Chawlk

1. Drawar
2. Fenxy
3. Decaflon
4. Two Credits
5. Wriging
6. Loose Suits
7. Chixe
8. Dud3s
9. Wing Colors

 

For people reading this not familiar with your site, your most recent focus has been: making money online, SEO and metablogging.

Your niches...

I'm going to be honest with you: those are three of the most oversaturated niches there are. I'm not saying you shouldn't write that sort of content, but you'll have to make a hell of an impact somewhere to see a measurable response.

The readers of these niches (and I apologise to you, because I know I'm grouping you in here) collectively have less attention span than a hamster watching paint dry. You need to be consistently excellent instead of following the crowd.

Money

Money-wise, you're advertising to some of the most advert-alert people on the internet. These are guys who spend all day either monetising sites trying their hardest. You might want to mix things up a bit. Throw in a random interstitial. Randomly use those damned annoying underline-thingy-ads.

This is another reason I'd find being in the MMO niche extremely dangerous. At the top, you have a few guys making stupid amounts of money for doing nigh-on sod-all. I remember at one point in the distant history feeling slightly competitive with you over site income and traffic.

I've long since given up aspirations of taking over the world and to be honest, I'm a much happier person for it. I don't feel I have to write when I don't have anything to write about and I don't feel I have to shove ads under people's eyelids.

My point is if you're not making money online, you must occasionally ask yourself why you're writing about it. I would find that predicament too depressing.

Content

I'm sure this has dawned on you but you're pretty limited in your scope for new content. Everything has been said on the subjects and as soon as something new happens, a million people have written about it before you've head of it.

I don't know what you can do about that.

So how about providing something other sites don't? A regularly updated guide. All the little voices in the MMO arena squalk "I'm rich and here's how I did it" - but there's actually a lot less "how" and a lot more "here's what I'm doing now; click my links biatch". It's a horrible MLM-style pyramid.

You're not at the ProBlogger level so you can't speak with absolute authority (as if they can) but you can show how you're trying to get there. Long term experiments showing traffic vs income graphs, marking significant actions. Show what works and what doesn't. In doing so, you'll save people a lot of time.

Conversely if this doesn't work, you'll have more great content that doesn't get enough interaction and that won't help you psychologically.

Getting more interaction

Firstly, spruce up your comment form. It's basic and there's a captcha waiting there to scare people off. Turn the form into a two-stage process so they only see the bare minimum to begin with and ask the rest once they've posted the content of their post. zdnet have a great version of this: just a textarea and a button. It's great for luring people in, getting them invested in the process.

Additionally, with the two-stage process, you can do far more with the user. Once they've posted, you can ask them if they want to subscribe to the thread, if they want to subscribe via RSS or want one sugar or two.

Give it some styles too. Visually draw people in.

There's also a LOT of gumpf between the end of content and the comments. Rearrage the metacrap. Move Digg/contact/email and rss subs to the top of the sidebar. They'll get less attention but they're not delivering what you need anyway.

To conclude..

If I took over seopher.com tomorrow, I'd do the following things:

• Examine if I really want to continue writing in the current niches. Are they sustainable? Can I succeed in them? Are they fun to write about?
• Regardless, is the way I'm writing affecting the way people tend to comment. I'd take a look at something popular and try to emulate its style to see if that worked again. Perhaps chuck in some questions.
• Ask myself how important monetizing was. How much does it degrade viewing/interaction performance? It that worth it?
• Work on getting people from the end of my content straight into the comment box.

Yeah stick it to Sony by paying them to use their tech =)

It doesn't even serve their best interest - MS need to focus on growing a high-performance, affordable IPTV service.

I'm no fan of Sony. You could go as far as saying I hate them, but I'm not sure that's quite the case, despite me banging out images like this:

You've got to hand it to Sony; they f**ked up a buttload of times and they're still here with their console.

I only mention all this because I'm going to do something I'm not known for and defend Sony. One lost exclusive isn't game over.

Firstly, has the BR360 actually been confirmed yet? I know everybody thinks it's a great idea but there are still a lot of people saying it'll never ever ever ever happen. Sony still have this edge and with the PS3 still being one of the best HD players around, it's a first good option for lots of people just getting into high-def content.

And even if MS does implement a BR player, how much is it going to knock the price up? Sony wont let them have it cheaply. There's only £100 in it at the moment (and you get more from the PS3 anyway).

This isn't a 360 exclusive. This isn't Square saying they're changing sides. If anything they just want more money from more people without forcing a platform on them ... which is fair enough. Good for them.

And let's not forget that Sony are renowned for holding back the power of their consoles for later in their life cycle. My first experience with this was when they released Gran Turismo. It came late in the PSX's life but it used so much of its potential that it blew my face off. On paper the PS3 is ahead of the 360 so I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see games edging ahead.

And the PS3 is a pretty decent xvid player and it'll let you (easily) install Linux onto it to serve as another computer if you need it. A pretty cheap one too.

Sony are still bastards though. Aaah, that feels better...

That's a lot of assumption, and no fact.

Given that we're talking about a story slathered in words like "allegedly", "claims" and "rumors". There's very little fact around the story or its backing stories.

But no, I don't sit in on a lot of Apple-Rogers meetings these days -- it's hard to find the time -- but I'm really not venturing too far from common sense, am I?

There are only a couple of points there. I'll attempt to call bullshit on myself:

• Renegotiations: almost guaranteed because Apple changed the pricing scales. There's no way in hell that Rogers wouldn't want to take advantage of cheaper hardware.
• Apple knowing Rogers' rates: Slightly tougher but how on earth are Apple supposed to pick providers to handle their brand unless they've receive fairly detailed business planning?

I could be wrong - but I doubt I am. This "news" seems just a little too close to the rest of the internet's outrage on the subject to not be a PR back-covering exercise by Apple.

On a purely economic level, talking basic supply-and-demand theory, by cutting the supply like they're rumoured to have done, Apple have increased demand. You might see it as a sanction but it could also be something to motivate the people who were thinking about putting a purchase off into queuing. Moving on..

I'm assuming that Apple and all their providers around the world went back to the negotiating table for the 3G iPhone.

If that's the case, Apple have known about Rogers' evil plans since day one. Under their deal, I bet you a ton of that cash goes in Apple's direction.

Now it's the eleventh hour and Apple have only just discovered how much Rogers are charging? Bullshit. Apple have just found out how pissed off the internet is. Who said petitions didn't work?

I would have thought going through all the SMS folders and scrubbing everything (like you did in the inbox) would do the trick. There might also be a delete-all function hidden somewhere. I'm not sure because I'm not familiar with Ericssons

A common problem on old phones is that they stored all the SMS messages on the SIM, giving you a stupidly low message limit. Your inbox might be empty but you could well have a ton of outbox messages and status reports clogging up the tubes.

I'm actually really surprised that AT&T would let people do this.

And I'm surprised you're surprised. Seriously: I don't get it.

I've seen this thread buzzing away in RSS and I haven't paid it any attention, just marking it read and moving on but now I've read it and I don't understand why you're surprised.

What was the alternative? AT&T forcing people to keep their units tethered to an AT&T account?

Or are you shocked that the iPhone can run SIM-free? Even so, surely the US has pay-as-you-go SIMs that only cost £1 or thereabouts?

News would be: AT&T allow you to convert your old iPhone to wlan VOIP handset. Or is that already a viable feature?

Nah I'm not loving the witchdoctor. Looks far too much like a watered down mix between the D2 necromancer and sorcerer.

I'd be really upset if they've dumped the necro in favour of this poncy thing.

The download site isn't working for me either so here's a torrent link for the video.

Edit: Here's a direct FLV link. Edit 2: despite the FLV being an FLV, it's better quality than the torrent (and faster), so I suggest you get that.

I'd love to find good HD version to see how awesome the graphics really are.

But if you're on the inside, making sites for companies that do have this problem, you might have more luck by actually talking to them and explaining how having you hack your way around IE6 could cause serious maintenance issues further down the line.

Reading through somebody else's (or even your own, months down the line) hack or workaround -filled CSS is a horrible prospect. I'm sure you know how much extra time it adds to getting something relatively simple done.

I recently had to bring an in-development site up to production standards for its release, fixing several cross-browser hacktastrophes. The code was horrible and massively convoluted because it used a combination of workarounds and plain hacks. It was impossible to tell what parts certain browsers were using and what it they were ignoring and by the time I was done, I reckon it would have been equally easy to dump the original and start again... But it's hard to tell when you start off with just a short list of required fixes.

Conversely, fixing things on a standard-embracing site that doesn't care too much about IE6 is a dream. You can target the issue with Firebug, change the one part in CSS and you're done.

If they're just paranoid, the prospect of wasting that much time and money on maintenance issues should heavily outweigh any doubts for an upgrade.

And if you can explain that to somebody who has ultimate control over the IT jockeys, perhaps you can make a change.

There's no reason for people to be using IE6 any more. You should feel no guilt in kicking them off (or at least giving them a strongly worded recommendation).

Well... There's almost no reason. Some people are locked into it because their poorly-built internal apps only work on IE6 (so it's an IT constraint). They're in the cant-help-it camp but they could pester their IT guy(s) for an upgrade.

Then there are the people who installed (or had installed) XP SP0 when automatic updates weren't on by default; paired with those that turned auto updates off when MS started breaking illegal copies of Windows. I wish I could remotely reformat all of these computers, killing IE6, spam bots and all sorts of other mucky crap too.

I imagine I'll preorder for release-date delivering but also download it to fill the precious few hours between online release and it turning up.

I'm going to click my finger off.

I don't see why fixed term contracts are the biggest evil here. They manage to give you your handset for a lot less than its retail markup in exchange for you paying them the moolah over a long contract.

Apple (and others) selling exclusive contracts so you can only receive a certain handset on a certain provider and sometimes only on certain tariffs is what causes stagnation - especially when the handset is as fashionable as the iPhone.

But it's ultimately your fault. If the contract isn't good, don't end up on it. Switch provider (if you can), let them know you're considering switching away. I've had luck beating O2 into giving me a better-than-standard renewal by saying I need my number unlock code.

You could argue that (as I pointed out last time) the deals are improving for the 3g model in some places without inter-operator competition, but I think, in the UK, O2 and Apple have been feeling serious heat from other smart phones with a lower-price, on better tariffs and so they have to compete.

But that's here. The US mobile market is poor and has always been poor. People are locked to one carrier because there is a difference in actual service (not sure if this is still true).

Server vs desktop is another story completely. Servers need really great across the board multi-tasking (so CPU, RAM, HDs, networking). Gaming desktops need realtime 3d performance (graphics, graphics, CPU and a side of graphics). There isn't too much overlap in terms of pushing an industry.

XNA is an elegant solution... if you only want to deploy onto two devices.

As much as they should, MS will probably never open up .NET (which XNA is tied to) and even though there are efforts to move it cross-platform with Mono, it will likely never support all the features necessary. If you want to cover the hottest hardware for the next two years, you can't touch XNA unless you want to double your workload.

I do wish Sony released cross-platform, open source game development platform (to rival XNA) that worked on Mac, Linux, Windows and the PS3. That could do some real damage to MS.

First and third person shooters are also firmly within the realm of the mouse.

Yeah every 360 owner and their brother will start harking on about Gears of War, Halo and how the Orange Box is ported over for them - but seriously... The devs can water down the mouse interaction but when it comes to multiplayer on the same game, the guy with the squeaker is going to mop the floor with you and your little analogue twigs...

I'm a PC hardware enthusiast. I like expensive graphics cards, 10krpm HDs, RAID arrays, tons of RAM and most of all, I like to be able to rip stuff out and put new stuff in. With consoles, even Macs to some extent, this just doesn't factor in at all.

There's no competition for awesome framerates or minimising network lag and that, in my opinion, is half the fun of serious PC gaming.

==--==--==

Unfortunately for hardware makers, it's the games that drive hardware sales. It would be unfair for me to say that no new PC games push current hardware, but compared with a few years ago, I think we're seeing a great number more development houses aiming their upper-specs at PS3s and 360s.

This means in a couple of years time, when most middle-of-the-road PCs are as powerful as a PS3, there won't be as much drive to upgrade, not until the next wave of consoles (which won't be for another few years).

Perhaps it's a reversible trend but if it carries on, improvements in games are going to slow down and hardware spending will too, neutering the growth of the industry.

I'm going to describe a sensation that might ring true with other people - but it might not: Do you know songs that send chills down from your neck, down your arms, goosebumps everywhere, through your body and (I apologise for anybody that doesn't want to know) right through your balls.

Man, this post is going to come back and haunt me, I can tell already, but I just wanted to describe the power of this sensation. Only a few songs cause it. I find they're usually trance-y (Pendulum vs Prodigy - Voodoo People == awesome) but there's also some metal (lostprophets - Shinobi vs Dragon Ninja) that'll hit the spot, so to speak.

I mention balls but I'm not talking sexual pleasures here. It's about as orgasmic as a sneeze. No, maybe two sneezes. Oh I'm digging a hole again... Does anybody else know this feeling? Or do I have some form of synesthesia?

"Mason vs. Princess Superstar - Perfect (Exceeder)" is the latest song I've met that has this quality... And the video is pretty hot too. Enjoy.

Not really a business question but: How much did ma.tt cost?

Scrivs try the Europe server: http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en

Edit: it's going pretty slow but at least it's going.

Well given the success other media companies have had limiting the "fair" usage of their own media (I'm talking video and audio -- RIAA, MPAA, et al) I'm not too shocked that they're trying to cash in.

To report you almost always have to quote in some fashion and the copyright laws allow for this through fair use. The difference between infringement and fair is substantially subjective though but I don't think I could possibly say that the drudge example you gave was that bad. It was partially rewritten.

I should add that clearly quoting and citing doesn't affect things in terms of fair use.

I think the most important part about all this is consideration #1: "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;"

Drudge (and a billion other sites) aren't using this content to replace the destination of their outbound links - they're there to give them context and even help drive more people out. I think bloggers and link-dump sites are on pretty strong ground under that consideration... But it's something that would have to be tested in court.

The AP issuing guidelines seems completely arrogant but it might help some people who are less familiar with the letter of the law. I'm sure there are plenty of people ripping "too much" from AP articles but I don't see how what Digg or DT (or Clips, for that matter) do would need rehashing.

By the sounds of things, they want to completely nuke any quoting and leave it at a title + link... Fat chance that'll happen.

I see. Yeah I just read something wrong along the way.

On pricing, I just found out that the US prices I've been citing are excluding taxes. The UK ones are inclusive. How much would the final price be where you are guys?

And it's shitty, fake, "assisted" GPS. Uses cell-triangulation instead of satelites so it's no use for navigation without an external, proper GPS receiver.

And there's still no MMS >_<

And they've crippled it so you can't use it as a modem.

3 years? I'm surprised they sold any!

It's certainly cheaper here in the UK... But that's not hard. It was £270 + tarrif (£35 upwards) * 24 = Total Cost of Ownership: £1110 (~$2220) = Fuck!

It's now:
£free + (£45 * 24) for the 8gig or
£free + (£75 * 24) for the 16 gig.

You need to look at the tariffs quite closely to see exactly what you're getting but you can still get it on cheaper tariffs (though, of course, you get a many fewer bundles minutes/texts) and it works out even cheaper:
£100 + (£30 * 24) = £410 cheaper than the £45/pm

But the TCO is still massive compared to other similar devices. I realise this incantation is a damned sight more "complete" than the first gen iPhone but I'm still not sure if it's justifiable at £820 (~$1640) over two years... But it's getting much closer.

My n95's TCO was £540 over 18 months (£30pm + free handset).

Tangent: If I'm looking at the right figures, I think the iPhone is cheaper here than the US. $1640 vs $1975 and the UK one comes with more minutes, data and texts. Surely that's a first.

Don't forget that the ipod isn't subsidised by a $1200 contract.

Mike they never used to be. The iPhone launched and it's now frankly ridiculous trying to get any high-end phone on anything less than a 18 month contract. Even then, your monthly payout goes up and you get less in the way of bundled minutes, etc...

I'd be really wary of it, personally. Sure I see the immediate benefit: you get a new phone with a ton of features that should have been on the original. It doesn't cost you much at all right now but you end up with at least a 36month contract.

What bothers me here is that I've never been able to remain happy with a phone for longer than about 14 months, however cool it is, because there's always hotter hardware flying out every year. I'm going to struggle to make it to 18months on my N95.

Are you not just a little bit tempted to hold out until the end of your contract when the 3g coverage is all but guaranteed to be better, improvements in battery tech, slimmer, twice the storage and probably at the same $200?

What do you reckon the ebay resale price would be on your 1st-gen? Edit: to answer that, it looks around $400-500 for a new one. Wonder where that figure'll be in a month's time.

I guess it has to come down to stock control issues... If they're going to be offering this version at a much lower price that the current one, they're going to want to shift every last unit.

I'll be interested to see how the contract works though if the new one is (more) heavily subsidised. Are they going to let current 24month 1st-gen users upgrade and effectively wipe 12 months? Or if you upgrade, would you be taking on an additional 24months?

From a business aspect, I can't see the first one being true as they'd be taking an hit in the region of 12-23 months of service fees. That's an enormous amount of money and they'd be expected to repeat it when the 3rd-gen came out, etc.

If it is the second, more plausible version, how many upgrades until you're locked into AT&T for the rest of your life? This is why 24month contracts suck big balls.

MS really does have a tight grasp on the UK chat scene. I'm another MSNM/WLM user and just as you've experienced most people I know are on it, including work contacts.

It's true lock-in. I can't move service without:
a) not being to talk to anybody
b) converting every person on my list (and all their friends)

Facebook are apparently going to be exposing their chat under XMPP - perhaps that'll be enough to start an exodus away from MSN.

I think the first real point raised in the article is the branding. Apple is still designer. It's like buying Nike carpet for the office: equivalents might not look as nice but they get the same job done with a lower price-tag. Small businesses need to cut every corner they can and while Apple refuses to provide cheaper "beige-box" hardware, they're hard to justify as an expense.

Something he doesn't seem to mention (which is going to conflict with a later statement I'll make) is support. I know of at least fifty small-business MS specialists in a 20 mile radius from here, offering same-day on-site support, who are trained and can swap out hardware in an instant. There's choice and competition. That sort of Apple service just doesn't exist here yet; there isn't enough demand and of what there is, there's absolutely no competition.

What I really don't understand is the final line of the article:

Windows Vista, properly installed and used in tandem with Web-based productivity tools, is a powerful, powerful alternative.

Why Vista? If we're here scrutinising why the Mac is unnecessary expense, how the hell has Vista been allowed to slip under the radar? Upgrading XP PCs to Vista slows your system and can introduce headaches. And then you've got to fight Vista itself on a day-to-day level.

If you're really serious about saving money, ask yourself why you suddenly need to leave XP. Everything supports it (except DX10 games and who gives a flying shit about those in small businesses?!) and it's installed, ready and costs you nothing more today.

If you're trying to progress, or you've got to expand your office/server system, take a look at Linux. Yeah, anyone reading this who knows me probably knew I was going to hop on my soapbox but seriously: if your tasks are limited to Office and the web, Linux will work as fast, if not faster than XP, with guaranteed free updates for life, with free improvements to all its included software, again for the life of the product.

Professional support is an issue for Linux too, though in the enterprise world, generations of Linux server usage has given most techs at least a taster course. Finding a desktop vendor who can offer you same-day support is a little harder, albeit improving.

===

All in all, I don't think the article is too far from the truth. Support availability and price have to near-first when it comes to this sort of IT decision. We're talking small business, so it's not really something that can be done in-house.

Give it a few years though, and I think we'll see massive diversification in supported operating systems from average out-source techies...

But by then, the cheaper hardware requirement and free OS of Linux will dominate all. You'll see. *evil-laugh*

*throws smoke bomb*

*disappears*

Jimmy Carter stumping for Obama just sealed the deal for me. Anyone who is A-OK by Carter doesn't get my vote.

Hitler was a painter and a vegetarian. By your measure, people that fall into that category are all mass-murdering bastards.

Ev did say something useful and that was that "fixing" Twitter isn't a money issue, it's not a scalability issue, it's essentially an HR issue. They have to find the best architects -- right now -- and get them hired and up to speed yesterday.

I disagree. This is completely a scalability issue with MySQL.

They've been going this master/slave "push" route for some time now because that's what they thought would provide the best performance. And they were wrong. They need to take it back to paper and figure out what's going to serve as the best possible.

In theory, all they need is one guy (who might already be on the books) with the right idea. By the sounds of it, they're testing a filesystem-only approach and I've got to say that I reckon this is probably going to fix things for them. There are plenty of freely available filesystems that can scale to infinity and maintain a decent level of performance.

So hiring people might speed the implementation of the next step, but it's not going to solve things immediately and unfortunately the problem is very immediate.

And hiring a ton of people would also be a colossal waste in the long term. Once this issue is fixed, they're going to be standing around twiddling their thumbs.

Well I'm so sodding glad somebody else noticed this. Harri (m' lover) will attest that I started spitting in indignation at the stupidity of this episode.

Plus, how much money are MS paying these guys? They're using their tech all over the lab (Photosyth, VB just two in that ep)... Pity that none of the computer appear to be running Windows.

That's because people in Britain don't use money. They use pounds.

... Says a Dollar user.

Kami says "they aren't Rottweilers" but they are, and more. In the US, Pit Bulls were responsible for almost twice as many human deaths as Rottweilers.

Pit Bulls can be loving pets but they take a lot of training to forget a lot of their innate aggression. They are a dangerous breed and their owners need to acknowledge and respect that.

You really aught to ask them to keep it muzzled when in public. No, muzzles aren't the nicest things in the world for dogs but its owners need to respect that their dog has a history of biting and it could do a lot more damage next time.

===

I think I would have been pretty pissed off but I would also know that this is somebody's pet. If somebody told me my cat had to be destroyed (the nice terminology they use in the news here to say 'put down' for dogs), I'd fall apart.

Unfortunately, reporting it in any sort of way (doctors or police) here would result in the animal's death. Another breed might get a second chance.

I'd probably get some serious antiseptic on the wound (TCP or some other iodine-based a/s) and keep applying it for a couple of days. I'd expect a little bit of swelling and a lot of bruising. If it's swill really tightly swollen after a day, it might be a good idea to visit the docs for some antibiotics.

But for the dog, I would just want its owners to make sure that nothing like that could happen in the future to somebody that was less able to defend themselves. Muzzles, intensive training, fences. And needless to say, they've got to cover any medical expenses.

I don't think you need an entire policy to say "Be relevant and polite". You could write that on your comment form but you shouldn't need to.

If you keep having problems with this problematic poster, just wang them an email explaining that you're not happy with the quality of their responses and ask them to qualify their criticism or bugger off.

That might cause some initial friction but they get the message, in which case you either have to ban them and delete their furious sploodge of retaliatory postage, or you regain a useful audience member.