With E-mail Dying, RSS Offers Alternative

I have mentioned this a couple of times here. Sounds like it could be a good way to supplement a current newsletter offering at the least.

A guy has sent out a 100 million messages asking for time travel equipment so he can travel back in time to correct his past and make his current life better.

Wired News: Turn Back the Spam of Time

From: Start Your (Search) Engines

Teoma - search results include relevant web pages, suggestions to narrow your search, link collections from experts and enthusiasts.

Vivisimo - "document clustering search engine"

Kartoo - flash-enabled map of search results

Just came across this:

"Checkout And Order Security Issues

Geoff Ford forwarded issues concerning the checkout procedure and how orders are made. It is possible for a customer to bypass the checkout procedure and head straight to the processing logic creating false orders.

This issue is most serious to those offering downloadable products that may be active to the customer as soon as an order has been falsely made.

A fix to the problem has been commited which can be seen here:"

[OSC-ANNOUNCE] [WEEKLY] Issue #10: August 19, 2002

I was unsure what happened with the issue after I identified it and let the osCommerce core developers know.

Pegasus Mail is a very powerful alternative to Microsoft's email software.

Pegasus Mail is freeware.

One of the main advantages is that it is immune to the email viruses written to exploit MS Outlook.

Feature list for Pegasus Mail for Windows

I was prompted to write this when I noticed a new feature in Pegasus Mail. I went to send an email out with an attachment and forgot to attach it ... Pegasus Mail warned me that I had nothing attached although I was mentioning it in my email. Nice!

Pegasus Mail

The New Overture Best Practices, Part 1

Dubious claim - but interesting that SMS has picked up quickly in the US this year.

Texting blamed for summer movie flops

I was always dreaming about very powerful people, dictators and things like that. I was always impressed by people who could be remembered for hundreds of years or like Jesus for thousands of years.

We Love Arnold

New Zealand News - NZ - Major earthquake shakes South Island

Internet portal giant, Yahoo, today gave one of its strongest indications yet that it will soon end its reliance on Web search technology provider Google.

Yahoo Australia, search producer, Peter Crowe today revealed that the company had started testing Inktomi's search engine in parallel with projects at a number of the company's regional portals to see if it provides a viable alternative to Google's crawler-based search engine.

Yahoo stepping back from Google partnership: ZDNet Australia: News & Tech: Enterprise

"I will not change. Because if you are successful and you change, you are an idiot."

We Love Arnold

No idea if this is an accurate quote or not ... but you know it could be!

Interesting development in the New Zealand Internet Space.

Press Release on Domainz site:
InternetNZ announces the sale of its company, Domainz Limited to Melbourne IT Limited

I have been working on a revision of the Attitude Website and a new osCommerce Shopping Cart Review Site the last week or so. By no means finished but I thought time to get the content out there.

I have also linked 'the attitude' weblog into the site footer - making it officially part of the Attitude site.

In addition, I have made the Business Website Planner PDF available without requiring registration at the Business Website Planning Guide.

Nice article on how optimising for Inktomi is easier and quicker than optimising for Google. Using paid inclusion, your page is refreshed by Inktomi every 48 hours. You can optimise pages much more quickly by making small and frequent changes. A good Inktomi ranking tends to give good rankings in Google also.
Optimising for Inktomi – And how it can help on Other SEs!

Think about this next time you look at your site (or someone elses). If the site is trying to sell a product or service is there an obvious call to action? Start by thinking what you actually want the visitor to do.

Is it:

• Buy?


• Contact Us?


• Register for your email newsletter?


• Download our whitepaper?

If you dont give the visitor to your site a clear indication of what you want them to do they will have to figure it out for themselves - which may mean leaving your site and going and making a cup of tea! More often than not, letting visitors know what you want them to do will increase the frequency of them "heeding the call".

The article below covers this well and mentions placing "point of action assurances" along side the call to action. For example, “We Value Your Privacy” or “You can always remove the item later”.

Calls to action

I have been out of town visiting clients and getting a general break from work.

Reflections on my return:

• What can I say? Arnold for Governor in California! Says it all really. Crazy times.


• Great personalised service from the places I stayed in Wanganui and New Plymouth


• You should really taste the eggs benedict at one particular cafe in New Plymouth - wish I had noted the name!

I think Google is great ... but there have been some interesting results coming up of late. I am finding myself needing to dig a bit to find what I want.

Examples from one influential blogger:

Topics on which Google thinks I am an expert (kottke.org)

Google Web Search Features

Was looking for this a couple of weeks ago on the Cluetrain site but found it here:

The Cluetrain Manifesto Entire Text

Among the "95 theses" it includes jems like:

Markets are conversations.

Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

Were 95 necessary? I don't think so ... but neither did they. There are a few comments on this on the Cluetrain Letters page.

I am reading my way through it again. It has some interesting and maybe even subversive ideas that are worth revisiting and reviewing if you are interested in internet-related business.

Worth a look.

Andrew Bourland continues discussion on the challenge of making money from two popular web enterprises that have never made money:

bourland.com: Trying to Make a Buck on the Net

Discussion from I-Sales on why the attempt to implement paid subscription failed is recorded here:

What Went Wrong?

As well as what I think are some valid predictions about the future of the Internet, Sean Carton of Clickz doesn't see a future for blogging.

Blogout. Blogs have gotten a lot of attention in the past six months. Many of my ClickZ colleagues have written some pretty compelling pieces about blogs' power as a marketing tool, perhaps even replacing the e-mail newsletters. Outside of its utility for marketing, blogging has taken on a life of its own. Millions of registered users blogging away. It's a new publishing medium that wouldn't have been possible without the Internet, and one that's given a meaningful outlet to many folks.

But (you knew there'd be a "but"), it's not going to last forever. As bloggers know, maintaining a blog is a lot of work. Paying people to keep on blogging can cost lots of money. Eventually, many private bloggers will move on to other things. Corporate bloggers will become too busy (or bored) to blog. As someone who ran a proto-blog for six years, 364 days a year, I know first-hand that at some point, you just run out of steam. Blogs are wonderful innovations. They emphasize the powers of the Net, personality, and instant publishing. Just don't count on them remaining the phenomenon they've been over the past year or so.

Eleven Things That Will Happen, Part 1

I agree that the fad aspect will run its course once people and businesses realise the work and time committment involved. Who knows how long my blog will last?

Here is my "but" ... I think he is wrong for the exact reason he cites for their popularity.

It's a new publishing medium that wouldn't have been possible without the Internet, and one that's given a meaningful outlet to many folks.

The Internet has enabled anyone to publish to the world. Sites like Geocities and Homestead provided an outlet for people to self publish. I see blogging as another form of this. It won't disappear - it will change - names, formats, mediums - but it won't disappear. As long as people have a desire for a 'meaningful outlet', something I see as one way of fulfilling a basic human need, some form of blog-like self-publishing will continue.

He is right that blogging or continual publishing is hard work and of course this will lead individual bloggers/business blogs to stop publishing. As blogs die out - new ones will spring up.

I predict businesses will pursue this kind of publishing for a range of reasons in the next couple of years. I predict the chase for search engine rankings 'for free' will drive this to some extent. I think search engines will tweak their algorithyms to take account of the increasing amount of commercial blogging to ensure the relevance of results.

Even if a businesses blog doesn't give a business tangible benefits in terms of search engine rankings, there is value for businesses

• in displaying their expertise or leadership in their field


• enabling communication with their customers and potential customers


• publishing relevant content in a regular format


• and then some ...

I see blogs as having a role in what comes after email marketing. Sean also predicts the death of email as a marketing tool, something I have commented on a couple of times about in this blog. With a News Aggregrator I can take control over the regularly published content I receive from various blogs.

• I don't need to surrender my email address to do this.


• There are no issues for the publisher in it being filtered out by software spam filters or ISPs.


• The publisher can publish an ad to me just as easily as they can other content.


• If I don't like the content I can remove myself far easier than I can with an email list.

I think we are nearer the beginning than the end of blogging, both for individuals and businesses.

Anyway, read the rest of Sean's predictions and see what you think:

Eleven Things That Will Happen, Part 1

... and look out for part 2!

I have made some similar points in the following related articles:
blogs will fade away within two years
the personal voice

Articles/comments on the search engine benefits of business blogging:

SEO Today Article: Business Blogs to Help Search Rankings

Blogging Helps Search Results

Plastic Balls

This is really for my reference:

PHP Blogger API « Projects « Dented Reality

I have been investigating some alternative advertising mediums to Overture and Google AdWords for a couple of clients.

Here are some links from Larry Chase's WDFM newsletter related to online advertising that I have found relevant:

payperclicksearchengines.com - information and reviews of Pay Per Click Search Engines.

payperclickanalyst.com - another site reviewing Pay Per Click Search Engines.

TheAdSpot.com - an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of onliine advertising with a useful search feature.

The other day I noticed that blogosphere.us was selling TextAds on their site. I thought that might have interesting possibilities for the right kind of site. It seemed reasonably priced at US$10 for 10,000 impressions.