topbanner_forum
  *

avatar image

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
  • Saturday March 28, 2026, 4:35 pm
  • Proudly celebrating 15+ years online.
  • Donate now to become a lifetime supporting member of the site and get a non-expiring license key for all of our programs.
  • donate

Recent Posts

Pages: prev • 1 ... 1234 1235 1236 1237 1238 [1239] 1240 1241 1242 1243 1244 ... 1515 • next
30951
Living Room / Re: Digg, the wisdom of crowds, the hive mind, netscape, and competitors
« Last post by mouser on June 30, 2006, 04:04 PM »
From downloadsquad.com:

...
It's not entirely inaccurate to call the new Netscape (which replaced the old Netscape.com late last night) a "Digg clone," but it's surely not the first. But if I asked you how many other Digg clones are out there, what would you guess? Twenty-five? Fifty? Yeah, more like 200+. Blog 3spots has created a constantly-updated list of the Digg-alikes on dozens of topics and in dozens of different langauges.
...


from downloadsquad.com
30952
General Software Discussion / Re: GoogleX
« Last post by mouser on June 30, 2006, 09:27 AM »
nice, wonder why they got rid of it.. maybe just too hard to maintain..
30953
Living Room / Re: Digg, the wisdom of crowds, the hive mind, netscape, and competitors
« Last post by mouser on June 30, 2006, 06:30 AM »
a nice blog post directly on these subjects:

http://www.shmula.co...the-wisdom-of-crowds

Digg isn’t De.licio.us

Digg, I believe results in less intelligence. The crowd is imitative; there are many followers in this space. De.licio.us, on the other hand, is the result of truly independent choices: it’s simply personal bookmarking, made public. The assumption is that a human will bookmark what is useful to them; making that bookmark public allows others to benefit from your discovery. In contrast, Digg is very supportive of crowd psychology, which can be very dumb, mimicky, and in the end not all that helpful.
30954
Living Room / Re: Article(s) on Googles New Pay Service, controversies, and my experiences
« Last post by mouser on June 30, 2006, 06:10 AM »
and here's a wonderfully insightfull negative take on the new system:

Google Is A Very 1.0 Shopping Engine
With the launch of Google Checkout, Google is clearly aiming to be the world’s online shopping engine. The strategy has all the hallmarks of AdWords — Google doesn’t care what you’re looking for, what you find, or where you buy it — so long as Google can make money off of every step of the process.
Here’s the problem with this strategy — from the consumer perspective, Google is not an efficient way to shop online. Google’s blog mentions Starbucks are one of the merchants that signed up for Google Checkout, so let’s try searching for “gourmet coffee.”
There’s nothing wrong with the ads in the search results — each of these gourmet coffee merchants is potentially relevant. The problem is that I have no way to compare them — all I can do is click and browse, click and browse.

Google revolutionized search by leveraging the network effect of hyperlinks to determine relevancy — but the 2.0 efficiencies of page rank are completely missing from AdWords. Sure, advertisers compete on keyword relevance, but I as a consumer am unable to benefit from the network effects of the larger online shopping community. Which of these merchants has the best value proposition for people like me? Where do people like me most often shop? Which has the most relevant products? Which has the best prices?

Navigating Google ads feels like Yahoo circa 1997 — a lot of clicking and browsing in hopes of finding the right fit. The organic search results may be super-relevant, but the “sponsored” results are of limited value because the cost-per-click bids are too big a factor in ranking and there is no information available from my peers. The advertisers are in complete control. The ads are relevant to a degree, and certainly more relevant than the random interruption of old media models, but as a consumer, I’m still at the mercy of the system. And the return on my attention is marginal at best.
...

30955
Living Room / Re: Article(s) on Googles New Pay Service, controversies, and my experiences
« Last post by mouser on June 30, 2006, 06:07 AM »
here's a pretty positive take on google checkout.. from the standpoint of it being smart business for google as a way of leveraging their advertising and removing the possibility of fraud from their ad system.


from http://paul.kedrosky.com/
30956
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Locate 3.0 - great *FAST* HD search tool!
« Last post by mouser on June 30, 2006, 05:42 AM »
welcome to the site jmj!  great to have you stop by.  :Thmbsup:

i should also suggest to all those locate lovers out there, now is your chance to donate a few credits to jmj to show your appreciation.  so if you've got some spare credits, now's your chance

remember, to give someone some credits, just click on the gold coin under their name.
30957
Living Room / Re: Article(s) on Googles New Pay Service, controversies, and my experiences
« Last post by mouser on June 30, 2006, 04:52 AM »
very interesting post from Jellyfish blog - a service that is trying to do web advertising differently by sharing profits with users.

Jellyfish sounds like a really nice and different idea to me.. i wish them luck and hope that can compete against google.. i'm afraid they might get squished though.. definitely worth checking out:

Is this a fair trade off?  I give Google all of my purchase data (what I buy, when I buy, how much I buy) and they use it to benefit me by: 1) offering me the convenience of Checkout; and 2) giving me more advertising that will be more targeted to things I’m potentially interested in (to quote Marshall Kirkpatrick “Minority Billboards”).  And you know what Google gets?  They get to jack up their ad rates, charging bigger dollars to the companies that have to pay to reach you because you might buy what they are selling.   I’m pretty sure Google has done the math here and fully expects their increased ad rates to outweigh the cost of the Checkout service.  And you, as the end consumer will have no idea what that increase will be because Google’s advertising market isn’t transparent.

At Jellyfish, we don’t think this is a fair trade off.  Targeted ads are nice, but the ad’s Google will likely show you are from the advertisers that paid the most to get to you (Just because company X outbids Company Y to get in front of you at Google doesn’t mean that company X is the most relevant for your needs).  And most importantly, you won’t benefit from the competition that is fueled by Google having access to your buying information (or what we would call your historical record of buying intentions).   

At the end of the day, I think Google is doing some major free riding on the extreme value you create by allowing them to store and sell off the database of your buying intentions (e.g., your purchase history) to the highest bidding advertisers.

We intend to do this much differently at Jellyfish, because with our VPA advertising we always share back at least half of the advertising dollars that a merchant pays for your attention (both historical buying intention and present intention to buy when you search for a product at our site).  Thus, anytime a merchant pays more to get your attention at Jellyfish, you will get a direct, tangible benefit in the form of lower prices.  It’s the way we hope to show consumers that when it comes to their buying activity and attention, there is a better way.   

30958
Living Room / Re: Watch World Cup Soccer live online!
« Last post by mouser on June 30, 2006, 04:38 AM »
don't forget the "Online Markov Chain Monte Carlo World Cup Predictor Tool" that crono and i built:
https://www.donationcoder.com/wcp
30959
Living Room / Re: Cody Figurines
« Last post by mouser on June 30, 2006, 04:29 AM »
omg cody's crazy uncle came to visit - i snapped this picture while they weren't looking!  he even brought with him a pet dalmation snake!!!

30960
Living Room / Re: Article(s) on Googles New Pay Service, controversies, and my experiences
« Last post by mouser on June 30, 2006, 02:12 AM »
update:
i've successfully signed up donationcoder and added it as a payment item to the alternate donation method page on donationcoder:
https://www.donation...te/DonateMethod.html

it's not ideally suited for accepting donations - users can't configure the amount they want to donate.  i just set ours to $25 :)
30961
Living Room / Re: Cody Figurines
« Last post by mouser on June 30, 2006, 12:48 AM »
they don't look exactly like cody - i can only assume they are part of his extended family..
30962
Living Room / Cody Figurines
« Last post by mouser on June 30, 2006, 12:39 AM »
I bought some clay the other day and left it out on the table.. overnight Cody flew in the window and when i woke up this is what he left:

Images lost unforunately



i guess i am supposed to give them away to dc members or something
30963
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Email Attachments Browser
« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 10:50 PM »
there has to be an outlook extension that does this i think
30964
Developer's Corner / Re: VclSkin
« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 07:12 PM »
you don't sound stupid at all.. just take your time and figure it out.. you will learn more by figuring it out than by someone telling you how to do it :)
30965
Developer's Corner / Re: VclSkin
« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 07:11 PM »
well i must admit i've not used it in bds2006, just bcb6..

did you get it installed ok, and its just the demos you are having trouble with?

in http://www.link-rank...load/vclskinbcb2.zip
there is a sample in the "CB6 Demo" directory..  study that.
30966
General Software Discussion / Re: HELP! How do I download a movie file in a swf Flash file?
« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 07:01 PM »
I tried downloading some flash with with Flashget but it was not as intuitive as I exepcted it to be. 


it should be as simple as pasting the url of the .swf file into flashget as a new file to download and saying download.
30967
Developer's Corner / Re: VclSkin
« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 06:32 PM »
there should be a sample or something in vclskin -
once you get it basically working i might be able to help you figure out some tricks or stuff.. look for a sample in vclskin page or something. you'll figure it out !
30968
Developer's Corner / Re: VclSkin
« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 06:03 PM »
doesnt vclskin have a manual?
30969
General Software Discussion / Re: HELP! How do I download a movie file in a swf Flash file?
« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 03:34 PM »
jdd,
this is one of those cases where it's really far easier than you might think.

an .swf is just a file, the reason its hard to download from your browser is that your browser wants to play it!

so you can use any download manager to download an .swf, for example the now completely free flashget (http://www.flashget.com/en/download.htm).

note you still have to find the url of the swf file, usually easy but if you have trouble, try our own URL Snooper(https://www.donation...rlsnooper/index.html).
30970
Living Room / Re: Article(s) on Googles New Pay Service, controversies, and my experiences
« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 03:06 PM »
it's definitely worth a discussion.

i'm afraid thought that part of the review problem is to blame on me..  :(
several people have sent in partial reviews and are waiting on me to edit them..
i'm going to make a concerted effort to get it done in july so that we have a few reviews in july.

we really need to revive the review section.. i just don't know if adverts are the solution.. finding a print syndicator is probably a better solution to paying reviewers.
30971
Living Room / Re: Article(s) on Googles New Pay Service, controversies, and my experiences
« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 02:47 PM »
yet another post (you can tell i'm conflicted by this stuff!):

i think there have been some great developments that have come out of the ability of people to put ads on their sites - like the ability for good writers and bloggers to make some money that they otherwise wouldn't have.  i think it's so good that individuals can make enough money on ads to be able to do their own thing.

i just wish that people were more willing to donate directly to authors and bloggers rather than this indirect ad stuff.. ironically, i'm guessing that regular readers are not the ones clicking on the ads.. so the site is funded by non-regular readers who stumble onto the site.. weird.
30972
Living Room / Re: Article(s) on Googles New Pay Service, controversies, and my experiences
« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 02:20 PM »
i'll also come back to what i've said before - i'm a strong believer in focusing on incentives.
if your company makes money by making people happy - that's a nice situation, because your incentive is to do good, and in doing good you make money.

if celebrity and publicity makes money, even if the publicity is being arrested for murder, then you've got a situation where the incentive is to do do bad.  if blood is what makes people watch your news channel, then your incentive is to hope for war.

so my question with this stuff is, what is the incentive/motivation for companies like this?  if all the money comes from advertisers buying ads, then the entire incentive is not to build good products, but to please the advertisers.  sometimes this may be best served by making good products that people love - sometimes it may be best served by taking a loss in a whole range of markets in order to kill competition.

it's a very weird situation when revenue is based on advertising - it basically means what you are doing has nothing to do with the way you are making money - you are making money as a side effect of the traffic on your site.  maybe in some ways this is a good thing, because it means you might be able to do things that in and of themselves are not money making things, just because there are enough people interested in it to let you survive on advertising traffic.  so maybe it's a good thing i don't know.

it's very confusing actually.  imagine if we had 100x times the traffic on this site.. we could put advertising back up on the pages and never have to ask for another donation.  advertising revenue would pay for the entire site and fund all programming.. strange..  but then if no one was donating to support the software.. it would lose something i think.. there is something more pleasurable about the idea of people actively supporting the content on this site...

i wonder how this would look like in the real world..
imagine if your local bread shop had free bread.. you never have to pay for bread any more.. but when you come into the store to buy bread you have to wait on line and listen to some adverts while on line.. one one hand you get free bread and the baker still gets paid.. on the other hand, something just seems wrong about it..
30973
Living Room / Re: Article(s) on Googles New Pay Service, controversies, and my experiences
« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 02:05 PM »
i don't think they are putting out poor products on purpose.  in fact i think most people i've talked to have generally been extremely impressed with google stuff so far (gmail, maps, etc). so kudos to google.

i think the concern might be however, that if the only goal is publicity and advertising dollars, and the products are really just ways of getting attention and press - then it means that once a product enters that relatively quiescent state where it's not getting monthly free press, does it suddenly become the ugly stepchild and get kicked to the curb?

in other words, if everything google does is just to get attention and feed their advertising beast - then does the game become to keep releasing a new beta program every month, and let the old stuff just die and wither on the vine?  it's too early to know.

i guess i'm just wary about this whole advertising driven business wave we seem to be riding on.
30974
Living Room / Re: Fetching Cody
« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 01:54 PM »
30975
Living Room / Re: Article(s) on Googles New Pay Service, controversies, and my experiences
« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 01:06 PM »
just to sum up my interpretation of the claim of "predatory pricing", it means that
google is willing to take a loss on any profits directly from this service, so that they can hook in more advertisers using adwords.

in essence this is kind of my impression of google as a whole:
if the entire google company is really a giant machine designed to make money from their advertising, with everything else serving to aid this, is this something to be concerned about?  i'm not sure about the long term implications of this but it makes me a little uneasy.
Pages: prev • 1 ... 1234 1235 1236 1237 1238 [1239] 1240 1241 1242 1243 1244 ... 1515 • next