DISQUS

To everyone that thinks they got aweso.me, you didn't.

I registered interest in aweso.me in the landrush period and the auction is coming up in August. I don't know how you managed to get through GoDaddy to "purchase" it either. I looked it up and it told me aweso.me was unavailable.

I was pissed 'cause in the time it took Godaddy to process my purchase of weso.me (subdomains FTW) someone else got there first.

I wish I'd have thought of trying somewhere else myself, I just assumed that GoDaddy, being a big name, would be able to cope.

Glad you got yourself out of that mess! Talk about blogocide when you changed your url, that would have really killed it!

I take no chances with this sort of thing, and backup regularly, not just when I'm about to make a change. I use the wp-db-backup plugin which emails me a full backup of my database every Monday, though you can choose how often you want it. I would highly recommend this for anyone because of exactly the issue you describe above, but also in case of any hacking or other problems that could render your database useless. It is nice to be able to pay for a restore courtesy of your host, but much easier and cheaper to always have your backups to hand.

Don't do it again Doug ;-)

Yes I am :)

I didn't get the original iPhone and this one tipped the balance in favour of the iPhone (I really didn't want it without 3G for a start).

I ordered mine on Monday and will be waiting by the door for the delivery on Friday. I'm excited!

I love the huge guy who just broke the wall around him :D

Japanese game shows are the best!

Psst.... that's Survivor, not Foreigner ;-)

So you're not interested in this experiment then: http://www.flickr.com/photos/danpat/262640851/

:D

I do find it funny that people complain so long and hard about Twitter's downtime when it is actually up 98.72% of he time. It's only been out for 37 hours in 4 months and while it is more than other services, it is good for free!

As you say though, maybe the free model of the internet does start to spoil things. I have free broadband at home that comes with a telephone plan that I buy. The internet connection is fine, however, if like some people I have problems with it, my provider has less to worry about since I'll be getting what I paid for (ie nothing). Yes, on the internet we want everything, we want it to run perfectly and we don't want to pay for it, but sometimes there has to be a compromise and in Twitter's case at the moment it is that it doesn't run perfectly. I can live with that. I'm not sure I'd be so happy if there was a stage when you start to pay for Twitter in order to improve it, but you don't get that immediate benefit. Then you are compromising on two factors.

I hope Twitter can sort something out for a decent revenue stream soon and I think you are probably right in guessing that freemium will be the model, but in the meantime I wish people would stop complaining about the minute percentage of downtime Twitter has achieved when it is a free service.

http://www.tweetclouds.com/user_pages/philnash....

Time, New, Blog, Web and Work, in that order.

I don't know what to think!

Another tip is to write valid code! Those hackers don't tend to, so if something trips up my validator, I know something is wrong.

Thankfully I've never been hacked. Of course, saying that is only asking for it. Wish me luck!

Ocean's 12 was one of those films where it could have ended after 10 minutes and you wouldn't have known the difference, one of those films where at the end you think back over how you're never going to get that hour of your time back that was wasted in the middle section of the film.

Oh, and the Julia Roberts thing, just ridiculous.

Glad you liked it though ;)

Are you still tracking visits to your site from either BlogCatalog or MyBlogLog? I like MyBlogLog for it's stats as well as seeing the people visiting, though I see what you mean about taking up real estate on the blog. I think I'll be moving MyBlogLog down to the footer in my next redesign, but I will keep it about.

Also, if those two are not doing their job of bringing users in, what is? Obviously you are doing well, Doug, is it all subscriptions and search traffic that are bringing you the hits or is something else working for you as well?

Not only that, didn't one of your Blog Herald articles get quoted by RWW too?

Nice one!

Ha! Want to see an epic fail?

It seems engtech really meant all 13 of these words, "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb"

I don't know, I don't read TechCrunch!

I think FireEagle is interesting as it isn't a service itself, rather, it's a two way API. It is the services that will be built on top of FireEagle that will make it. Those are the ones that I guess you are looking out for here, where you can control who sees where you are, when you want them to, etc.

Once developers start to leverage the information from FireEagle, then we will see some interesting mobile, location based services and that is what I think you are looking for from a mobile social network, I certainly am!

So you guys are interested in the (mobile) services that will come out of Yahoo!'s FireEagle http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/ ?

I don't know of any that exist yet, but I'm interested too.

I agree with Michele, that is Search Engine Marketing, not Optimisation. The fact that Google's top organic result was a local site that looks as though it will give you the right details shows that natural search works.

Of course, if Interflora are paying for that top position then they are wasting money if they can't deliver to the location you need. However, I'm sure they maintain that top position on searches for delivery in the UK and the conversion rate on those is worth a few false positives.

Finally, if Interflora was the first thing that came to your mind, then coming top of the results, even as a sponsored link, is what you should expect.

How close to the edge should I go with my humour?

At least a video of the break fluid and bleach thing, I don't have any break fluid at hand myself!

Facebook already have a mobile friendly site http://m.facebook.com. Not forgetting that Facebook is perfectly usable in the full version with Opera Mini.

I think you are right and that Vodafone is going to either charge users to access it, or at least feature it heavily in their advertising for their mobile internet service. I remember getting wound up by old Vodafone adverts that claimed "The Internet is now mobile" when I'd been using my mobile to go online for years. The only reason they seemed to get away with it was because they had deals with Hotmail, MySpace and a bunch of others that they could advertise that you could reach their sites through the Vodafone portal.

I think Vodafone want to keep their users' internet access locked down to their portal still, which is not the way forward. Still, it's good for Facebook to draw in another healthy wad of cash.

I definitely don't follow enough people on Twitter (I found out about Heath Ledger on Digg, and I don't even use that much), but you've been added to the list now Doug!

Snitter is a great tool, I've been using Snitter at home and Tweetr (another AIR powered app) at work and I'm starting to thing about installing Snitter for work. There are lots of differences, but Tweetr counts down how many characters you have left as well as shortening urls (but I can't remember what with), might be better for your game!

I've put my entry in.

Who's the girl on the iPod though, and is she included in the prize ;)?

I'm sure you can, in fact I expect you to, have a go at being more risky Paul. I'd like to see this blog banned in several countries! :D

The MyBlogLog widget looks nice now, by the way. ;)

Welcome to your new home! Will there be even more risky stuff on here than the Segala blog? Is anyone running bets on how long you take to get this blog banned in China too? I look forward to all of it!

I would so definitely get one of those MacBook Bears. Jobs has missed this customer!

I once had BBC news and Slashdot in my feedreader, when I used to use Thunderbird for that. Nightmare! I can't imagine what you were doing though!

My tip would be, if you use a home page like iGoogle, is have the news items coming into widgets on there. You never have to read them, they don't build up, but they are all at your disposal and available every time you open up your browser so you're not out of the loop.

It's definitely a good idea to have rules for your feeds too, though wiping out ones that don't post doesn't seem that great. They're not getting in your way by being there, but they may return with even better content than when you subscribed.

I have to say, Doug, that I have been seriously considering losing the BlogRush and possibly MyBlogLog from my sidebar. BlogRush, has sent me 3 visitors, I think. 3? It's not worth it and even with the choice of colours, it sticks out just a bit too much for my liking. At least MyBlogLog is providing some value, however I do worry about the time for my page to load. I may even be purging my plugins soon too, just to optimise the page by removing unnecessary JavaScript files being included.