Site Updates: February 2005 Archives

Long posts are tiring. And I'm always so lazy to tidy things up. I've still to mail the guy about the Sports Night/West Wing stuff. The idea of bitching about Broadvoice more today is making me squint.

On the upside, Tori's doing very well at the moment, certain unnamed reviewers are full of shit. The site is doing pretty well, I've tidied more things up, gotten rid of some awful tables etc. I think I'll give the ringtones a couple of months, but I doubt they're gonna do much. I'm still waiting for TheOCinsider Shop to get back to me. I'd be very happy to put Chrismukkah links on the site :).

I'll at some point do a bunch of pinned posts at the right hand side, basically things like my DVD links page etc.

I'm pretty happy to do my little TV things, it's just fun. That probably is the only category feed worth subscribing to exclusively at the moment I'm afraid.

Google seems to be taking its time indexing the site, they just did a once over of the main index, not the archives yet. But at least searching the domain returns at least that one page so far.

The various clicks are registering, which is nice - I'll have to wait till I appear on the search engines before my traffic goes anywhere worth mentioning. Hopefully the Broadvoice post will do something.

I think what I might do is move my Google search boxes where the ring tones are now on the individual pages, and the intersperse the adsense banners - the search clicks just don't pay as well.

The ads are now more intrusive on the Monthly and Category pages, only because there's that much more content on them. For individual posts, you only see ads if you scroll to check trackback or comments.

Just felt like mentioning that since Google's started indexing the site more properly, the adsense is showing slightly more relevant ads on the page. The double banner will probably take time to ramp up. Unfortunately, google also has a tendency to read the top index and serve ads for all the pages like it's the top page - annoying, so many many blog and RSS ads.

I'm now wondering whether I should just do away with the ring tone crap, but at the moment that would just be too much work. Adsense is actually working, there appear to be a least a trickle of clicks - god knows from where. I'm assuming that none of my behavious counts as clicks, since I've been trying my darndest not to click on my own ads.

But other than that, I've put up a subscription to the Economist, if only so I can have the cover on my page. It's the same price you'd get anywhere else for a subscription in the US - even on the Economist.com, where you could subscribe if you're in another country.

If you're a student or an academic, then things are different and you can try here. The academic price is $77 as opposed to the normal price of $129 via my link - and come to think of it, they don't seem particularly stringent about checking if you're a student or not, so whatever. For a while now I've just been loth to refer to myself as a student, so whatever.

The Amazon links are also sort of a bit of fun, to show Sports Night and Murder One. Unfortunately the Murder One cover isn't as nice as it should be, but it points to the full series set rather than the pokey season one set available on Amazon.com. I'll probably do a page for stuff like Spooks etc. Basically the stuff that I actually think is worth getting on DVD rather than leeching off http://www.the-realworld.de/.

The Comcast links were one of the few legitimate ISPs I could see - and 4 megabits is nothing to sneeze at, if I remember correctly their upstream wasn't bad either. SBC I'd be too ambivalent about to recommend anyway. Even if alot of the fault was probably my router, come to think of it.

Annoying thing is that I'd probably have to do 2 different pages, one for US stuff and one for UK stuff. But then I'm not sure I could recommend the MI-5 sets - I've not really checked them out. And anyway, shipping to the US from the UK is pretty okay, and things are that much cheaper without VAT, so...

In the interests of full disclosure, when I eventually do my search.ini tutorial, my customised search.ini will have my own affiliate searches on there - for amazon, google etc. That'd be what you help me out with for getting a customised dictionary.com wikipedia search.ini.

I found this little helper to create category based RSS feeds - so if you're just interested in a particular category, you can subscribe to the relevant feed.

You can find the list of categories as folders here, and just get the respective feed inside - index.rdf.

Pretty spanky if I should say so myself.

Feedburner Feeds: Television

Feedburner I find a bit annoying, but since it's there what the hell. The ads only really show up in IE, but then that serves people right. In other browsers it's just a neater page to browse - in feed readers it just shows the content. I'm wondering who would continually read in IE that they'd see the amazon links though.

I've been thinking for bit now that it's actually smart to put my adsense banner at the bottom of category pages etc. because, if they're reading through by date, then they would start at the bottom. Of course already my ardour for boggling 12 times a day has waned, but, well, that was to be expected. It was a lot of expectorant anyway. It's a pity that google isn't indexing my site faster, I'd much wish that the google search boxes be useful - but it'll happen eventually. At the moment it just shows nothing.

The political bent of the media focus on boggling is quite a bit binky, and it's starting to piss me off. The fact that blogads also seems to push that idea is a bit silly, I would think, like riding a wave.

I'm basically making up a post to try out Pingomatic, which supposedly pings a whole bunch of blog update services at the same time - and it can be automated through movable type. Traffic, baby, traffic :).

Is anyone else starting to get a bit annoyed by the advertising on the site? And it appears once you stop clicking on your own links (sorry google, I was just testing it out), they're not *quite* as effective. We'll see, it might just be a bit of a shock to the system. What is rather annoying is that comments are so low now on the page, I'm wondering if they're noticeable. Though I suppose people would be getting at them via the comments link if they see them on the main page. I'll just try an get used to it.

On a related note, I'm getting really rather embarassed by how inelegant some of the coding I do for the templates is - lots and lots of center tags.

Oh me of little faith. I'm now serving google ads. I think, until their bot crawls my new pages, the ads will be a bit limited. At the moment they seem to be rather tasteful public service ads. I've taken off the more annoying ads now that these guys have stepped up.

I refuse to put things above the fold - that's not the kind of site this is. The search box will be more useful, again, once they've crawled. It's also useful now to demarcate where the pinned posts end.

I'm now going to put ads all over my old blog, arr.

Now that I'm back in bed, let's just say I'm a little pleased by how tasteful the ringtone banners are, and how the other mobile content banners really aren't - I think I'm particularly happy about the naughty bits. I now have a minisite of my own featuring "adult" mobile content, happy day. I suppose these are particularly useful in that they aren't blocked by my proxomitron filters, or Firefox's CSS blocker. Though really these aren't going to pay for anything unless there's a epidemic of ringtone junkies coming here. I'm still waiting for adsense, but I get the feeling that's not going to pan out. Anyway this just helps me feel a bit more fun about things, so whatever. Lik-Sang's banner was just too annoying, so well, neh.

It's an affiliate program with Lik-Sang, I think I heard about them when they used to be on the Sharereactor page. I'm really only doing this for fun, I don't expect anyone would actually click on it, much less buy anything. And for me it's not an issue since it's conveniently blocking in everything except IE - so boo-ya suckas. I'm still hoping to find something that pays for advertising, not for results :). Adsense is so not bothering, and neither is blogads. We'll have to see. If I don't hear anything back from anyone good, I'll start putting the lik sang ads on the individual pages.

I now also sell ring tones. *Sexy* ring tones :).

This was my pitch to Blogads:

I write about a range of subjects, obviously some personal, but also on technology, media, books, television, film, hardware and software, internet technology, online shopping, VOIP; as well as whatever topics my readers request of me, including lifestyle, food suggestions, political and economic opinions. I write about things I know, and people trust my opinions because of it.

I am a technology evangelist, and my site reflects that. People who discover my site do so by links in forums, other weblogs, trackbacks - many discussing technology purchase decisions - and they come looking for information. My search strings regularly feature interest in television, software, and technology products of all kinds.

I provide information in the best way possible, in an environment that is sincere, un-self-conscious, personal, opinionated and anecdotal - in a form that is meandering instead of direct, engaging rather than alienating. People actually spend time here, figuring things out.

I'm quite interested in the idea of people bogging for profit. Eric Rice tries to do it. Robert Scoble does it so well that he gets an article in the Economist. I wouldn't mind being an evangelist - talking about things, using them, being objective in a way that's at least open, in a tone that's not hackish. So I've decided to start writing about the things I use. I want to write about ICDSoft, but they don't seem to have an affiliate program. I'd write about Opera, but there are tonnes of fanboys out there - I'd save that for later, and I'd want it to be a fantastic article that is able to enjoy it's own pith. So I'm going to write about Broadvoice. I'll probably put it in a seperate post later, and be sure to include the phrase Broadvoice Sucks somewhere so that people who are searching for the downside will click through. I think the line will be, Broadvoice sucks - sometimes. Or Broadvoice sucks if you don't manage your bandwidth properly. And of course I'd compare it to Kazaa, and do a Broadvoice vs. Kazaa thing. Then maybe a Phoneconnector section: using Broadvoice with Phoneconnector. Coming soon.

I'm also wondering if I should write about news more - have a news category, comment on articles etc. I'm sure I've done this in the past, but only in passing, and not surprisingly dealing mostly with the Economist. I mostly get my news from Reuters, scan Google News for headlines, sometimes go to the Post and the Times, occasionally Fox News. I'm just wondering how fruitful the endeavour would be. Of course Louis doen't necessarily subscribe to his own fiction that people actually read this/give a crap - all this, if nothing else, occupies me. If I'm doing it, and reading it, why not write about it. One of the big reasons why not is that daily news annoys me. But then that would be what I'm doing, parsing news I actually think merits it, much as the Economist is able to do by publishing weekly.

Working on 800x600 again, I realise how useful the drop down search in Opera is, since I can't have all my searches so readily available. Which reminds me I'd also like to do little tutorials, like how to do more with the search.ini - probably the most convincing reason I know that differentiates Opera from Firefox. I am quite happy to leave the RSS entry up though, since that's something that needs more exposure. I'd probably end up pinning a post that acts as an index of important tech articles - or some such. I suppose I could move the entry to Articles, but then I'd feel the need to polish it up a bit.

Just to say though, part of the appeal of writing about the news is also to keep a kind of record - I'm wondering whether silence really is that compelling a response to activity.

A new category for file sharing updates perhaps? Links to sites, new alternatives as the old ones get bent over? Perhaps trying out newer apps like DC++ and the Gnutella 2 network?

Hi. You found me by smurfing the interweb, or you know me. Just below this post are a couple of "pinned" posts, that I want to keep at the top, either because they're important, or they're particularly useful. Previous pinned posts can be found under the category "Previously Pinned".

After those posts, the rest are arranged as per normal, the latest coming first. You can also browse the most recent posts by the menu on the right, or via categories or by date.

The easiest way to recieve updates is to use my RSS feed, which you can access from your address bar if you're using Opera, or under "syndication" on the bottom right of the main page, or you can just download my Klip to use with Serence's Klipfolio. The search function/local google search both do a rather good job of indexing the site, so they can be useful as well.

If you're new here you might want to take a look at a number of things, for instance the main site page: www.fallingbeam.org, also accessible via the link on the right side menu on the main page. There's also an e-mail link, and a link to the forums.

Comments are enabled on posts, but I moderate all anonymous comments - if you want you can get a TypeKey account, which gets around the need for moderation.

I think I will also consider finding the plugin that allows random entries - make my front page more of a introduction rather than just being the most recent posts. People who actually care or bother would be coming in via the RSS feed anyway, and there's always the Recent Entries thing. And the first pinned post could be a sort of About:Bog thing. Things to be considered.

I'm concerned that people understand the nature of the pinned posts - that they don't just see that the top post hasn't changed and move on. It'd be nice to be able to set them off somehow, but I can't think of anything pleasing/easy. I suppose it doesn't help that the first view doesn't have a pinned post and a non-pinned post. I suppose the best way of viewing the site would really be through the RSS feed, and perhaps via the monthly archives.

Which reminds me that the google ads would have to be at the bottom of the individual post pages.

What the pinned posts help with is that the front page won't be so empty that way - even when this incontinence stops.

I'm really going to have to find the time to do a little search.ini proselytizing. Things like my own search.ini, ctrl-d, highlight right click etc.

I'm considering adding Google ads to the site, just under the "powered by movable type" link on the right. It'd be unobtrusive, and you'd actually have to be vaguely interested in the site to encounter the ads. I'd probably end up having to put ads on the individual archives etc. if only so that people who keep bumping into me via search incur some opportunity cost. I'd probably tailor it to fit in as much to the site as possible. I might then also end up putting links to the actual posts people are looking for - things like finding subtitles etc.

Of course you realise that like all other forms of advertising on this site, it's just for fun - if I actually got any money from any of it I'd be more than surprised. Which is probably why I wouldn't insert adverts into RSS feeds, or those fucking annoying ads that pop up as if they were links in your site text - evil evil evil.

Yay, I've fixed the CSS so that those god-damn trackback and comment links aren't so obtrusive, and the side panel is more to my liking. Post titles are also bigger. I was going to mess with the headline, but I'm now quite fond of it wedged in the corner, the lower case making it seem more insignificant.

In other words, isn't my site even more handsome? I get the feeling that using odd values for the width of the panels is making the calender look squashed - I'll have to look in to it, but I'm leaning towards not giving a crap. Or maybe extending the range of the non-background area.

Louis has finally figured out how to pin important entries to the beginning of his bog!!! The required plugin can be found here. Louis is also such a hack at doing these things. But yes, there will now be about 2 pinned posts at the beginning of this page, everything below that is as per normal. Just be glad I didn't refer to them as "sticky".

It is a bit crazy that this requires you to hack around in the templates, but it's done, so I'm not complaining. For those looking at this as trackback, using this is pretty simple - try adding the sample code from the original "MTEntry" post to your Main Index Template - just below the line div class="content". Once you rebuild you'll see how it turns out.

If you want your posts to look like they normally would, just copy and paste everything between the MTEntries tags within MTEntry - it's that simple. If you want more than one post on top, just duplicate. That is my super-inelegant way of doing it. Comment if you need help.

Oh, and just in case you're interested, I have turned on the Creative Commons license that comes with Movable Type, you can have a look at the button for it on the right. It just seems sensible really - I honestly couldn't care less if my writing was circulated for personal use, as long as it was attributed to me. Books are really only useful to me because they're good at what they do. Like a paper subscription to the Economist - it's really a service that I subscribe to. My future publishers take note.

Oh, and Su-lin said spanky to me - I'm very gratified.

I've also decided to enable Trackback, just for the heck of it.

As of 1.2, my klip updates correctly. In order to get 1.2, which will update by itself in the future, click on the klip button on the right. Thanks to the people at the Serence forums, the actual post that discusses the functionality is here.

Oh, and the link for Opera is now fixed - it sends you to the download page, but it also gives you my reference no. I'm still not that sure it works, but it's the principle of it. For a while I had forgotten to put in my ID no. which means I was doing it in vain. Not that that's not what I'm doing now.

I appear to be as done as I want to be at the moment. My links are done, the RSS feed has been changed, you can get the new klip from the klip button. I'm not sure why it's not updating automatically. I've decided the Opera button will now point to the download page.

Must remember to check up on my stats, and protect the folder.

Oh my. I've just upgraded fully to Movable Type 3.15!!!

Better yet, I've even been able to import (finally) my blogspot entries, so it's all together now in this one place. The last post was just for completeness, I'm now sticking with MT 3. Okay now to finish things up, I'm still going to have to fix things like links and the RSS feed.

Yay!