Archive for the 'Computers' Category

The Most Popular Article on So It’s Come To This: Is…

Published
by
C.G.
on June 20, 2007
in Computers and Site
. 0 Comments

My site isn’t super popular - I only get between 460 and 490 page views a month; my reports from Google Analytics tell me that.  Most of my readers are from North America - about 30 or so a month from Canada and about 170 or so from the United States.  I have about 100 readers from Europe each month and close to 40 readers from Asia and the Australian/New Zealand region.

I don’t write much on the site.  I write when I’m bored or when I have something important to say.  Occasionally, I’ll come up with some genius and write something intellectual.  And once in a while I write a review of something. I think I touch almost all topic, too.  One, in particular, has turned out to be my most popular topic which gives me 70% or more of my traffic:  my Newton’s Law of Porn article.

It should probably come as no surprise.  Porn is a huge business.  Its considered one of the vices that generate the most tax revenue for states.  Other vices include alcohol and tobacco products and you can see how much money they generate - billions to the companies that sell them and millions (possibly billions) to the states; some places like New York City have a state and a city tax that could be 60% of the pack of cigarette’s cost!

Anyway, for some reason, people like my article on PornoTube; it’s the most popular outbound link!  I think I should get some of their ad reveue (if they make any) for referring so many viewers.  Now that I think about it, I should come up with a porn site for people to contribute videos to.  It would be a crowded market, though, I’m sure.

I’m proud of that article - its a law of society that, I think, is almost as the universal truths of physics and chemistry. But I wish I could come up with other articles that got that kind of attention without the easy porn angle to attract visitors.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the visits and I like people reading my article… I just wish I could write some other cool post that got similar views on a topic other than one of the popular vices in the world.

We’re Not Doing It For The Money… We’re Doing It For A Shit Load Of Money!!!

Published
by
C.G.
on April 17, 2007
in Computers, Life and Money
. 1 Comment

Sorry about the long title but it’s needed.

See, I was strolling through some older posts at Lifehack.org on my newly Mac-ified Google Reader when I came across an article on how to start a blog and make $100 in the first month.  Suddenly it dawned on me… Most blogs are in it for the money.

No kidding!

I know, I know… the realization shouldn’t be so surprising but for me it is.   I guess in this day of social media/collaboration and open source software, I figured blogging - or creating a blog would be an extension of that.  I also feel that its different for companies because they invest heavily in IP, infrastructure, and the production of media/content and they need some justification.  Besides, that’s what businesses do… do something to make money.

But people… are they that hell bent on making money that they do what lifehack.org is suggesting they do to make an extra $100 a month?  I know I’m not.  Of course, I’m lucky enough to be comfortable in life - I’m not living in a Park Avenue penthouse or anything but I’m not in the slums either.  The prospect of even $500 a month doesn’t appeal to me.  I guess that’s my prerogative but what about everyone else?  How much money would you have to make on your blog before you thought it would be worth it?

Its a hard question to answer and its not as simple as some dollar amount.  It can’t be (in my mind) the same amount of money one would make in their “day job.” You could find that you might take less money if it was less work.  But if the point of having a blog was to make more more money, you can’t quit your job.  And if you do it part time, you can’t create much content to generate views, hits, and clicks.

But being creative and keeping people reading and clicking on ads can’t be easy; talk about pressure to perform all the time.  If you don’t write something meaningful a few times a day or so, you loose your audience and the ad revenue they bring.  Even if you regurgitate someone else’s content as many do, is still hard to do it day after day.  If there is anything people like about their music, movies, TV, and books its new content.  They don’t like the same style of beats, etc. to keep them entertained.  And because we tend to be fickle in what is hot and then not, it makes keeping audiences “tuned” to your blog even harder.

I suppose you can be sneaky about things and write a bunch of words in there that will gather lots of attention.  Words like, porn, fuck, adult entertainment, beer, and cars plastered all over every post might garner you some hits but is it really all you want to do get people to like your site?  Faking hits is fraud.  Hiding meta data is also a no-no.  None of those things, I think, will really get you the money that would make investing in a blog worth it.

Not that its really expensive.  Figure $7 for a domain - some are free with hosting plans.  Hosting plans average around $7 a month with many much less than that.  Ads could be costly but you’ve got to spend money to make money, right?  But what about the time?  Is your time valuable?  If so, you might not want to spend it earning $5 an hour.  If you already earn $5/hr, then it might be worth making that extra $100 but now you are talking about a heavy investment ($7 a month is 1.5 hours of your month and 7% of your expenses before ads you buy).

So why not do it for the experience?  Share your thoughts with the world and not care if it nets you a Ben Franklin.  I mean, that’s why I do it… to tell you what I am thinking as if you care and like what I have to say.   I mean, normally its a gift to hear what I have to say, anyway so…  The way I see it, you are all winners here.

:)

Inspired to Backup

Published
by
C.G.
on April 11, 2007
in Apple, Computers, Hacks and Linux
. 0 Comments

Over the weekend, I managed to backup my entire music directory to my hosting provider, DreamHost.  I was inspired by Michael Lee’s aptly titled article on How to Backup Your Mac to a DreamHost Server and while I didn’t do all the technical coding work, I managed back up my music files nonetheless.  If you have a Mac, using rsync might be a good way for you to go - especially if you have a 479GB of on-line storage like I do with DreamHost.

It took all weekend to upload 40GB worth of songs so if you have a large collection like I do, this is not for the faint at heart or those with a slow connection.  I have a great high-speed connection and get 30Mbits down and 5Mbits up.  So at roughly 450kb/s, well, you do the math.  Like Michael’s article suggests, I used iCal to schedule my daily backups.  But unlike Mike (if I can call him that), I use my FTP program and created Automator work flows to handle the file transfers.  I created a work flow application that iCal runs every night at 2:30am that checks for the latest version of the files in my music directory and if it finds any changes, it writes over the older version - wherever it may be.

Eventually, I’ll have separate jobs to take care of my other data but I’ll have those jobs run every other night since syncing the music can take up to 20 minutes or so.  I’ve got my photos on a dedicated photo site that I host so that takes care of my pictures.  Though, I might automatically upload new photos to the import directory of the Gallery2 site to make things easy but that’s not necessary.  I’ll also set something similar up for my wife who has no backup of her data.  In fact, neither of us had anything before this.

I thought I’d build a file server like I did when I was the CTO of the small company I used to work for.  And while I would still love to do that, its not very cost effective.  Plus, it would be noisy and big - it wouldn’t go with the new Mac based office I’ve created since I picked up the Mini.  Hiding the server (it would have to be a rack mounted array… it has to be) would be tough since we don’t have a lot of closet space in our condo.  And it would still generate a lot of heat and use a lot of electricity we don’t want to waste.

But back to the automation I did…

I was inspired to try the automated backup program that Michael Lee wrote about.  And now, finally, I feel that I can sleep at night knowing that my files are safer.  I’m also inspired to see what else I can do with Automator, iCal, and rsync.  Anyone have a good work flow they care to share?

Why blog?

Published
by
C.G.
on April 3, 2007
in Computers, Life and Philosophy
. 1 Comment

Why is it so important to blog?  What’s the point?  Do authors really think they have something interesting to say?  Are people that interested anyway?

Why are there so many blogs?  Are there that many potential writers out there that have day jobs and freelance at night?

And do we need to consume it all?  Isn’t this another case of information overload? Isn’t the 24 hour news channels and websites enough?  Toss in the movies, TV, and video games and you’ve just filled 22 hours.  Forget reading books or newspapers; now you are pushing it to 23 hours.  If you have a conversation, you’ve just filled your 24 hours in a day.  Can anyone consume that much information in a day?

When will the world saturate? We have 6 billion people on this planet and only a small amount are connected to the cyberworld of blogs, instant messages, and the rest of the Web 2.0 social networking; some 24% of the U.S.’s 275 million people.  When will there be so many blogs out there that people can’t read them all?  When the world is saturated, how many blogs will there be, 12 billion?

Are blogs like magazines?  Are they destined to become a lost consumable that, when some other technology comes out, be relegated to the back shelf?  Newspapers are struggling, CD sales are dropping, movies receipts are tanking, and TV ratings are bombing.  When the “next big thing” happens, who will go the way of the horse & buggy?

Why am I even writing this?  Is anyone reading it anyway?

Port 69

Published
by
C.G.
on March 15, 2007
in Computers
. 0 Comments

I must have a dirty mind.

I just finished reading this article on Techdirt, one of my most favorite websites on the net today. Real quickly, the authors really understand technology as it relates to business - something I know a great deal about as its what my career is all about.

So as you can see from the article, the Utah governor wants to move all porn traffic to some other port.  Now besides this being attempted before with the whole .xxx domains, the attempt to move all porn to some other port besides 80 is near impossible.  Not only is hard to identify traffic and force it to alternate ports, forcing someone to route to a specific port is improbable and will be circumvented eventually.  The entire net would have to change, really, and you know how hard it is to get standards in this day and age.

But the idea that you can protect people from content by segregating it just smacks of ignorance.  Elected officials and policy makers only make themselves sound uneducated and ignorant about technology when they come up with and promote these crazy ideas.  While its ok to want to keep adult content away from children, forcing the technology to change human behavior is not the way to go.

The best way to keep mature content is through good parenting.  Good parents will place their computer in a public place, talk to them about on-line predators, and discuss the websites that they find objectionable.  Its not easy but no one ever said parenting was.