Having Vista Anxieties
Posted by Mitch on Jul 13, 2008
I need a new computer. That’s pretty easy to state. I want Microsoft XP; that’s not as easy at this time and place.
It seems that I missed the deadline. As of 6/30, all new PCs with a Microsoft operating system has to come with Vista, no questions asked. Some computers, if you order online, can come with both Vista and XP, but Vista is the big dog now, plain and simple. Suffice it to say, I’m not overly happy.
The Microsoft people have done a lousy job of convincing us why we want Vista loaded computers. They initially came out and said we wanted it because it had all these capabilities, and that it was prettier than XP. Then we heard the reality, that not only was the version most people were getting lacking the “pretty” part of Vista, but most of the computers being sold were deficient in power, so they couldn’t run the new operating system properly. And let’s not forget that it wasn’t compatible with an overwhelming number of hardware or software products that the masses already had. In other words, Microsoft had a massive customer service issue, which I wrote about on my other blog. It’s such a bad problem that, oddly enough, when most companies are advertising their computers these days, they don’t even mention the operating system until later in the descriptions; that’s a shame, and it’s somewhat disingenuous since the release of Windows 7 is pretty close to only being a year away.
So, what do I do? At least these days most computers are being loaded with Home Premium with the first service pack; that’s a step forward, but from the normal consumers position, is this much more improved than what we initially heard? I could buy the sucker, erase the operating system, and load my own XP professional version, which I purchased for another ungodly $300 a few years ago. I could go the route of trying to put together my own computer components and loading it myself, or better yet hope to put together a component package that still ran IDE drives so I could slip my own drive back into it; nope, that doesn’t make sense, since the reason I need a new computer could possibly be related to the drive (I don’t think so, but who really knows, right?). Or I could pay big money through a company that puts computers together independently such as Falcon Northwest, but at the moment their computers are a bit pricey for me. Or I could just take my present computer to the shop up the street to see if they can overcome a problem that Comp USA couldn’t for a year or so (before they skipped town, along with the $299 I paid for 3 years of maintenance) for under $500, which, as a friend of mine said, makes little sense when I could probably buy a budget machine for less than that that’s more powerful than what I have now; that’s a shame.
Decisions, decisions,… who to trust, how to trust, what to do,… I sometimes wonder if it’s better to not have any knowledge at all about computers, so I could walk in and just pick either the nicest looking one or the cheapest one and get on with life. Luckily, I don’t have to buy it today, so I have more time to think about it. Other than looking at RAM, what does anyone else think is the most important thing I should be looking for, and would you be balking at Vista right now, especially since it’s being forced on us?
Google 411 - Amazing
Posted by Mitch on Jul 11, 2008
What’s the 4-1-1 on Google? It’s Google 411, a new service where you can dial 1-800-GOOG-411 and get all sorts of information about businesses, maps, restaurants, and many other things. The link above will take you to the same video that’s below:
This is fantastic, but I have to admit it seems kind of unbelievably, well, helpful. As you see in the video, not only can you find out information, but you can then go ahead and make the call if you want to, or call up a map and go to the place. This is freaky; can these Google people really be this smart? Yeah, I guess so; wow!
This Is Now A “Do Follow” Blog
Posted by Mitch on Jul 9, 2008
Well, the things you learn. I was visiting one of my friend Sire’s blogs (no, I’m not writing the name, but if you click on the link you’ll see it), and he was talking about testing something called Comment Kahuna, which is link building software in general, but it gives you the option of deciding when you want to use “do follow” or “no follow” tags, which in essence means whether you want to give love to the people who comment on your blogs or link to your site or not.
Out of the blue, someone else commented that it was an ironic topic for him to be writing on, since his own blog automatically set comments up as “no follow”. I thought that was intriguing, and so did Sire, so we both asked this guy how he knew, with both of us assuming that CommentLuv was getting us around it. Nope; didn’t work quite that way. What he said to do was right click on a comment on our blog, go to properties, and if it said “external” then it was a “do follow”, but if it said “external no follow” then it wasn’t. I checked this blog, and of course it wasn’t heck! I guess it’s an automatic default in Wordpress, and I never knew it.
His suggestion was to go on Google and search for a plugin to eliminate the “no follow” if we were using spam blocking software, which I am with Askimet. So I did that and came upon a nice simple little plugin called Do Follow; can’t get any easier than that. I downloaded it, then uploaded it to the blog, and now this is a totally “do follow” blog; yay!!!
The things we can learn from strangers; thanks Dennis!
Firefox 3 Experiment Is Over For Now
Posted by Mitch on Jul 6, 2008
Man, I hate when things don’t go right.
If you’re a regular reader, you’ll remember when I wrote about my excitement that Firefox 3 was coming. Then you later read where I said I’d downloaded the program and was testing it, and there were some good things and some bad things, but the jury was still out.
The jury has come to a decision, and it’s not good. The Firefox 3 experiment is over, done, finished. I’ve decided that, for now, it’s just not worth the trouble and the things I lost. So, I’ve spent about 10 minutes getting rid of it, then getting rid of the latest update, and starting from scratch again. Well, maybe not all the way, as I didn’t get rid of my bookmarks or anything else, but you know what I mean.
What was the main thing? There actually was a main thing this time around, and it was the Google Toolbar. Seems it was incompatible with the new version, and trying to run Google Desktop was almost impossible also. I probably rely on that more than anything else, so that was a really big deal to me.
Then there were the smaller things. For instance, TwitterFox for Firefox 3 just wasn’t going to work. Actually, it worked for 2 days, and that was that; irritating as sin. I hadn’t realized how dependent I’d gotten on it, but I have. Another add-on I really like is colorful tabs, as I tend to have a bunch of tabs open at once, and the colors help separate them so you know where they are. That may seem odd, but it’s the truth. And there were a bunch of smaller add-ons and some of the themes I’d downloaded before that I liked that just wouldn’t work in Firefox 3 either; heck, my few Greasemonkey scripts wouldn’t work either, though all my userstyles did work.
And finally, it didn’t save anything on my resources, which is had promised to do. Yes, it was a little bit faster, and I really noticed it with Facebook, but heck, I’m on cable; that little bit of slowness on Facebook isn’t worth all the other things I’ve had to give up by switching over.
So, I’m back to my original version, 2.0, though I’ve now run the update back to 2.0.0.15 for security purposes, and my Google Toolbar is sitting there smiling at me. Sometimes we have to learn those lessons, and this is the first time Firefox has failed me. Maybe one day all will be right with the world once again; but not now, unfortunately.
Can A Niche Be Too Defined?
Posted by Mitch on Jul 6, 2008
I’m going to touch upon what might end up being a sensitive subject, but I feel I must.
There are lots of pundits out there who say one must have a defined niche so they know just the market they’re trying to get, and hopefully will have that particular market find them. I understand that in general, of course. After all, this blog, though I get conversational from time to time, is more about blogging, online marketing, and the internet. And my other blog is on business topics related to people and leadership.
However, I wonder about niche’s that not only seem a bit too defined, but also seem, well, “exclusive” instead of “inclusive”. In other words,by their general definition they seem to say to others “stay out, you’re not wanted”; at least that’s how I see it.
I’m talking about niches such as “work at home moms”, religious based, or ethnically based businesses. From where I’m sitting, I’d be immediately knocked out of two of the three, and on that third one, I’m not sure I’d identify myself as “only” being a member of that group because I think, if others had my same thought process, that it would keep some people from coming because they’d feel like I was part of an exclusive club that they weren’t invited to.
Of course I know that’s not really the case, but appearances really are everything up front, and any time you’re doing something that seems to be weeding other people out, or putting a stamp on their foreheads, you risk alienating a big part of the population and, of course, impacting your opportunity to generate true revenue. I’m certainly not saying don’t be proud of who or what you are. For me, as a black man in America, I’m not backing away from anything like that. However, I’m not identifying myself as a black businessman, or any of my businesses as black businesses, because I want to invite everyone into my digital or business living room, where I’ll serve up some virtual cherry Kool Aid and low salt corn chips and we can have a nice little conversation with each other.
Then again, some of this reminds me of a post by Steve Pavlina when he wrote about why one shouldn’t have a religion, which I thought was a bit over the top, and then he followed it with his post on feeling blessed, which was very nice but leaves one confused in some fashion about whether it was a good idea to write the initial one in the first place. My intention definitely isn’t to stir the pot; it’s to ask the question about how much niche might one consider as too much niche. Of course, if you’re looking to only work or market to specific people, then go about your business; after all, it’s what the separatists do.
And man, do those folks know how to market. Still hate them, but they’re everywhere! Overall, what do you think about this?
Some Stats From June
Posted by Mitch on Jul 2, 2008
This is something I don’t often do, but I decided to look at my monthly stats and post some items here, though I’m probably not going to post all the numbers that I could. However, the month has shown me some very interesting things.
For one, when I first signed up on Twitter, it seemed to help my blog grow, and my visitors doubled for awhile there. Supposedly, this past month, my readership jumped again, but Twitter had nothing to do with it, as the number of people who came from Twitter dropped drastically; not sure why, other than Twitter had lots of problems this past month.
What made my blog jump seems to be StumbleUpon, which is strange to me because not only do I not have an account there, but I’ve never even been to the website to see what it’s all about. So, that was a major surprise. The second surprise is that, according to Google Analytics, the second highest number of visitors came to the blog directly, no referral source. That’s actually pretty good because it means repeat visitors are coming back for more; that’s a good thing. Maybe they’re not commenting all that often, but they are coming back to look at stuff; thanks folks! And the third highest referrer is my business blog; thanks me!
And, it would seem that the people coming from my business blog are the most serious readers, or viewers at least, spending an average of 4 minutes and 16 seconds here. Hey, I try to write interesting content as much as possible. The overall average time on the site for the month is a minute and 48 seconds, which is about how long it should take the average reader to read one post, so that’s not bad either.
I’m not even getting into the business of talking about how much money I’m making here per month because, well, I don’t want anyone laughing, and I don’t want to cry. It’s not all about making money, though; just don’t tell the O’Jays I said that:
Time Warner Kills Newsgroups
Posted by Mitch on Jun 29, 2008
How did this one slip under the radar? Time Warner Cable has discontinued its newsgroup services as of June 23rd of this year. They cite it’s because of low subscriber usage, but anyone who believes that needs to buy swampland from me to build their houses on.
I discovered newsgroups pretty much after I got online over 10 years ago. It was the logical follow up to the old bulletin board system, and I liked it a lot. Took me a few years more to learn that I could access music and movie files through the newsgroups, and thus I’ve been able to circumvent the paid subscription services, which I enjoyed, even if I couldn’t specifically ask for content that I might really want.
In my mind, the truth is that the bandwidth that went into downloading these services, thereby bypassing Time Warner, who now offers its own music and movie services, wasn’t worth the cost anymore. That, plus there were some pretty unsavory groups out there that, a couple of weeks ago, many internet service providers agreed to stop allowing usage of, probably made this decision a no-brainer for the Time Warner people.
My only gripe is that they could have given some notice. It didn’t show up in any of their online newsletters, and it didn’t show up in the bills along with all the other junk they usually send. This one didn’t even make the newspapers or online news, and I’m surprised I haven’t read about it on any other blog up to now.
Okay, fine, I’ll take my ball and go play elsewhere; maybe. We’ll see; sniff!
Is It Easy To Comment On Your Blog?
Posted by Mitch on Jun 29, 2008
I just left a post on another blog. The blog required me to register first, then it sent me a password so I could fully register and add any pertinent information I wished to. It’s a Wordpress blog, so I’m familiar with it.
Thing is, the blog has been in existence for almost 18 months, and there’s never been a comment. I would pretty much figure it’s because the blog owner makes one have to register first. I usually don’t register for blogs, but in this case I made an exception. I don’t usually like doing it for three reasons. One, it takes time away from my commenting; when I want to comment, I want to comment now, while I’m thinking about it. Two, it gives the blog owner a feeling that they can start sending me all sorts of email that I don’t want or need; I’ll visit the blog and possibly read or buy stuff when I want to. And three, you can’t unregister; I tried on this one blog and finally just fudged an email address, because the writer was inundating me needlessly with updates, then updates on the updates; enough already.
There are other blogs I’ve left messages on, only to receive an email asking me to click on it to prove that it’s me. It’s easy enough to do, but it leaves me wondering if I want to continue dealing with it long term; I’d rather you just read the comment and determine if you want it on your site or not. A couple of times my entry has never shown up on one of those sites anyway, which left me feeling like I wasted my time. And, if I feel like I’m wasting my time, you’re probably not going to get any love back in the form of links or even being added to the blogroll some day.
I never had it set up that people needed to register for my site (though some do anyway), but I realized fairly early on that I was going to have to add something to stop as much spam as was coming through. I first loaded Botcheck, which took care of a lot of stuff but not nearly enough. I then loaded Bad Behavior, but the same was occurring. Finally I added Askimet, which is supreme, and it catches virtually everything. On my business blog, I added a plugin that makes people put in a randomly generated number. I haven’t had to go that far with this one, as Askimet seems to be doing a great job.
The main idea of your blog is to encourage others to comment; at least that’s usually the intention. You share your ideas, and you hope others will either validate your thoughts or offer something new. If you’re just writing for yourself, then that’s something entirely different; enjoy that. Some folks don’t have comments open at all; their choice. But if you’re going to do it, make it easy.
I Want You Back - Jackson Five
Posted by Mitch on Jun 29, 2008
The day my dad left for Vietnam is 1969 is the same day that the Jackson Five showed up on the Ed Sullivan Show performing I Want You Back. To this day, it’s my favorite song ever. I told my wife that if I ever go into a coma, this is the song, along with the rest of the Jackson Five collection, to play if she ever hopes I wake up.
So, without any further wait, I present the Jackson Five:
My Thoughts On Firefox 3
Posted by Mitch on Jun 28, 2008
I’ve finally downloaded Firefox 3, after saying how much I was looking forward to it. I didn’t make the record breaking download day, and I hadn’t even thought about trying because I was expecting there might be problems, and it turns out I was right, with many people being unable to get through at times throughout the day.
I downloaded it, then loaded it into a different folder than Firefox 2, so I could run both of them if I so choose later on. It immediately told me many of my plugins weren’t compatible with this version, but it found some that were, so I went with it. Then the browser opened, and I could finally take a look at it.
Initially, I didn’t see anything different, except my colorful tabs doesn’t seem to be working; ugh. TwitterFox also isn’t working, but it wasn’t working on Firefox 2 either; lousy update, and if it doesn’t start working I just might have to disable it. The theme I was was updated, but there were a few changes that prompted me to go in and alter some visuals. Some of my other plugins aren’t working all that well either; Greasemonkey is still kind of flighty, as it was with F2 (easier to say now).
However, the two things Firefox was supposed to do that made it an improvement is that, one, it was supposed to be faster, and two, it’s not supposed to use as much of your memory as F2. I’ll talk about “two” first. Thus far, it seems to be using the same amount of resources as F2 was using, at least on my computer. Now, I had turned off pre-fetching, which had made a difference on my computer, so that could explain why it’s comparable, but I was expecting something much better.
But when it comes to speed, well, it’s kind of a winner there. Facebook is the ultimate test for me. Facebook has always kind of dragged for me, and I’ve believed that they needed to probably do something with their servers. Maybe not; Facebook has never loaded faster for me. And going through all the pages,… man, it’s not hanging up anywhere. I then ran the test through many other webpages, and all of them are faster with the excepting of Ning; what is it with that site?
So, it would seem the reality of Firefox 3 thus far isn’t as dynamic as I’d been hoping for, but I like speed, and that’s a success. I know there will be updates coming, so I’ll be patiently waiting for some of this other stuff to work better. But it’s not bad as it is; I just want more.
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