DISQUS

All the way to the top.

You did indeed totally thrash this topic. Thanks for letting me know Andy. So, are feedburner figure less indicative than a year ago (or more)?

Twitter and Facebook usage is per item while feed count has always been about whole feed use. If I break up my feed into 12 items and announce new items to another service as they reach the feed is the person that reads the item on the service reading my feed or just my headline?

How do we redefine reach?

Doh! Also YUM or APT-GET would have had your MySQL up to date in about 60 seconds. I'm wincing for you because I know what it is like to have a money grabbing company refuse to stop charging you. It's quite arrogant to assume that every customer even owns a fax. I don't - it's old technology and to costly for no real value. I'm surprised the US has no customer protection laws against this sort of thing. Odds are in the UK you could have alleged fraud and won if only on "unfair contract terms" of contract law - check if the US has a similar law.

Thank you Vlad. I appreciate your write up.

Once you switch you don't want to go back. That's what I have found.

Me that is.

Hmm... must try harder.

I went house hunting.

I have the Portege R400 which Toshiba gave me. It lasted about six months before it broke and after taking six weeks to "fix it" I got it back with a vanilla HDD and no OS (the R400 has no CD/DVD drives). Furthermore the screen had been opened up and there was loads of crap stuck between the LCD and the sensor screen. The whole laptop was filthy. I'd make 'em clean it if I could be bothered to wait half a year to get my computer back.

I recently lost some email but I never gave it another thought until you mentioned it. Now I'm locked in on finding solutions.

Some of these uses would look amazing announced on twitter. Look: http://tinyurl.com/cqc44b

In a niegbourhood fued one could use one to plant inciminating/offensive/smelly garden contents from a safe distance.

Also good when washing offensive terry nappies. One could launch water and soap (plus or minus naughty local politicians) from a safe distance downwind.

Imagine: Snowball Fight 2.0

I also wonder if the riot insitigators (aggitators) in and out of uniform at the G20 protest wished they could have had a few of those?

It's national normal month, dontcha know - it's when we very strange people go away to recharge the batteries with odd juice. Apart from me of course my camel was never on fire in the first place.

Is it me or is this Mark Kithcart a bit of a blow hard?

"I did block several IP addresses to prevent any one from LeapFish to comment on my blog until the time they will begin to show some manners." Too right too. If they start to mess about on my blog I'd ban their IP addresses too (I'd also publish that I'd done this and why).

I would not be surprised if legal council did advise. It seems the normal way for them.

On the subject of paid reviews - Chris doing a review and heartily recommending something are two different things. AI fully agree paid reviews do have a seedy side. That's the risk - just one or two reviews of "bad product" and your own reputation is dead (like leapfish's seems to be).

I can see exactly where this opinion came from and would have arrived at the same conclusion. As LeapFish comes from the same stables as iHype they should know that the "New Media" of blogs etc. runs squarely on reputation based largely on transparency. This non transparent method of operating coupled with the founders on going reputation and the companies past history would make these conclusions logical.

I should point out that no one outside of leapfish knows how the advert service works. This is the same of the more famous and trusted Google AdWords system. However Google has a lot more people trying to guestimate what goes on and they rarely (if ever) conclude fraud or misdeed. If LeapFish have a fraction of that number of people and a fraction of the detractors looking and some of those numbers are concluding fraud then your transparency level is wrong.

As a technologist there are things I look for with any "investment" based market and these things appear to be missing in the case of LeapFish. While not necessary they are a good bench mark of the usefulness and quality of an offering. Had Yahoo, Google or Mr Nobody come up with this system of LeapFish's and been viable I would, for example, expect the likes of John Chow to tell his readers how to get the most value and mileage from it. I'd expect it to become a popular ebook topic and I would expect to see Google adword, Yahoo ads and "home ads" (ads on the topic's own system) telling you how to get rich using this system.

I would look for 45n5 to make a video about it, for Caymon host to have a product, for Andy Beard to send me a stumble. I would expect Vlad to have an affiliate product from (say) click bank and I would expect to see it in the business and financial places I go.

I would expect to find podcasts talking about it with questions like "is x the next big thing?"

I would expect advice from CopyBlogger on getting the most from you x ad.

I would expect ProBlogger to write about it.

...

Need I go on?

For every blogger that says they are thinking something I would expect there to be between 7 and 70 other people thinking the exact same thing and twice that thinking similar things.

So when six blogs I trust say x is good I will conclude that x is likely to be good.

If, say, Chris Parilo said it was cool I would expect it to be cool but if it was not Chris would loose my trust. Chris has never lost my trust which is why his words carry the authority with me and many others that they do.

The same is true of Vlad. He has never led me wrong yet.

In fact because of a review of one of the above I am going to purchase some new equipment as recommended by said person.

I define myself as a working-class left-rightist or sometimes as a lower-class right-leftist who finds the centralists a bit lame. In other words I despair of elements of pretty much the entire spectrum leaving me to judge each choice on it's merits rather than my own political "ideals". That said I'm all for co-operatives, community mutuals and practical commune style living at a micro/village level and am actively involved with such things.

So make of that what you will.

So how is this working out for you?

It is always amusing for me when a big old provider such as Google makes a public failure to test cock-up. Still it's something to talk about.

benny is cyber squatting. ICANN have rules regarding that sort of thing you know.

Exactly. What we are crying out for is some form of token system. Any form of token system at this stage would be good.

Thanks for the extra link. I feel it very unfair for a person to miss-use anonymity to abuse others. The ability to be anonymous is a tool that has taken down corrupt systems it is not for attacking others.

While 5 is a nice idea I have doubts that the big players in the music industry would know what's good for them if it ran up and bit them. That's why economic crunches are good for the system - they help us shed unproductive hogs out of the market.

That's a very amused baby.