Chris Anderson writes about the end of the hit era
His Book “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More” that this article is adapted from will be available 7/11.
http://www.google.com/ncr
is the URL you want to use in order to teach google NOT to show you the localized Version that they throw at you based on your IP. I had removed all my google cookies and was faced with the devastating fact that I rank at #15 or so for my own name on the german gogole version.
Just got a quote. As a pdf. Which is a great start. Everybody should send quotes as PDFs, not as word documents. That one should be pretty obvious, but sadly it is not. I tell people by now that I will not be able to read their Microsoft Word Documents. They often don’t even know what they have sent. They think that Word Documents are the only way to store text on a computer.
The second issue with attachments is much easier to fix since it happens on a logical level: Name the document so that it makes sense on the hard drive of the receiving end! Don’t send me something called ‘quote.pdf’. Or ‘wacker.pdf’. That might be interesting for you, but not where the document will be used and found: On my drive.
Do yourself a favor and call it: “source.function.date.dpf”. “Function” being “quote” or “invoice” or “memo”. Source is you, so that I know where this came from. And then date. Date I would always express as year-month-day. With leading zero on month and day. This will be recognises as the same date on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific and it sorts files nicely by, gasp, date in any text listing.
But PDF instead of Microsoft Word is really the most step forward into attachment sanity.
they think can take a stroll on the dark side
Idiots. How often can you sell your virginity? Now Apple has marched into the ‘phone home’ camp. And for what benefit? Idiots.
Companies like AT&T and others that move the bits around on parts of the internet and to clients want more money. They realize that companies like Google or Apple/iTunes make a bug or two on the internet. Now they want in on that action. Since it runs on their wires they think they have a valid angle. Which is highly ridiculous. They get paid what they asked for. Providing internet bandwidth was good business. But now they want to be able to charge more for those ‘precious bits’. Like Apple iTunes. Apple could afford it. The download cost is only a small fraction of the 99 cents they get per song. Same with google ads. However, the precedence is ugly. And, worst of all: Nobody stopped big and old and stupid companies like AT&T to provide services like search or music downloads. Except that they are old and stupid companies. Being big didn’t help either. The outrageous aspect is that AT&T feel that they have a birthright on the value inside of the bits they transfer. That is ridiculous. I don’t think that this would need regulation and legislation. Ideally people would understand what’s going on and tell the big telco’s that they don’t get it. If they try to extort google and Co then those companies should expose this. After all: Think of the internet, and think either google or AT&T has to go away. If you think that we would need AT&T to push a couple of bits around then you have been fooled by their brainwash. There are lots of providers and ample net capacity. The real value is in search. And that drives those old telcos crazy.
this kind of moron gets elected
freaking clueless. OK. So be it. But then they start to meddle with the very things they have no freaking clue about. That is plain dangerous. I guess they might understand as little about the internet than they do about the other things they pass legislation on. Bunch of jokers. Since the people are asleep they get to decide what happens next. Good luck!
Around 80% of all blogcontent is spam. You probably never see it. But search engines do. And that’s what the spammer hopes for. So called Splogs try hard to look like real content. Sometimes the spammer uses buggy code. Like in this example: http://football-shirt.afreeblogforyou.com/
Here the keywords have not been replaced. They still are called {keyword} in the text. This splog is pretty typical in many aspects: Please note the google ads. Yes, google does do business with this kind of content. They do not care. Actually google is responsible for allot of spam, since it’s adsense ads are a premiere resource of revenue for spam like this. The content in this ‘blog’ has simply been ‘scraped’ aka copied or some would say ‘stolen’ from legit weblogs. Easy to do. The next step in a splogers enterprise is to generate as many pages as possible and to put them into search engines. 70% of all interenet trafic gets steared by search engines. Getting only 0.01% of that can make you a rich man.
Of course the content is around a recent event. That might get you ahead of real content for a day or two. Enough to make a couple of hundred dollars in some cases. And, yes, google pays.
Over time I did subscribe to a podcast here and there. A bit of NPR, fxguide of course, Twit, Adam Curry was only worth listening to a year ago. He is long gone from the cut. Even though I try to keep the list edited I can not keep up any more. Todays download would take 4.5 hours to listen to. Easy for the shuffle, hard on me.
There is simply not enough Lawn to mow, commute (replaced by getting breakfirst rolls from the bakery), floor to vacuum in my life. And hour or two, I can squeeze in.
Of course this is just one sign of the times: Content is available in abundant supply. Ten years ago Cinefex was pretty much the only magazine covering visual effects. Quartely. Now there are lots and lots of podcasts, websites, newsletters around the same subject. Weekly.
I looked at the Millimeter Magazine website today. Interesting, yes. Couldn’t find the subscribe button. So, no, they did not make the cut. Clicked on that funny icon just to find out that they try to use flash video. What a joke! Somebody have a the mercy to explain to them that their audience is different from youTube, and that they should use quicktime.
But with all those gigabytes streaming through to my hard drive they are not worth the consideration.
Media darwinism two thousand six. Lots of content producers are in a for a surprise.
If lots of merchands sign up then this will be a big deal.
why did google blog at 3:00 am about it?
It sounds like good business. But it is not. That one bad person creates usually hundrets to million times the damage compared to his gain. If possible society would fare much better by retiring all those spammers on a decent allowance. Right now they kill millions of business to make a bug or two.
What ever happened to the the ‘canspam’ act that the Administration put in place? Spam is not Bush’ fault. But having a government that is vastly clueless about any thing invented after 1983 did not make the spammers life exactly tough.