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December 31, 2004
Vanquish Vanquish
Twice this week while sending email to people who had emailed me, I encountered a service called www.vanquish.com. This is software that makes claims to being:
The next generation in anti-spam technology. The first and only proven solution that stops spam cold by empowering you to instantly punish the spammer!
When you email someone using this service you receive a message back that asks you to click a special link to confirm your email address. Well... this is all-right I suppose...
Certainly the amount of growing spam is a concern for all, and one can't be blamed for taking sensible pre-cautions. It was fully my intention to honor this request, which I really didn't have any other choice. See... the recipients don't get your email if you don't go through this extra hoop.
But see what is happening with this service which charges a yearly subscription of $24.95, is that there isn't any guarantee that it won't block legitimate email.
Each time I tried to confirm my email address I was greeted with this message:
The recipient of your email uses Vanquish to limit the amount of spam reaching his mailbox. Your email address was not recognized. Normally, this web page offers a way for you to demonstrate that your mail arrived from a real address and a real person.But the challenge has already expired, and your email has been cleared from the system. Please refer to the date and subject in the reply that you received and RE-send your original message. You will receive another opportunity to authenticate your address.
Just how many hoops and failed attempts to contact people using this service will people endure to try and get their message through? This was enough for me.
In the past, I've had people subscribe to my newsletter which is double opt-in, and I've gotten similar messages back. I don't recall, if these used the same service or something different. These confirm requests have all been deleted, and these people have not been added to my mailing list.
No one likes spam! Still it's a shame that anti-spam tools and services can have a negative impact on your business.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 02:38 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 30, 2004
AOL and Less Spam
In a recent article at eWeek, titled "AOL Reports Drop in Spam Messages, Anick Jesdanun, AP Internet Writer reports about a large drop in spam email to AOL subscribers.
He says:
The world's largest Internet service provider believes spammers are starting to give up—at least when it comes to sending junk to its subscribers.
If you're not an AOL subscriber, have you noticed a drop in spam?
Not likely...
Although several clients (myself included) have had our messages blocked from AOL by people who find it easier to report the message as spam, rather then clicking the unsubcribe link at the bottom of the double opt-in newsletter they chose to receive.
This was followed a few times by clients waiting on hold with an AOL rep trying to get the domain off of the black list, and then purging all AOL subscribers from their lists, and putting measures in place so no-one from AOL could subscribe to these legitimate double opt-in newsletters.
Anyone considering running a business online could benefit by dumping AOL and getting a real service provider.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 29, 2004
Tell us what you really think John!!
Between Paul thinking you're a moron and John saying:
Look, you don’t need another fix it quick ebook from an "Internet Marketing Guru" who has done nothing is his life but figure out how to sell you on the next hot thing.
...I had to smile. I enjoy reading uncensored passionate outbursts, the like of which probably would never have been published to a website before blogs.
For most of us who run a small business and work the web...
...there is a lot more to it then spending our days looking to get rich. A lot of this information being produced is taken with a "grain of salt" because those of us who work at it full time, know it is a lifestyle choice. Recently I explained it in this way:
"I guess it is likely common sense... but some people don't get it...There are a lot of us (most people you will never hear about) that make a living from running an online business. We aren't gurus... we don't sell info-products telling you how you can get rich... 'cause if we knew how, then I expect we would be rich. But we get by, just the same.
Christmas, 2003, I made a total of $988.00 for the month. That was the worst month I've had since December 2000.
Still, I paid all of my bills, bought a used car for $4000 and spent $1000 on Christmas.
I was able to do this because, as an entrepreneur I know if I am to survive I have to live well below my means.
OK... so in December of 2003 I wasn't living below my means, but for the 11 months before... I was.
My ex wife made fun of my truck. Yes... I have two vehicles... paid cash for both.
Between her and her new man they are spending $1500 a month for two new vehicles, financed through the bank, (that's including insurance) and last year, besides child support, I was loaning them money almost every month.
Let me tell you about my cousin Harry. Harry is a millionaire and entrepreneur.
A few years ago on a trip he and his wife were taking, their car needed repair. Actually... the frame broke. The garage where he took his car looked at the problem. After seeing that the frame had already broke and been welded 5 times in the past, they said there wasn't any solid metal left so the car could not be fixed. So Harry had to part with a car that was 20+ years old and bought another one.
Lot's of people have a problem with this type of thinking. My friends and family constantly say to me "Why don't you buy another house?" or "Why don't you buy a new car?"
I'm not here to impress anyone.... heaven forbid! What if I have 4 or 5 bad months in a row?
It has been my experience that this isn't likely, but I would be fine.
Being an entrepreneur isn't about money. It's a lifestyle choice. When you choose this lifestyle then you have to be able to adapt your finances to match this lifestyle. This means finding the ability to live well below your means so the money will be there when you need it. "
Sure... getting rich might be OK (can't say for sure how much I would enjoy it because I've never been rich) but it might complicate things a whole lot more which I tend to think would go beyond my vision for my lifestyle choice.
I use the Internet to research and/or buy things I'm interested in. I've bought books related to my business in the form of programming manuals and books, researched hotels and bought air-line tickets. One time I bought an eBook from Paul Myer's whom I've known more or less since 1996 when he used to moderate a business discussion group on the USENET.
For anyone considering buying anything on the Internet they need to be encouraged to perform a little due-diligence and discover for themselves the truth behind some of these publishers.
You have to applaud the efforts of people like John and Paul whose passionate posts would probably not be available if they had to markup a webpage to put it up. (the time it would take to markup a webpage might take a little of the edge off) And you have to applaud blogs and RSS that keeps us informed of posts like this that otherwise we would likely never stumble across. Who knows? Eventually we may discover the real truth in marketing.
OK... spit it out! It's your turn. Don't hold back! Tell me what you've been buying on the Internet.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 09:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 28, 2004
Take it to the Streets
I was reading an article on Cnet this morning on how www.craigslist.org, an online classified website, has:
"...cost the newspapers millions more in merchandise and real estate advertising, and has damaged other traditional classified advertising businesses, according to a report published by Classified Intelligence.
Steven Musil, Staff Writer, CNET News.com goes on to say:
"Online auction giant eBay took a 25 percent stake in Craigslist in August. eBay also announced recently that it would buy online apartment rental service Rent.com for $415 million."
As I report on my www.carsite-marketing.com, ClickZ Stats on September 24, 2004, said:
"Consumer Reports found that 77 percent of pre-owned vehicle shoppers research prices, and 77 percent go online to do so."
People are using the Internet to find just about everything which means there is an opportunity for local entrepreneurs. Although they might not have the money to compete with the the BIG players, they can do a much more better job at representing the local market, and find businesses that will pay them for helping them advertise.
My used car website faced competition from major car classified websites and print publications, but I found that local businesses like to do business with people they know and trust — which all comes down to how you build professional relationships. They are quite happy to give you some of their advertising budget if you can produce results.
We typically think of the Internet as offering a place to reach a worldwide audience, but there is good money to be made in your backyard without taking on the whole www.
Watch for more websites like these in 2005.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Let your pictures do the talking...
FotoBuzz lets you annotate your digital images and share the stories in your pictures.
With the FotoBuzz Viewlet you can easily integrate this functionality to any existing website or weblog and let your visitors add comments too!
There is a demo on the site you can try.
It is licensed under a Creative Commons License and is not free for commercial use.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 27, 2004
What a day!!
Did you ever have one of those days that it would have been better to stay in bed?
I was away for the holidays. I stayed at my parents place where most of the family gathered.
I got home last night before the blizzard hit and this morning I was freezing in bed around 5am so I got up to see what was going on. The thermostat said it was 59 degrees. What's worse... I had come down with the flue.
The repairman couldn't make it here today because of the snow, and it took most of the day to warm up the place using the oven in the stove. By lunch time it was 65 degrees in here so after a cup of tea I started working.
Needless to say, I didn't get as much done today as I would have liked. The way I figure it... the rest of the week is going to be a lot smoother.... well... once I get finished shovelling snow... I still gotta' find that car.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 08:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 24, 2004
Opera beta features speech recognition
Opera Software ASA unveiled Thursday a beta test version of its next Web browser release that features speech recognition, discovery of RSS news feeds and automatic Web-page resizing.
This sounds pretty cool. There is a beta available for Windows users.
| Read more |
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 23, 2004
How to Really Market on the Internet
Verizon SuperPages.com, in conjunction with their partner SCORE, has teamed up to give you a short primer called "How to Really Market on the Internet Workbook."
Although some might find is quite useful... don't believe everything you read.
I looked through it rather quickly and noted a few discrepancies such as this paragraph:
The number of Web sites doubles every four to five months. By 2003, the Web will have up to 80 million users logging on either through standard Internet access accounts or online services.
You have to wonder where they came up with that figure. The last I heard was that world-wide Internet usage was around 560 million.
Read it if you want. It might offer some solid advice to you. Don't assume it is completely accurate though. There was a few places I found my-self scratching my head and wondering.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 11:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cool tool to help you create your first CSS template
People new to developing websites are learning from a lot of old tutorials available on the Internet. It is quite common to see the use of the CENTER tag to align elements... and most beginners are still using font tags. Constructs like this have been deprecated which means outdated by newer constructs... usually in favor of CSS.
I found an interesting online tool that will help those new to CSS build their own template.
You can try it here. This seems like a good way for beginners to get started — once they create the template they want, then they can try and adjust some of the settings to see what kind of changes it makes in the layout.
If one decides to use the template they create for their site template it would be a good idea to take the CSS out of the top of the document and use it as an external stylesheet. To this remove... cut everything out between the <style></style> tags and paste it into a Notepad file and then save it as stylesheet.css. Make sure to remove the <style></style> tags from the .css file.
Then create a link to the stylesheet in the <head></head> part of your html document like this:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="stylesheet.css" type="text/css" media="all" />
If one was to put their template on the web you might also want to include these meta tags in your <head></head> element:
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="mssmarttagspreventparsing" content="true">
<meta name="description" content="">
<meta name="keywords" content="">
When you're learning a lot of people don't know how to create thing like this form scratch, so by using a tool like this, it can help accelerate the learning curve.
Did you find this useful?
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 22, 2004
NOTICE: hosted clients
Late yesterday you may have noticed erratic behavior on your site... things that didn't appear to working right. Here is an announcement from AMS Computer Services:
On the evening of December 21, 2004 some security changes were made to all of our servers. These security settings were put in place to better provide our client's with a security environment and help to insure that their websites remain functioning. However, it seems that these settings had some adverse affects on numerous scripts, resulting in Apache 500 Internal Server Errors. Because of this, the security settings on all servers were relaxed. Your scripts and software should be working now.
However you should still contact the creator of any scripts you have installed on your account and insure that your scripts are up to date. There are numerous exploits on the Internet that a malicious user can use to wreck havoc on your website. Just because you are running the latest version, and follow every security guideline that is recommended, does not mean that your site won't get hacked or defaced. However, not having the latest version and following some security guidelines makes it that much easier for a malicious user to gain access to your account.
There has been a rash of account defacements and numerous script exploits reported in the recent months. Because of this we have had to step up the security on the servers. Unfortunately some of the security enhancements we have made, may break some of the old methods used to accomplish certain tasks. Please understand that we make these enhancements for the betterment of all of our clients, and it is because of these malicious acts that we are having to make these changes.
We at AMS Computer Services take the security on our servers very seriously. It is because of this that we implemented the above security rulesets, to offer a more secure environment for our clients. We apologize for not testing the security settings more before implementing them. We did not anticipate the amount of problems that this has caused. We want to offer all of our clients the best in usability, but also provide a secure environment for these websites. We will do some more testing on these security settings and will probably implement a better version in the future.
Again we apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you. If you have any other questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to use our contact form to express any feedback.
Thank You
AMS Technical Support Team
NOTE: If any clients are still experiencing problems please email me to have a look at the problem.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 03:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
UPDATE: Security alert for PhpBB users
Santy worm now hunting through AOL and Yahoo!
...just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...
eWeek announced a security alert concerning PhpBB. You might want to read it to make sure you are not a risk if you have PhpBB installed.
Cnet reports it has infected 40,000 Web sites but Google has reported:
On Wednesday, a Google representative told ZDNet Australia that though Google users were not at risk from Santy, the search company had started blocking attempts by the worm to replicate."We are aware of an Internet worm that exploits a vulnerability in third-party Web servers that use PHP bulletin board software. While the worm does not put Google users at risk, we are working to help stop its propagation by blocking queries to Google that are generated by the worm," the representative said.
You may not be at risk, but if you run an older version of Php, it might be worthwhile to check out.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 02:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 21, 2004
Scrooges in our midst
Fifty-one percent of all US internet users are reported to be using broadband and these people are shopping online. The off-line world is getting their "nose out-of-joint" as the Internet becomes a very real competitor to brick and mortar businesses, and they don't like it.
An article on Cnet says:
The Nov. 18 ruling, by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, said the state was not justified in requiring Web sites to have a real-estate broker's license in order to publish real-estate advertising and other information while allowing newspapers to do so.
Imagine! The audacity! Allowing newspapers to publish real estate listings, but not the Internet unless the site owner has a real-estate broker's license. That's just crazy in my humble opinion.
Another article by Declan McCullagh Hands off of Net shopping, claims "the federal government is fighting against tax-happy state legislators. The latter are becoming increasingly worried about their residents buying cheaper products over the Internet--and not paying state sales taxes or funneling purchases through local campaign-contributing businesses."
Regardless of whether it is the wine industry, real estate, or government, the Internet is progressively becoming a serious contender for the consumer dollar, and sales are being lost off-line in favor of shopping online. This means it is time for more brick and mortar businesses to examine their working business model and learn to adapt....
These businesses need to learn to compete. They need to aggressively market their websites (for those that have one) and do a better job of getting their customers permission to send them electronic offers. It's no surprise that most off-line businesses are failing at this. Pushing the government to set prohibitions on online sales is the wrong way to compete. Any judge who would rule in favor of such tactics needs to be removed from his position. He is obviously living in some other century then the 21st.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 18, 2004
Tiny URL? How About HUGE URL?
Thanks to Larry Seltzer's article about Huge URL.
Please click here:
Might be OK for download pages. Nobody will remember this one.
I was starting to think Larry didn't have a sense of humor.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Writing Tips for the Web
Inc.com offers some handy writing tips for the web. They say:
Hardly anybody really likes reading online. No surprise there, since so many websites are so poorly written. Here are easy ways to make your Web words more reader-friendly.
You can read the article here.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 04:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 17, 2004
New AVG 7.0 Edition Supports Email
AVG Free Edition is the well-known anti-virus protection tool. AVG Free is available free-of-charge to home users for the life of the product!
If you're running an older version (less then the new 7.0 edition) it won't be supported after Dec. 31 which means no more virus definition updates.
The new edition also scans incoming email and offers support for Incredimail, Netscape, Mozilla, Outlook Express and Pegasus. View the Personal E-mail Scanner Guide here.
Here is how it works:
Incoming mail:E-mail client sends request to Personal e-mail scanner to get mail, it receives message from the server and tests it for viruses, removes infected attachments and adds certification. Then the message is passed to the e-mail client.
Outgoing mail:
Message is sent from e-mail client to Personal e-mail scanner, it tests message and its attachments for viruses and then sends the message to the SMTP server.
With past editions I used a little common sense by not opening any attachments from people I don't know, and then saving and scanning ones from people I do know. This new plugin is a welcomed feature. If you haven't read it... you might want to see the FAQ.
How do you check your email attachments for viruses?
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 04:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Personal Internet Software Consultants
I understand that Jeremy Wright's business is taking off. He's hiring bloggers to post to company blogs. This brings to mind another trend we may see develop.
Software in the form of CGI, PHP/MySQL .NET ASP scripts and programs is becoming increasing more difficult for small business people to understand. As the web matures, programming evolves, the complexity of the programs we have at our disposal is in some cases almost as complicated as some software you could install on your own hard drive.
Let's take Microsoft Office products for an example. How many adult learning courses do you hear about that trains people to work with these programs? My sister-in-law just finished a course on Excel.
Let's look at some recent examples from my personal experience.
There is the client who was recommended he should use 1shoppingcart.com for his ordering system. This online service is meant to be user friendly but he did not understand it, and asked me to setup his autoresponders, links, etc... and whenever he has a question about it... I have to read the manual for him and give him the answer.
BUT... this isn't just limited to 1shoppingcart. Whether it is remotely hosted or installed on a private hosting account, more and more people are becoming intimidated by the complexity of the programs, and claim they don't have the time to read the manuals to learn to work with the programs.
This is a problem...
The first rule of being an entrepreneur is to find a common problem and provide the solution.
Me?
No, no,no,no!
Yesterday I had six jobs to do for six different people. One job was installing a program on a customers website. It was a fairly simple installation. I did it in about 10 minutes... logged onto the program to make sure it is functioning and did a couple of minor tests.
The customer doesn't understand how to work with the program (he thought it would be simple)... doesn't want to take the time to read the manual, or access the customer support discussion forum. He assumed since I was a programmer that I would automatically know how the program works.
I don't!
I know how to install the program, check to make sure it is operating properly, but the installation of such software isn't even remotely connected to learning to use the software. Again take for instance Microsoft Office... I was able to install my first Microsoft Office in 1997 on my computer. But the ability to install the software on my computer doesn't necessarily mean I automatically become an expert Office user.
Ahh!
This opens the door for "Personal Internet Software Consultants" ... people who are willing to trade their time to help manage, use and learn complex web software for small businesses.
What do you think? Am I missing my bet here? Or do you think this will be something to watch for in the coming years?
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 11:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Stump the blogger...
I was reading Wayne Hurlbert blog post this morning about blogging when you have nothing to say which is kind of an interesting perspective. Let's face it... some days you have so much work sitting in front of you, or your mind is thinking about something else, and you don't feel very creative.
You have to try and be creative for your blog, your newsletter, and usually (in my line of work) you have to be creative there too, because many days my job consists of coming up with a solution that will solve someone's web related problem.
And of course, this time of year everyone is thinking about the holidays.
What about you? How do you get the creative juices flowing when you're stumped?
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 08:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 15, 2004
Nasty Christmas Cards
Nasty Christmas Cards are making their rounds. A new virus strain masquerading as electronic Christmas cards is accounting for one in every 10 e-mails hitting in-boxes, security experts warned Wednesday. This most likely accounts for the whole Internet slowing down around supper time, when people get home from work. Besides the nasty virus, there has been an increase in holiday spending which some retailers are reporting to be up by 25-36 percent.
Have a safe Christmas. Don't open electronic holiday cards from anyone you don't know.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 09:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology
Scientists in China have developed a microscopic swimming robot that could lead to devices that are able to deliver drugs to a particular part of the human body. It uses nanotechnology.
It's hard to think of Nanotechnology that doesn't conjure up images, of the very lovely, Jeri Ryan who played Seven of Nine in the Star Trek Voyager Series. Like her character's nanobots, nano-transistors can self-assemble using biology. There are a slew of stories emerging about this new technology which lays claim to the fact that some day they will be able to put a 100TB storage capacity on a 3.5" floppy disk.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 09:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Google Digital Library
Google plans to stay one step ahead of the competition by offering content from five major libraries who will scan millions of books for inclusion in its Web index. Google is partnering with the New York Public Library and the libraries of Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Oxford and the University of Michigan.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 09:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 14, 2004
Desktop Search Tools and Viruses
eWeek reports that Ask Jeeves will release a beta of its desktop-search application late tomorrow but some industry experts are warning against installing desktop search software.
According to a Cnet article written by Munir Kotadia...
"Foad Fadaghi, senior industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan Australia, said that most viruses are designed to harvest e-mail addresses and other personal information from an infected system. He warned that because desktop search tools such as those recently announced by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo can index and categorize that information, virus writers are likely to start exploiting the technology."
This means for those people who recently switched from the Internet Explorer browser to Firefox, because it isn't supposed to be as vulnerable, will be taking two steps back by installing desktop search software.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 06:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Last chance to say good-bye
Benjamin Disraeli, British politician (1804 - 1881), said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
That being said, if you can believe www.w3schools.com browser stats, they are showing Mozilla based browsers at 21.2%% and Netscape 7 at 1.2%. I don't know why they would report Netscape as different from Mozilla. Netscape 7 is built on Mozilla, and so are a number of other browsers, application suites and development tools. You can find a good list here.
With Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape popularity growing, this means a possibility that a lot of people visiting your site will not be able to see popup windows if you are using them.
With the release of Service Pack 2 for XP users, Internet Explorer can block certain popups. As a matter of fact, when the service pack is installed the popup blocker is turned on by default. For reference please see this Microsoft page.
This doesn't mean it will block requested javascript windows, but unrequested popups will be blocked. These are often used to contain a departing message to the user.
Some people have also reported that if SP2 users set their security settings to high, that it will also block links that use "target="_blank" to open new windows. I don't have any way of testing the validity of this statement. If you would like to email me and tell me it is true, it would be much appreciated.
So how can you get around this?
John Watson wrote a small Perl script that will help. Once this script is installed... if a user clicks on an external link on your site, it loads a temporary webpage telling them they will be re-directed in X seconds. Then you can have a link to your newsletter sign-up page (or any other page), so if they click your link it cancels the external click and brings them back to you. You can grab a copy of this script here.
Then you will need to edit the links pointing to external sources on your site like this:
<a href="/cgi-bin/redir.pl?url=http://somedomain.com/index.html&title=TITLE OF LINK">URL Title</a>
If you look through the Perl Code you will see a few references to "print <<EOT;" and these are the areas you can edit to make the redirect page look similar to your website if you want to. Or... it might be an nice idea to make it look a little different -- just whatever you prefer.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 06:58 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
eBay I want it now
Myles Goodwyn who is credited to be the founder of the old rock band "April Wine" is originally from New Brunswick, Canada. I get a kick out of some of his lyrics... for example "Hard Times:"
"When the truck driver don’t wanna truck
And the hockey player won’t touch the puck
And the rock musician don’t wanna fool around,
it’s hard times"
Speaking of Canadians...
Apparently eBizBlog.ca is a Canadian government agency whose goal is to assist small and medium-sized businesses with technology issues. From their blog I learned about Christopher Saunders' article called "eBay Buyers Can Recommend Products" which announces that buyers can post the items they are looking for. This creates a great opportunity for sellers to do a little market research to find out what is hot and what isn't.
The article states "Sellers can then browse through these requests to discover buyers for their items, as well as get new ideas for what items are in demand."
This just made market research a lot easier, right?
Maybe... but what a lot of people don't stop to realize when they do their market research is one of the key elements. Yes... you find a niche that is buying certain products and services... but what you want to find out is if are they willing to spend money with YOU for these products and services and what are they willing to pay YOU for YOUR products or services. This point is often over-looked.
Don't let this stop you though. Visit pages.ebay.com/wantitnow to get started.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 06:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 13, 2004
Sorry Assed Blog
Usually you can find a lot of informative and useful blog posts. Some times... you stumble on a sorry ass blog.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Geeks bearing Gifts
It seems every place you turn on the Internet you see a number of marketers who have banned together to offer you enticing info-products and software as gifts for Christmas. Of course there is a small catch.
Gary Ambrose offers a few tips for sorting through the material. He claims in an hour you could download 10,000 pages of various products and services which stacks up to a lot of reading. But he warns....
"If you see the same thing mentioned over, and over, and over in all the free ebooks you downloaded … do you think you might actually be on to something?I’m going to be brutally honest with you ... The majority of the stuff you download from these free giveaways is going to be absolute garbage. And I’d be willing to bet that at least one of the three or four ebooks you pick to print won’t be worth the price of the paper you printed it on ..."
So which did I choose?
None of them! Don't want them! Sorry folks!
See... of course this is a way for several marketers to get you on their mailing list. That isn't a bad thing, really. Except for the price they are asking. To cough up my email address so you can place it on your list is worth more then your free gift.
I think it's time to revise this tactic of luring your subscribers in with free gifts. With people's email inboxes being so choked full of spam, the last thing anyone wants to do is to add another 400-500 extra email to their list of email and spam they must sort through. I have personally set over 1600 filters on my email accounts, and it only made a small dent in the amount of spam I receive.
So...
Build a relationship with me. Offer instant access to your freebie, make it a good one, and ASK me to consider subscribing to your newsletter, if I find it useful. Give first... don't expect your subscribers to.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 08:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 12, 2004
Newspapers and Blogs? Nope! Can't see it.
Thanks to Jeremy C. Wright for the email yesterday, which contained a few useful links, one that eventually led to Roland Tanglao blog post titled "Newspapers should launch blogs - Canadian papers are you listening?" For an answer I would refer to Seth Godin's post "Why ask Why."
Roland's post led me to a pdf file written by Todd McCauley who outlines a strategy that newspapers could use to engage, solicit interaction and feedback from a younger audience which would attract the 18-34 year olds.
In my post titled Let's Talk Turkey about Blogging it mentions statistics collected from what was CyberAtlas, that says:
"The demographics suggest that 51.5% of all new blogs created are created by the 13-19 year olds with 20-29 year olds taking second place at 39.6%."
This is a clear indication that younger people want to have their voices heard. I don't know what part of Canada Roland Tanglao grew up in, but the area I grew up in seemed to include a number bureaucracies, as pointed out by Mr. Godin, that just want you "to go away."
At the risk of sounding like a middle-aged whining adolescent, newspapers aren't any different from Mr. Godin's description of bureaucracies "who don't want the whys working their way up the chain." We have learned this lesson well, which is evident from the poor turn-outs at election time. Newspapers are more like Seth Godin's bureaucracies who "encourage their people to be the first and only line of defense" so that editors, jobbers by nature, can just make it to quitting time without really having to give a "rats ass" about any controversial issues that would ruffle the feathers of the the "good 'ol boys" club. If the newspaper started to lose sponsors, you can bet that editor would be looking for a new job.
Let's look at an example. From the CBC News: Opposition leaders unite to guard EI surplus
The four federal opposition parties have announced a plan that will try to stop Finance Minister Paul Martin from using the Employment Insurance surplus to pay for other priorities.
The EI surplus will be about $20 billion by the end of the year. There wasn't supposed to be a surplus, but by starving the people who could use this money, the government has created a situation that screams "Oh those poor people! What should we do? Hey... anyone want to party?!!!"
The PDF article written by Todd McCauley mentions a website called "Debatables.com" which was "A Web log on which a handful of writers/editors scan and post news from a variety of sources along with their own commentary" and encourage feedback "to provide a place for a segment of young readers to have something to talk about and to feel they’re getting smarter about topics of interest to them."
Well...well! It isn't any surprise to see that the site is no longer active. See, the politicians want your vote, but they don't want any public forum which might hold them accountable and coerce answers that might imply further corruption and scandal. And, any newspaper that was to adopt the radical idea of a web blog, would keep an editor busy just deleting posts and questions. The editor might not know where the EI surplus is going, and if he can keep his job, he doesn't have to know. He's got a few more comments to delete... then it's quitting time.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 08:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 11, 2004
GoDaddy Hosting
A gentleman contacted me on Friday about installing a simple CGI script on his hosting account at godaddy.com. He claimed the fellow he initially contacted didn't seem to be getting anything done.
There seems to be some problems with these hosting accounts...
After doing a number of tests and then running a script that would output the CGI variables here is the result:
SCRIPT_NAME -> /cgi-bin/sbox/env.cgi
SCRIPT_URI -> http://www.xxx.com/cgi/env.cgi
SCRIPT_FILENAME -> /html/cgi/env.cgi
PATH_TRANSLATED -> /home/content/x/x/x/xxx/html/env.cgi
(The domain name has been x'ed out to protect the owners privacy)
The problem: 4 paths to one file.
Any scripts that need to rely on server paths will likely fail.
My advice to anyone hosted there who needs to install scripts is to move your site to a more professional hosting account.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 10, 2004
How To Make FireFox even Faster
I ran across an interesting thread this morning from webmasterworld.com a gentleman named Matthew shows how to adjust your settings for Firefox to make your browser as fast or faster then even Opera.
Matthew said:
Disclaimer: This is not, and is not intended to be, a firefox vs. Opera thread. The following are simply some basic guidelines for increasing firefox performance, and is not meant to be a comparison of any kind! ;)I've heard it said, here and other places, that Opera is the fastest browser available. It is fast - there's no denying that - but there are ways to make firefox render pages every bit as quickly, with just a few easy "tweaks." I had thought these adjustments were pretty well-known, but it's beginning to seem as though they may not be. So I thought it was worthwhile to bring these "hidden settings" more into the light.
To get started, type "about:config" in your firefox address bar. The settings you're looking for are:
1.) network.http.pipelining
2.) network.http.pipelining.firstrequest
3.) network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
4.) network.http.proxy.pipelining
5.) nglayout.ititialpaint.delaySet #1, #2, and #4 to "true". Set #3 to a high number, like 32. Set #5 to 0.
Enabling the pipelining features allows the browser to make multiple requests to the server at the same time. The "maxrequests" is the maximum number of requests it will send at once. I've heard that 8 is the most it will send at once, but setting it higher won't hurt, just in case. The initialpaint.delay is the length of time (in milliseconds) after the server response before the browser begins to paint the page.
Adjusting those settings will help pages render much faster in firefox. In fact, my own observations have been that, tweaked in this manner, firefox will render faster than Opera (and yes, I realize that others may experience different results).
The firefox Tuning thread over at Mozillazine has more information for different connection speeds, etc.
I wasn't able to find a couple of the settings he mentioned, but for those who need a little more tweaking, you can visit this thread from forums.mozillazine.org.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 08:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 08, 2004
Interested in a HomeBusiness Discussion List?
Kelly Lowe of onlinebusinessbase.com dropped by my message forum and posted this question:
"Does anyone know of GOOD email discussion lists for home based businesses? I've been looking for a couple to join, but the only thing I've found is JUNK where it is nothing but ads. I am a member of one good list, for home based business women, but I would like to join one or two others. Any thoughts?"
A few days later she still hadn't gotten any response, so I suggested...
...she head over to Yahoo! and start her own.
Although homebiztalk hasn't had a chance to be promoted a lot yet, and there only a few messages in the group so far, I thought I would pass this resource on to you. Some of you might enjoy it and help kick it off.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 08:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Let's Talk Turkey about Blogging
Debbie Weil posted:
Thanks to Dee Rambeau for a pointer to a 21-page PDF report from Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker and Brian Pitz on why "next generation content" (as they call it) will "gain usage / revenue traction in 2005." Ahh, the business case for blogs. It's coming, I'm confident. It just may be a bit hard to see right now because the "content" of blogs is so inextricably intertwined with the "technology" of blogging.
A lot of business people these days are promoting blogging as the next "big thing" but I have to wonder if this enthusiasm is based on reality. ClickZ's stats (formerly known as CyberAtlas) released a look at who is actually using Blogs the most.
The demographics suggest that 51.5% of all new blogs created are created by the 13-19 year olds with 20-29 year olds taking second place at 39.6%. That means a total of 91.1% of all blogs are not business related. Weblogs Inc. founder Jason McCabe said:
"There are millions of blogs, but I would say less than 1 million are updated regularly. So less than 1 percent of the country is blogging,..."
When you stop to think that the 1% that is regularly blogging with 91.1% of this not being business related it means that a lot of the business related hype about blogs has been created more by enthusiastic bloggers and that it may be too early to tell if it will become a viable resource or simply a time waster for businesses putting their efforts into blogging.
I think it is a tool — another way to reach like-minded individuals — to help accelerate business relationships. It's not a "magic pill" and ignoring other channels in favor of blogs will be at your own peril.
Let's look at my client base which consists of small business owners and entrepreneurs. 98% of them have no idea what a blog is or why they should be interested in learning about blogs. It is marketing as usual for these folks. Likewise, even though entrepreneurs who use the web to market their goods and services tend to be a little more web savvy then their customers, most of them would be at a loss to try and convince their customers/clients why they should install software to subscribe to their RSS feeds. It is just too new for a lot of people to understand yet.
Some customers will stumble on your blog while visiting your site, or they may see a link to an article on your blog that has been indexed by a search engine. Most of these people will see this as an article archive without understanding the technology behind it.
Overall, the time spent on blogs is worthwhile, but the enthusiasm of bloggers and there practical use is still largely to be determined.
For me?
It gives me a place to post my rambling thoughts to, and archive a few issues of my HomeBusiness Websites Journal. By promoting the blog to the blog directories linked to the RSSTop55 - Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites it has helped double my traffic, but I don't feel it has actually helped me bring in any new clients.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 08:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 07, 2004
Z-index imagination
Some of the new constructs to html over the last few years allow for greater imagination. You may have seen sites that employ newer design strategies, but didn't realize what you were looking at. One of these new constructs comes from the use of CSS to utilize the advantages of "z-index"
This CSS property allows us to layer elements on top/ underneath other page elements. In essence what you do, is stack items on top of other items. This can get fairly complex, but what I will show you today is fairly simple, something that will perhaps stoke a little imagination for your upcoming projects.
Let's look at the simple example I have prepared for you:
http://www.homebusiness-websites.com/decezine
This isn't a single image. The image of the guy in the background is underneath the gray window and text headline. It is a z-index of 1.
The window has a z-index of two which means when positioned on top of the first element it takes prominence over the first element which was the picture with a z-index of 1. The gray window is a transparent gif image so you can see the guy underneath.
The text headline has a z-index of 3 which means that when it is positioned over the other two it takes prominence over the other elements so it appears to be on top of the guy and gray window.
The way to make sure these things are placed on a page exactly where you want them to be, is to place the stacking elements within a <div style="position: relative;"></div> so that the items inside this div are positioned relative to the div rather then the top/left of the browser window. Then you can use a little absolute positioning to jiggle the stacked elements around in the container div and move them up, down, right, or left.
If you would like to explore this idea even further, there is a good article on using stackable images to create CSS based image maps. Have a look here:
http://www.frankmanno.com/ideas/css-imagemap
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 06, 2004
Be a Blog Consultant
I ran across a post on blogbusinessworld about Jeremy Wright who auctioned his blogging skills on eBay.
He is supposed to get $3350.00 for the next 3 months for adding 5-10 posts per week to the winners blog.
What does Jeremy say about this?
"The interest in this auction, and the nearly 10 private deals I’m looking at signing show that there is a market for blog consulting and outsourced blogging."
I have a feeling his price may be a little low. And it is definitely going to keep him busy. Maybe I have the math all wrong but a minimal of one blog post per day per customer for 10 customers (I can't see it working out to be this many posts per day) means a LOT of research.
I don't know... what do you think?
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 03, 2004
Google's new email discussion groups
A lot of people are familiar with Yahoo! groups and Thursday Google started offering something similar. You can create your own private or public groups. You can choose to receive new messages in your groups via email or just read them on the web.
You can read more about it here.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 07:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 01, 2004
Div Overflow
On a site I a built for a customer, the gentleman wanted notes in a side bar. Granted that was easy enough to do... except for one page. The content in the sidebar exceeded the length of the content in the main area, and by extending the content below this area, it gave it an odd appearance.
I emailed the customer and asked if it would be acceptable to make this long content scrollable and placed in a fashion so it doesn't extend past the content in the main part of the page. He replied this would be fine with him.
iframes means including a different page, which is more work, increases load time, can cause problems with printing, navigation, and getting the page properly indexed by search engines.
I added a div overflow to an example template I showed you two weeks ago. You can see it here
http://www.homebusiness-websites.com/apple
The CSS for it look like this:
#overflow{
background-color: #FFFFFF;
width:160px;
height:125px;
overflow: auto;
}
...then I placed the scrollable content in between <div id="overflow"></div>
The CSS wasn't added to the print stylesheet, so that when you print the page, the whole column will print off to the right, just as it is when you look at the page in your browser.
Older browsers like Netscape 4.x, don't support the @import method for including stylesheet data, which makes the page backwards compatible. If you use your browser "view source" you will se this in the <head></head>:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="print.css" type="text/css" media="print" />
<style type="text/css" media="screen">@import url("stylesheet.css"); </style>
Overall, it is a pretty handy way to include more data in a limited area.
In some cases you may wish to include a lot of data in a table and have it scrollable. Very few browsers support this though. See:
http://htmlhelp.com/test/tbody.html
What they don't tell you on the above link is you can hide this from browsers that don't support it with an alternate stylesheet like this:
<style type="text/css"><!-- @import url(hidefromie6.css) screen; --></style>
The above alternate stylesheet will be hidden from from all current MSIE browsers from 4.x and up, and Netscape 4.x browsers.
Posted by Steve MacLellan at 06:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack