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Webitz - Checking out the Web from an amateur's point of view
I’ve been using a Mobile Connect or, (as Vodafone calls them a ~3G USB Modem) to access the Internet when I’m away from a place where I can use a computer that’s linked directly, and it’s proved a valuable little tool.
I was a bit miffed to discover at first that while Vodafone indicates you can use it to access the Internet anywhere, (and you probably can) what they didn’t point out was that not all access is created equal. While cellphone coverage throughout the UK is pretty good overall (except that I have to walk to the front of the house I’m staying in at present because people can’t hear me if I try to talk at the back!) connections using mobile connect, which aren’t on the same cellphone system, it seems, aren’t nearly as well spread. They’re there, but the signal is often so weak that using the mc in those places is like being on a very slow dial-up. This is a pity, because when mobile connect is working properly, it’s as good as broadband anywhere. I had a conversation with someone in New
Zealand via Skype last night, using the mc, and it was superb. But here in the house we’re staying in, it’s very sluggish, so sluggish that you have to go off and do other things while you’re waiting for Internet pages to load, otherwise you’d go mad. At least it’s got me practicing the piano while I‘m waiting - because the piano is in the same room.
I’m reliably informed that the 31st August is the day for doing an annual link to other blogs for fun. I’ve done this on more than one occasion, since annually is a bit infrequent for me. Anyway, here are some blogs and sites that I picked up on recently while working on an article. They don’t all have the same theme by any means, and all of them are worth a visit.
First up is the Shrewdness of Apes site and one of the things I noted about this was that the blogger and her commenters play a movie quote game fairly regularly.
The second is a site that offers some arcane answers to questions as about the collective names for animals. (It was while I was writing an article on that topic that I came across this one.)
The third is similar in subject matter, but different in approach. And if you’ve never had a look at the collective names for animals, both of these offer some very unusual collective words.
The fourth is a social question and answer site, which for some reason has a jellyfish theme. A fluther of jellyfish is the correct collective noun, believe it or not.
And finally, a link to a New Zealand blog written by an English couple who emigrated with their nine-month old in 2005. And now they have twins as well. Great photos! And they
A picture from the ex-pats blog
have lots of links to blogs written by other ex-pats.
Curiously, while looking for a blog at random I came up with Chris Brogan’s one. Chris is one of the two originator’s of the PodCamp idea - I’m attending one in Birmingham on Saturday.
I've just had a thought that some people might quibble at my list of five links, because they're not all links to blogs. Never mind, I've linked to blogs on other occasions without any other motive than to do it for fun, so they'll have to count!
When a considerable number of clued-up people are in agreement about something, it’s worth following their advice. In this case the advice of having a blog with its own domain name.
One of the advantages of being on Orble.com is that you can acquire a domain name very easily, and for no cost. Orble is willing to get domain names for bloggers in order to improve their placing in the blog world, and the wider internet.
For some time I had only one domain name with Orble - Webitz.net - but now my other Orble blog has been shifted over to a domain name as well: WorkReport.net. In both cases I missed out on having a .com domain name; even though you’d hardly think Webitz.com and WorkReport.com would be something everybody would be looking for. Actually both of them are up for sale - they’re both sitting there doing nothing at the moment.
Furthermore, Orble shifted my posts from my old non-domain name over to WorkReport.net, which meant I didn’t lose all the work I’d already done. Full marks to Orble for this!
I have another blog which has been going for some years now, but it doesn’t have a domain name, and it’s on Blogger.com, which some slightly sniffy people think isn’t quite the place to be - as if you weren’t living in the best part of town. Of course this isn’t the case, nevertheless, when I get back home after my holiday here in England, I’m going to see if I can get a domain name (MikeCrowl.com is still available) and have all the posts transferred to it. Unfortunately I won’t have Orble’s helping hand to do it.
One of the more innovative advertising campaigns on the Net must be the series with the enigmatic name of Frank.
I’ve only come across two of them, but if they’re anything to go by, someone is using their imagination very well in order to capture people’s attention.
The first ad regularly appears on a site I write for: Triond.com. They host a whole range of sections now, and the articles I write are likely to turn up under gomestic.com, or socyberty.com, or quazen.com (the oldest of the sections), or trifter.com, just to name a few
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A friend sent me a classic piece of computer cartooning called Animator vs. Animation by a young artist called Alan Becker. It’s about what happens when an artist draws a little man, regards him as a ‘victim’ and then discovers that the victim doesn’t want to play ball. It’s so well animated that I’ve watched it several times and am still only picking up on the detail. Check it out!
The animation is on a site called deviantart.com. It calls itself the biggest art community in the world, and members of the site can add their profiles, submit art work and keep track of their favourite artists. And in case you think this is one of those sites where the people can barely draw something that looks like a human being, think again. Even on the opening page you’ll find samples of art that are quite stunning within their genre. And much of the art is for sale in various forms.
There’s so much art around these days that almost makes you weep for the future of art. Deviant Art goes against the grain and shows that human beings can still stun each other with their graphic ability.
It’s time to do the monthly (approximately) link to an unsuspecting blogger trick.
First on the list is Georgia Girl. I came across this site on myLot.com, where the blog’s writer, Andrea, is looking for people to visit her site and help pay towards her cheerleading fees. She lists a number of ways of doing this at the bottom of the page.
Incidentally, on Andrea’s site I came across AuctionAds.com. This is a site similar to Google’s Adsense, and one you can use in conjunction with the latter. I’ve installed it on my main blog: the version I’ve got actually brings up pictures of the items being advertised on eBay
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I’m in the UK on the 1st and 2nd of September and am going to at least one day of the PodCamp near Birmingham.
I’d never heard of a PodCamp until this morning, so I’ve been reading up on what they are. PodCamps were founded by Christopher S Penn and Chris Bogan in 2006. There are usually a number of them held in the US, but
fewer in the UK. The Birmingham one is the next, and then there’s one in Kilkenny, in Ireland.
The definition of a PodCamp is that it’s an UnConference, which I take to mean that it’s less formal than a Conference. To achieve this informality there are seven rules, which include the freedom to participate, freedom of access, and equality for all involved. And the one I like most of all: all sessions must obey the Law of 2 Feet - if you're not getting what you want out of the session, you can and should walk out and do something else. It's not like you have to get your money's worth! If only such a rule could apply to normal conferences, I might go to a lot more of them! (Don’t you hate getting stuck in a lecture or meeting where you just can’t get out of the place, and your bored silly
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Congratulations. You have no undone to-dos.
This is a rather catchy line from a site called Stikkit.com, which I tried out today. I’m not sure that it’s my cup of tea, but I probably need to persevere with it further. (Another similar site, Yojimbo, isn’t free, but it looks like it might be more useful. However, it’s only geared for Mac users.)
Stikkit allows you to make notes for yourself - diary events, things to do, birthdays and holidays and so on. You can also `clip` websites and keep track of them
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Thanks to some assistance from the Net, I now have a better idea of what a botnet is. (The word has links with robot.)
Most of us are aware of emails that contain malicious attachments, which when opened, will infect the recipient’s computer. These are the common virus.
But a botnet is a little different. The PC gets infected as usual, but with a program that then logs onto a particular server, which is known as the command and control server. The botnet creator purchases access to the botnet from the server and then sends out instructions to the botnets residing on any number of Pcs. These instructions cause them to send out spam messages to mail servers. Thus, instead of one spammer sending out messages on his own, dozens or possibly hundreds of machines are doing the work exponentially
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While looking at Thoof, one of the most recent social networking sites, I came across a couple of other interesting things, the sorts of things that you need to make a note of before you lose track of them.
One of them is a slightly older piece that first appeared in the Washington Post, and is still available on their site. It’s by Gene Weingarten, and is in response to someone in their twenties who (perhaps unwisely) asked Weingarten Can you think of anything you know now in your fifties that you wish you'd known in your twenties?
Weingarten’s initial response should have been Can I think of Anything? You’ve got to be kidding. Where do I start
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I’ve promoted HitTail on this blog and a couple of others for some time now. I really enjoy playing with the search queries they provide and writing up new posts as a result of them. Simply put, HitTail collects search results that connect back to my site, and keeps a list of them. I can go and check them out and decide whether I want to follow through and use those key words or phrases in new posts. The difference between this system and other key word approaches is that HitTail uses the results that are on the ‘long tail’ of search queries, small words which still play a part in the overall picture.
HitTail, however, is only a small part of a much bigger system that HitTail’s parent company uses. Connors Communications uses HitTail in a Search Engine Optimization method that they explain in greater detail on an excellent audio/visual presentation I’ve just checked out. I was alerted to this by Mike Levin, who was the person who came up with the HitTail approach, and who’s been in touch with me at different times since I first discovered their system.
Mike emailed me today to ask if I was aware of the Connors ABC of online marketing. I wasn’t, but now am since I clicked on the link and checked out the presentation. It must first be said that their online marketing system is geared towards big companies, companies that are likely to spend US$25,000 a month on marketing alone. That cuts out most people I know, but I’m sure there are plenty of companies out there who would be interested if they knew about it
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My wife has type 2 diabetes, which means she has to watch what she eats in terms of sugar content and the Glycemic Index. (Diabetics need low GIs to improve their health – you can find out more about this here.)
But going shopping for items that come within the range of foods diabetics can safely eat is often a problem, especially if you’re not close to a large supermarket with lots of choice.
A 17-year-old student (he’s doing his A-levels) called Giles Peters found the same problem when he wanted to buy food gifts for his relatives, most of whom have type 2 diabetes. So after some thought and research, he came up with the idea of supplying diabetic hampers online. Naturally, these don’t contain all the foods a diabetic would eat, but focus more on the items that they’d like to enjoy on special occasions, but which aren’t always obvious on the supermarket shelves
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It had to happen.
A blogger friend of mine posted some paragraphs about dancing shoes that had gone into the Lost and Found column of a newspaper. She speculated that they might have danced off by themselves.
Which set me off wondering what Google would turn up if I put ‘Lost and Found’ in as a search. And blow me down, the first thing to turn up is a site that deals solely in lost and found items around the world - including New Zealand. For instance, at present someone in Papamoa is looking for the pet cat, a white long-haired Birman male, whose name is Caspar. Caspar is wearing a blue collar with a blue name tag, and has a little bell
attached to the collar. He was relocated from Hamilton and had only been in Papamoa for a few days when he went missing. Obviously disorientated, poor chap
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Think City. It’s a rather odd name for a car, but it’s real.
Perhaps the name is odd to go with the other thing that’s different about the car: it’s electric. Furthermore, it may be about to change the way motoring, and the buying of cars, is done worldwide.
Even more odd is the way this car is going to be sold. Instead of going to a showroom and dealing with car salesmen, you’ll go online and order the vehicle according to your own
specifications, just as you do when ordering a computer with Dell. In due course the parts for these cars will be available at local warehouses, which will mean that instead of importing the car from Finland, where it originates, it will be ready to be made up to your requirements at a warehouse near you…as they say
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Search for ‘Elert’ on Google, and several results will come up proclaiming ‘Email is dead!’ and that Elert is a new and unique line of communication enabling you to receive information on a myriad of subjects.
Piffle, I say.
What is Elert? Elert is a new gadget that only allows businesses and info services to contact the Elert users who’ve subscribed. The theory is that instead of getting a pile of junk mail in your email every day you can cut it all out by using Elert
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Zealand via Skype last night, using the mc, and it was superb. But here in the house we’re staying in, it’s very sluggish, so sluggish that you have to go off and do other things while you’re waiting for Internet pages to load, otherwise you’d go mad. At least it’s got me practicing the piano while I‘m waiting - because the piano is in the same room.
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