After reading an article from eJabs, I can see the appeal of Linux, the great new slap in the face of Microsoft, but it makes me smile when people say it is totally customizable. When you see the dog's breakfast that most people make of a web site design, what can possibly be cool about a whole OS along similar lines?

Call me conformist, but Vista and OS X and even Linux designers have way better ideas than 99.9% of the rest of us, and I think most users are better off with a few options rather than carte blanche. Also, it makes more sense to vent at Steve Jobs or Bill Gates for a crap implementation rather than take the blame yourself for an arcane set up that works badly for literally one person on the planet.

I may be wrong, but I doubt we will see too many screenshots from users owning up to diabolical Linux GUI tweaks that make Jackson Pollack's sense of order look positively trigonometric.

Anti-Matter Sputum From Beyond, the appropriately named, Cyber Tuberculoisis Pounder, or the Iron Turtle Blaster are just 3 of the Super hero names generated at random for your delight. And it is just one of many random generators from the site, Generator Land. It is a blast, especially when you get comments from people like The Nuclear Flatulence Bouncer!

Joke Opener generator

The Joke Opener Generator gives you a creative joke opener without the fuss of having to remember the punchline. That's right, you can't get these jokes wrong!

Check that out, cheesy jokers, and finish this opening line.

Eight drug-addled priests walk into a pizza hut...

Add in the Emo haiku generator, and the random excuse machine too, and before you know it, you will be ready for anything.

Thanks to Michael for sending me the details. If you have a joke site that I could bring to people's attention, email Ed.

After receiving an email from WMDTalk, a site I reviewed some time ago, I got to thinking about video and music piracy. Trae now offers links to major movies for your online pleasure. I am duty bound to point out that this is not illegal because the movies are hosted in Denmark. So that is alright then.

Piracy is theft

I think the main reason that people rationalise stealing as "borrowing" or "sampling" is actually their response to the stance of a bunch of numb skulls in the video and movie industry. If you read the Motion Picture Association of America website, it makes for some interesting and sad reading that is so black and white as to be almost laughable, and no wonder people are circumventing their rules.

Who are the pirates under scrutiny?

This isn't aimed at major mobs who get hold of the master tapes before they leave Hollywood. I am talking piracy involving normal people. The MPAA website and people on the piracy trail offer plenty enough fertile pickings for a pisstaker who, by nature, mocks the behavior of people who say one thing and do another, or make a stance that is so full of holes you could drive a truck through it. (This is why I make fun of my imperfect self too, just to be fair.)

To the pirates I say

I am totally against stealing. Crazy as it sounds, I feel I have to say this, because many people of a certain generation think that stealing, when couched in other terms, and applied to online activities, isn't particularly wrong. I suggest that most people have never created anything worth stealing, so they don't get it!

So, my main gripe, irrational maybe, is that 99% of "pirates" have not an ounce of movie-making creativity in their own soul yet they dare take the work of someone who has spent years and millions making something from nothing, and take ownership of the DVD as though it were their own.

Call it a quirk of old age, whatever, but I try to see things from both sides. For instance, I know for sure that if I played truant, then made a copy of a student's school notes and said I was borrowing them to see how they worked out for me before I copied them and used them as my own, the ripped off student would be anything from indignant to pissed off. Is watching a pirated DVD any different?

Of course the student would say "Yes! When I watch (or copy) a DVD, I have no intention of selling it, or making a movie using the excerpts or doing anything except watch it. It is for personal use."

And then of course, the creative person in me would get totally cruel and say that me taking his notes and him taking a DVD copy is exactly the same, because neither would I do anything with his notes with commercial intent, but I still want to have his notes as my own to read and entertain me. (Not to do anything with them, just to have them, taking them for the hell of having them on my shelf is plain vindictive, and that isn't nice either!)

And anyway, maybe I wouldn't do anything with his notes, but the truant mate of mine who I gave them to might re hash them, and sell them to classmates... (I know a university professor who sold his notes to students, so it isn't too far-fetched a proposition!)

When is copying OK, according to Ed's own black and white stance?

If you already own a full copy and wanted to make a back-up, then at last, we are entering the constructive side of copying. And if you were doing research to see if you wanted to add to a paid-for collection, then at last we can look to the movie industry to stand up and move the debate forward.

MPAA are causing many issues related to piracy

I am not an unfair pisstaker and am not down on people for the sake of it. I need to point out, however, that the MPAA are a bunch of dinosaurs who have backed progress and piracy into a corner. For a start, they say that studentss with little world experience act against the law, (which is true) whilst making out that the entertainment industry is a pure entity operating on a level playing field (which they aren't.) They have ripped off so many individuals in the course of their history it is embarrassing that they stand for anything ethical. Every penny invested in movies has come from a legitimate source, every contract has been fair to both parties? Right! They have tried to prosecute politicians for downloading stuff?

Grow the number of collectors via "preview piracy"

And the really stupid thing about their piracy is theft stance is that the online world offers the film industry endless opportunities for massive additional incomes, if only they could think outside their ivory tower and embrace change instead of fight it.

For instance, one of the students' justifications for taking a copy is to preview something before buying. That is a bollocks argument for most, but a small percentage actually do that, you know. There are folks with collections worth thousands, and the availability of free previews on Limewire gives them a chance to view more, and get suckered into owning more. Admittedly that small percentage of modern day collectors was also small pre-piracy, probably smaller than today in fact, but the MPAA are thick not to recognise the chance to grow that collector base by miles using creative use of previews.

Unfortunately, the movie people delight in quoting the truth - People wouldn't buy more just because of free previews of pirated movies. Correct. But they only see the "preview" model against a backdrop of DVDs at their current prohibitive price level. What the MPAA fail to embrace is that if they made full movie previews easily available and dropped the price of a DVD, and maybe played around with resolution quality options, then shock horror, the barriers to entry would drop and millions more people would probably start collecting. Oooh, 3 things at once!

That is some food for thought. There is also the flat-rate download all the digital you can for $50 a year option, but that is too big a step, I fear....

A final twist

Here is another piece of sadness. When I said students, that implies young people, but I also include the following demographic - people old enough to be parents who were interviewed in the Indicare project

• PC-freaks (high computer proficiency, high level of illegal copying; 10,3 % of the sample; average age 25);
• hobby-users (low computer proficiency, high level of illegal copying, 33,6 % of the sample; average age 29);
• pragmatists (low computer proficiency, low level of illegal copying, 49,5 % of the sample; average age 34);
• PC-professionals (high computer proficiency, very low level of illegal copying, 6,5 % of the sample; average age 38).

Mention Adsense and you get different reactions depending on which side of the blog fence you sit.

Bloggers attitude to adsense

Bloggers are looking for ways to monetize their material and one of the first ports of call is Google. They are the biggest fish in the pond. On their Adsense journey, bloggers may think any of the following:

Adsense will make me loads of money now.

According to money making guru John Chow, he makes 10% of his $12k monthly revenue from Google Adsense. I also read of people making 50 cents a month, or nothing. Obviously, your mileage may vary as to whether Adsense brings you riches, or not. The key is, if you have a big readership, Adsense should earn you some money.

Hassle incorporating the code

Google Adsense code is based on Javascript. For WordPress users, apparently, a break tag is automatically added to every line of code you paste into a template, causing issues. It is the same with my software, Rapidweaver, and probably in others that I don't know about, (maybe you do?) Anyway, the options for Wordpress users are: to work some code monkey magic, or do as Steve did on his tech blog and use a special plug-in Adsense Deluxe.

Rapidweaver users should highlight any Adsense code included in a post and press Cmd full stop. What others do, I don't know. Either way, it isn't that simple a job to incorporate the Google code into your blog on a whim, although it is getting easier.

Design challenges to incorporate Adsense into a theme

Hands up if your blogging theme was specifically designed with advertisements in mind? The majority of theme designers seem to just assume that the blogger will work out a style and placement of Adsense ads once the theme is up and running. This reliance on non-designer input at the critical stage of ad placements must explain the dire state of the many blogs peppered with tasteless commercial Adsense crap.

I have to say this aspect of theme design is where the Pisstakers designer, Bonsai Studio, deserves a huge round of applause. The Rapidweaver theme was practically built around that one looping ad space that you see under the left side navigation bar. (Interestingly, it was not designed to incorporate Adsense ads, but that's for another point.)

Readers attitude to Adsense

I am a reader too, and I have a different Adsense oriented perspective to a blogger when I surf.

Euh, commercial ugly Adsense interfering with my reading time.

I go to a site that seems to have some good posts waiting for me. Bingo, shite! The first thing I have to do is process the fact that there is text that has nothing to with the title of the post, right there in my line of vision. Or, in many atrocious instances, the only text you see above the fold is a bank of Adsense ads, and you have to scroll down to start reading any content. Get out of here, loser blogger, next thought.

Euh, this blogger is trying to "make" me click away from this site

I have noticed that some bloggers don't want sticky content ie they don't want people to stay, but to click on ads. Fair enough, Adsense is your friend. But if you want curious and committed readers, be more judicious.

Oh, that's an interesting product in that list of ads, let me find out.

At last, a positive thought about Adsense. Man, I was really thinking about investigating a nose hair plucker, thanks blogger, here it is, and now I can leave your site and find out all about this amazing product. That is a positive, at last.

Conclusion

Basically, my take on Adsense is - use it in huge moderation.

And what is it with gurus on Adsense who advocate you use a layout where between 40% and 100% of viewers' first sight of your homepage is Adsense, and then woo you with the research that they get 10% of their income from those ads! Dumb advice, surely. For a 10% return you give Adsense 10% of your theme real estate, or if that space allocation won't get you 10% of your income return, advise people to not think so highly of the efficiency and usefulness of Google Adsense.

I know The Pisstakers won't ever be an Adsense whore, I don't have the space, for one. For two, I am learning that there are so many other ways to generate an income without stimulating so many negatives from readers. Think before you Adsense. What do you guys think of Adsense?

According to this report about cooking with sound found in Ars technica, a consortium of UK universities plus Los Alamos laboratories have developed a Sterling engine. Essentially, with little energy input, this device will generate heat at one end of a tube, refrigerated air at the other, and electricity from the middle. That is quite a tube!

What problem is the tube trying to solve exactly?

It all sounds like a dream come true for the Third World, where wood is still the main source of heat for cooking, and the only cold storage available to most people are containers wrapped in wet canvas sacking hanging in the shade.

Will the Sterling tube solve the problem in the Third World?

In theory, this Sterling idea should make a difference to the quality of life of its users, because it is simple in construction and presumably cheap to build and run. But as usual, the practice probably won't match the theory on a national or global scale - and you have to think global, seeing as 70% of our fellow humans are in the same sorry shit hole.

Third World development programs inaction

What happens is, a Westerner has a great idea, it seems simple to them, it is cheaper than anything in their own society, they see poor folks overseas with a need... obviously they have solved a major problem? Not on your life. From day one, the ratio of radical ideas to successful uptake is very low. But lets forget the Canadian camel breeder who wanted to teach nomads how to breed camels! Let's be optimistic.

Assume people are hot for a new technology that could actually make their lives better not different. Bring it on! The experts flood in, money is no object to launch a project, funds are available for locals to get in on the scheme. Early adopters run with it, headway is made locally. Hunky dory. But then a couple of things happen.

Maintenance issues

As a project gathers momentum, bad donors deem it a success too early on and decide it is time to pull out. Enthusiasm soon wanes when the local users become saddled with an ongoing maintenance expense that eats into their already small budget. Hence donated machines break once never to be repaired. Sorry bwana, I am not ungrateful or unwilling, but I need money for food not to buy parts. I am thinking of a doomed Landrover services station program in Africa as I write this.

Changing minds issues

Another scenario is where the enthusiasts need to spread the word, which means involving the general populace, which means more funds required. The usual oversight is not the lack of money, (reliable donors have funds covered) but the use of money. They don't grasp the difficult part of the inappropriate technology scenario. Just because there was isolated interest in the first place to do things different, "experts" forget that any change from the norm for the general public is nothing to get excited about. Basically, we have enough going on without making room for just one more thing.

If you don't change, there will be trouble

Before we think of patronizing silly little Third Worlders, ie they are stupid not to do whatever it takes to adopt a tube that gives them a combo fridge and cooker and generator and saves the environment too, the image I have in my mind as I write this, is the latest revelation that many US school authorities are stopping ther laptops for students programs!

It all sounded fine and dandy giving kids this incredible tool to learn with, many educators were enthused to the point of no return, but it fell on its face in many instances. There was no culture of on-line learning, just gaming and chatting. And not enough teachers outside the hard core adopters are tech inclined, and so it just spiralled into an expensive waste of time for many authorities. They gave them back without going hungry. And that is an example of apparenty appropriate technology for a high tech society!

Too much technological change is inappropriate

If that is a poor illustration of the issues of first world solutions for third world society, then imagine a program where instead of laptops, schools have been offered some sort of high-tech nano info absorption device that teaches them twice what they can learn now. It requires a little bit of setting up, and half the time at school but the killer part is that students have to follow a weird timetable that totally disrupts their current routine at home. The likelihood of that taking off?

That is the same scenario when Third Worlders, people like you and me, but 100 times poorer and cut off from the world we know, are presented with a cool solution to their problems. It rarely takes off.

Going full circle, if tech god, Bill Gates, were to get behind the Sterling tube and make it do what his software couldn't in the US, and change the minds of the parents of hungry young kids, and get this neat technology into homes without turning homelife upside down, then we may be on to something.

Just a quickie to convey my immense and over-stimulated nerdy excitement at the new version of Rapidweaver. To me, the advances in this super cool desktop blogging tool represent a huge sigh of relief. Rapidweaver and The Pisstakers are rocking in the right direction.


All I need to do is wait a bit for Bonsai Studio to update some itzy code and we will be in business as follows:.

Rapidweaver is good for Ed

In practical terms, Rapidweaver 3.6 means I can have even better times putting this blog together faster. I know Macs are only toys but what a fun toy! And instead of facing the prospect of transferring hundreds of posts across to Wordpress, the so-called daddy of blogging software. I can spend all that wasted time now being funny!!

A helvetica font walks into a bar and asks for a drink. The barman says, We don't serve your type!

Rapidweaver is good for Google

To Google it will mean search-friendly titles for all my articles. When you search Hunter chimps evolve into Hell's Kitchen chefs, that is what should appear in Google rather than some arcane meaningless reference to The Pisstakers.

Most important, Rapidweaver is good for you

What it means to you, my readers, is better tagging, more categories, maybe even a tag cloud, so you can zip around in style. There may also be more multimedia than ever. Woah, now you are talking.

For The Pisstakers as a whole, and that includes you, Rapidweaver means rosy times ahead.

Talk about a storm in a coffee pot. Silly fellow, John Chow dot com mogul, has decided he is going to nickel and dime some of his readers with a $10 a month comments oriented scheme. He is offering commenters a backlink to his site via a Do Follow applied to any comments they leave on his site. Woo hoo say some, boo say I, wtf is a Do Follow, say many.

What's a Do Follow, dude?

By default, Wordpress and many other commenting systems tell Google not to make a big deal of the links that commenters create with their names when they leave a comment ie the in-built coding says, Google, No Follow Ed, man! On the other hand, Do Follow unleashes the beast and advises Google to do something constructive with the link.

Woo hoo is what you hear from the bloggers who think it is cool to get a link to a PR6 site just for leaving a comment plus $10 in John Chow's piggy bank. And for his part, John Chow is probably thinking $10 x a large proportion of 5000 subscribers hmmmmm. $$$$$$$$. I say boo, though, along with a few others, and here is why.

Do Follow craps on content

I don't have a crystal ball, but if I, or you, were to advertise, "For $10 a month, post comments all over this high PR site and get a backlink every time." what would happen? Most likely scenario is, instantly a certain pool of not quite tech savvy people would go mad and trawl through my every old post leaving remarks like, "Cool, nice blog, I agree, You're a twat etc etc."

There are a couple of quick points worth making, methinks!! Content is king, and bulk commenting schemes produce crap content. Readers, as well as Google will read crap comments and make up their own mind about the quality. Net result for all concerned in the long term - not good!! The long story follows:

Look at Do Follow from a Google standpoint

While the demented ones are wasting their lives commenting inanely in the hope of getting loads of link love, it is highly debatable that Google would think very highly of their comments.

Certainly a Do Follow link is going to be better (in theory) than a No Follow link , so the $10 deal appears to have a positive side, but...

But, indeed! As far as Google is concerned, compared to links in the body of a real post, these comment-based links hold marginal value from the outset. Worse than that, from a Google perspective at least, the more comments-based links (or any links for that matter) populating a page, the less value each link has. The $10 link love scheme encourages lots of people to leave lots of links, so you know the dilution process on any page is going to be major.

It also gets worse. The idea that you have a link on John Chow's homepage because you paid $10 and commented on a front page article, is false - as far as Google is concerned. Within a couple of days, the article drops off the homepage, and it loses its homepage PR. It is how it works. That article fights for its own popularity level as a standalone page. The post's new PR will invariably be less popular than the homepage that attracted you to the DoFollow offer. In the blink of a $10 transaction, your link love payback on the back of a comment binge will be majorly diluted.

Google logic, therefore, says your return on $10 a month "investment" has almost no lasting value, and the more pointless link-grabbing comments you leave, the worse it gets.

Look at Do Follow from a site owner's standpoint

To be honest, $10 x a few thousand sounds nice, but I don't think that the return is worthwhile compensation for the repercussions of a drop in the entertainment value of a site built with long term gain in mind.

If you assume that comments are a part and parcel of the overall content of the site, you want to encourage the highest quality comments to keep rolling in. Some of the best remarks made on the Pisstakers are to be found in the comments section, so I wouldn't want to dilute their quality. But, if I gave a green light to you to spam the comments section, that part of the site would turn to rat's poo and I would expect a few readers to start complaining, "Hey Ed, your comments (ie an important part of your content) are shit, we arent commenting any more and certainly aren't reading them either." This isn't a great scenario!

Most blogs depend on a relationship, a sense of community and discussion. This is where comments play a major role in the success of a blog. John Chow is expecting advantages from a proliferation of crap content? If that is a good strategy, please don't show me a bad one, buddy. Or maybe it is all a pisstaker post ?

John Chow is expanding on a bad idea of his!

It could be argued that my pessimistic Do Follow for cash forecast is based purely on what I think would happen if I applied this Do Follow policy on my 200 uniques a day site. On that basis, sure, mine is not necessarily an accurate forecast of the scenario on John Chow's 4000 uniques a day site. I say otherwise, because the evidence I based my assumption on is from what I see on John Chow's own site. This Do Follow deal of his is based on an idea he already has in place, and it ain't that great at all!

His current Do Follow plan

To be fair, his comments section is generally vibrant and the quality of many commenters is quite good, but that is only half the story! His comments boxes are already peppered with crap, thanks to a scheme that encourages commenters to strive for Top 10 Commenter status each month. ie If you leave loads of comments, you will get one of these same Do Follow links that I am talking about now with the $10 scheme. People are leaving 100 comments a month. Feel the quality - not!

Can a variation on this comments-based theme (times 10) really improve the quality of comments / the quality of his site content / the chance of attracting more readers? I think not.

John Chow may well retract his latest experiment as another bad, sorry, "evil" idea and will carry on as before. But he may not, and certainly lots of bloggers will be tempted to give him $10 just to see what happens.

Fans of his may say I am missing the point and it is all about the numbers game ie he is evil, always pushing the envelope and the figures show his earnings are constantly rising, regardless of experiments. Maybe, but he hasn't tried charging like this before!

But maybe John Chow thinks that with such a big readership in place, eating his every word, he can get away with subtly worsening the content? Good luck trying to mask the mass of crap coming his way. The skewed mix of sponsored posts and real content is already attracting adverse comments, but hey, income is up so who cares!!

Do Follow or No Follow, that is the final question

To reiterate, the evidence isn't great if you expect appealing comments (ie more new reader bait) to rise from incentives to mass comment.

As a blog owner offering the Do Follow service correctly, ie as part of your friendly helping hand to people who contribute a realistic number of meaningful comments to your site, go for it. It is a good use of the tool.

As a blog owner offering this type of inverted cash for comments strategy to readers, I would reflect and quickly draft a backtrack post - sorry this was a bad experiment , we are stopping it / radically over-hauling it now. Of course I could be a greedy short termist dummy, take the $10 now and pray I can blag my way out of it once I have earned a few bucks.

And finally, as a site visitor contemplating handing over $10 to spam comments boxes galore, I suggest you act like a wise fellow and do not follow the DO Follow for $10 scheme. Put your $10 away and spend 5 minutes answering my Blog Interrogation - an easier and far more constructive way to create content and gain some readership. Or write a post on your own site that others find worth linking to. Anything but inane comments on someone else's site. Proper content is king!

And thanks to Phishie for alerting me to this original story. His is almost the sole external link on this page so far. Almost pure link love, man.

Are you aware of the madness that sees 120,000 new blogs launched every single bloody day of the week? Cwazy talk. And how do these people keep in touch, network, interact, improve the world of blogging? Via MyBlogLog clones, that is how!

Who are these clones cloned from?

MyBlogLog is the primary Web 2.0 social community site for bloggers. It brings some sort of order and cohesion to a potential 70 million strong army / community of writers.

Where are these MyBlogLog clones?

Once one person provides a service, others follow and improve and become known in this field of endeavor as MyBlogLog clones. Social community sites for bloggers all share a common theme - they are everywhere, but nowhere, baby! The only evidence they exist is via the bloggers' avatars that inhabit sidebar widgets galore.

How do these clone things work?

Handsome authors gurn at blog readers all around the globe from widgets laid out to varying degrees of complexity. Click on an avatar and you go through to a profile page where you see a little community in action. Clickety click keep on discovering new bloggers and communities, leave messages, spam strangers... It is sweet.

Some clones

Yahoo catapaulted MyBlogLog to the top of the tree with its recent buy out and has clocked up well over 100,000 blogger members. Meanwhile, a new kid on the block, Blog Catalog, is making waves because of its clever interface, and then there is Wavumi, a start up with noble intentions, but a long way to go still.

MyBlogLog

This innovative site now backed by an 800lb gorilla may be too simple for some, but I think the basic premise is still intact. I check out the 10 face widget in my sidebar and I go to my MBL home page from time to time to check for messages and the sites of new wannabe contacts. That is pretty much all I need. I guess I should drop the Log part and call it MyBlogPlace? To be honest I have a life that can't incorporate infinitessamal studies of every visitor stat and examine the log of every visitor's manic path to my site. I am too busy reading Google Analytics already!

Having said that the site is pretty simple, I should add that there is some messy stuff in the sidebars sometimes, and recently I also noticed some new clutter, tag options. Oh well, nothing is perfect and I will get used to those oversights one day, I guess.


Of course the greatest aspect of MyBlogLog is the popular MyBlogLog Sunday here at The Pisstakers. It is fast becoming the home of gummi bear addicts and bloggers seeking witty-ish mini reviews. Call by Sunday 10 - 11 am and you may get in on it yourself.

Wavumi

At the other extreme of the development cycle is Wavumi, a MyBlogLog clone created by Patrice, a brilliant Belgian. The idea is simple, I think. An author of a web site is likely to visit the web sites authored by its visitors Looking at the quote every which way, it seems to make sense, but just in case you share my doubts, I will play safe and adopt the MyBlogLog approach, offering their tag line Connect with fellow readers. Phew, that's a lot more straightforward for a non-Belgian mind to grasp.

Over the months since its release, Patrice, the author, has been keeping us informed, via his blog, of progress fine-tuning the code and beefing up the server. As a result, he has acquired 26 members, 4 of whom have installed the widget. It is all very bare bones, but nothing a multi-million cash injection into the marketing and graphics department couldn't solve. Contact Patrice for all investment offers, or the code for his widget.

Blog Catalog

Zooming into sidebars at an alarming rate is the widget from Blog Catalog. They claim it is a few stages advanced on MBL in terms of usability and usefulness. (Less the clone, more the evolution?)Taking a spin through it, you seem to have the same facilities as MyBlogLog, plus a chance to have proper discussions and a neater way to see your latest blog posts.

Whether it is better laid out overall, I am not sure, although I feel the need to repeat that the latest tag box addition in MBL doesn't add to the clarity of that site! So maybe yes, Blog catalog is an improvement. Of course the real benchmark, user numbers, indicates a big gulf between BC and MBL, but time will tell. I suppose it wouldn't kill yahoo! if their MBL project ended up number 2!!

Do these MyBlogLog clone sites work?

The cynic in me says that it is a great system for spreading a warm deluded feeling that real people actually call by other bloggers' site for a long read! I am sure many bloggers use these community network gizmos for a quick show of heads plus inspiration for ideas, but I am only half right there! In its purest form, this is a great networking idea for the power house of the internet, the bloggers. You meet new folks, get new ideas, and bring new material to your own readers. Not too shabby a result.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, as long as the widget loads fast, the rest is detail!!

If you like the safety in numbers of MyBlogLog, go for it, and if you want to do more stuff with it, check out the SoloSeo guru for inspiration.

BlogCatalog is more feature-rich out the box, but if it isn't so popular with bloggers, that makes networking a bit less efficient than it should be.

And Wavumi, let's here it for the small guys and get behind them, mention the site in a blog post, and even install the beta widget somewhere. (It is in the sidebar of my Blogger homepage.)

So, who do you think will rule the roost, or is there room for even more players?

I was just going to hit the sack when I noticed I had been tagged in one of those meme thingies. I tend to look at meme's as "Ideas for people who don't know what to blog about today - pass it on." Well, this is different because it is Larry Hnetka asking why I blog. Hmmm, he is a funny and mature and grounded guy who has been on the end of a few too many sarccy comments from me, so I owe him a reply. And most importantly, the meme is about a topic I actually cover here at ThePisstakers under Blogging and Tech.

So there you are, now you know why I am going to break my vow of memelessness (since the last time at least) and give 5 reasons why I blog. And after reading a tip from Phishie , the motivational blogger, I am going to give this article the subtitle, What motivates me to blog! Oooh, I feel 5000 impressions and a banner on his site coming on!!!

I have a computer, it needs a work out

There is only so much info you can include in emails to family and friends in the real world, so, rather than let the PC seize up in between the bimonthly "Hi all, and bye all" letter to family and friends, I give it a good work-out with a few blog posts.

Also, you can never really say in family correspondence what is going on in the darkest depths of your mind - it will only frighten your nearest and nearest to learn that you ponder search engines and blog interrogation techniques! A blog is therefore a great way to convey my inner techno machinations to imaginary friends in the form of enlightening and amusing articles.

Bring new design paradigms to the world

This is a rather lofty title that means I had this idea for a non-conventional web page but had no idea how to achieve it, so I got a couple of smart guys on the job. My contribution to the over bloated design world is a quirky blog theme with as few rectilinear lines as possible, a stupid iconized grin on my face and acres of white space. Feel free to run with the concept and with your next theme, go mad and save us from yet another Wordpress cookie-cutter template.

To prove that anyone can blog

I didn't know jack about blogging, except it was "hard" to make a go of it. Initially, I got sucked into the small SEO lie perpetrated by experts who want to keep the blogging game shrouded in mystery. They claim that for success you need smart SEO all the way, and that you should only link to PR4 and above sites etc. All I can say is...

If you want to write plenty about things you really enjoy and you play fair with everyone, regardless of their perceived ranking status, and you dabble in SEO and you like to get around forums and network with other bloggers and have fun, the rest comes. (As a caveat, I say this as someone who has a fairly good PR but not as much traffic as many sites with a lower PR!)

Earn loads of money

I am that guy living on easy street who wants a little extra fur lining on the sidewalk outside my palace. Got a problem with that? Wrap a brick up in a $10 bill and throw it through my window, see if I care. The $10 will be added to the donations pile in front of me, and once I have analysed the fingerprints and traced the owner, it will give me something else to blog about too.

Let off steam

Behind closed doors, I am the typical opinionated twat shouting at guests on Dr Phil, telling them to get a life. They can't hear me on the TV, but you can sure as hell read these blogged words. Hey you lazy, violent stupid losers out there, listen to Dr Ed. Start blogging like he did and get a life!

Now if that wasn't enough of a motivational and revealing insight into why I blog, then you need to go over to Blog Interrogation and read other people's revelations. There you will get a different perspective and learn something - and you won't be part of a meme either. Which reminds me, who wants to be tagged and write some more?

As part of a post on traffic stats, I mention keyword phrases that made me sit up and look and wonder, wtf? I will never cease to be amazed by people's imagination, and Google's search algorithms. A match made in satirical heaven, as illustrated by the following wordsets.

Keyword phrases from the depths of disturbed minds

Naked zwinky. How sad that not only do people create life like avatars of themselves, they want to know how to do it in the nude. Shiver shudder barf.

geiko.com Well, I guess I was flattered to appear alongside the greatest insurance company on TV ads today, but then I realised it is one of those instances where a typo throws up a "positive" result and you appear miles up the normal list of search results. The cheeky little gecko and irate cavemen come from from the ads by geico with a C. Maybe the company with a K do insurance against the trauma of reading unfunny blogs?

javascript curry song lyrics. Now this is getting way too surreal for me. And the whacky thing is, it wasn't searched for just once, by mistake. Someone seriously wanted to know about this topic.

What are the most bizarro phrases to come up in your search results?

7 months ago I tentatively hit the blog waves and I have been reading traffic stats ever since. I have noticed a few trends on The Pisstakers in terms of visitors, some good, some eye-brow raising, and one, bad.

The good bits are: increasing traffic, a steady increase in the the time that visitors spend on the site per visit, a drop in the number of visits per reader per day and some really cool commenters.

The bad bits are: some of the keywords people search for! Many are, shall we say, surprising. I have dispensed with a few of those in a post called Keyword phrases to cringe at!

Increasing traffic

After reading this next paragraph, perhaps you will be able to work out how many unique visitors I have had this month (up to 21st of May):

Starting in September, traffic rose from zero to around 600 per month by November. In December that monthly total doubled - despite Christmas spirit that ruins it for the last week opr so!. By March, the monthly traffic doubled again, and with spring in the air, April saw 10 times as many people visiting as had called by in any one of the first three months. (I am running around the stat counter here, so keep up!) So, here in May, I predict I will reach last month's total by the 24th.

The uniques count for May up to today is? Answer at end of article

More time spent on the site

I estimate that if you read this article and then go check out this post from beginning to end, you will increase the average time each visitor spends reading The Pisstakers by at least 10%. And because there is only text on the page, the hit on my bandwidth will be negligible!

Out of interest, how long do you spend on this site on average? If it is more than 2 minutes, welcome to the 6% bracket.

Less visits per visitor per day

I think this is good? Most newcomers can't believe their eyes the first time, and have to return later to confirm that they won't be coming back again. That number is going down and regulars are going up.

A weird stat is that something like 70% of visitors are first timers and about a third of them bookmark the site, but most don't return. I think I need to do a widget for them. The self destruct bookmark. If it isnt used within 7 days, it blows up your computer. What do you think?

It is also quite scary to think some really important people have taken a look at this site, and rolled their eyes never to return. Oh well, when we are famous!!!

More comments, and plenty of cool ones too

As a blogger, there is nothing quite like reading new comments. It is like astronauts finding life on Mars. They revel in the knowledge that there is somebody out there perhaps even bigger than themselves! So, thank you to those kind souls for making a sad blogger happy.

As an aside, I read that if you get 1 comment per 400 visitors, you are doing OK. A round of applause to the trend breakers here, then. And apologies to silent visitors who obviously read stuff here and lose the will to write even a few words in response, in anger, in sympathy. For what it is worth, I try to leave a few words when I call by, because like I said, even a couple of words makes a difference to morale.

A few more trackbacks

I didn't know much about Trackback, all very blog nerdy, but they are a good time saver and a neat way to promote your own posts too!

Say you already covered the same topic as me, and have nothing else to add to my post, just ping through your article to my comments box via trackback. That way, you don't need to dream up any thing new to say, you add to the "conversation" and you can lure people away from The Pisstakers to read your far more entertaining words in their entirety.

Lies, damn lies and statistics

So there are a few hidden insights to the state of blog traffic(king) here. How does it compare to your experience? And for them that care, I have had 5000 unique visitors , and 22000 pages read up to the 21st.

And that just goes to prove that Google page rank is not an indication of popularity! In Google's eyes I am more "valuable" than John Chow dot com's site last month. Yet he earned something like $10000 and had more than 20 times my level of traffic. Just blog and ignore the stats!!!

I hope that this week's Spring Widget star makes you laugh. Brought to you by Flabuless, a fun and full of life Australian lady who unashamedly shares her battles with bulges. Hers is a Rapidweaver site too, in case you were interested. If you aren't, sorry to bore you!

According to the rules of the game, you can have between 1 and 63 letters and/or digits in a domain name. Well, you never could have 1 number and now you can't have 1 letter either , because the rules have been evolving.

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It is all happening over at Web Analytics World, the hotbed for anything web and analytical.

Manoj is running a competition / carnival / interesting series of articles entitled The Future of Web Search marketing. The topic is set but the content and angle of articles is as open as the future of search itself.

The challenge seems to have loosened up a few writers, whose average post looks long. Interesting and thought provoking, to say the least.

The Thinking Blog

Ilker Yoldas has come up with an expansive look at the application of search in the future. Web 3.0 is not too far around the corner and it had better not be too similar to Web 2.0, unless the developers and driving forces behind it want to be labeled opportunist marketers.

The problem is, we users already need a lot of help making sense of the welter of data out there, and as the digital mayhem spreads, data search isn't going to get any easier over time. In fact it is going to get ugly, which means an increase in opportunities for search marketers. Solutions will require some out-the-box and novel approaches to web search - not more of the same, and although AI is not round the next corner, it isn't too many bends away. His article

The Idea Is

Shay Rosen looks deep, and I mean deep into the crux of search - algorithms. In his article entitled, The future of search marketing LSA on Search History he says algorithms are a bit dumb at the moment and are missing out on millions of opportunities. For the sake of a little more imagination and less rigidity, he argues that engines could propose ads and links to encourage users into a click or purchase when they least expect it.

He is not saying spam or trick users into buying what they don't want. It is cleverer than that. The search engines should be able to remind users about products they have been thinking about in general, but weren't thinking about right at that particular moment. Shane explains it well, I think. His article

SEO Space

Jody Nimetz runs through the A to Z of web search in the future. This is very indepth and although a little bit contrived, there are loads of smart observations and predictions. From ASK online communities, to blogging as the mainstay of search engine ranking, to Firefox as dominant browser (easy prediction!) he moves onto G for Google of course. He predicts they will be forever dominant, joining Yahoo to protect themselves from a monopolies law suit (which sounds the reverse of what would have to happen?) And then we see an idea that Joost will be the Google conduit for consumer-driven TV programing, before the article whizzes through the alphabet to Z, several Z's in fact.

He ends with quite a poignant remark, that Man will be searching long after Google fizzles and dies. Search is in our nature. Amen to that. His article

The Pisstakers

And somehow, Ed got in by donning his sensible, slightly ranty hat and proposed that Google will be the main tool of search, regardless of what people like, think, or want. As main search engine to the internet, the Googloids will also be the thread throughout web search marketing. Live with it, they aren't all bad, you know. Google have environmentally friendly power for their servers, they are creative and they aren't called Microsoft.

(And it just occurred to me, that the search marketing world needs a main dominant player. Just look at the mess that is free-for-all US internet service provision, compared to say, Japan, where central bodies make sure that internet service provision stays focussed. In the US you are lucky to get above 2Mb/sec, in Japan, they are uploading at 50Mb/sec!

Working on that analogy, the world doesn't need Google to have too many competitors, unless we want to hobble search marketing on the basis of some outdated principle that believes that competition, no matter how damaging, is good.) The article

So, the burning question today on the Web Tech section of the Pisstakers blog is: Windows users, do you still use Photoshop to capture colors?

The correct answer is AdesClrPickr

This is a loaded question that comes from Ades, a mega rich tech and money-making blogger from the Kyrgyz Republic, (that's right, THAT Kyrgyz Republic the favorite holiday destination of the rich and famous).

He knows that the answer for a resounding number of folks tweaking colors on websites is going to be "YES, I am a photoshop junky." But the correct answer should be, "No, I am cool and productive and use a color picker from Ades called AdesClrPicker."

What is AdesClrPicker?

In contrast to his other cool app, the Ades Nose Pickr, a web 2.0 Identikit droplet, the color picker is very easy to use. With a single click of the mouse you will be told the exact hue and tint of a pixel on a screen in either HTML, RGB, C++, VB and Delphi color codes.

You would expect Ades to play up the benefits of such a tiny app, making it out to be better than it actually is, but the color picker has plenty of mini features, proving that good things do come in small packages, all 1MB and change of it.

Color Library

If, like me, you have a terrible memory for 6 digit hexadecimal numbers and you are forever tweaking your site (especially when styling widgets), the Color Library is a useful feature, acting as a store, enabling quick reference to the color codes you use on a regular basis. The Color Library feature also allows you to change your colors and convert from one color to another. See, it isn't just a one-click pony.

A couple of drawbacks

Although I have to concur that this color picker really is a time-saving godsend for site owners and designers, it can't cater for a couple of mini segments of society. For instance:

Not all widgets need styling. MyBlogLog's visitor widget, for instance, is a bit of a fiddle to style, but some designers are so far ahead of the game (did I say Bonsai Studio?) that they code their widgets (did I say Funny Quotes widget?) to auto adapt to any theme, thus making AdesclrPicker obsolete. However, as most of us are left to figure stuff out for ourselves, make sure you have Adesclrpickr to hand for general use.



Windows only. Pah, Ades droplet only caters for 98% of the world. How elitist is that!! But if you have a Mac, don't despair, you have your equivalent StevesMacOSXColorPicker built into the Operating System.



Discloure: I am writing this so that Ades has a link about his product to a PR5 website, I mean, so I get a link back from his PR7 site, I mean, I wrote this to help you guys out.

What has search got to do with humor? Nothing per se, but it has lots to with visitors to a humor blog, and bloggers too.

As the complexity and sheer volume of the internet develops, info bogs down blogs and search becomes an ever important button. Your visitors will often be asking themselves these questions. Where the hell was that post on Indian restaurant hijackers? Do they have a post on Mongoose DNA? And you probably ask the same questions too when writing. How do you find out quickly? You go and search.

Search beyond Google

Once you get past Google, which is still The Pisstakers best in-house search tool, a whole new world opens up. However, rather than re-hash the wonders of Winzy, Swicki and Technorati, take a look at a series of quite sensible posts on web search that I have been developing away from readers but in sight of search engines. There are plenty of options for speedy, focussed or paying search tools that can be incorporated into a blog and hopefully I make a bit of sense of what is out there..

As it happens, this post was prompted by a trip through The Pisstakers Swicki where I am reminded every morning of search keywords that I could write a new definition for. Unlike Bobbarama who would have a field day adding to his DictioWary, Swicki request sensible definitions from me. I can't stoop so low, but if you want to beautify the web with a few words on the following, be my guest.

Dirty jokes and pics, convert Pantone ral 1925c and boring old clean jokes - just a sample from yesterday's 40 keyword searches on The Pisstakers Swicki!

Another week long exposé of a humor blog, this time CDP.com, offering a mix of posts on entertainment and personal stuff. Plenty of sharp images too. All this, courtesy of Feedburner.

I was looking through a webmaster forum and people were looking for yet more bloody stats counters. As if Google Analytics, and Crazy Egg, Awstats, Technorati, Alexa and Blog Juice and the rest of the unusual suspects aren't enough. Anyway, this freebie logger was recommended so I copied and pasted the code and came up with the widget below.


What made me smile though was the warning that came with it. Initially quite business-like, it soon deteriorates.

Note: If you alter the code above your account will be disabled or we may show ads on your site or a big image that tells everyone you have stolen this counter or we will call you names and take away your birthday.

I changed the font size.

free web counter

Will they call me names? Like Pisstaker, maybe?

One thing The Pisstakers can't be accused of is filling humor fans' eyeballs with Adsense. In my opinion, there is no need to be overtly commercial, as there are so many more subliminal ways to skin visitors to a blog . (That is a joke btw, there are no income streams whatsoever on this web site.) However there is a looping display box in the left side bar that could be construed as advertising space. I want to offer a spot on it to 7 humor-related bloggers.

Brohans currently loop through a few thousand times a month, as does number 9 in the imaginary dream team, the designer at Bonsai Studio. They pay not a penny, and apparently do get some traffic from this PR5 site of dubious descent.

If you are serious about blogging in a humorous way and you would be fair-minded enough to post about The Pisstakers from time to time, a free spot is yours for a few months. 28588 page views last month even if divided between 9, amounts to 3000 freebie views each, and in theory that number should rise. Contact Ed.

Mike, who is on a mission to make money online, knows a thing or three about business scams. As a former pen pal scheme schemer he must have learnt of a few tricks on the way. I emphasize OF because he wears a suit and tie and looks like the sort of guy who would rather give his grandma away for nothing than sell her for ill-gotten gains.

Don't tinker with Wealth Toolbox

Anyway, enough of the character assassination, Mike has a thing going against Wealth Toolbox, a business opportunity that he sees as a total scam.

Delving deep into the small print, Mike has made quite a case, and begrudgingly digs up the dirt on the company at every opportunity. Well, at least 5 times since he started blogging. For a better description than I could ever dream up with, read more of Mike's gems on how to spot and avoid Wealth Toolbox and Ponzi schemes

Agloco

This is another business opportunity that I have to tread carefully over, before stamping it into the dirt. Apologies for that emotional outburst, but I can't resist the urge. I am also about to further denigrate the Agloco wholesomeness, by questioning the potential for gain for entrepreneurs like Steve Yu and, to name but 2, Hfdzli, who told me in an exclusive interview on April 17.

I think agloco is not a scam ... I am 100% in support of them. I believe this program will be a success in just a matter of time.

...I know that the viewbar is still in progress. The Shanghai team are working 24/7 to make sure that the viewbar is working fine. And I believe that it will be released before end of this month.

The exuberance of youth is a wonderful thing, till it is quashed by on-line scams!

Paid to surf sounds nice and if you run the numbers, it is in theory a viable business model. So where is the scam, you ask? Well, where do I start?

A waste of human life

There has been an inordinate amount of pro-Agloco view bar promotion energy expended, and for months now it that has been hovering in limbo, awaiting the big release. This situation represents a scandalous waste of resources. Imagine if all that brain power and effort to enlist users had been put to good use, we could have all retired to Utopia by now.

Smoke and mirrors are damaging to the health too. Agloco Delusional Syndrome is being diagnosed in huge numbers. Not to be confused with a different ailment! If you feel happy then sad then resigned to surfing for zero income, as before, then you have Agloco Deficiency Syndrome. Treat it now with a dose of resignation to reality.

Consequences of being late

If the view bar comes, it is going to be such a late starter that it will face unbearable competition. Like pirhanas at feeding time - minus the feed - any number of enterprising internet gurus will poach their signed-up Agloco users and transfer them to a paid-to-surf program of their own. Sorry to plant seeds of dissent and scamability in weak minds, but in this day and age, if you don't act fast, you get swallowed by predators. Ask Hugh Grant.

Will Agloco tool bar ever come?

Perhaps of more interest to readers is the answer to the question, what if it never does arrive, what damage can we cause to the Agloco team? I am sure Shanghai has a few dodgy alleys and a supply of Made in China baseball bats you can borrow.

And if Agloco does appear in a timely fashion?

I will eat crow before reveling in the irony that only the top of the pyramid will do anything financially, while the rest of them brag about their $5 a quarter pay checks. Did I say pyramid, sorry I meant MLM, I meant ------

But not us, we won't suffer humiliation. We can enjoy the judgment call based on no desire to pimp out my browser with horrible green logos.

There is a whole tirade against Agloco if you want more!!

And finally

Is this is a semi clever variation on the 419 Nigerian scam? Bottom line is, I will gladly accept money from them (or in this case their customers) and send the scammers the difference, but if they pay me and then I pay them back the total minus my commission, then no thanks.

Any takers should contact the gentleman below.

Dear sir/madam,

My names are LI CHEN,chief executive officer for Delixi Group of companies . We deal on Electrical appliances and export into the Canada/America,Austrailia New Zealand and Europe. We are in need of representatives/book keeper who will help us establish a medium of getting to our customers in the Canada/America New Zealand, Australia and Europe as well as making payments through you to us.

Please if you are interested in transacting business with us we will be glad. Please contact us for more information,Subject to your satisfaction you will be given the opportunity to negotiate your mode of which we will pay for your services as our representative in canada/America and Europe.

Please if you are interested, forward to us your phone number/fax and your full contact addresses to the email address below: ceo_delixi2a@yahoo.co.uk

Thanks in advance, Mr.Li Chen