls like you would find in MS Word.
http://www.mozilla.org

Other free WYSIWYG editors include:

Nvu (pronounced N-view, for a "new view")
http://nvu.com/

Trellian:
http://webpage.vendercom.com

Sure, the look of your site might not be overly fancy, but the important thing to keep in mind is... it is your text that sells. Your headlines, sub-heads and copy are far more important then a fancy look. If you don't believe me, just ask Jim Straw at http://www.businesslyceum.com

If you find yourself wanting to start with something a little more, you can find all kinds of templates here:
http://homebusiness-websites.com/templates This complete business package comes with templates, eBooks, software tools and scripts and has everything you are likely to need for only $19.95.

So if you don't have a lot of experience, but think you can use a WYSIWYG editor well enough to build a web page, the only thing you need to worry about is your copy. There are a few free guides around that will give you a few ideas. Try this search on Google:

Sitehost4u.com is owned and operated by AMS Computer Services. I've been hosting clients who need hosting on their servers since 1997. You can get a starter hosting account there for $5.99 per month. They will also register the domain name for you for $20.
http://sitehost4u.com

Once your book has been written you can join ClickBank for a one-time $49.95 activation fee, and no monthly fees. They can accept the payments for you, allow you to have affiliates and manage the whole thing for you. From sending you YOUR check, to paying your affiliates for you.
http://clickbank.com/options.html

You can create the eBook in almost any word processor and then convert it to pdf format. There are a number of free tools around that will help you do this. Here is one:
http://www.pdf995.com/

An online service that will convert your Word document for free (up to 2MB) can be found here:
http://www.gobcl.com

Once you have this setup, contact people you personally know and tell them about it. They can sign up for an affiliate account for free from Clickbank to help you promote your eBook. Some people will help you, others won't.

You can also burn the eBook to a CD and sell copies locally using Flyers. You would want to make sure that the flyer explains it is a book on a CD that requires a computer with a CD player to read it.

Now is the time to do it. According to an article by eWeek:

...it says "Forrester Research is projecting that online holiday sales this year will hit $13.2 billion, which represents a 20 percent increase compared with last year."

For those of you who joined this list and are new to all of this, any questions you have may be posted to my discussion board at and if I can, I will help you take some more of the mystery out of it.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 01, 2004

FireFox Questions and Answers

If you're having any problems with Firefox, its extensions or plugins, you might want to try using Google to search the Usenet newsgroups related to Fire fox. There is a ton of information in these Google groups, and likely any problem you are having, someone else has had too, and asked about it.

The best place to look is in snews://secnews.netscape.com:563/netscape.mozilla.firefox

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 05:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack