JimWorld Gazette Issue #102 10/02/2000

JimWorld Gazette - Issue #102 - October 2, 2000

CONTENTS

• From Our Sponsor - Consultants-on-Demand.com
  
• Award Design Contest Goes Into Overtime Innings
  
• From Our Sponsor - pogo.com
  
• Traffic Logs Don't Tell The Whole Story
  
• From Our Sponsor - Microsoft Exchange 2000 Servers
  
• Review - Virtual Ink's Mimio Whiteboard
  
• Way To Go Dick
  
• Snippets

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g102


A warm "attaperson" goes out to all of the participants in the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Have a safe trip home and I look forward to seeing you again in 4 years. This Olympics saw world records broken almost daily. The dedication and discipline necessary to accomplish that high level of performance is truly admirable. You all have reason to feel pride in your accomplishments. Just being there to compete is far beyond most of us mere mortals.

It was thrilling to see the growth in women's competition this year. Many of the most thrilling performances were put in by the women. Watch out guys. The women are taking their fair share of the audience through hard work and sensitivity to the need to entertain their fans. It's nice watching athletes compete who are more interested in winning than getting to the photo shoot for that new endorsement contract.

On a lesser note, I have high hopes that the International Olympic Committee will be invited to swim home from Australia. It will give them a chance to re -think their money-grubbing approach to event management.

The IOC is so out of tune with anything that has transpired over the past 20 years that it boggles the mind. Their refusal to accredit any online journalists and even banning competitors from publishing online diaries of their experience at the Games shows exactly what the IOC considers the real meaning of the Games: money.

I applaud the IOC's emphasis on drug testing for all competitors. I would also applaud competency testing for all board members of the IOC before they shove the Games back into the Dark Ages.

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AWARD DESIGN CONTEST GOES INTO OVERTIME INNINGS

I've had several requests to allow a little more time for entries in the contest to redesign the JimWorld Way Cool Hot Site Award. We've received several hundred entries but there's always room for more.

The contest deadline will be extended to midnight on October 10th.

The prizes for the winning design will be:

> Permanent credit on the winner's pages and submission form.
> Recognition in the Gazette for the winner and top 5 finalists.
> 50,000 banner impressions on the JimWorld web sites. A US $1,250 value.

The rules are simple.

Create an award graphic that is fast loading and small enough to be displayed on any web site's home page or awards page. You can view the current award graphic at http://jimworld.com/hotpg.html

The award graphic should reference the JimWorld Way Cool Hot Site Award instead of the current SmartDesk reference.

I will select the top finalists and the Get High Forums and Search Engine Forums moderators will select the winner.

I am currently setting up a new database driven award management system to allow us to evaluate more submissions and recognize a new award-winning site each week.

Submit your entry via email before midnight California time on October 10th.

mailto:jim@jimworld.com

That's it. Now get to work!

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-- JimNote: Since seeing Pogo's ad last week I have acquired a new addiction. Their Buckaroo Blackjack is entirely too much fun. Now, if I could go from winning 15,000 virtual dollars at Pogo to winning 15K greenbacks at Las Vegas...

TRAFFIC LOGS DON'T TELL THE WHOLE STORY

My email In-box and the Search Engine Forums got pretty busy after my last article about paid submissions to directories. Seems to be a great deal of confusion on the subject, so let's look a bit further into the subject.

If you were off-planet and missed the article, the gist of it was that several places that charge for submissions should be on your "A-list" when you start promoting you site.

Aside from a few hold-overs from the 90's who still feel that everything on the Internet should be given to them for free (in other words: somebody else should pay for it) most of the reaction was basic confusion.

Let's take a look at LookSmart, which probably led the confusion category.

The reality is that LookSmart reaches a larger Internet audience than any other entity. Because they supply search results to such portals as CNN, MSN, Excite and AltaVista as well as through their own search site, LookSmart is able to expose your site to over 77% of the Internet population, or in round numbers, 58 million people. That's an impossible market penetration to ignore.

On the surface this level of market penetration should be making your server logs fill up, right?

Right. But you may not know it.

When your site is listed in LookSmart's directory it is suddenly available on the hundreds of search sites that use the LookSmart data. The listing comes from LookSmart, but the traffic comes from any one of these LookSmart "partner" sites. What you suddenly see in your logs is increased traffic from MSN.com, CNN or any one of their other partner sites.

While your logs do not show a sudden, massive increase in traffic from LookSmart, they are directly the cause of your increased traffic.

The exact same situation exists with tracking results from your listing in the Open Directory Project (ODP) which supplies search listings to hundreds, if not thousands of other search portals. Some of the sites that use their listing database are huge, well-known portals. Many are either smaller vertical portals or simply search services offered by many sites wanting to offer enhanced services to keep their traffic flowing.

It is a fairly simple matter to purchase a copy of the Hyperseek directory management software and import the ODP database into it and suddenly be offering your users access to 2 million reviewed web sites. The sites listed in that Hyperseek directory will start appearing in the traffic logs of the sites listed and will be identified as coming from your site, not from ODP.

But how did you get that traffic? Because your site was listed in ODP's database.

ODP does not charge a listing fee as their listings are reviewed and maintained by a volunteer staff of thousands of editors. If you feel like giving a bit back to the Net, why not volunteer to edit a category at ODP? You'll learn and enjoy results of your efforts.

Other directories providing results to search services do not share the "identity" problems faced by ODP and LookSmart.

GoTo.com supplies results to a growing list of search portals, however all traffic generated by those partnerships flow back through the GoTo.com servers causing the traffic to appear in your log files as hits directly from GoTo.com. This is necessitated by the fact that GoTo must account for all of the hits they generate in order to charge by the hit for being listed in their directory.

A similar situation exists for Direct Hit supplied listings at their search partner sites. Their motivation is to track the most popular sites in their list of categories. This means they must direct clicks through their own servers in order to properly track results.

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REVIEW - VIRTUAL INK'S MIMIO WHITEBOARD

One of the fun things about my job is getting to play with all kinds of cool tools and gadgets.

One of the things I've always lusted after is those big, $20,000 automatic white boards that print out on paper everything you write on the board with the dry wipe markers. That's about as cool as you can get.

However, $20,000 is uncool. Very.

So when I saw the Quartet Mimio Digital Meeting Assistant, I just had to play with it. While it is fun to play with, it turns out to be much more than just a cool gadget.

The Mimio has a narrow bar that attaches to your white board with suction cups. The bar connects to the serial port on your computer (USB connector available as an option.) When you write on the white board using the marker holders supplied in the kit, everything you write is transferred to your computer automatically. In full color. In real time.

When the meeting is over, just print out all of the notes made on the board, pack the Mimio back into your briefcase and hit the road for your next presentation.

That alone would be worth the purchase price, but Mimio has a robust offering of additional ways for you to use their system.

Here's just a few:

• Install mimio boardCast on your RealNetworks> G2 server to synchronize audio and ink in your white board sessions.
  
• Add the mimioMouse plug-in to your mimio to run a projected desktop presentation, capture your white board notes, and annotate the presentation right on the white board - all at the same time!
  
• Add the Handwriting Recognition plug-in to your mimio (PC), and your handwritten white board notes -- print and cursive -- are automatically converted to text documents. You'll save time and money, because no one has to transcribe notes into text!.
  
• netShare (Available September 2000)- Using a standard white board, mimio technology, and your company's network server, netShare captures everything you write on the board and then shares all your notes with the rest of your team, over your internal network or on the Internet. In real time or later as a playback file. Moving pictures and sound makes it feel like the viewer was at the meeting.

With a street price of about USD$500 this is a tool that just about anyone can justify. It is easy to set up, easier to use and the audience goes nuts when they see it in action. Turns you into Mr. Wizard.If every company is going to start making gadgets that actually fill a real need the way mimio does, where will it all end? Where will we get useless gadgets to play with?

If you're coming to Stockholm for the conference, take a look at the mimio in action. I never leave home without it.

http://jimworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g102mimio

WAY TO GO DICK

Sorry Dick. You Can't Be On The Web.

Congressman Dick Armey (R-Texas) is a long-time, outspoken supporter of Web content blocking software. You know what that is. The stuff that keeps kids, library users and anyone else they can make a buck off of, from finding anything of any value on the Web.

Yes, I'm back on that subject. Long time subscribers will remember that I have a price on my head for telling the world what Scumbags most (or all) of the "publishers" of blocking software and services are.

The idea is good. People selling software that doesn't even come close to working is bad.

Simple, isn't it?

Well, it seems that the Web is not without a sense of irony. (Thanks Matrix for a great line.)

It seems that Dick's web site, "Freedom Works" is blocked by the major blocking services and software.

Seems they don't like his first name.

Maybe Freedom Works best when politicians keep their hands out of it.

At least Dick's not alone. Dr. Laura built a web site called Pure Intimacy which helps people find ways to avoid adult content on the Web.

Yep. Blocked.

Doc, you simply can't go throwing words like "pornography" and "hard-core" around without being punished for your evil deeds. How dare you expose our children to words like that? Trying to help educate and support people who want a better, safer experience on-line is no excuse!

My biggest disappointment during the collapse of the Dot.Com investment industry was its failure to wipe out these companies that prey on the public with the open support of our elected officials.

Maybe the real problem is the ignorance of our Elected Officials.

Or is that an oxymoron?

SNIPPETS

Internet Marketing Strategy Day Conference
http://jimworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g99imc

October 26 and 27, 2000 will see the second gathering of webmasters and site promoters, and the list of speakers has grown. The conference has also grown to two full days.

If you are planning to attend this conference in Stockholm, bring a few problems with you and take advantage of the second day's small group workshops to get some excellent advise on resolving the problems.

I look forward to seeing you there. I'm already working on my presentation and should be able to squeeze in a lot of good tips.

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Selling Site Design Services
http://jimworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g102webdev

Here's a very nice article about the process of selling Web design services successfully. The sales process described is real and workable for anyone selling on-line consulting.

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Here's a press release from Ulead, one of my favorite image creation software companies. Take a stab at the $5,000. You just might win.

"Show Us Your Site and Win $5,000 (and a lot of other cool stuff!)

To kick off the release of PhotoImpact 6, the first image editor that can create Web pages, we are pleased to announce Ulead's "Show Us Your Site Contest." The contest will run from September 18th to November 15th, 2000.

What Do You Need to Do?

Use PhotoImpact 6 (the full or trial version) to create your Web graphics, design a web page and post your creation to Ulead's new free web hosting service powered by Homestead.com. Ulead will host your web page, which can consist of as many pages as you would like, but the judging will be based solely on your home page.

To find out more about the contest, or download the PhotoImpact 6 free trial click here: http://jimworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g102ulead1

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FreeSticky
http://jimworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g102sticky

Looking for some instant content for your Web site? FreeSticky has located lots of it and the quality is good.

Take a look through their content directory and see if you don't find a few things that will make your visitors happy.

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Thanks to all of you who wrote, telling me how happy you were to find Asynchrony. Seems we have a lot more software developers reading the Gazette than I ever would have guessed.

Asynchrony operates a site where software developers can meet and jointly work on projects aimed at making some money. What a concept! Income? Profit? I've heard about such things.

http://jimworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g100Asynchrony

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Just a bit of shameless self-promotion.

If you operate a mailing list or discussion list, you should download the free trial of the JimTool Extractor.

It will make your life much easier to manage.

Windows only. Sorry Mac folks.

http://jimworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g100Extractor

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DomainZero
http://jimworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g102zero

Ready for a free domain name?

DomainZero has put a new twist on building their Opt-In mailing list. Agree to receive their Opt-In mailings and they will register a .com, .net or .org domain name for you and pay your registration fee. That's pretty cool.

The name is registered in your name for one year. If you agree at the end of the first year to continue to receive their mailings, they'll pay for another year of your registration fee.

You can point the domain name anywhere you want, including any of the free hosting servers that allow you to use a domain name.

There's not really much risk here. Even if you decide you don't like the deal, you can Opt-Out and pay the $29 registration fee.

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The shopping holidays are closer than you think, in Net time.

Stop in at the "Contests and Sweepstakes For Real Traffic Growth Forum" and talk to WinningWays about how to plan for your holiday promotion ideas. Holiday sales require traffic, and Susan has many good ideas for you. She is recognized throughout the Web as the leading expert on this subject and we are lucky to have her at JimWorld. She has helped thousands of our members freely over the years.

Susan's web site http://onlinesweeps.com/ is a hub for the contest and sweepstakes industry on the Web.

http://gethighforums.com/Forum4/HTML/000144.html