Email Hosting

As we all know marketing on the web is rather like the Red Queen's problem in Alice in Wonderland. You've got to run ever faster just to stand still. As soon as you come up wih a reasonable or decent technique then someone else comes up with a way of blocking you getting your message out.

One way to get yourself a leg up in this race is to use a specialist hosting company: like Fat Jack for example. Yes, they do all of the regular hosting plans: $5.77 a month for a basic server space, just under $20 a month for private hosting and so on. But hen there are hundreds of other companies out there offering such deals.

What sets Fat Jack Hosting apart is their specialty in hosting email campaigns. They'll monitor the deliverability of your messages (which is, in these days of spam filters, the most difficult part of the process) on an ongoing basis: this helps you to work out when and where campaigns are succceding and when they are not.

If you're in this part of the marketing business then Fat Jack is definitely worth checking out.

Online Coupons

Yes, yes, we all know how to save money if we're going out shopping to the supermarket. Get a copy of the local newspaper and clip some coupons. However, if you're going to be doing your shopping online, how do you replicate this experience? How do you get the deals, how do you find online coupons?

Well, that's just become very easy really. What you do is click through any of the links ehre and go to Counpoin Chief, the largest selection of coupons for online stores on the web. There, that's pretty simple isn't it?

For example, now that spring is here, perhaps some home and garden coupons might suit you? Looking for Home Depot discounts, so that you can get the house sorted out? Or perhaps Spring Hill online coupons so that you get the yard done?

They're all there, all you've go to do is click through and start saving money.

Katie. Suri and Tom

One of the more scandalous rumours running around Hollywood is that the baby Suri, the result of Katie Holmes' and Tom Cruise's marriage, is not actually being brought up at home. Rather, it's farmed out to the Church of Scientology during the week and only comes home on Sundays to be photographed with the parents.

That's not the only delightful rumour about Katie Holmes and her husband, of course, but to find out more you'll have to go elsewhere.

Elsewhere being the blog dedicated to brining you the news about Katie Holmes. Just click through that link to get there.

Silly people

You might find this useful as a marker for the future.

Where people are too stupid to be able to microwave popcorn, you might not want to employ them.

Of course, such things are different for bureaucrats: the City of Seattle is going to have a microwave popcorn ban rather than find slightly more intelligent employees.

Intelligent, eh?

Too Much Sex in the Bible

Well, it is true, there's an awful lot of sex, violence, incest and rape in the book:

More than 800 Hong Kong residents have called on authorities to reclassify the Bible as "indecent" due to its sexual and violent content, following an uproar over a sex column in a university student journal.

A spokesperson for Hong Kong's Television and Entertainment Licensing authority (TELA) said it had received 838 complaints about the Bible by noon Wednesday.

The complaints follow the launch of an anonymous Web site -- www.truthbible.net -- which said the holy book "made one tremble" given its sexual and violent content, including rape and incest.

The Web site said the Bible's sexual content "far exceeds" that of a recent sex column published in the Chinese University's "Student Press" magazine, which had asked readers whether they'd ever fantasized about incest or bestiality.

But banning it seems a little odd, even over the top, at least for that reason. I can understand the shrimp industry getting pissed at Leviticus but I don't think anyone reads it as porn.

Ringtones Links

"Everybody loves ringtones. So i decided to have a search for the best ringtones sites. Maybe everyone knows Ringophone.com or Ultrasonic-ringtones.com but to tell the truth the best site for free ringtones to download is GoldRingtone.com. Download the best Ringtones for free! Doesn't it sound attractive? The site has a weekly update (as they inform me with their press release) so you can continuously find the best new free ringtones.

The site is simple. The users can download free mp3 ringtones from any carrier. Besides, there are sections for all carriers. You can get free Sprint Ringtones, or free Cingular Ringtones.

Skype Developments

Skype seems to be adding features to its services after its being bought by e-Bay.

Skype Ltd. has released a new version of its Internet telephony and instant messaging software that adds a feature to let users create business reviews, and another one to sell expertise, as the eBay Inc. subsidiary promotes interaction among its users.

Skype 3.1, available for Windows, features SkypeFind, designed to let Skype users post and find reviews of business establishments. It also introduces a test version of Skype Prime, a marketplace where Skype users can market knowledge and advice to others.

The company unveiled SkypeFind last month in a beta version of Skype 3.1. Already, SkypeFind contains around 4,500 listings from 124 countries and Skype expects it to have over a million listings by year's end.

Meanwhile, Skype Prime made its debut last week in another prerelease version of Skype 3.1, as an expertise marketplace open to both individuals and businesses interested in selling their advice. Unlike SkypeFind and Skype 3.1, Skype Prime is still considered to be in a beta, or test, phase.

SkypePrime looks interesting. I wonder if the world would actually be interested in a scandium expert online?

Steve Ballmer on Google

It takes a certain sort of nerve to attack a company for only being good at one thing when you're worse at that one thing yourself. Also, in news for Steve Ballmer, Google is good at two things, search and advertising:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer yesterday bad-mouthed Google for being successful at only one business (even though it's a business Microsoft has been trying unsuccessfully to break into). But the target doesn't matter. It could have been Linux. Or Apple. I'm just worn out by the repetition. Ballmer's trash-talking is a tired routine. He needs to get a new act.

For a couple of years now Microsoft has been trying to figure out how Google does it -- how the world's premiere search company provides Web-based services and makes its money by selling advertising. Google has done extremely well at both, and its success has made it the darling of Wall Street.

By contrast, as hard as Microsoft has tried with MSN and its confusing Live announcements, it hasn't done very well at either: Its search services are mediocre, and its Live OneCare antivirus software has famously failed a couple of tests recently.

As far as I can see, Microsoft will never have any success in Web-based, advertising-supported services for two reasons. First, it doesn't trust the model -- Microsoft is unwilling to give away for free any service that might be really useful. And second, it doesn't trust its customers.

It's also true that Microsoft is only good at one thing: controlling the OS market.

Keyloggers

I didn't actually know that such a thing as a keylogger existed until just recently and I've been wondering what they could actually be used for. Sure, I know what spyware would do with it, but what would be a legitimate use for a legitimate keylogger?

It took me a bit of time because I'm not all that au fait with the ins and outs of technology but there seem to be at least three very good uses.

1) This one would be useful for me. Recording the various passwords and log ins to everything. Yes, I know you can use windows and or your browser to do most of these but do you really want to trust your security to such?

2) There's a corporate use as well. Not just the above log ins thogh, it'll help managers keep an eye on what users are actually doing on their computers. For example, managment can be held responsible if someone starts sending around dirty pictures and the like and very expensive that can be too. So if they're able to check on who is purveying such images then they can nip it in the bud.

3) A similar use could apply to a child's computer at home. Making sure that they're not straying off the straight and narrow into unapproved pastures.

OK, I think I can see what a keylogger could be used for now. I'm off to investigate the one they've got at Spector.com now.

Disclosure Policy.

Just Say Hi!

One of the great joys about the web (indeed, about the internet itself) is that it offers us huge new opportunities to try out new ways of doing business. You might think that all possible ideas have already been tried but that would simply not be true. Think of Just Say Hi! for example.

Ás the late great Julian Simon pointed out, the only scarce resource we have is human ingenuity and it's that which throws up this cornucopia of new ideas for us. You might think that a market niche like online dating was already crowded, full in fact. There are the large companies like Yahoo, then those who chase various niches, like Jewish Singles, Christian Singles and so on. There's even one for single parents. Just Say Hi is doing it differently.

Instead of charging people to connect via their site, like Plentyoffish does, why not make the site free? There's enough advertising revenue to be had from people like Google's Adsense to make this a viable strategy.

So why not? A free site is going to get a lot more people joining than a paid one (unless we think that dating is a Giffen Good, which we have evidence that in fact it is not) and as it's the network effects that make them such desirable destinations, it should work very well indeed.

OK, that's the end of the economics. If you're looking for a date why not check out Just Say Hi!...?

Discount Click

So you've built that better mousetrap, designed the finest site on hte web, have the greatest products and the best prices and you can't quite understand why you don't have customers flocking to your doors.

What you're missing is SEO services. 

You see, almost everyone shopping on hte net uses the search engines to try and find what they're looking for. But, humans being humans, and lazy (or rather, as economist say, satisfacting rather than perfectionists) they only look through the first one (or at most two) pages of the results the engines give them. That's what SEO companies do, work with you to make sure that your mousetrap site turns up in those vital first set of results for the search "better mousetrap".

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and for the reasons above it's a vital part of anyone's marketing mix on the web. If you're not using it you're simply not going to get the customers.

So click through and see what Discount Click can offer you in this area. Hey, if you're going to hire someone to be an expert for you, you ought to hire the experts, right?

A New Approach

We've all been looking for a new approach to directories as things like Yahoo have become so important and the multitudes of followers and copiers have chased after them. Simply putting up a piece of software that allows a listings service isn't really enough I think, and most sensible people looking at marketing their efforts seem to think the same way.

But is a new approach possible? Certainly, why not, there are no limits to human ingenuity, after all (what Julian Simon called the Ultimate Resource).

Why not optimise a directory to be read by the search engines? Now that would be a new approach, wouldn't it? Why not use the search engine friendliness of blogging software to build it too? Say, by using Wordpress software to build that directory? Make, in fact, a Wordpress directory?

That's exactly what Netizen's Page is all about. It only costs $3 to have your site listed there and it seems to be an excellent idea, a way of using the pinging services (just as an example) to raise the profile of those sites listed.

Excuse me, I'm just off to have a closer look and work out which of my sites should be entered. If you want to do the same, just click through any of the above hyperlinks. 

Softlink

Looks like the company that sells fingerprinting machines for schools has been telling some porkies: 

The managing director of one of the firms supplying fingerprint scanners to British schools has vowed to come clean to parents about the arguments against the use of such biometric technology on children.

In an interview with The Register Alisdair Darrock, managing director of Softlink, a firm that sells fingerprint scanners to schools, said he would change his advice for parents so they can make an informed decision about whether they want the school to take their children's dabs.

...

"What we tell schools is under review at the moment," said Darrock. "Our letter - we don't make people aware of what the issues are. We might go some way to outline some of the issues. We should list the concerns and then address them."

The standard letter that Softlink sends to schools that buy its fingerprint scanners dismisses the "media speculation" about school fingerprinting and claims that its own devices "do NOT compromise individual freedoms."

It provides schools with a standard letter they can send to kids. It talks about the implementation of fingerprint scanners in the school library as though it were a done deal and makes a strong case for parents to accept it as such.

"We are planning on having biometric devices in the school library to the improve the service," it opens.

Though it does say parents have an "opportunity to decide not to be involved in the system", it does not help them understand why this unfamiliar technology has caused enough concern for other parents to launch campaigns against it. It does explain why parents should be as happy about having their children's fingerprints scanned into a database as the school head and governors are.

The real problem with such systems is of course that they will lead to the entire population, over time, being on the fingeprint database.

 

Technorati tags: Softlink, fingerprints, library

Windows Vista

Can you believe this? Microsoft spent $500 million on the launch of Windows Vista?

Microsoft's $500m Windows Vista launch on Monday was the culmination of months of heavy sell intended to persuade the company, as much as everyone else, that not only is the operating systems is essential to users' computing needs, but also that it will translate into sales gold.

If bullishness were revenue, Microsoft is well on its way to a bumper fiscal 2007 and 2008. Windows Vista is supposed to out-ship Microsoft's last client - Windows XP. And Windows Vista will break all records bar Windows 95, by hitting 200 million PCs a mere 24 months after this month's launch, according to Microsoft.

In God's name, why? They're going to sell a copy on every new PC in the world anyway, aren't they? Anyway, me, I'm sticking with XP. Next time I change, I'm hoping that Linux will finally be user friendly.

 

Technorati tags: Windows, vista, XP, Microsoft, Linux

Death of the Floppy

As someone who started with computers using the 360 kb floppies (yes, before hard drives) this is slightly sad:

PC World’s marketing department declared the death of the floppy disk yesterday, generating a wave of publicity that even rivalled Bill Gates’ touting of Vista.

The chain said it would eject floppies once it has cleared existing stock. It reckons that by the summer, none of the laptops or PCs it sells will actually include floppy drives.

It's true that the last two conputers I bought did not have floppy drives.

It's also true that I once sold a few cases of 180 kg drives into the Soviet Union. Ah, those happy days when people would buy anything at all.

 

Technorati tags: PC, floppy, PC World, computers