A wise member of S-R recently said "I want the last 5 minutes of my life back."

I spent 9 minutes scanning this thread and have concluded I want at least 6 minutes of my life back after reading this...

The 3 minutes I'm willing to keep are the ones reading the comments about who exactly is running the asylum around here and Gypsy telling it like it is...

By the way, the pink and purple elephant was last seen sitting on my couch sharing a gallon container of Praliene's and Cream ice-cream with my orange and yellow spotted zebra and some slick red dolphin dude I've never seen before today.  DARN IT!  HOW MANY TIMES I GOTTA TELL YOU THREE NOT TO EAT THE ICE CREAM STRAIGHT FROM THE CONTAINER!  GET A BOWL!

(sorry...couldn't resist!) 

atwhatcost wrote:

I swear I was leaning over backwards trying to see if you might have something of interest to teach me.

Ahh, were you lulling me into a false sense of security before pouncing?

The method you took in writing that article gives the impression that, not only are you an expert in some very impressive fields, but that you consider yourself an expert in web development, or, at the very least, developing a new business online. You teacher. Me student.

Not my intention at all, which is why I said "In contrast to just relaying advice of an expert ..." Though I do subscribe to the tenet "the best way to learn is to teach", that is, the process of communicating to others really focuses one's mind and efforts on the important points that need to be conveyed. This method can be a bit of a baptism of fire, but I'm up for it.

I have no doubt that you're smarter then me. You really couldn’t find your own method to separate the wheat from the chaff? (You’re in this forum, so I figure you have.)

Sounds like you're pretty smart to me. Well, hopefully these articles will be that method. A bit unconventional perhaps, but hopefully worthwhile.

As a business owner, never mix religion ...

I made no mention of religion.

customers are the reason/the bread and butter/the center of your business

Quite right.

- It doesn't seem like you know how to market your business

You're right, that's what the wheat I am after, and why I am doing this.

... Every successful business owner U've ever met knew the competition, and marketed towards their strength to show the competitions' weaknesses.

I only wish I had the time and resources to do this in detail, it's a full-time job.

One thing for sure, you’ve already managed to alienate many on this forum.

Have you carried out an extensive, scientific survey, or was this communicated from some divine source (sorry, just teasing :-) ).

I know it is possible to have a business succeed, even when someone is nasty to their potential customers..

I trust you're not implying that I have been nasty, or impolite, at some point. I reread the posts just to check and see no place where that could be justified.

Actually, I have no desire to get into any tit-for-tat personal attacks or jibes, I'd much rather talk about the details of web site development and marketing (web design). You are, of course, free to slag me off all you like, but it is not going to get us very far.

By the way, the pink and purple elephant was last seen sitting on my couch sharing a gallon container of Praliene's and Cream ice-cream with my orange and yellow spotted zebra and some slick red dolphin dude I've never seen before today.  DARN IT!  HOW MANY TIMES I GOTTA TELL YOU THREE NOT TO EAT THE ICE CREAM STRAIGHT FROM THE CONTAINER!  GET A BOWL!

ROTFLMFAO

Just tell the dolphin to be home by 12, my giant pool of tomato sauce is starting to congeal and i need him to stir it again...

Ryan_steyn wrote:

By the way, the pink and purple elephant was last seen sitting on my couch sharing a gallon container of Praliene's and Cream ice-cream with my orange and yellow spotted zebra and some slick red dolphin dude I've never seen before today.  DARN IT!  HOW MANY TIMES I GOTTA TELL YOU THREE NOT TO EAT THE ICE CREAM STRAIGHT FROM THE CONTAINER!  GET A BOWL!

ROTFLMFAO

Just tell the dolphin to be home by 12, my giant pool of tomato sauce is starting to congeal and i need him to stir it again...

So that is what the red stuff under his left flipper is!  I thought he got into the tomato pudding I keep in my igloo next to the couch and was gonna kick him to the curb.  It's a secret recipe designed to wipe years off of your life if you eat a certain quantity but I've never tested it on animals before...only humans...

Oh boy! Am I glad I've been a bit busy....Sounds like the whole place has gone to ***t and everyones gone to the asylum - do any of the sane members have any other forums they could suggest where we can get back on topic??

oh relax, shush flipper.... FLIPPER!!!!

jmac, in a twisted but rather enjoyable way this is the equivalent of keeping on topic, some extremely good points have been made and none of them taken really seriously which imho is not a helpful interactive guide to any form of success... failure and lunacy (when realizing you have followed and implemented fictitious advice) can be expected if the proper precautions aren't in place... they aren't, so i maintain that we are still on topic and have just skipped failure - not a big fan.

Major M, it must really work! half of him is really moist and glowing the other half is dry and crackly "personal note... put dolphin back in water..."

ha ha ha.. you guys are out of control ....

I am thinking... maybe I will write and article called;

"How to put together and interactive article campaign"

You see DOC, I think you should have checked in more often and participated with the ORIGINAL thread you started. You kind of posted.. and dissapeared. This does a few things

1. Negated the point  - which was to discuss the idea and get a direction that all would support ( build up the excitement)

2. Loses faith from the gang early on, as getting to know them and establish interest/rapport is very important to get folks 'on side' with the idea


As you may have noticed, I have just a wee bit of weight around here. How? Well it's not my manly good looks that does it ( or is it ladies?). It's a lot of involvement here on the boards, in PMs and via email with many, many folks. It is showing respect and a true interest in their sites and well being.

I am PART of the community. You should really have gotten more involved... not just in YOUR project, but shown more interest in others... asked questions... gave advice.... just generally participated.

In the end, for the idea to be done right, I would do it another way... I think the approach was somewhat poorly thought out as well.

And isn't that the crux of the problem? How effective will ANY of it be, it the initial planning is poorly concieved. There are some pretty smart folks and business owners on this board. I doubt it has gone unnoticed.


There may still be some hope, I would suggest spending a few weeks here on the boards participating, getting to know everyone, and then approach the idea again... I dare say the experience would be good for you and your project as well.

I hope this helps some..

mobtex wrote:

2) MMS and email are different. No offence but manipulating IMAP in PHP to read email attachments and publish them to a homepage or feed isn't groundbreaking no matter what kind of spin you put on it.

Yes, it is reasonably straightforward. But there is a lot of potential for such a service. How far it goes depends on how it is marketed; that's the challenge. I am making some progress off and online, but am open to any  positive suggestions.

mobtex wrote:

MMS has some serious limitations except in Norway where to be honest I think it totally rocks. (Larger file sizes supported, premium MMS available etc) As it stands here, networks can limit the size the user can send or receive and from a content retailers perspective there are issues with protecting the content, handset recognition and deploying the right file type for the device.

Yes it is irritating that the UK networks don't give users the option for umlimited size. It is not a showstopper though, and maybe the networks can be educated.

mobtex wrote:

Credit where it's due tho, I like what your site does to the videos and I'm impressed you can take 3gp or whatever and render it to flash like that.

Thanks.

mobtex wrote:

I think it's more likely that your electric and gas meter with have a SIM card inside it in the coming years so it can ping data back to base.

Yes, I agree. However, that is some way off, so they may go for an interim solution, which would be cheaper than sending out a human, even if it did require some manual input.

mobtex wrote:

Citizen journalism is here already.

Yes, what I am looking at is commissioned images, and have interest from a major news agency.

mobtex wrote:

5) Phone cameras suck, 2mp seems the norm, it's poor. While I see the spirit of the idea with the weddings I think it would be better to drop a disposable camera on each table to be left behind and processed at a later time.

I have a Sony Ericsson w900i and I am pretty impressed with the 2mp camera (and they will get better). It takes good pictures with size of 1632x1224. Good for the web even when resized to 640x480.

The thing with the wedding angle is that they are intstant, as well as being shared. In my experience everybody takes their own pictures and they are not accessible by everyone, even the disposable table pictures.

mobtex wrote:

6) Where's the mobile version of your site where I can browse galleries and upload from my phone?

Not implemented as yet unfortunately. Would you suggest a .mobi compliant site?

mobtex wrote:

there's more people with mobiles than with PCs now.

Yes, but I got the impression from the Wireless Developer Forum in December that phone browsing is still relatively rarely used. I'd be interested in figures though.

mobtex wrote:

8) Software licences. I don't think you have a technology you can resell, you can try all you want but I'd not buy it and I suspect many others who wanted something like that would dev it in house.

Ok, I guess I'll have to cross you off my customer list. Some people will develop in-house, others may not have the resources or may want to save time and money.

There are many options for reselling. At the moment I am partnered with someone who has a network of 35,000 agents throughout the UK who can act as resources to take images for insurance claims, commissioned media images etc. We are also partnering with Sun Microsystems and will be part of their demo for the integrated claims systems in the financial services section of the SUN07Live conference in London in March.

If anyone is going to be there come and say hi.

ruperty wrote:

Yes, it is reasonably straightforward. But there is a lot of potential for such a service. How far it goes depends on how it is marketed; that's the challenge. I am making some progress off and online, but am open to any  positive suggestions.

It's just got even easier to do MMS to HTTP post as AQL of Leeds have just announced they can support MMS to HTTP on their shared long number (07766 40 41 42)

ruperty wrote:

Yes it is irritating that the UK networks don't give users the option for umlimited size. It is not a showstopper though, and maybe the networks can be educated.

LOL - the networks are a law unto themselves, as for educating them, well I can't see it happening in the near future. Look at the set up they have here, even when they all agree to work together on a solution like the Trusted Mobile Payment Framework they can't sing from the same hymn sheet. T-Mobile, O2 and Three will be using PSMS to bill, possibly 'silent' PSMS while Vodafone will use their M-Pay back end and Orange will use their Kiosk back end. Hrdly uniform and that's when they're trying. (More on mobile payments)

ruperty wrote:

Not implemented as yet unfortunately. Would you suggest a .mobi compliant site?

It depends on which you prefer, there are the Global Authoring Practices as set out by Luca Passani of Openwave as well as the W3c Mobile Best Practices, these differ slightly to the dot mobi compliance over things like internal or external stylesheets and other small anomolies.

I'd say it's worth going for compliance but at the same time I'd also say it's worth using the WURFL and WALL to be able to render the most suitable contents to the device.

ruperty wrote:

Yes, but I got the impression from the Wireless Developer Forum in December that phone browsing is still relatively rarely used. I'd be interested in figures though.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6309593.stm

Jason from Admob wrote:

- Mobile users avg 100-125 pageviews per month. (Usage)
- Average of 3-4 mobile sessions per month. (Frequency)
- Approx. 50% of visitors come back each month (Retention)

It is growing. As for the rest of it, well good luck. I know there are still more opportunities for mobile to come!

TheGypsy wrote:

I am thinking... maybe I will write and article called;
"How to put together and interactive article campaign"

Sounds like a good idea; I may even be able to give you a few tips

TheGypsy wrote:

You see DOC, I think you should have checked in more often and participated with the ORIGINAL thread you started. You kind of posted.. and dissapeared. This does a few things

I was there. But I do have a life offline too. And in case you're worried about me this weekend I am actually away on a Salsa weekend, so will not be going anywhere near a computer for three whole days!

If you look back at the original thread there was actually a lot of it that was off topic. And in terms of ideas and suggestions there was only one really,

Ryan_steyn wrote:

perhaps get a group of vastly different noobs to start

with which I agree and is part of the intention; I hope others do get involved.

TheGypsy wrote:

As you may have noticed, I have just a wee bit of weight around here.

Never doubted it.

TheGypsy wrote:

There may still be some hope, I would suggest spending a few weeks here on the boards participating,

Yep, that's what I am/have been doing, though I don't have the luxury of being able to do this full-time.  I realise you have doubts about the process, but can we talk about the issues, some which I have raised on the other thread web design  (the summary of my initial research). If you feel that none of these points have anything to do with seo then perhaps you would be so kind as to explain why, or point me towards somewhere that does provide an explanation.

I really would appreciate your views on these points, as well as anyone else who would like to participate.

mobtex wrote:

10) Pissing off the (or any) Gypsy isn't wise.

But, some folks take great pleasure in such things.

Did you ever hear the recent story about Dr. Heidi Cullen at the Weather Channel who runs the Global Warming program? Did you hear how she proclaimed that anyone who worked as a meteorologist that refused to sign on to the global warming "theory" should lose their license that enables them to work in meteorology?

In her world, there is only one right side to the "global warming" story -- her's. Everyone else is wrong. And, if someone is wrong on an issue, they should not be allowed to predict the weather.

I am like the weather man at channel five who questions the wisdom of the global warming theory.

I stand on the other side of the SEO aisle and present opposing viewpoints. Sometimes, I even say my viewpoints are theories or opinions, and show the foundations, right or wrong, on both sides of the issue. When I am done, the reader has been given enough information to make their own judgements.

Every time I do so, I am at risk of pissing off the Gypsy. And, I have caught his flame several times.

It  is interesting to me that although some of the really brilliant SEO minds in this forum sometimes rage that my words are words to run from, and at the same time, publishers for some unfathomable reason think my same words were at least interesting enough to share with their hundreds of thousands of readers.

Here is the deal, Doc. Frequently, this forum is a hostile forum. You don't want to play here, unless you are willing to get your nose bloodied on a regular basis.

Pissing off the (or any) Gypsy isn't wise.

Take my words of "non-wisdom" in any way that you would like to do, cause I am pretty sure that I might be pissing off someone right now.


They say that those of us "who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it." Do we remember Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) who was burned at the stake for opposing the viewpoints of the Catholic Church, by proclaiming and standing steadfast in the belief that the Earth revolved around the Sun and was just one of many planets?

In 1633, Galileo Galilei stood against the same charges of opposing the Catholic Church's viewpoint that the Earth was the center of the universe. Galilieo is said to have recanted to save his own life.

400 years later, we applaud both for having had the courage to stand against the church and oppose church doctrine. We applaud them for standing up for concepts that science seems to have now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Everyone in the SEO business -- who is at least honest with themselves and others -- is guessing based on their own observations and experience.

What one must ask him or herself is whether what they have heard makes sense or not. Is it possible that all of us SEO people are right about some things? Perhaps. Is is also possible that all of us SEO people are wrong about other things. Very likely.

I am not perfect... I am a human.

You may be asking yourself who I favor more as a personal role model: Bruno or Galileo?

Hands down, I would go with Bruno. I will bring the lighter fluid, if you will bring the match.