A few months ago I paid for phpArcadeScript to power a small site I was planning to run just to add another aspect to ‘joeanderson.co.uk’: Webby’s Arcade was the result.
phpArcadeScript only cost me $30 (including 150 games) and is now the most visited part of my website receiving almost 400 unique visitors in the last 24 hours! I also receive, through Google AdSense alone (the arcade also shares an advertising contract with Ewedrive) about $15 a month from Webby’s Arcade (yes yes yes, not a lot but it has already paid for itself and that doesn’t include the many Firefox downloads which earn me up to $1 each).
The only SEO work I’ve done for phpArcadeScript is the generation of a Google Sitemap through the built-in GSitemap generator.
I’ve never ever ever promoted a turnkey script before but phpArcadeScript offer great support and it makes me a fair bit of traffic for a one-off payment of $30!
Perhaps my old slogan, which Azhar will tell you, was wrong.
Tags: make money, phparcadescript, php script, php
Excuse the punny title but this post is supposed to be about reasons I pity the average computer user. Why? Well…
- They use Norton or McAfee. I can’t stand Norton, at all. I find AVG provides me with sufficient protection and doesn’t hog resources in the same way Norton or McAfee do. If I was to use a non-free anti-virus package I’d probably lean towards NOD32.
- They use Hotmail. Why oh why oh why?! Gmail is much better and every Hotmail users I’ve converted so far agrees
- They use Internet Explorer… sometimes even IE6. Why not use Firefox or another gecko-based browser which are generally considered more customisable and secure?
- They attend novice IT classes and read novice IT books. I learnt nearly all of my computing skills from trial-and-error. My relatives often attend courses or read books which generally just confuse them more as they learn how to do things in pieces of software they lack or different operating systems.
- New computers come with Windows Vista. I’d much rather use XP (or even better a Unix-based OS) and as much as the average Joe (and indeed myself) love eyecandy in their operating system, Windows Vista’s eye candy isn’t equal to its performance and I’d rather have the latter.
Different people use different social networking sites. I don’t use any, the middle-aged (with many exceptions) seem to use Facebook, teenagers seem to use MySpace and Bebo (1/3 of public Bebo profiles belong to people aged between 13 and 17!).
Even though I rarely use social networking sites, I hear day in and day out about them. From what I’ve heard, I have made several judgements about the websites (even though I’ve never used them!).
Facebook users seem to see themselves as ‘better’ than MySpace users, generally being older (ironic considering Facebook’s student origins) than them and realising how annoying auto-playing media is!
MySpace users seem to have ‘oooh look animations follow my mouse’ (courtesy of our good Web 1.0 friend DHTML) and ‘look how pretty my profile is but don’t look at the content… especially spelling!’ attitude. The general bloat MySpace forces users to endure with its advertising and default layout in addition to the bloat users elect to add themselves reminds me very much of Geocities or Angelfire back in the day.
A big problem I have with MySpace is the fact that when you’re trying to design a profile page you seem to spend 75% of your time inventing work-arounds and only 25% of your time designing.
Bebo users seem to be even less self-respecting than MySpace users using even more appalling spelling (here’s a typical comment: ‘hu r yuu n y did yuu add meh..x0x’), BLOCK CAPITALS and terribly designed profiles whenever possible. I had a quick browse through some Bebo public profiles whilst writing this post and I was impressed to find no auto-starting media (they probably block Flash! I’m sure that their target audience would love auto-starting media!).
Feel free to say your own assumptions, opinions or rebuttals to any of my points in the comments
Tags: bebo, facebook, myspace, myspace sucks, social networking, web 2, web 2.0, web2, web2.0
Only a brief article today.
Web2icide is when websites alienate their users and change their purpose so much that users are so confused they stop using the site.
Some classic start-ups who in my opinion have committed Web2icide are Technorati (they strayed too far from blog search) and Digg (too for from tech news, censorship). Do you care to add any more?
I am currently only in fluent in one language, English, but I’m always interested in learning more.
There are many online resources you can use to help you learn a new language ranging from online dictionaries to full online courses and many of these are free!
I spotted an interesting free language learning course on the Internet called Mango whilst reading Lifehacker . It seems to be pretty good and it mainly involves hearing and reading phrases and memorising them (at least at the introduction phrases! As far as I got!). Whilst somewhat primitive this is fantastic way to gain a basic knowledge of a language (useful if you’re going on holiday etc.). Currently, Mango lets English-speakers learn French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese; Mango also offer a course in English for Polish-speakers (but sadly not Polish for English speakers which I would personally would’ve appreciated).
The Open University publishes free course material for French, German, Latin and Spanish.
If you’re already studying a language but lack a proper dictionary shame on you! But really, there are quite a few good online ones. My personal favourite has to be the Wiktionary which is a multi-lingual online dictionary. Sadly Wiktionary isn’t very centralised and I find myself often having to check both the English Wiktionary and the Wiktionary of the language I wish to translate into to find a translation. This can be time-consuming.
There are many online dictionaries which are specific to two languages. The best ’specialised’ dictionary is probably dict.cc for German-English and English-German translation (although it is annoying that it doesn’t give the plurals of words in it), Poltran’s useful for Polish translations (but it’s really slow to load and WordReference seems quite good for Spanish, Italian and French translation.
You could also consider using the Wikipedia reference desk on language, but don’t overuse it as it relies entirely on volunteers.
Tags: language, web 2.0, learning, e-learning
