Trust but verify!!! Good advice:

How to protect your identity and personal information online

The Adsense for Domains test has expired.  It is no more.  It has ceased to be.  I have stopped watering the dead houseplant under the ex-parrot.

After a month (and a few days) of my Adsense for Domains test, I am thoroughly underwhelmed.  I did cover the cost of a latte, so perhaps I shouldn’t complain.  The larger issue, of course, is that I have collected no data at all on traffic patterns and drivers that could give me insight on how to best develop these domains.  I could have parked these at one of the domain parking services with a lot less effort – or even thrown a one-page content site up and collect real data.

Final tally posted here.

While most domains brought in traffic – and fairly steady traffic during the test -  only three brought revenue.  Certainly not worth the two hours it took configuring the DNS.  Over the next month I will start moving these over to content sites and start developing them.  Unless anyone wants to buy them (wink wink nudge nudge).  As for parking – I’m moving on

There is no charge for awesomeness (Po, Kung Fu Panda);

Home with a sick child, watching Kung Fu Pand, eating ice cream, and occasionaly checking email. Just got this:

Phillip –
Regardless of how the rest of your day goes, here’s something to be happy about — today a honey pot you installed successfully identified a previously unknown email harvester (IP: 86.20.21.215). The harvester was caught by your honey pot installed at:

www.vtoolbox.com

You can find information about your newly identified harvester here:

http://www.projecthoneypot.org/ip_86.20.21.215

Don’t forget to tell your friends you made the Internet a little better today. You can refer them to Project Honey Pot directly from our website:

http://www.projecthoneypot.org/refer_a_friend.php

So hey – pop on over and see what you can do to take a byte out of mime..

The one-week results for my Adsense for Domains test is up – I’ve dumped the full results into a Google spreadsheet for those interested.  Summary is on the test report pageI have yet to make a buck.  I never really considered using domain parking before – I think I may be a few hundred domains shy of the number needed.

See the test report here. I will continue to update this on a regular basis -does anyone else have different or better results?  Let me know!.

While I’ve thought about using some form of cash parking for domains I’ve acquired and never really developed, its always seemed to be more trouble than it was worth. But with a tight economy, launching my own business, and a bit of curiosity, I spent this afternoon looking into it.

There is a lot of discussion on Google’s motivation. No one seems to be reporting on their use/success, so I thought I would keep a running review of how a small number of my domains did. I’m not a typosquatter, but I do have a small bunch of certification-related domains I picked up for a now-dormant project.

It took about an hour to modify all the DNS settings – and now I will update the test results for at least the next couple of months on a dedicated page.

About 10 years ago, I was in Chicago to deliver a Vignette StoryServer training class. It was cold. And I was standing in line, outside, waiting to get a bag of Garrett cheese popcorn.  The guy in front of me turned back a few times, then introduced himself.  He was with the Trib and had recognized me.  We spent a cold walk to the L talking about the impact of the web, the news, and the future.

I never got his name.  And time proved most of our speculations (and stock options) worthless.  But I do remember the impact that the Chicago Tribune’s web operations had on my own career.  They were Vignette’s first marquee customer for the old StoryServer product (which had its detractors).  Acquired from CNET – where it was called PRISM – it ran on Sun and was powered by Tcl and Sybase (or Oracle if you REALLY wanted to IPO well).  And after a time I actually managed a pale imitation of MVC using it.  While I had some exposure to data bases prior to coming to Vignette, I spent many a long night in 1997 with the Trib schema on the screen and “Database Design For Mere Mortals” on my desk.  By the time I was back getting popcorn in the winter of  ‘98 I was able to give the Trib guy an idea or two from our first forays into XML services.   I will always be grateful to those Trib folks that answered my first dumb questions and helped convince me to leave Detroit for Austin.

Several bubble-bursts later, I hate to see the Tribune  fall, although it looks like it was financial engineering, not the technical or business models.  I hope 2009 is kinder to us all.

Recently in Craigslist:

WordPress developer needed to make fun little blog (78704)

---

Reply to: gigs-abcdefg@craigslist.org Date: 2008-12-06, 10:16PM CST

I won a contest at Homeslice pizza, and now I get free pizza for a year. I want to have a blog where I document my year and all the random people I have pizza with, and I’ll need a WordPress setup that’s customized.I can pay you lots in pizza and a bit in cash. Lemme know if you’re interested and we can talk it over.

• Location: 78704
• it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
• Compensation: lots of pizza, a little bit of money

PostingID: 948126547

Originally uploaded by Al Q

Need to pay close attention to the Bloomberg crawl this week for the current pizza exchange rate.

Gotta love that Craigslist:

POSTING: We need someone to join our team. If you are creative and have some marketing savvy, we will compensate you will for your efforts. Please respond for further information.

RESPONSE: Okay, I’ll Bite

Email from Get-Rich-Schemer:

We are looking for someone who is creative and can generate traffic to our website. This position isnt for everyone. We are willing to assign the person who is agressive and creative and willing to join our team, their own promo code. This means any traffic that is driven to our site with your promo code will be monitored and you will be compensated starting today and will continue to be compensated as long as whatever traffic you drive to our site, uses your individual promo code. We are a company that is similiar to that of an auto broker. Our website is www.greatcarprice.com. Our target client is anyone who is in the market to purchase a new vehicle.
What we offer is simply this, if anyone using your promo code purchases our service, we will send you $30. Its that simple. You would basically be a marketing/sales rep for our business and we are looking for someone who is seeking a long term financially beneficial relationship. For example if you get us 1000 new hits per month to our site and we convert just 3 percent of those youve made $900. If you are up for this challenge please let us know asap and we will designate you with your own promo code that is used to track any business you generate to our site. If interested please respond with your contact information and request for your individual promo code.  Please let me know if you have any questions or need any further information. I look forward to hearing from you. Regards. Adam.

If this position does not interest you, please let me know as well. Thanks.

My response after reviewing his sad little site:

Normally this is called an “affiliate program.”

This site is not built for conversions.

Page Title: GreatCarPrice.com -Auto Broker- Car, Truck, and SUV Buying Deals Saving You Money!
Meta Description: GreatCarPrice- Auto Broker -We find you the best deals on the car, truck, or SUV that you are looking for, and at the best possible price saving you money!
Meta Keywords: auto broker car truck suv buying deals saving money

1. Page Title is too long (82 characters).

Meta Description is too long (155 characters.)

2 . Heading Summary

Total headings found: Second-Level (H2) Call Us at 214-474-1558

3. Domain Info: Time To Expiration: 5 months (Google and other search engines may penalize websites with domains that are set to expire soon).

4. Permanent Redirect Not Found

5. Google PageRank: 0

6. Google Indexed Pages: 9

7 . Last Google Crawl Date: November 12, 2008 @ 11:41 AM

8. Inbound Links: N/A

9. DMOZ Directory: No Entry Found

10 . Yahoo! Directory: No Entry Found

11. ZoomInfo: No Entry Found

12. Blog Not Found

13. del.icio.us bookmarks: 0

14. Digg.com Submission Summary

15. RSS Feed: Not Found

16. Quantcast: http://www.quantcast.com/greatcarprice.com (120 people this month)

Oh, and your header:

Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:04:47 GMT
Server: Apache
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Not setting any cookies there.

17. Cold Fusion Not Configured Correctly – Error on Form Submit:

at cfthankyou2ecfm847608245.

runPage(/var/chroot/home/content/g/r/e/greatcarprice/html/thankyou.cfm:9)

coldfusion.tagext.validation.IllegalAttributeValueException: Attribute validation error for tag CFMAIL.
at coldfusion.runtime.CfJspPage._validateTagAttrValue(CfJspPage.java:1274)
at coldfusion.runtime.CfJspPage._validateTagAttrValue(CfJspPage.java:1320)
at cfthankyou2ecfm847608245.runPage(/var/chroot/home/content/g/r/e/greatcarprice/html/thankyou.cfm:9)
at coldfusion.runtime.CfJspPage.invoke(CfJspPage.java:152)
at coldfusion.tagext.lang.IncludeTag.doStartTag(IncludeTag.java:349)
at coldfusion.filter.CfincludeFilter.invoke(CfincludeFilter.java:65)
at coldfusion.filter.ApplicationFilter.invoke(ApplicationFilter.java:225)
at coldfusion.filter.PathFilter.invoke(PathFilter.java:86)
at coldfusion.filter.ExceptionFilter.invoke(ExceptionFilter.java:69)
at coldfusion.filter.ClientScopePersistenceFilter.invoke(ClientScopePersistenceFilter.java:28)
at coldfusion.filter.BrowserFilter.invoke(BrowserFilter.java:38)
at coldfusion.filter.GlobalsFilter.invoke(GlobalsFilter.java:38)
at coldfusion.filter.DatasourceFilter.invoke(DatasourceFilter.java:22)
at coldfusion.filter.RequestThrottleFilter.invoke(RequestThrottleFilter.java:115)
at coldfusion.CfmServlet.service(CfmServlet.java:107)
at coldfusion.bootstrap.BootstrapServlet.service(BootstrapServlet.java:78)
at jrun.servlet.ServletInvoker.invoke(ServletInvoker.java:91)
at jrun.servlet.JRunInvokerChain.invokeNext(JRunInvokerChain.java:42)
at jrun.servlet.JRunRequestDispatcher.invoke(JRunRequestDispatcher.java:257)
at jrun.servlet.ServletEngineService.dispatch(ServletEngineService.java:541)
at jrun.servlet.jrpp.JRunProxyService.invokeRunnable(JRunProxyService.java:204)
at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$DownstreamMetrics.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:318)
at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$ThreadThrottle.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:426)
at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$UpstreamMetrics.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:264)
at jrunx.scheduler.WorkerThread.run(WorkerThread.java:66)

18. The following: “One lucky person each month will win a $100 American Express Gift Card.” does not have the proper disclosures, notices, etc to operate in the state of Texas (I’m just down the road from you in Austin).

19. So if this is you:

Administrative Contact:
Wolkowitz, Adam alw300x@aol.com
5736 franklin ct
frisco, Texas 75024
United States
(214) 642-0118

You either overspent on your web site or should be aiming for people more in the box.

PS

20. Oh, number 20 is “use spell check.”  But I will give you a link from my blog when I write all of this up.  In the future, I suggest you stick with people happy in their box.

PPS

You should have an attorney look over your wording on your “affiliate” agreement.  Trust me . . .

Think this would be a great screening test for potential fathers! Current dads – make sure you watch someplace where a tear and a stupid grin won't be noticed. A fantastic short film: http://www.responsibilityproject.com/films/tony/

It started with a strange email – “I told you so” and a link to an official Chinese government web site. I had to bluff my way through dim sum at Yank Sing, so I was completely lost – but when very smart old friends send you mysterious links, you pay attention.

The only English in it was – “we’re adding 250,000 users per day – how about you?”

I met my friend Kai Yunlan (normally haunting Singapore and Hong Kong) over breakfast fish and mixed fruit juice at the Rosebank. He was a Vignette customer, and since I was their training manager at the time he decided to read me the riot act over our poor Chinese language support (hey, it was 1999!). Later, we ran into each other again in London, both deciding that the breakfast buffet (complete with haggis) at the Stakis was “tai-ku.” I last saw him as we lamented both the Hilton purchase of Stakis and the proliferation of Starbucks all over London. The dot-com bust grounded both of us and we were limited to the occasional email.

So he really got my attention with his recent email – of course I wrote back begging for a translation. I didn’t know what to think when he let me know that a) the Chinese government was pumping 4 trillion yuan [about half a trillion $US] into the Chinese economy as an economic stimulus and b) he was heading to the US (including Austin) with a fat checkbook and friends interested in the best US e-commerce technology.

It will be great to see my friend and do some dinners on his expense account – guess its time to order some Garrett’s and drug him into a stupor. But the fact is that our current economic woes make US technology affordable.  Not for trade, but for acquisition.  We chuckle at our British friends when an Indian auto company buys Jaguar, but it will be something else entirely when sovereign wealth funds, Chinese conglomerates, and Indian holding companies decide that US intellectual property is the safest of investments.

Already, we find it difficult to maintain our own software.  When I take a look at my personal list of hot SaaS and Web Apps companies I am researching, they are all on the other side of the International Date Line.  Australia and New Zealand companies are becoming serious apps innovators, followed closely by Europe.  While US firms seem trapped by platform-itis, and the best US talent seems unable to create cool applications that have revenue potential, the rest of the world is buying our patents and mastering our open source.

Today (Sunday), the financial news pundits were discussing how much Larry, Moe, and Shemp . . . I mean the Big Three Auto Makers (yeah, Shemp = post spin-off Chrysler) may get in the economic stimulus package.  Having worked for one of them (Larry, uh, I mean Ford) I am incredibly underwhelmed.  This isn’t economic intervention – its wishful thinking.  Lets get the money to the Dells, the IBMs, the Oracles, and the Red Hats of the US.  Distribute enough to the old economy to help the workers, but let the Stooges go gently into that good night.  We may hate the socialists, but watch where Red China places its bet.  It will be in new technology, not old manufacturing.

Meanwhile, I’m off to discover if Whole Foods carries haggis sometime other than Rabbie Burns Day.  And some melamine for the breakfast omelets.  And of course, getting ready for:

过多饮用

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