Okay, this is about as un-rant-ish as I think I’m capable of getting. I received this picture in my e-mail recently, and it just melted my black little heart. I’ll let the story tell itself:
I want to take them both home
We are Google, and we can kill you
Published on March 3, 2010
Okay. I have a gmail account. The e-mail for this very domain name goes through a Google Apps server. Guess what my default browser home page is? Yeah.
Hell, I use “Google” as a verb…don’t you?
On the other hand I passed on Wave, and will pass on Buzz. I’m not opposed to them, really, I just don’t care. I don’t do meetings I can possibly avoid and, as for Buzz, well, “We’ve already got one.”
Is Google on the path to being another Big Blue Meanie? Another Microsoft? They have become frakken huge and mayhap a bit arrogant, haven’t they? That might help explain this fun little segment I ran across today over on YouTube. Watch, enjoy, and fear not. They pledged to “do no evil.”
Right?
I Sing the Praises of Akismet
Published on February 25, 2010
Do you have a Wordpress blog? Are you using the free Akismet plugin? Why not?
This baby stops comment spam in its filthy tracks, my friends. You need to get a (free) Wordpress API (they tell you how to do it, it’s easy), then you install the plugin…done. It works so well that after about a month of testing I removed moderation from my comments! In roughly three months of use it’s stopped nearly a thousand spam comments, and has only allowed one questionable posting through.
I mean it: Akismet works!
The only down side I’ve run across is the occasional false positive. Some of my guests have left legitimate comments with links included, and maybe one in ten of those gets nabbed. I find it no chore at all to review the spam queue before I nuke ‘em and make sure nothing good is in there.
On your Wordpress plugins control page just search for Akismet and take a decisive stand against comment spam!
Spinny’s Take on the Facebook “Link Love” Program
Published on February 24, 2010
Okay, so anyone and everyone who is trying to run a business is wondering how the whole “social media” thing might help out–or should be IMNSDHO. There is, however, a big potential down side to using such media for getting exposure for your business as I see it: how do you avoid crossing the line into spamming?
Social media, by definition, is supposed to be a place where the participants can relax, let their proverbial hair down, and socialize. Who wants that activity interrupted by commercial spots? Come on: outside of the Super Bowl (if even then), who really LIKES to have their TV show interrupted by commercials? There are some (I’m close to this at times) who feel that any unsolicited commercial information–any at all–is unwelcome spam.
Wow, that puts the would-be entrepreneur into a real pickle, doesn’t it? You can restrict your marketing output to those who opt in through some means, but how do you get them into the position of deciding whether to opt in? There’s a kind of catch-22 in there, no? Facebook (and Twitter, and probably others) is already full of would-be entrepreneurs busily trying to tap into the flow of literally millions of potential eyeballs—and many just end up being annoying and subsequently alienating their hoped-for audience.
Wouldn’t it be cool if there were a way to attract viewers to your wares without thrusting the advertising in their figurative faces? Thanks to the ingenious efforts of Facebook entrepreneurs, there is.
I first heard of the so-called “Link Love” program accidentally. As one of those entrepreneur wannabes I spend no small amount of time engaged in the social media scene, trying to expand my contacts while working hard not to cross any lines. In one of my Facebook sessions I happened across the “fan page” (business page, really, but the semantics of the Facebook interface are interesting) for a fun, crafty business called Runway Crochet. Something—maybe it was the hot cartoon babe in the backless party dress she uses for an avatar—led me to do more than my usual skimming of the wall posts. She seemed pretty caffeinated about something called “Link Love,” and it was related to people collecting nice fan totals for their pages. Considering at the time my own little fan page had collected a grand total of five fans, including me, I was intrigued and did some research into the idea.
Here’s how it works:
Participants create a related thread in their fan page’s Discussion forum, inviting visitors to post links to their own fan pages. Then you go out, using the aforementioned Discussion thread of any participant as a starting point, and visit the posted fan page links. If you see something you like, become a fan of their page as you normally would, but also leave your link in their thread and invite them to come reciprocate. Assuming they do, now both their thread and yours become growing repositories of links of potential interest, and the entire network grows.
It’s that simple.
Other people are doing the same and, as they come across your posts on various pages, they might be motivated to visit yours, become a fan, and (and here’s the pay-off) maybe even become interested in what you’re selling. Think of it as a catalog of Facebook-based business pages, and a forum for placing free ads in a place that—far from calling them out as spam—actually WELCOMES your post. Advertising is all about getting eyeballs on your sales pitch, right?
What’s the ROI? This is an unofficial network and I doubt anyone has hard numbers on click-through or conversion rates, but here’s anecdotal evidence: I spent maybe an hour at first, becoming a fan of various pages and spreading my own link out there. Overnight my fan total jumped from five to over 50. Two days later it was over 100, and within 24 hours of that event it had more than doubled to over 200. I’m sure I’ve been riding an initial surge, and as the other “members” eventually make it to my page I’ll be down to new arrivals and the rate will taper off, but the “Love Link” base appears to be growing every day, so we’ll see.
As for where lies the plateau, the lady running the page where I started hosts regular “parties” wherein she lauds various members who’ve achieved milestones in their own fan growth. I’ve seen several boasting totals of several hundred–or even in the thousands. And this is all coming from free advertising: you only invest your time (and of course it helps if your page and what it offers is at least reasonably attractive). Since Facebook charges you per click to get essentially the same results (arguably by paying them you’d start with a broader beginning base, but social media is about relationship building after all), for me the program is a no-brainer.
So check it out—and while you’re at it, visit my Spinland Studios fan page and share some Link Love. 
Editor’s Note: Since I posted this it’s come to my attention there are those forces out there who are opposed to this model. I’m not sure what all of the reasons might be, and it’s a truism that you can find a group of people opposed to ANYTHING if you look hard enough, but I’ll anticipate at least one potential objection that I see: you’re not getting “real fans,” rather just people who want you to “fan them back.”
Okay.
Let me repeat what I said above: the objective of any advertising is to get as many eyeballs as possible on your pitch. I challenge you to do an unbiased comparison of the quality of the eyes that LL brings to your sales pitch, versus that of the eyes that see, say, your typical (read: moronic) television ad. At least with LL you’re pitching to an engaged and sympathetic audience who wants to be there! If your stuff isn’t good enough to draw some attention from the stream of such folks you’re bringing in…you have more serious problems than perhaps you realize.
Saying Good-bye to Jerry
Published on February 13, 2010
This past Wednesday was our literal Funeral for a Friend, as we bid our final farewells. The funeral itself was, in my opinion, the best possible sort: brief and focused. I’m not a fan of ceremony for ceremony’s sake. A few of us spoke of Jerry, how we’ll remember him and what he meant to us, and that was to the good.
Afterward his wife hosted us all at a local establishment with a very nice buffet and an open bar. As one might expect from a lifetime where golf played a major role, a large percentage of us represented his golfing mates, especially the “underground league” he and his friend Chris set up and ran every year. It was called “Fleppert,” a contraction of Chris’ and Jerry’s last names.
What prompted me to post this was a photo of our table that Chris sent to me tonight. We represented the hard core of the Fleppert gang, and stayed the longest and probably partied the hardest–Jerry wouldn’t have had it any other way. Here we are, as captured on camera by Jerry’s sister, offering one of many toasts to his memory:
The core of the Fleppert League. The brew is Sam Adams.
I should add a little thumbnail of those present. Paul and Chris were among Jerry’s closest friends, and co-conspirators in creating Fleppert. BJ literally grew up around Jerry, as some of his earliest memories are of Jerry coming over for visits when he was a small child. Mike the Neighbor lived next door to Jerry for the last few years of his life, and was both an ad hoc drinking buddy and the one who stepped up to handle a lot of the physical tasks around the house when Jerry became too weak. When we gathered to decorate the large evergreen tree outside Jerry’s house for Xmas 2009 it was Mike who got us the mobile cherry-picker so we could reach the high spots. Spinny & Anne are, of course, yours truly and my lovely wife (who had no trouble holding her own among this motley group of guys). Joe is my partner in “that other golf league” that Jerry & Chris split from when they formed Fleppert, and a frequent Fleppert attendee. Last, but not least, Jim is Anne’s brother, a solid Fleppert regular and one of Jerry’s long-time friends.
Although we shall always miss Jerry, our gathering that day went a long way toward giving me closure and in helping me let go and move on. He’ll still always be there with us, though, every time we tee one up or hoist one high.
Fare well, Jerry.
I Don’t Understand Grocery Stores
Published on February 13, 2010
My mission today: pick up some lemonade–not just any lemonade, I was armed with a pair of specific brands from which to choose.
My arrival at the hub of all things that are wrong in the commercial world was uneventful: I scored a decent parking space, no one tried to run me over as I crossed the raceway that fronts the store, and there was a nice stack of carry baskets to hand as I entered. My feeling that I might escape undamaged began to fade a bit, however–not long after I located and entered the aisle labeled “beverages.”
Lemonade is a beverage, isn’t it? For that matter, so is soda, beer, bottled water, and tomato juice. You wouldn’t have known it from the contents of this misleadingly-labeled aisle. From what I could see it was stocked with only the weird to-drink stuff nobody wanted–what the hell is a “new age beverage,” anyway?
Okay, I reasoned, this is clearly not meant to be easy. First I need to figure out what KIND of beverage they believe lemonade is, and look for it in an aisle associated with that sort of product. Hmm…it’s mostly water, but there is the “bottled water” aisle and no joy. Juice! It’s mostly lemon juice. Hie, there’s the juice aisle!
Strike two–no, make that strike three, since I already tried the water-that-isn’t-a-beverage aisle. Oh, they had juice of every kind there, make no mistake. They also had two different kinds of “organic” lemonade, but neither variety was on the target list.
This was starting to become puzzling, indeed–then I recalled the few times I’d ever made lemonade it was from a frozen concentrate. Frozen stuff is over there, let’s check it out!
The brands I was supposed to choose from, I soon discovered, don’t come in a frozen version. Strike four, and I had entered unknown realms.
I’d now been on the hunt for a ridiculous length of time–especially for what was supposed to be a side trip–and I should have been home long ago. I decided I wasn’t going to leave empty-handed, and that organic stuff was starting to look pretty good–hey, any lemonade in a storm! The quickest route back to the juice section, conveniently enough, would pass through the aisle of beer-that-isn’t-a-beverage. It was a hard thing to swallow, but I steeled myself for the ordeal. As I strolled happily past the stacks of lovely Saranac and Guinness and other beer-that-isn’t-a-beverage that also isn’t crappy-fizzy-yellow-pisswater-that-passes-for-beer-in-America, I happened to glance to my right.
Orange juice in a refrigerated cabinet. Grapefruit juice, too. Could it possibly be?
YES! There, snuggled up against the cheeses and mocking me for daring think it might have been anywhere else, was the very brand of lemonade I’d been sent to procure! So this was the place for drink-that-is-mostly-juice-that-isn’t-a-beverage-that-needs-refrigeration.
How silly of me not to have known all along.
Internet Explorer Must Die
Published on February 8, 2010
If you’ve done any web development more ambitious than a few text links, you have already long since run up against the problem of how Microsoft constantly fails to conform to standards. For those of you who haven’t experienced the special joy of making otherwise correctly-coded web designs work in IE, you don’t know what you’re missing.
See, web pages are coded in a special programming language, much like any software (okay, let’s not get bogged down in the semantics of markup languages versus compiled and interpreted code and all that, shall we? It’s not germane to the point, here). The problem is, when you learn this language the people who are in charge of creating and maintaining it tell you that certain program instructions will result in web browsers displaying things in a certain, predictable way.
Except for Internet Explorer.
You can buy into conspiracy theories that Microsoft wants to control the language and so interprets it in their own way, expecting to force everyone else to conform to their version by sheer power of market share. You can jump on the “Microsoft is run by a pack of idiots” bashing bandwagon and assert they’re just too stupid to understand the standards, so are unable to conform. Or you can just throw up your hands, utter blasphemous curses, and try to hack out code that will work in their crippled and ill-constructed browsers while simultaneously working in other, correctly-constructed ones. You could even do all three, and/or make up a few alternative activities for fun while you’re at it. I suggest drinking heavily during such an enterprise.
For everyone who knows the pain of which I speak, here is a fun graphic I ran across today that sums things up all too knowingly:
Graphic created by Alan Foreman of Poisoned Minds.
Cancer Sucks
Published on February 5, 2010
No shit, right? Who doesn’t know someone it’s taken?
It took a friend today, and the hurt’s still raw, and there’s nothing really to do about it but get over it. Eventually.
Jerry was a great guy. The harder you broke his balls the better he liked you for it, and he had a million zany stories that you knew he wasn’t making up. He drank like a sailor–which is appropriate because he was one. I don’t know anyone who was more happily politically incorrect, and you had to love him for it–more so the worse his wisecracks got. I had to make him stop including my work e-mail address on his mailing list, some of the stuff he’d send was definitely not safe for work.
He loved golfing, which is how I got to know him. We were league mates and later, when he and his crony Chris broke away from the league and started a group of their own, I showed up to play with them as often as I could. When I missed half a season because of emergency surgery he was the guy I asked to cover for me. He had his great days, and he had his lousy days, and on the latter there was no one more accomplished at sending a duck hook (he was a lefty) farther right than I could send a slice. I can still see him pounding his chest like a drunk Klingon, and threatening to kick his ball’s ass if it didn’t go into the hole.
He was healthy as hell, too, until the cancer took him down. Trim, fit, he used to relax by swimming laps in his pool. He was retired some years back, but still active and vigorous as anyone half his age. Until the cancer got him.
He went peacefully, with his “lovely” beside him. Just closed his eyes and left. Thank goodness for that.
He “may not have been the best, but there ain’t none better!”
I already miss him.
Jumping on the “Avatar” Bandwagon with Both Feet
Published on February 5, 2010
So, from what I hear there’s an explosion of videos on YouTube detailing how to paint yourself blue, and to otherwise try to look like a Na’vi character. I figured that’s lame: on one hand, you ever tried washing all that shit off when you’re done? Don’t even tell me you plan to get between the sheets all blue and sticky. Yuck! Besides, in the era of Photoshop there’s no need to go to all that bother (click to see a larger version):
Spinny'd up in Blue
I just know that on Pandora they’d have good taste in beer–don’t you?
Beware of Theft via “ATM Traps”
Published on February 3, 2010
I just heard about this today (and checked it out at Snopes), and it’s pretty bizarre. There’s a way to set an “ATM Trap” such that it captures your card, and then the thief does a bit of social engineering to get your PIN, only to recover the card a short time later and withdraw cash. This PDF file shows such a theft as it happens (note this footage is from 2005 and it’s quite likely many ATMs are now made with this in mind, but still forewarned is forearmed):
“ATM Trap” theft in progress (PDF)
So, beware! If you use an ATM that sucks in your card, and it appears to be confiscated, follow the steps in the document.
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