This article was prompted by a TV advert for Pajamagram.

I heard the name, and looked up quickly from what I was doing. I saw a dishy girl in pajamas closing the bedroom door, a happy guy was in the background, propped up in bed.

Two thoughts crossed my mind. The reason the ad initially caught my attention was because I misheard the name of the product. I genuinely thought they were saying vaginagram. That may sound a ridiculous error but it seemed to tie in neatly with the mood of the advert, and my mind was joining weird dots - woman in pajamas, hotel room. Pajamagram, strippagram...

Anyway, this company needs to look at its name and marketing angles, else their site will be inundated by more non-customers like me!

Garmin are selling more GPS systems than ever before, and as well as earning shedloads of money day-in, day-out, they are the cleverest long term strategisers in the GPS business too. So smart, in fact, that nobody on Wall Street has seen that they could be after their greatest rivals, TomTom!

Background

Everyone is talking about GPS darlings, Garmin, these days, applauding them on their management skills and ability to grow market share, and all that good business stuff. But suddenly Wall St says that this very same glamor boy management team have got it wrong with a couple of M&A moves.

They did wrong, apparently, first of all by not buying Navtech for $9bn. Then they really screwed things up, so the experts say, by putting in an offer today of $3.3bn for TeleAtlas, (a company smaller than Navtech) who also make maps and have $1bn cash in the bank.

Garmin trumped Wall St once already.

According to the Wall St experts, Garmin did wrong when they decided not to spend $9bn on Navtech ie they screwed up by not blowing billions all at once in order to secure the supply of a product they can get off the shelf any day of the week. (Yes, Wall St, even under Nokia ownership, Navtech are obliged by law to supply Garmin at fair market prices.) Wall St knocked Garmin down about 20% over a few days. Garmin bounced straight back, of course!

Master stroke

And now, Garmin have decided to try and take ownership of a smaller map-maker with a stash of cash in the bank and Wall St have again hammered them down 11% for so doing. How short sighted of Wall Street, because the stock will again bounce back up, stronger than ever, before going meteoric!!

It will go meteoric because of Garmin's real strategy behind the TeleAtlas offer!

On the surface Garmin made a pure counter-bid against arch European rivals, TomTom, and by entering the bidding arena, Garmin have put the onus on TomTom to raise their initial offer. 1-0 to Garmin who will make their rivals pay more than they wanted!

But it is in fact 2-0 because Garmin's move rocked Euro stock market confidence in TomTom, and the T2 stock price dropped 18%. How cruel to become embroiled in a bidding war not of your making!

But according to Ed, it could be 3-0 to Garmin, and game over for TomTom, - and Wall St would never see this one coming.

Game, set and snatch

How funny if Garmin were to announce tomorrow that not only were they buying up a few TeleAtlas shares today prior to publicising the "disastrous TeleAtlas offer" but that they also went shopping in Europe and now own enough cheap TomTom shares to get on their board and kick some butt!

Probably too frivolous a thought, but either way, plenty of savvy investors will be buying into a slice of Garmin over the next few days. They are the best.

If you have a product to sell, idea to promote, or story to tell, you could do worse than adopt a landing page mentality to ensure some positive results. Sounds like a lot of techno marketing fooey? Relax, Google have come to the rescue.

Rather than leaving us wannabe webmasters to sit around debating in a vacuum about what does and doesn't work best for an all-action webpage layout, (that is page not site) Google Website Optimiser helps us get down to some serious and well-constructed testing to determine what page layout will work best.

It's all in a landing page

The biggest single pointer I picked up is the concept of landing pages. If you think in terms of those pages that appear when you click on 100 ways to Improve your Sex Life, you should already be half way towards understanding what you are trying to achieve with the Website Optimiser. Bottom line, any webpage you create can and should generate a response/action from your reader.

The action doesn't need to be a sale, it could be encouraging readers to sign up for your RSS subscription, or take a look at another article, or whatever you have going on with competitions or memes or link trains.

The video presentation spells out the options and key points and variables you need to consider for an effective landing page. Starting from the top (literally) and working down, you can isolate each stage of the psychological process that occurs when we look at a page, and scientifically test what works best as a headline, a sales pitch, a photo and a call for action.

A couple of useful tips

I learnt quite a few things, one of them being, sexy photos draw your eye in to a page, but may draw you away from the call to action - or worse, drive you to perform a different action to the one intended by the webpage designer. Therefore, Ed icons will stay as unsexy as ever.

The video also clarified the meaning of a call for action. I realise that whenever you read an article, all I want is for you to
1- smile
2 - go aaaah
3- sign up to my RSS feed
4- submit an entry to a widget or install one of my widgets.

Simple aims!

If you are curious about web page optimization, take a look at the video.

The Pisstakers is not very automated, but sometimes a living breathing piece of code can work wonders to entertain and amuse you with no effort from me. Naked keyphrase produces the following funny-ish books and DVDs.

Earlier this week I was eulogising about Amazon and their amazing coming of age due to smart investments in technology. Then I get this email.



Sorry, guys, but I never bought an MP3 player in my life! Time for you to check over the code for whatever software gave you the idea I would be remotely interested in this offer. Next.

There are plenty of opportunities on the web to make money, or get something for nothing or at a great deal. But there is usually a catch, no doubts.

Sitepoint's bona fide design offer

According to a Sitepoint review in Webby's World, you can run a contest asking designers to submit a logo, a set of stationary or even a coded theme for your blog/website. If everyone enters into the spirit, a snazzy new look or even a fully functioning theme could therefore be yours for not a lot of money. Factor in the designer's added bonus of a platform for their work on one of the web design sites on the web - it all sounds brilliant, and so it should be for most participants.

Pitfalls to a bona fide offer

Knowing how human nature is, and being a cynical git, I can just see a pitfall that would make me wonder if it was worth it.

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The Pisstakers are to consumerism what Bill Gates is to social skills. The world would grind to a halt if we had our hands on the purse strings. Nonetheless, shopping carts and other options for gouging money from blog traffic is a fascinating subject, so we updated our blog on shopaholix and offer it out there as a starting (and maybe finishing point!) for webmasters short of ideas.

7.3 Megapixel cameras? For $119? Where will it end in the world of cameras?

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Driving out of Philadelphia, there is a huge billboard designed to make red-blooded males veer off the road - 2700 hot slots. The banner is of course referring to the new penny slot casino opening in nearby Chester PA, and has nothing to do with whatever crossed many testosterone-pumped minds.

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These statistics from Compete are presumably like all other stats and can tell several different stories at once. If you are into selling gadgets, then it was a nifty 19th to 23rd of November, as long as your name isn't Dell, and, if you sell building products, you hope Wal-Mart are going to go mad and build more stores from their on-line profits.

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Further to our "How to podcast" blog, we got to thinking that perhaps we were too casual with our hardware selection - the internal microphone on a 4-year old Mac laptop, period. So, in order to be taken more seriously, we went in search of the perfect omni-directional microphone. The staff at Radio Shack were full of fine advice and a few wisecracks.

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If you want a really good stock tip, don't listen to anything that Motley Fool money expert, Seth Jayson has to say about APPL shares.

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There was a time when a crib, a humming mum, or a rocking pair of daddy arms was enough stimulus get the baby to sleep. In more recent times, rock-a-bye baby methods went more hi-tech and parents used to get in their cars and drive till the motion, noise and heater sent the little one into a deep slumber. But, as gas prices have risen to astronomical levels, a hunt has been on for alternative measures.

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