Disqus - Latest Comments for pwnicholson

Re: Amazon wants to know what you're wearing (so it can sell you things)

Paul Nicholson — Tue, 04 May 2021 18:14:07 -0000

FYI: It's "sealing wax" not "ceiling wax".

Re: Google Assistant can now access your Calendar and Meet events from multiple accounts

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 12:19:57 -0000

Same. "account unsupported"

Re: Giveaway: Win one of seven EarFun Air Pro hybrid ANC earbuds (US, UK, DE)

Paul Nicholson — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 11:54:32 -0000

comment!

Re: Giveaway: Win one of 3 Fret Zealot LED guitar lesson systems (Worldwide)

Paul Nicholson — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 08:30:41 -0000

Hope I win! Cool product. Hope to learn Johnny B Good

Re: Hi, We’re Back and We’ve Missed You Very Much

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 10:24:43 -0000

Hooray!

Re: Motorola Says The Moto X Pure Edition Is Now Being Updated To Marshmallow On Verizon, Sprint, And US Cellular

Paul Nicholson — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 09:58:50 -0000

No, you're not. You're just the first one to make the comment. :-) Only one actually...

Re: Motorola Says The Moto X Pure Edition Is Now Being Updated To Marshmallow On Verizon, Sprint, And US Cellular

Paul Nicholson — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 09:57:50 -0000

Edit to reflect that it is the Style / Pure. It is the same device called different things in different places for slight variations

Re: Motorola Says The Moto X Pure Edition Is Now Being Updated To Marshmallow On Verizon, Sprint, And US Cellular

Paul Nicholson — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 21:59:37 -0000

This is, of course, the Moto X Style / Pure Edition (XT1575). The 2015 version. Not the original Moto X Pure Edition (XT1095) from 2014. Man their naming conventions are garbage. It would help in your articles if you could specify this though. Always takes me a second when I'm reading posts about this and have to go do the math on my own on which model you're talking about.

Edited to reflect the new model being a Moto X Style 'slash' Pure, depending on your location, thus part of the confusion.

Re: How to Run a Facebook Group

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 11:25:20 -0000

Ah, that makes sense. I thought you were saying Facebook was charging you something.

And yeah, in general I wouldn't trust Facebook with anything that was mission critical without a fallback way of contacting the folks in the group. They've already made major changes to groups over the years and could do so again at any time

Re: How to Run a Facebook Group

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 08:24:05 -0000

Not sure what you're taking about with the email and being charged for a group. I've never seen that and I've started and administered a few group, some with well over 10k members.

But I will say, you left out a few important points people should know about Facebook groups:

1) you can't control what order posts display. Facebook reorders posts in the group based on when someone comments on them. So if someone comments on a 3 month old post it will show before your post from an hour ago. Even if that 3 month old post still has just the one comment and the brand new post has 30 likes and 50 comments. You can also only have one pinned post.

2) join settings: If you allow people to join a group on their own, you will have spam problems. You can set it so that people have to request to join the group (they are then approved by admins), or can be added by any current group member that they are friends with (not just admins).

3) if your group is public or closed, then all of the posts can be viewed by anyone who views the group page (they just can't interact unless they are members). If it is closed then people can only see the About info (and maybe the pinned post... I forget).

4) if it is a public group, all of the posts that a member makes in the group will also show up on their personal wall and their friends will see it in their timeline. Some people don't expect this behavior and it annoys them.

4) If you make a group public you can change it to closed or private later. You can't reverse that though. Once a group is private or closed, it can never be public again. (I believe you can go from private back to closed though).

5) have multiple admins. If your group hits any notable size you'll be fighting spam enough that it helps to have multiple admins. Do this early. Make sure they understand when, how, and what you want to be allowed in the group and what shouldn't. See the next point for why this is extra important

6) moderation controls in groups are very limited. You can delete posts, delete comments, and add/remove/ban users. That's basically it. You can't edit other people's posts or comments. You can't closed comments on a post. There is also no moderation log. The only time you can see what others do in the group is seeing who added or banned a member to a group and roughly when it was done. You can't see if someone deleted a post or comment or anything else. There is no log of deleted comments or posts. They are just gone. As a result is very easy to get into a he said/she said argument about activity that has been removed. So again, it is imperative that you trust your fellow admins and that they understand how they should moderate.

7) if a group of pictures is posted together in the group they show up as an album. However, if anyone comments on just a single picture, then that picture will also break of and show as its own post in the group with no description or title. It can get really cluttered quickly, especially for buy/sell/trade posts.

8) Facebook has just announced a new 'selling group' feature that you can enable in groups that somehow is supposed to make it easier for people to post items for sale and mark what has been sold, what hasn't, etc. But those features haven't been enabled yet, you can only opt in your group for the feature for when it rolls out, so we don't really know what that will look like yet

There's probably other stuff too, but this is the short list. I would NOT recommend people start Facebook groups for their businesses unless you're wanting your customers to have an open forum for discussion that you have little control over. Don't expect to use this as a way to get your message out. If that appeals to you, then may God have mercy on your soul add you enter this endeavor.

(apologies for typos... Wrote this on mobile)

Re: How to Use PPC To Optimize Your Organic Search Strategy

Paul Nicholson — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 13:35:42 -0000

Generally I agree, but PPC data has to always be taken with a grain of salt. Certain target markets don't react well to ads. They might surf with ads disabled via browser add-on, or the might simply never click them. Similarly, some products might be in categories which are dominated by companies that have skewed PPC costs and results by basically spamming hundreds of keywords with high spend, low value ads that spoil PPC results for everyone. But that doesn't mean that organic SEO would be valueless for those keywords or in those situations.

So, all things being equal, PPC can be used as a directionally informative metric to help you know where to drive SEO. But a lot of companies need to look beyond that to get a better feel for their market and how their target customers behave. Drawing correlation between SEO activities and improved rank on certain keywords and a corresponding rise in converting traffic can be just as valuable for some customer sets. It isn't as clean and the answers come slower, but sometimes that's the best you can get.

Re: Say Hello to Ello

Paul Nicholson — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 15:25:07 -0000

Almost exactly like Diaspora, just 4 years later. Only advantage is that Diaspora named themselves a brand that they couldn't get the domain for (they were joindiaspora.com). But the aesthetic, purpose, approach, lack of functionality, etc...it's all just Diaspora 2.0 and I expect it to be just as successful as that blip in the social media history books was.

Re: Say Hello to Ello

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 29 Sep 2014 20:35:06 -0000

@pwnicholson - same as everywhere else

Re: How Long Can RetailMeNot’s “SEO Empire” Survive?

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 13:05:46 -0000

this is useful information! thanks! - http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Re: How Long Can RetailMeNot’s “SEO Empire” Survive?

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 13:04:41 -0000

So... no actual information as to how they did it, what techniques they're using that could be especially vulnerable? I was hoping for some useful information, not just a recognition of one of thousands of sites that are dependent on SEO for their bottom line and are (surprise) really good at it and (shocker) could be affected by Google changes. That's true of every nearly every affiliate business and for that matter the vast majority of online commerce. Any insights on their success would be appreciated.

Re: Vic Gundotra Visits Dallas to Talk Google+

Paul Nicholson — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 20:43:51 -0000

Thanks for sharing. Sounds like a great time and some exciting things ahead

Re: Product Review: Rescue Bots Beam Box

Paul Nicholson — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 12:01:09 -0000

Sorry, I only used it once for a short time. I gave it away to some friends because it wouldn't work on my setup at home.

Re: [APK Teardown + Download] Google Maps 7.6 Brings Improved Offer Management, Transit Options, And More

Paul Nicholson — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 12:20:13 -0000

ditto

Re: Stillbirth rates tied to lead in drinking water

Paul Nicholson — Thu, 26 Dec 2013 23:41:38 -0000

There's nothing wrong with questioning a study. Studies with insufficient statistical validity are exactly the sort of things that can be used to misinform and tell people that dangerous things are safe or that safe things are dangerous. It can work either way. Asking journalists to hold themselves and their sources to a higher standard all around will result in a more _accurately_ informed public. That said, as mentioned below, the detailed statistics are mentioned in the notes accompanying this article.

Re: [Update: It's Rolling Out Today] Android 4.4.1 Will Improve The Nexus 5's Camera, Update Expected To Roll Out Over The Next Couple Of Days

Paul Nicholson — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 12:04:39 -0000

agree but it is still confusing to users. quality issues are no more true for non-HDR than for HDR. If you allow zoom in one place, allow it everywhere.

Re: Trivia: Steven Spielberg Added Flames to Appease MPAA in ‘Raiders Of The Lost Ark’

Paul Nicholson — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 11:55:48 -0000

The story here is the image that was shared. That flames were added for the MPAA ratings board was well-known for years and has been documented on numerous DVD bonus features and other articles. Pretty sure it's on the IMDB trivia section too.

Re: ISIS Mobile Wallet Finally Launches On Verizon, AT&T, And T-Mobile, Probably Wasn't Worth The Wait

Paul Nicholson — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 17:10:34 -0000

does it still? Mine stopped taking Google Wallet this week

Re: ISIS Mobile Wallet Finally Launches On Verizon, AT&T, And T-Mobile, Probably Wasn't Worth The Wait

Paul Nicholson — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 17:10:16 -0000

They used to, but they don't any more. The vending machines in my office took my Google Wallet from my stock Nexus no problem until last week when it now fails out and gives me some sort of error about ISIS. I think they've rigged it for ISIS only, which is beyond stupid.

Re: ISIS Mobile Wallet Finally Launches On Verizon, AT&T, And T-Mobile, Probably Wasn't Worth The Wait

Paul Nicholson — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 17:07:28 -0000

The really frustrating part is that the vending machine at my office accepted Google Wallet via NFC until this last week, when it suddenly stopped taking Google Wallet from my phone and said "Can't Verify ISIS Payment". What's worse is that I'm a T-mobile customer with an unlocked GSM Nexus 5, but I can't install ISIS for some reason which makes no sense. These guys won't take my money when I try to give it to them. So incredibly dumb

Re: Motorola Announces The Moto G: A Competitive Mid-Range Phone For $179 Off-Contract, Coming To The US In January

Paul Nicholson — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 10:02:35 -0000

NFC included? Qi wireless charging?