Free Prince CD

Unbelievable. Record shops in the UK are complaining about Prince's decision to give away his latest CD for free in the Mail on Sunday. Their complaint is that they stuck by Prince in the past and consider this a kick in the teeth.

What?

They are complaining about someone who, let's get this straight, made the record business MILLIONS of pounds in the past, who has decided that the music that he has written, performed, recorded, should be distributed by someone who has paid him £250k . Give me a break.

The whole music industry needs to wake up. Record companies and record shops are no longer the central elements of getting music from performer to consumer. They can put tracks up on websites for free, they can give CDs away. The labels and shops realise this and are getting worried. And so they should.

Online music is continuing to grow, and it doesn't show any signs of stopping. The labels and stores have had years to prepare, but instead have gone after file sharers using organisations such as the RIAA which simply alienates the consumer even more.

We are at the point where the power in the music business is going to move from the labels back to the artists, which is where it should be.

Yahoo Search Marketing Upgraded

My Yahoo Search Marketing / Overture account has just been upgraded to the new platform, and everything looks good so far.. The expected 8 hour conversion time took place within 15 minutes. Not a bad start.

Then I find a killer good feature: Import campaigns from a third party (ie. Google). This is excellent. Google have always made it so easy to create campaigns and groups and keep everything very targeted. Yahoo, on the other hand made it difficult for small advertisers, as there was no way to import/export. If you were spending thousands per month then there was a solution, but that didn't help me...

Now the good point here is that Yahoo ALWAYS converts for me way better than Google. If I can get the campaign quality and control that I do on Google with the conversion rates of Yahoo, then things will start looking good. Fingrs x'd!

IE7 Suspicious Website Filter Oddity

Since IE7 came out, it has forced it's opinion of what is and isn't a "suspicious" website. Now fine, I don't think anyone has a problem with MS operating a system where known phishing websites are identified and blocked. The thing that annoys many people is when it says "this website might be dangerous". That decision is based on no published basis, and a number of websites that I have been responsible for have fallen foul.

It's possible to fill in the correct form for Microsoft and they will check and flag it as a clean site, but this is a load of grief and hassle. Why, when Microsoft have made a bad decision about one of my sites, do I have to go through the process of clearing it?

Anyway, the other day, I was building a page which was fine according to the filter. I tidied it up a bit to remove a few bits and pieces and removed an advert block for some ringtone service. Lo and behold, suddenly the page was classed as suspicious.

So let me get this right. WITH a lump of javascript loading a flash advert for a ringtone company, MS considers my site safe and responsible. By removing that line of code, my site suddenly becomes a potential phishing site? Can anyone explain any logic behind that at all?

When I get the chance I am certainly going to look into this further and create a redux version of "safe" page and "unsafe" page, to see what specific part is tripping the pass/fail flag.

For now though, the ringtone ad must stay!

..and the roof came tumbling down

Well, not quite, but it would have if we hadn't noticed. We had a leak. The boiler pipework was leaking above the dining room ceiling, but the first we knew was when BANG, the circuit went when turning the light on. We then noticed the wet table (not good on a highly polished smooth wood :-( ) and the dripping ceiling.

A quick call to a plumber/sparky friend and he had found and fixed the problem. It did mean cutting part of the ceiling away however, just to access the pipes.

We called the insurance people to find out what the score was regarding fixes to access work (which we are covered for, thankfully), and someone will be around in the coming week to check what needs doing, and whether the table is salvageable or whether the water has got into the grain and ruined it. So far it's all been very professional and helpful.

Having never had to use insurance before, we didn't know what to expect, but have been pleased so far. Well done Skipton!

I'll reserve final judgement until after the assessors have been and we know what can be done.

Ad money increasing, ad payouts decreasing

A very interesting story on Michael Gilmour's Whizzbang Blog : Where's all the revenue going?

This brings up the differences between the increasing ad money coming into the PPC market, yet a general decline in payouts. So where's the extra money going? Initially it looks like it's staying with either G or Y, but people are still digging.

Of course, if payouts continue to decline, in the face of increasing advertising money then a small upstart is likely to have the nerve to take the two big PPC engines head on and target the domain parking business. Other research has shown that parked generic domain names can deliver over twice the conversions of ads placed on active, content led sites with less-good domain names. If an new PPC ad company can get in there and share more of the incoming ad money, they will have people biting their hands off.

I concede that writing a whole PPC system isn't easy, but it's not impossible. And the money at stake means that this could soon be a viable option for the big domain holders.

Keeping tabs on clicks and visits

When you are running a PPC campaign, it can be annoying waiting for the online stats to update. One thing I have used in the past is to simply get my website to email me for every visit, with details on the IP Address, referrer and full path requested. The same technique is useful for newly registered domain names that you can self park.

My automatic emails provide a number of useful things:

• I know about site visits almost immediately, rather than when the online PPC stats update. (Useful for high bid terms!)
• I can see when I start getting referrals from somewhere new, like a forum, and jump in to comment.
• I can see what search terms my site is getting clicks from
• I can block the IP address of bad spiders that start to overwhelm the server
• For previously registered domains, I can see what pages are still getting referrals, and from where. Potentially useful for matching future content, rather than returning 404 errors.
• With a custom 404 handler, you can trap missing pages, and be alerted to them immediately.

Of course, you wouldn't want to do this on any big traffic sites for any length of time, as you would drown in email! But for new sites, high PPC terms, or specific test conditions, it is very useful - and far easier than downloading log files or waiting for stat reports to update.

Domain vs Search: The coming wars

There is a war coming to the Internet, but most people simply haven't noticed yet, and may not for some time. On one side, everyone has heard of Google and Yahoo! They are constantly trying to keep their search algorithms up to date and beat people trying to cheat the rules. They deliver millions of eyeballs to advertisers. They make a lot of money.

On the opposing side, and estimated to be getting almost as much traffic as Google and Yahoo! are the big domain name holders. These guys hold MILLIONS of domain names. They get traffic not by having good algorithms, or content rich sites, or any other whizz-bang features. They get traffic by having very good, generic names, which millions of people a month just type in, bypassing all search engines. And this worries Google and Yahoo!

There are only a small number of large name holders; maybe 7 or 8 - certainly below 10, and these guys, with hundreds of thousands of generic .coms each are starting to ramp up the PR machine, and trying to get the smaller domainers - of which there are thousands - on-side before the battle proper commences.

Now let me first nail my colours to the mast: I'm all for holding domain names - I've got a few hundred of my own. Some bad, some good. I'm certainly not of the opinion that anyone holding domain names must be a cyber-squatter, as some people do. If a good generic name is available to register then it's fair game - and there are still names available in either .com or huge numbers in .co.uk. If it's a generic name you want , and someone else has it, then tough - you either have to pay the price to buy it, or think of a new domain name.

Domaining isn't a dirty business. It's not something to be ashamed of. It's an area of the Internet that will continue to make money for the quick and creative, who can spot trends and gamble on new generic terms. And it's where all the fun will be for the next few years.

Portable blogging

We all know it's possible to blog on the move using mobile phones, smart phones, PDAs etc. but laptops are still generally better, due to better connectivity possibilities, bigger screens, keyboards, and the ability to bring up websites for referencing links etc.

But laptops are getting bigger all the time. Yes, we all want 17", 20" and bigger LCDs, but it kind of kills the notion of using it on the move in an easy manner. They are too big, run out of battery too quickly and get too hot balanced on your lap!

But then I saw an advert that had a Sony C1 generation laptop in the background, and decided to dig my C1XD out of a dusty box. And I'd forgotten how good it is.

OK, it's only a PII-400Mhz, with 128Mb or so, and a paltry 12Gb HDD, and it also runs Windows 98 (and not too easy to upgrade any option at a reasonable cost..) but it just feels nice. The screen still holds up well, running at 1024x480, for a widescreen type display, which is just on the right side of usable for writing and browsing.

This blog post is actually coming from the diminutive beastie, running on the extended battery pack (4hr 51min left!), using an old no brand wireless PCMCIA card.

The laptop feels fairly quick running Windows 98, and assuming that nothing too major is installed (can't see PhotoShop working), I think it'll be great as a dedicated blogging machine...

All I need now is too see if I can find an offline blogging app for times when an Internet connection isn't available...