July 2007 Archives

Matt Cutts thinks there is a striking similarity between the Harry Potter font and the Yahoo logo It might be a long shot (don't Google engineers have day jobs?) but I can see the similarities if I squint enough (original post)

A Harry Potter fan has made available a translation of the latest (and last) Harry Potter novel. The translation, which is available both online and in PDF form, is probably not up to the same levels as the official version which will be released later this year, but shows a lot of dedication and commitment. (A quick scan of the PDF found several phrases in the original English that the translator / fan hadn´t been able to translate). Of course I´d expect that the publishers won´t be too happy and will probably initiate a takedown.. (via)

I've been trawling the 'net today looking for sources of legal avatars for use on the new film forum I setup. I got some really nice ones from AfterGlow, but I haven't had much luck finding other sources. Sure I can find plenty of avatar sites, but most of them are spyware ridden nightmares. I wouldn't mind paying for some decent avatars even!

Over the last few weeks I've mentioned Movable Type 4 several times. Byrne and his team made a release candidate available last night and the change log is simply huge! I'll be wiping my beta install and replacing it with RC1 later today / this evening ... Hopefully they'll have ironed out those bugs that were driving me mad :)

Following up on my recent post about choosing the right domain for a project, I decided on movieforums.eu So without further ado I give you MovieForums.eu The style / design still needs some tweaking ...

I'm planning yet another website (why not?) So I've registered a number of possible domains to use for it, but I can't decide on which one to go for. The domains I have are as follows: cinemachat.eu filmchat.eu filmforums.eu moviechat.eu movieforums.eu Which one would be best? Some of the words are probably very Irish, so I'm trying to go for something that's a bit more international in its appeal (see this thread for related discussion)

The Irish Internet Association's board is made up of people who actively work within the internet / IT industry in Ireland. The nominations are now open .....

The IIA is overseen by a Board of Directors of 12 individuals from the industry. There are a number of Board positions to be filled for the board term beginning at the conclusion of the forthcoming AGM to be held mid-September 2007. The number of vacancies available will be confirmed prior to the AGM. The IIA will be using an e-Ballot for the process of electing new Board members. The procedures listed below must be adhered to in order for your company Voting Member to cast their vote and for those interested in running for a Board position. The attached document outlines examples of areas in which Board members can positively and productively involve themselves in IIA affairs. The Commitment is at least two days per month - Minimum participation should include: - Preparation for all Board meeting - Reviewing & commenting on papers / proposals - Attendance at all Board meeting (normally 12 per year held in Dublin at 1700 for 2 hrs on 2nd Wednesday of month (i.e. Attendance of at least 10 per year) - Attendance at IIA Annual Conference / Congress and the IIA Net Visionary Events - Chairing AND / OR active participation in one of the working group - Attendance or participation at two or more of the other IIA (one in Dublin & one outside Dublin) - Use of there own personal or organizations skills / resources in the betterment / promotion of the IIA You should also familiarise yourself with the ODCE document - The Principle Duties and Powers of Company Directors - which is available via the link For your information the IIA Board Nominations & Voting Procedures are outlined below. 1. IIA Board Nomination & Voting Procedures 2. IIA Voting Members Update

Krystian has finally got round to setting up a photoblog. His photos have always impressed me, so hopefully he'll be posting some of the really nice ones he's taken over the last couple of years.

I don't buy many books, CDs or DVDs locally. I do buy the odd one, but the selection of books in the local bookshops is never that great, so it nearly always works out better to buy online. Over the last year or so I've been buying more and more from Amazon marketplace vendors. A lot of the more active vendors provide excellent service and great prices, so it's winning combination. I have had only two negative experiences. On one occasion a vendor sold me a CD, which turned out to be an LP. Kind of annoying, but I still buy from them, as it was an honest mistake. The more recent experience with a marketplace vendor, however, was more than mildly annoying. It has put me off that particular vendor for good. So, what happened? I bought two paperbacks from them. They arrived the other day and looked like this: As you can clearly see the books are quite mangled, with the spines being seriously damaged. It's actually quite hard to read them due to the way they have been completely bent and twisted. Naturally enough I wasn't impressed, so I contacted the vendor via the Amazon site. Several hours later I got a boilerplate response, which did not address my concerns at all. There may have been an answer in there, but if all they were going to do is send me this standard global response after a five hour delay, then their interest in customer service is quite questionable. Here is my message to them:

I received two books from you today order number: 736-4739634-1866549 Both books were not wrapped sufficiently and are badly damaged. Please advise

As you can see I specify the order number and the exact issue that I have. I would have expected a response that addressed this. Instead I got this:

Hello, Thank you for your website enquiry. Combined Orders: We regret that we are unable to combine orders for postage. You will receive a shipping charge per item. Cancellation of Orders we regret we are unable to isolate orders to cancel. If you wish to cancel an order please refuse it or return it to us in new condition for a refund. Delivery Times As stated in our product description, delivery is as follows: UK to UK 10-14 working days UK to USA 10-14 working days UK to Europe 7-10 working days USA to UK 10 -14 working days UK OR USA to rest of World 10-14 working days Product Information We regret that we hold no further product information than that shown on the website. Returns If your order is incorrect or damaged please return it to the following address, remember to include the dispatch note and when we receive the returned item we will initiate a refund: xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx This is an information only email and does not require a response. If this reply does not answer your query please resend your original email quoting "Zebra" in the subject bar.

Wonderfully helpful! I won't be buying from these people ever again!

Alexa have finally released an official toolbar for Firefox - Sparky. Up until now there were a number of unofficial "ports" of the toolbar to firefox, but an officially supported toolbar had not been made available. It's a testament to the growth in usage of Firefox that they finally decided to make one available You can see details of the toolbar on the official site

Yesterday morning there were new versions of the kernel for both my desktop and server Ubuntu installs. The servers, needless to say, don't have demented graphics cards, so there were no issues. My desktop, however, was a totally different matter. After the kernel upgrade X refused to start, which was more than a little annoying. When I upgraded this PC a few months ago (ie. replaced the old one with a new one !) I ran into some difficulties with the graphics card, an Nvidia GeForce 7900GS. That time "envy" was the solution, so I went back this time to see what I could find out. Envy has a command line option, so my issues post upgrade were solved by running this a couple of times until I was able to get X to behave. Unfortunately Envy does not configure Xorg to run at the highest resolutions possible, so you can either manually edit the configs OR re-run the Xorg config: dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg choosing "nvidia" as the driver. Restarting X (CTRL ALT Backspace) and you should then have a reasonably high resolution again :)

Ken posted about his apparent blog addiction. I scored a rather pathetic 87%. Maybe that's a good thing :) 87%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Free Online Dating from Mingle²

Techcrunch's Michael Arrington is reporting that JK Rowlings' publishers are issuing takedown notices to websites that mentioned the bit torrent story. So now if you mention that a file is available on bit torrent without even linking to it you get a takedown notice? I do not like copyright infringement and have every intention of buying a copy of the new Harry Potter book this weekend, but I find the publisher's attitude to be laughable.

Domain renewal scams are so annoying. The latest one, which was reported to us earlier today, is particularly nasty. I've posted about it here, but it was already covered here a couple of days ago. If you get any of those emails they are NOT from your hosting company.

I am a self-confessed Harry Potter fan I own all the DVDs in a nice little boxset. I have all the novels that have been released to date (some twice!) I will be buying a copy of the last book as soon as it is available in the shops (ie. this weekend) I have ordered the Royal Mail stamp set and am currently admiring the first few stamps that arrived today. Donncha, however, seems to have hit an interesting chord. A few days ago, as happened prior to the release of the last book, a number of people started posting about how the latest Harry Potter was available on bit torrent. Personally I didn't really care, since I can't stand reading long texts off a screen and want the familiar feel of dead tree in my hands. Of course the rumours about the torrents were a scam or a joke (depending on your point of view!). It transpires that the files in question are of a book inspired by Harry Potter / Jk Rowling and written by a fan NOT JK Rowling herself. While this is made abundantly clear in the comments on Donncha's blog every second comment is a pathetic plea for a copy of the book. Yes Donncha, it does remind me of Devil Wears Prada :)

Alan "SpoiltChild" has posted a very detailed explanation of how he runs an online business in a true virtual environment. It makes for very interesting reading, although I would have reservations about putting too much sensitive information on someone else's servers (I'm odd that way!) When I first met Alan about 4 years ago he was a designer. A very good designer, but a designer. Now he's branched out into a whole range of other online activities and seems to be making quite a name for himself. It's great to see that he's now reaching a point where he'll be able to move into a "real" office! Ps: His post is on Digg

Nothing like a bit of self promotion :) Full story here: Eurid accredits Blacknight Solutions

The Movable Type team have released the 7th beta of MT 4 in the last few minutes. Not only does this release include bug fixes it also includes "out of the box" support for podcasting, which should make a lot of people really happy. Byrne Reese has all the details.

Damien is interested in profiling Irish technology companies, particularly startups. It could be an interesting project, as long as he isn't swamped by fluffy rubbish

Most of the complaints you see on blogs about companies relate to relatively minor matters or people simply not reading the instructions. For example, I took delivery of a printer this morning. It didn't come with a cable. Some people would use that as an excuse to whine about how the supplier had ruined their week, when really anyone who works in IT should know that printers do not ship with cables these days. Whose fault is that? Mine of course! However if you start to mess with people's incomes then things are a lot more serious Google Adsense works well for me and a lot of other people, but from reading some posts elsewhere this would not appear to be universally true. A post on Darren Rowse's blog took me to mobilejones.com, where there have been all sorts of fun and games involving Google's customer service - or lack thereof (I've mentioned this more than once in the past) The post and its followups are well worth reading. In essence the guy had an Adsense account. He'd his payments on hold. He updates his address and requests payment. Google's system screws up completely and sends the cheque to the wrong address. Google admits they screwed up but flatly refuses to do anything about it. One bit of the latest post, which sums up the entire fiasco including the happy conclusion, is worth citing:

Google services accounts with millions of publishers. And like the Wizard of OZ, on our journey we hear about the goodness of the Wizard (Google) and that he can grant our wishes (for revenue) simply by the asking. So when we knock on the door of the Emerald City (Googleplex) only to find a gatekepper who chases us away, it’s not only frustrating but like Dorothy we question the goodness and wisdom of this so called Wizard.

(source) Whether the blogger got their money in the end or not isn't important. What is important is that Google's customer service failed to deliver yet again. If Google expect to be taken seriously in the long term they are going to have to address this. Normal people like dealing with other people. They don't like dealing with an anonymous team that doesn't have a proper contact number.

Since I was invited to the private beta I've posted a short review of DN Zoom One of my recent posts has also been picked up by CircleID (with my permission) which is really nice as well !

The Sunday Business Post Computers in Business has just launched a new blog. There's no real content on there just yet, but hopefully they'll make full use of it over the coming weeks and months.

About a year ago I posted about browser and OS usage on this site and search.ie Damien mentioned a new report on browser market penetration this morning, so I thought I'd have a quick peak at my stats. The results surprised me! The first image is the browser usage for this site. As you can see Internet Explorer is slightly ahead of Firefox: Search.ie remains true to form with the overwhelming majority of users running Internet Explorer

Dave "RedFly" Davis has released a handy little plugin for Firefox called Google Global. The idea behind it is simple. If you are doing SEO on your site it's important to see how you rank across multiple Googles ie. the country specific ones. For example, your site might rank really well in Google UK, but really badly in Google Ireland. With this plugin you no longer have to type in the address of each Google you want to check against - you can simply use your mouse to pass the search query against the Google of your choice. Handy! Other people have already been talking about it.

Apologies for the downtime - the RAM upgrade didn't work out as the new modules seem to be dodgy ....

There have been a few threads about print advertising on the Irish Webmaster Forum over the last year or so and if you look at the most recent one you can spot a trend.

A lot of web professionals are unfamiliar with print media and those that are doing print advertising probably aren't too comfortable sharing details of pricing etc.,

Up until 2003 I had never bought print advertising in my life.

I'd been involved in negotiations about it in a previous job, but I'd never been the one making the decision and spending their own money.

Print media advertising is very different to online advertising.

It's a completely different world.

A few things I have learnt over the years:

• Don't expect your first ad to have a huge impact
• Rate cards are open to negotiation
• Don't let them design the ad for you
• Don't take their stats at face value
• If the price isn't right walk away
• If you've never heard of the publication or seen it be careful

If you buy banner advertising or PPC you're probably used to dealing with relatively tangible figures.

If someone clicks on your advert you can track that click all the way to the checkout and see how much it earned you (or didn't).

When you do print advertising it's not that easy.

Even if you ask every single person who rings up where they heard about your services / goods you will always find that a lot of them won't actually remember. (I've been told that we ran ads in publications we've never dealt with more than once!)

You can, however, use things like custom landing pagers or coupon codes.

Rate cards are always an interesting one. When I first started out I actually thought that people were semi-serious about them, but you soon discover that you can simply treat them as a guideline - though if you're a shy wallflower you may not be able to negotiate as good a price as someone tougher.
Like anything - the more you buy the cheaper it becomes.
If you buy a series of ads the cost per unit will drop the longer the series is.
So the list price for a single ad could be a hell of a lot more than the price of a series of ads!

Our first adverts were naive.
We didn't have a lot of money to throw around and we thought it would be a good idea to let the magazines design the ads for us inhouse.

Bad idea!

Every time your company / business name is used in public - especially in an advert - it is a direct reflection on your business' perception.

If the ad looks cheap and tacky, what kind of impression are you going to give? (there is a cynical counter-argument to that of course - just because the ad is slick doesn't mean that the service / product is going to be as slick as promised!)

It may seem expensive to hire a professional designer, but it will pay dividends!

Don't forget - you can reuse an ad.

Readership statistics can be abused by a good sales person quite easily. You can either waste a lot of time trying to analyse the data they're giving you, or go with your gut.

After you've spoken to a few advertising sales people you'll probably realise that they ALL consider their publication to be the best in its niche and that their readership is worth a fortune.

Things to watch out for - actual sales vs. freebies

One Irish publication I know of has a circulation of thousands, but only actually sells about a 100 copies per issue.
Maybe a fraction of the people who get free copies are actually interested in the publication, but since none of them asked for it I'd have to wonder....

Choosing the correct publication for your ads is not going to be easy, but try to put yourself in the mind of the reader. If you buy a magazine specialising in making model cars you're probably not that interested in an advert for eye liner...

Don't be afraid to say no.

Sales people succeed, in most cases, by building up a rapport with their clients and prospects. By charming them to some degree.

If they're doing their job you may feel slightly guilty when you don't buy. Don't.

If the price isn't right or the product doesn't fit your market, walk away.

Don't be afraid to ask for sample copies of publications that you aren't familiar with. If the content style doesn't seem to fit then you probably shouldn't be buying advertising space with it.

I was just catching up on my blog reading, which is something I've been doing less and less of over the last while. Today seems to be a day filled with spam related news. Head Rambles has a very amusing post about a badly worded phishing mail. As can be expected he's taken a potential annoyance and turned it into a hilarious incident. Darren "ProBlogger" Rowse mentions a new "service" offering spam comments at knockdown prices. Yes - you too can help put people off blogs and blogging !! Techcrunch reports that Google is to buy Postini. Postini has been around for several years and is one of the better known email filtering companies. I wonder if they'll handle the transition better than when they acquired Urchin.. Only time will tell, but I'm not betting on it!

Francesco works in the domain industry as well, so he's always dealing with registries from the four corners of the globe. Today he posted about the error message that you get from Tongo if you are "naughty":

Error You filthy-minded little pervert! The Kingdom of Tonga admonishes you. Now go back and think of another name that you wouldn't be embarrassed to say to your mother.

Brilliant! (You don't need a degree to work out what you need to generate the message: ) )

Hopefully this clarifies matters for some people...

I'm down in Cork this weekend, as I have to collect a cat (don't ask!). I was down here last weekend as well to attend the Miss Ireland finals. Last Sunday's drive back to Carlow was very "interesting", as there were monsoon-like showers of rain that resulted in flash floods - aquaplaning might be more fun if I'd come prepared. I'm now trying to look out the window of my mother's sitting room. I stress "trying", as there's yet another torrential downpour accompanied this time by thunder and lightning. It's July - what the hell is going on?

I just posted about dublin.mobi becoming available later this summer. The big question is whether or not Dublin City Council will act on it............

One of the weaknesses of Apple Mac's is the lack of games compared to Windows based PCs. EA Games have announced that they are going to release some of their top titles for the Mac later this summer, so the number of reasons for not buying a mac are slowly but surely being reduced ....

I enjoy business. I enjoy pressure and stress and the lack of sleep.... Well I sort of do, but not all of the time. This afternoon I had to email a large number of our clients directly as a result of a programming glitch: We Made A Mistake - Sorry! I don't like it when we screw things up. It undermines the work we've put in to build up our business to date and I always take that personally to some degree. It's hard not to. On the plus side it did teach us all a valuable lesson - though I'd much rather not learn things this way. At least the expiry dates on our end should now match those on the IEDR's end .....

Copyright theft is wrong. I've been a victim, so has Donncha and Krystian. (to name but a few!) However, just because some people are being naughty doesn't mean that you can accuse people randomly of infringing rights. A story on Techcrunch this evening shows how wrong the guardians can be at times. Scouta received a DMCA notice for a video that was uploaded by the rights holder! According to techcrunch the notice isn't even compliant with the act, as it does not state where the original content maybe found. I sent Google a DMCA notice following on from my content theft issues and the instructions are crystal clear:

. Identify in sufficient detail the copyrighted work that you believe has been infringed upon (for example, "The copyrighted work at issue is the text that appears on http://www.legal.com/legal_page.html") or other information sufficient to specify the copyrighted work being infringed (for example, "The copyrighted work at issue is the “Touch Not This Cat” by Dudley Smith, published by Smith Publishing, ISBN #0123456789"). 2. Identify the material that you claim is infringing the copyrighted work listed in item #1 above. FOR WEB SEARCH, YOU MUST IDENTIFY EACH SEARCH RESULT THAT DIRECTLY LINKS TO A WEB PAGE THAT ALLEGEDLY CONTAINS INFRINGING MATERIAL. This requires you to provide (a) the search query that you used, and (b) the URL for each allegedly infringing search result. For example, suppose (hypothetically) that you conducted a search on google.com using the query "google", and found that the third and fourth results directly link to a web page that you believe infringes the copyrighted text you identified in item #1 above. In this case, you would provide the following information: Search Query: google Infringing Web Pages: www.infringingwebsite.com directory.infringingwebsite.com If you are sending a large number of URLs in one removal request, please also send an electronic copy of the notice to removals@google.com. 3. Provide information reasonably sufficient to permit Google to contact you (email address is preferred). 4. Provide information, if possible, sufficient to permit Google to notify the owner/administrator of the allegedly infringing webpage or other content (email address is preferred). 5. Include the following statement: "I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law." 6. Include the following statement: "I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."

Source So now even if you own the rights you run the risk of being sent take down notices? It's a bit like the abuse reports we've been getting for sites we don't even host!

It seems like Irish banks are popular with phishers this week.... The Ulster Bank phish is pretty dire:

For some other security reasons on how to protect your Internet Banking access from threats,spywares or any fraudulent activities and download software to protect your computer from becoming a victim of fraud

Why does that sound like something other than English?

Due to our new verification protocol, and for proper owner identification. We have issue new sort code for your account, please check it through your Ulster bank message center, Log in to your message center:

Ouch! Punctuation and grammar are obviously not this person's forte!

I'm signed up to several online survey services. In theory I get rewards if I complete the surveys, however more often than not I can't provide correct answers. Why? Because the survey designers don't seem to think things through. This evening's survey from an Irish company gave me three options for my city of residence. As I don't live in any of the three I would have chosen "other" - of course I couldn't and my only option would be to lie. What's the point of badly designed surveys like this?

You'd think Apple would have checked! Full story

Permanent TSB customers are the target of a current phishing campaign. The fraudulent website will ask for ATM pin numbers directly!

I really like Text Link Ads, but sometimes their system seems to have a mind of its own. A couple of days ago their system was kind enough to inform me that some inventory had been sold AND approved. I hadn't approved it, so what is going on? I checked my account and sure enough, the inventory had been sold and assigned as active. Although I contacted them about this glitch I never got a reply ... Has anyone else had issues like this?