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July 31, 2005

Instant Audio

How many of you enjoy hearing instant audio when a web page loads?

Yup! That's what I thought...

I was working on a client's website when he remarked to me about how annoying it was to load his homepage and hear his instant audio message. I agreed. I told him when I was making edits to the page I would disable it for testing purposes. He wondered if this was something he should test.

The page was for lead generation purposes to get visitors to sign up for a course delivered by autoresponder. He decided he would like to do an A/B split test where the web site visitors would be split between pages. Half of them would load a page with the audio automatically playing, the other half would have to click a button if they wanted to hear the audio.

The test was over a two week period. The client didn't give me the exact numbers but he did tell me that there were a LOT more people signing up for the course on the page where the audio played as soon as the page loaded.

For anyone using audio on their website, this doesn't mean you should change your audio configuration. My client's results and yours may not be similar at all. You would want to test this for yourself. Then you are in a position to make an informed decision.

For those who aren't using audio on your site, and don't want to pay a monthly fee for a service that provides it, you can check out Quentin Brown's website where he offers a complete range of streaming media tools for your website.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 02:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Icebreaker for sale

Dan Burry is selling his icebreaker on eBay. He says:

"It could be used for research or as a floating hotel, and would be perfect for touring icy Arctic destinations."

The minimum starting bid is $1 million US. You can see the listing here.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 09:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 29, 2005

Forbes lists the best blogs

Forbes recently published a list of blogs. They say:

"We identify the best blogs in categories ranging from Art and Literary Blogs, to Small Business, Marketing, Shopping and Music Blogs."

HA! They overlooked this one. What were they thinking?

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 08:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

SpamLookup plugin for MovableType

I haven't had trackbacks enabled for a few months. Too many trackback spammers = too much bother. However, now that I've got my email spam under control again... (he he) go figure — all I had to do was add about another 1,500 filters bringing my total to just over 3,000... I'm ready to give trackbacks another chance.

Mind you, I already have a few hundred IP's blocked from accessing this site, but the majority of the trackback spam I was getting here was being posted through multiple proxy servers. I've installed a new MovableType plugin called SpamLookUp which I hope will help.

One of the features in the config file looks promising. Here is a screen shot.

Previously I had installed a different plugin a while ago, that was supposed to help with trackback spam, but it didn't seem to help much. Who knows, maybe this one will bring me better luck! Time will tell.

If yo uwould like to give it a try yourself you can get it here.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 02:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Review of ShortURL .com service

Last week I mentioned how the Truro Daily News (local paper) mangled my URL in the ad. I thought it would be a quick matter to get one of those free redirects to make the URL much shorter.

The first place I went to was ShortURL.com. I used there service once before a few years ago. I noted on their website I would have to wait 3 days for the free URL, but since it was last Friday when I applied for it, I didn't think that was too much to ask for.

Well... maybe it was...

Monday would have been three days, but the URL still hadn't been activated. Oh, I thought, maybe they mean three working days. I thought if it was activated by Wednesday I would still be able to get my ad in the paper last week.

They emailed me about it today.

They said it was an affiliate URL. This isn't true at all.

Then they told me I would have to pay for it because it was an affiliate URL.

You can see where this is going and how long it might take to get resolved.

So I went to webalias.com and got a short re-direct URL for free and activated in 5 minutes. It does display a small popup, but in order for me to use the free service from ShortURL there was a small banner I would have to display.

Naturally, my opinion is that if you need a short URL to do some testing and quick promotional campaign, you would be wise to avoid using ShortURL.com.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 09:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 27, 2005

Blog Question and Answers

I said to my client, "Most people will have no idea it is a blog. They will only understand that it is an area of your website that you update frequently."

"Which RSS feed should I tell them to add to their feedreader, and why?"

I said:

People who view your blog and want to subscribe to an RSS feed will know how to extract the RSS feed that they want.

But on second thought... for those who don't know anything about this, it might be better to give them only one choice:

RSS (2.0)

This version is going to get a lot of support from the next version of Windows due out next year. So people who decide to switch from feed reader software to use the Microsoft software (that will be installed with Windows) will have a lot less trouble.

For reference see:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1831242,00.asp

Wayne Hurlbert has put together a wonderful article of blog question and answers. If you find yourself answering a lot of basic questions about blogs, you can save yourself some typing by pointing them at this article.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 08:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 26, 2005

9Rules hiring bloggers

9rules blog network announced that they are hiring writers for topics related to cars, gadgets, phones, etc...

If you're a blogger who is interested in writing for pay, you might want to check it out.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 05:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 25, 2005

Website Setup Tips

Do you know what you're going to do with your website next month? How about next year?

Don't feel bad if you can't answer that question. Most of us don't.

The first thing you might want to do (provided you are on a professional hosting account) is setup your site so that pages with an *.html file extension are SSI (Server Side Includes enabled) You can do this by editing a file called .htaccess that typically sits in your root directory. If there isn't one there, then you can create one from Notepad. To enable html pages to be parsed for SSI add these lines to the .htaccess file:

AddType text/html .html AddHandler server-parsed .html

This allows you to use SSI on all of your web pages that have an .html extension. Even better, if for some reason you wanted to include the output from a PHP script, you can use a SSI include file. The server will recognize the file with the .php extension being called into the SSI include, and execute the php script before sending it to the browser.

If you would like to see an example of this click here. Note the right hand side where it says "Latest News?" That is an example of using Carpe which enables you to parse an RSS feed and display it in a php file. The Php file is being pulled into the template using SSI.

Yes, you may not need this functionality when you are setting up a new site, but as soon as you start adding content to it, you will see how much easier it is to update one file when you want to change a menu than updating 100 files to change a menu.

Never add a webpage to your site with an *.htm extension.

I know, on past websites, you may have mixed and matched files with both .html and .htm extensions. Don't do it on any new sites. The .htm extension can become your ace-in-the-hole.

If something happens you need to have the ability to turn the first page someone sees on your site into a CGI script, that's what you are saving the .htm extension for.

To do this you would add this line to your .htaccess file:

AddType application/x-httpd-cgi .htm

Now if you do this later on when the site has already been built, and people have already bookmarked your site as www.yourdomain.com/index.html, you can modify your .htacess file like this:

Redirect permanent /index.html http://yourdomain.com/index.htm

See once you remove the index.html (if that is what your site defaults to) the server will load "index.htm" by default, that could be your CGI script.

One precaution. You need to make sure your are hosted by a provider that allows CGI scripts to be executed outside the of the CGI bin.

If you these tips in mind when setting up a new website, you will be ready for anything.

Got a tip you would like to post here and share?

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 04:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 23, 2005

Feedshake

Andy Wibbel's of http://easybakeweblogs.com, mentions a new service called FeedShake, that "helps you to generate new feeds by merging, sorting and filtering existing online RSS feeds. This service doesn't require any subscription nor e-mail address."

Isn't that a cool idea?

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 12:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 21, 2005

My ad didn't turn out as expected

First-off... it is under the wrong heading. I guess that is something I could live with if the URL wasn't so badly mangled. The preview they printed at the newspaper before I paid them had the URL breaking in what I thought was an all-right place. This, of course, takes into consideration that it is a long URL. However what appeared in the paper today shows an URL with two hyphens; one that is required, and one that isn't.

Moving along

I canceled it until I can register for a shorter URL. I will also see if I can have the word "Visit:" removed, so I can get the shorter URL on one line.

No, I didn't register a new domain name. I will try using a shorter URL which will redirect to this monster using the free service from www.shorturl.com.

UPDATE: — Aug, 2, 2005 — ShortURL didn't turn out to be a good idea. See my review of the service here.

Rats! What was the line from that Mary Chapin Carpenter's song that would be applicable?

"Some days you're the windshield; some days you're the bug."

Another favorite, although I don't know who said it, is, "Ya' pays your money; ya' takes your chances."

UPDATE: — Aug, 2, 2005 — The newspaper agreed to give me full credit since the URL was mangled and is running a new ad for me this week at no extra charge.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 03:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Mailinglist plugin for WordPress

I installed a plugin for WordPress today that allows you to have a mailing list as well as letting people choose if they would like to receive notifications of new posts.

It comes configured to ask for their firstname, last name, address, telephone number and email address.

Here is a screenshot:

This program saves all of the entries in a new table in your MySQL database.

(Yes, I know my WordPress blog looks almost exactly the same as this MovableType blog.)

You can use it to send out a regular newsletter or send notifications of new posts to those who subscribe.

The webpage for this plugin is written in French so I used Babelfish to translate it. A quick look shows there isn't a whole lot of documentation, but anyone comfortable installing WordPress plugins shouldn't have any trouble.

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

July 20, 2005

Uninstall Greasemonkey

If you're using the Firefox extension, Greasemonkey, you should uninstall it or downgrade to Greasemonkey 0.3.5.

Mark Pilgrim, an XML coder who helped to evangelize the extension says:

"...Greasemonkey scripts can be exploited to expose the contents of every file on a user's local hard drive to every site that user visits, and that an attacker "can quietly send this information anywhere in the world."

You can read more about it here.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 10:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 19, 2005

Getting to the top of Google

Danny Wall's article, How To Steal To The Top Of Google: Use the News offers some great tips and strategy for getting to the top using press releases. I would have to presume this would include writing articles and submitting them to article directories too. Mr. Wall says:

"...a visitor that comes to your site from an ad is actually much less likely to buy from you on that visit than is someone that comes to your site because of some sort of beneficial news article that they read somewhere."

I know I've tried using press releases in the past, but haven't had much luck. But this article gave me a great idea. Danny said:

"Is the price of gas going up? That’s good news if you do almost anything that helps to extend a car’s fuel economy."

With prices here hovering at around $1 per liter, it makes me think that this could be tied into why people want to start establishing a second income by building a web business.

You know, if nothing else, it will help put gas in their jalopy so they can get back and forth to work! Or better, yet.... maybe they will have some money left over at the end of the month.

But the point being made is that information being searched for at Google often has links to media coverage at the top of the returned results page, BEFORE any of the regular indexed pages appear.

Something to think about, isn't it?

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 09:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 15, 2005

Movable Type updates coming

Movable Type, the makers of the fine software that powers this blog, are making a major update with a new version currently in Beta.

Matt Hicks, of eWeek says:

"The company also is trying to thwart a rising menace—the rise of spammers filling blog comment sections and stuffing trackbacks with unwanted and irrelevant comments and links."

Apparently, this will allow you to score posts similar to how Spam Assassin works which I assume will automatically detect and prevent some of the comment and trackback spam most of us have had to deal with.

I have Spam Assassin on my server, but haven't activated due to the fact that in some case you could lose legitimate email. To help reduce the amount of spam messages I receive I use a server side filtering system. Currently I have 2,397 filters set, and it has made a small dent in the amount of spam I receive. Personally, I feel this is a better method, although it takes quite a bit of time setting individual filters for all of the spam I get.

I don't think I would feel the same way about using this for the blog though. I think it would be great.

As many of you will have noticed, the trackback feature on this site has been disabled. Between the blog, email and message board spam, it was just taking more time that I wanted to give to fighting spam. Maybe after this new release I will be able to turn it on again.

Anil Dash, vice president of Six Apart's professional network says:

"...the upcoming Movable Type update puts the software steps ahead of current and potential competitors when it comes to providing features for IT and blog administrators."

You can read the full article at eWeek if you want to.

It sounds like a great promise... I guess we will know soon enough whether the software lives up to it.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 10:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 14, 2005

Adding RSS Content

I was viewing a discussion thread that mentions a program called RSS Indexed that sells for $199.00. They claim it works like:

RSS Indexer takes all of the hassle out of creating pages and submitting feeds for you. You simply point RSS Indexer towards a URL and it will spider EVERY PAGE on the site and gather content for the RSS Feed.

Tell RSS Indexer how often you want it to submit and YOU ARE DONE!!! Your once Static website is now considered to have CONSTANTLY UPDATED CONTENT.

I guess there is something I don't quite understand here...

If you have a 100 page website full of static content, what is the purpose of turning static content into RSS feeds and having the same static content submitted every 18 days to the search engines. Is this suppose to make the site appear fresh?

If the search engines want FRESH content, wouldn't it make more sense to give them fresh content?

Sure, I understand 100 pages of fresh content might be a little much, but I will tell you what I found.

I was browsing through hotscripts.com and found a program called RSStatic.

Here is how this program works:

Typical web based RSS aggregators simply allow you to publish a headline and link from your chosen feed. This provides you with fresh content on your site and gives visitors a potential reason to return. This offers very little value to search engine optimization efforts. RSStatic goes one step beyond that.

RSStatic takes information from the feeds you choose and generates static html pages for each item in the feed. This quickly turns a 10 page website into a much larger, more robust site complete with relevant content that continually grows.

I installed this as a way to share some of my favorite feeds with my site visitors. I did not submit this page to the search engines. A few days later I noticed the increase in traffic while viewing my stats and referring URLs. If you have a look at this URL from Google you can see it found about 300 new pages from the installation of this script.

Well... I guess I get to share my favorite feeds with more people then just my site visitors.

I guess if someone wanted to use this for a good tool to bring in targeted hits, they could make sure that the feeds they included were site and keyword related. At least it doesn't cost a lot, and the content is fresher. So comparatively speaking, I don't see the advantage of using "RSS Indexed" over the free RSStatic.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 06:37 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 13, 2005

Mozilla Updates Firefox to Fix Security Gaps

Matt Hicks of eWeek says:

The Mozilla Foundation updated the Firefox Web browser Tuesday in order to patch a series of security vulnerabilities, including widely publicized browser spoofing issue and a frame-injection issue.

...more>>

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 03:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The 20 Second Rule...

This is the average time someone will spend looking at your sales letter.

Bugsy Cockaracha, from www.SalesLetterHumor.com visited my discussion forum and suggested:

Have any of you read "The 20 Second Rule"

That is the average time a sales letter will be in the hands of the receiver, looked at, read, and thrown away. Does this surprise you? Please go and read the two reports by Professor Vogele and see for yourself. Both articles are not long but are packed with information you can not get any place else.

http://cdmdirect.com/eyestudy1.htm read this first
http://cdmdirect.com/eyestudy2.htm read this next

I came across "The 20 Second Rule" about three years ago and been working on a way to increase the time a sales letter stays in the hands of the receiver. I have created a sales letter that will increase that time many times over

Regards,
Bugsy Cockaracha

"Humor Sales Letters" last forever
they are a Salesmen's best friend.
http://www.SalesLetterHumor.com

P.S. One good turn of the blanket . . . and you'll have the whole thing.

These reports are a must read.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 10:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 11, 2005

Online Profits

ON June 26th, 2005, I posted about Bob Serling's new eBook Online Profits at the Speed of Light. A special pre publication was released today where you can buy the eBook for a little less. Bob says:

The price for Online Profits at the Speed of Light — once the full program is ready — will be just $79. That includes the main program and at least 8 powerful bonuses.

However, as a special pre-publication offer to get a partial version of this highly profitable material in your hands as quickly as possible, I'm offering a discounted price of just $59. You'll get all the material that's currently available right now. And because it's all in pdf format, you can have it delivered to your desktop in the next couple minutes. Then, once the full program is complete (toward the end of September), you'll get the complete program and all the remaining bonuses.

When I posted about it, I told you Bob was looking for contributors.

The list of experts currently committed to participating at this point include:

Bob Bly, John Carlton, Dave Dee, Randy Gage, David Garfinkel, Paul Hartunian, John Jantsch, Audri Lanford, Paul Lemberg, Clayton Makepeace, Ken McCarthy, George McKenzie, Paul Myers, Bob Scheinfeld, Yanik Silver, Joe Vitale, Jeff Walker, and Pamela Yellen.

The BIG SURPRISE for me was that he published a handy tip I submitted.

If you missed out on getting your material submitted the deadline for getting your materials to him is July 27th, 2005, but he would prefer to get them as early as possible. It might not be too late to get in the final publication.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 12:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 08, 2005

Where are your spammers coming from?

I would have to say that just about 85% of the people who spam me are using a yahoo.com account.

How about you?

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 10:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Internet riding on top of electricity

Years ago Nortel and a power company in the UK were testing using powerlines to transmit an Internet signal over electrical lines. My understanding was the test wasn't altogether successful. I think they were having problems filtering the signal, and the report I said suggested that when they were able to solve this problem it would likely become a reality.

Today I read that "a company that provides high-speed Internet access over electrical power lines on Thursday said it has received a major investment from Google Inc., the Hearst Corp. and Goldman Sachs."

I am very happy to see this is making some progress. The main benefit of this service will be:

Internet access over power lines is seen as a way to deliver broadband service to rural areas where telephone and cable lines do not reach, or where various forms of wireless access are too expensive or not yet in place.

Think of the possibilities!

Who knows, in the next few years you may see a lot of people who earn their living online, moving out of urban hotspots, to run their business from a cottage by the sea.

Pinch me! I must be dreaming.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 08:17 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 07, 2005

Dead? Maybe not!

Yesterday I made myself something to eat and turned on the TV at Supper time. There was a re-run of Star Trek Voyager on. In this particular episode, Nelix dies, and 18 hours later Seven of Nine uses nanotechnology to reanimate him. We all know this is impossible... right?

Au contraire! The Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans.

The article goes on to say:

The animals are considered scientifically dead, as they stop breathing and have no heartbeat or brain activity.

But three hours later, their blood is replaced and the zombie dogs are brought back to life with an electric shock.

They say this "should be enough to save lives such as battlefield casualties" and that's all good and fine. I can't help but think how discouraging it would be to be killed twice in the same day though.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 08:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

6 ways to improve website stickiness

Don MacLeod article 6 ways to improve website stickiness offers some good common sense using:

• Fresh Articles
• Forum
• Reviews
• Resource Directories
• Newsletter
• Blogs

How many of these strategies do you employ?

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 08:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Site Map Builder

I was reading through my RSS feeds this morning and learned about a program called SiteMapBuilder:

SiteMapBuilder.NET enables you to create the proper XML code needed for Google SiteMaps. Just enter the URL, and the program will scan your web site and collect all the links, then generates the proper XML document to be placed in your root directory.

The URL for the software is www.sitemapbuilder.net, but the site seemed to be down when I tried to load it in my browser.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 08:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 06, 2005

Are you a Zombie?

No, of course you're not. But your computer could be. "Zombie PCs are computers that have been infected by malicious code that allows spammers to use them to send e-mail," according to Tom Spring, of PC World. Anyone who uses a cable connection and whose computer is always online makes a perfect target.

Mr. Spring says:

Have you been labeled a spammer? You may be able to find out. First determine what your Internet protocol address is by using a site like WhatIsMyIP.com. Next punch your IP address (or your domain name, for business users) into DNSstuff's Spam Database Lookup site to see a list of antispam companies that recommend blocking your e-mail.

If you feel you might be infected, head over to tips.littlehosting.com for some tips on protecting yourself.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 09:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Aweber and the referring URL

Recently a client said to me that they don't know the URL's of their representatives websites who are referring them. Some do, some don't. Typically they refer people who are looking for a free report used for lead generation purposes.

My client uses Aweber. Aweber gives a location URL (the page where the form was submitted) but does not offer a referring URL.

The problem was solved using a little SSI and a hidden input field in the Aweber form:

<input type="hidden" name="referrer_site" value="<!--#if expr="${HTTP_REFERER}" --><!--#set var='ref' value='${HTTP_REFERER}' --><!--#echo var='ref' --><!--#else -->Not Available<!--#endif -->">

It should be noted that not all systems and browsers send this header or the correct one. Use this code at your discretion.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 06:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 05, 2005

News Briefs

I wanted to share with you some of the RSS newsfeeds I subscribe to. You can view the links and excerpts of the posts here.

The last time I checked there was about 300 links, so the page loads pretty slow.

Enjoy!

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

Extra templates for First Business Website owners

For those of you who recently bought my "First Business Website" Toolkit" and haven't signed up for a hosting account, here is something of interest. I mentioned about hosting accounts using Cpanel that have Fantastico installed. This gives you additional programs that can be installed automatically from your control panel.

One of these programs is called Templates Express which allows you to install static templates to your website. You will need to use FTP and edit the html files, replacing the default text with your own text. Standard information like title, name, address and similar will be collected during installation and placed into the installed template in the appropriate locations.

There won't be anything special about using FTP to upload and download these templates. You will have covered this from the information provided in the toolkit. Here are some screen shots of the templates that will be available to you to have installed automatically for your use.

You can use the information provided in the toolkit to customize these to suit your needs. A search on Google will find many sites offering free templates, but I think these are pretty nice too.

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 05:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 04, 2005

Hacking for CASH

Business people aren't the only group getting more serious about Internet profits. More and more hackers/crackers are being lured by money. An article from Ryan Naraine on eWeek says:

The malware writers are looking to steal identities and credit card data. They are using their skills to make money from illegal activity. They're no longer going after typical attack mechanisms that are more along the lines of a nuisance. Now, it's a subversive, organized scheme. It's about making money from the Internet rather than harassing the Internet.

A lot of these malware programs are getting installed on computers from a method Paul F. Roberts refers to in his article titled "Drive-By Download Sites Chauffeur Spyware." He said some of these site owners are commissioning affiliates through programs similar to networks such as Commission Junction and LinkShare.

One site offers it's affiliates as much as Fifty-five cents for every one they can infect.They convince users to download 3KB program that "changes the homepage and installs toolbar and dialer."

According to Ken Dunham, director of malicious code at iDefense:

In addition to distributing malicious code and adware through its affiliates, (site name removed).biz mines click-through traffic from systems compromised by the group's exploit and uses pop-up messages to tempt users into buying nonexistent software programs, taking a cut of any sales.

The (site name removed).biz crew isn't above using its network of compromised machines to distribute spam or to steal personal information from users, either, Dunham said.

In Mr. Naraine's interview with Marc Sachs, director of the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center, Mr Sachs claims he feels a little safer on the Internet using the Firefox browser, and recommends it to all of his friends and family.

Do you think this is a reasonable precaution?

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 04:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 01, 2005

How reading spam can help weight loss

I know, you will probably think I'm joking, as I do often. But...I'm not.

The article on the CBC website says:

Spam, or unsolicited e-mail, can be healthy if it convinces you to change your couch potato ways and eat better, a Canadian researcher says.

People who were e-mailed tips promoting healthy behavior tended to increase their physical activity levels and lose weight, his team found.

Now print off 10 copies of this message, skip the mayo, and you're ready for lunch!

Whoops! Sorry, I guess that was reading spam, not eating spam

Posted by Steve MacLellan at 09:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack