Husband Hacking

I thought it was interesting, well-done, and funny.

And I'll bet a few of my old college jabronis will think I like it only because....I allegedly had a thing for Jewish broads back when I was in Philly (UPenn) some 20 years ago.

Al Gore DID NOT Invent The Internet!

Nor did any Commi agency.

It turns out Big Government HELD BACK the development of the web!

Read Stossel.

Dumbing Down The Web

With all these airheads going ga-ga over Pinterest now it just dawned on me that the internet has been in steady decline for some time now.

First, you had to code your own page if you wanted a website...

Then Geocities came about offering template websites.

Next blogs took over. The public was starving for something to READ that didn't come from the Big Media monopoly...

But then the masses opted for the puerile *Likes* and *status updates* of Facebook instead of feisty comment threads and posting well-thought-out blog comments.

Now we've fallen even further. Pinterest is nothing more than a cheesy magazine, full of glossy images for the illiterate and aliterate Morons among us.

Essentially, the web is becoming the new *idiot box*, a haven for the brain-dead.

Did y'all know that something like 80% of all web traffic after 5pm is *streaming video*???

Full Episodes Online?

The cheap 'old coots' that own the condo we are renting down here in Naples have neither an internet connection nor a cable color TV one.

Well they have some *basic cable* that comes for free from the development....but it only has about 7 channels. Now THAT is basic!

On Saturday I did manage to get Comcast to hook up a broadband internet connection for us. Last night, with my wife still here, a raging headache (not related), and while sulking over that horrible American football Superbowl result (also unrelated) we felt like vegetating a bit.

So instead of plugging the TV back in (been replaced by my PC) in the bedroom, I was happy to discover that we could stream NBC's The Firm on the 22 inch monitor of my PC. It came in HD and was crystal clear on a 'full screen' too.

While most of us are not cheap 'old coots' and have cable....I do wonder how many people out there are simply watching their shows (and apparently there are many available) online these days. I mean I no longer endure SportsCenter just to see Celtics highlights (my team) - instead I just watch them instantly on ESPN.com (part of the GO network!).

I would venture to say that most of the networks DO NOT really promote the online viewing option. Probably because of the delicate relationship they THINK they have with advertisers and cable companies.

Whatever. Screw cable and screw commercials! We're trending inexorably towards an online, pay-per-view media landscape.

All this freakin' *bundling* - landlines (who needs one?), cable, and internet is bull$hit. It's just a scam by Verizon, Comcast, and friends to keep consumers paying more than they should, longer than they should have to.

Unsecured Morons

Our rental unit here in Naples won't have its own internet connection until *sometime between 3pm and 5pm tonight*.

Meanwhile I've been squatting on a neighbor's WiFi.

The problem is that they keep turning it off!

Who does that? Who turns off their router to *secure* it? I mean why not just PUT A PASSWORD ON IT. They could even use *password* like the rest of the 'old coots'!

This reminded of me of one of my college jabronis in Philly. Though he was very intelligent in many matters he was a complete Moron with some other stuff.

He thought that the *pitcher* in invert s*x was most vulnerable to HIV; he thought that drinking alcohol before inseminating his wife could give him a retarded baby; AND he also made sure to physically unplug his cable modem each night, you know, so that hackers wouldn't be able to *steal his information*.

Attention - Pin-Heads

Did y'all see this new, upstart website - Pinterest?

I'm sure the site has some appeal - even if it was indiscernible to me upon first glance.

Website Building Chronicles - 3 - The Sales Letter

Do y'all know what a *sales letter* is?

Of course you get them in your junk(!) mail nearly everyday.

But they are alive and thriving online too. In fact they are all over the freakin' place since stamps are cheaper on the web.

These days I've been working on my own for HomeschoolDad.com.

One expert resource I've found is Dan Kennedy. I had previously read one of this other books and was very impressed. All these other guys (like Eben Pagan) mention him repeatedly and Kennedy certainly lives up the hype, IMO.

I just procured Kennedy's The Ultimate Sales Letter: Attract New Customers. Boost your Sales., I devoured it, and must say it was very helpful.

You have to understand that these guys have VAST experience; they've split-tested everything from fonts to formats to diction; and have amassed expertise that we could never acquire independently.

Heck Kennedy's book is only $10 AND I did one better - borrowing it from my library.

The other thing you can do, of course, is just read a bunch of successful sales letters/pitches online!

In fact Tim Ferriss recently did a blog post on the dude who's made tens of million$ from "The Truth About Six-Pack Abs" info-products. So I watched his sales videos closely and jotted down a few important notes.

Building a sales page, website, ebooks, etc. is a *process*. What I've learned is to overcome my school-induced perfectionism and to just throw something up and tweak/refine on the go.

I grabbed some popular software to help make snazzy sales pages - OptimizePress - for $97 or so.

Actually when I'm done I will have SEVERAL sales pages to which I'll direct different audiences depending upon demographics, specific group bigotries, etc.

One thing that's holding me back, still, is that I'm not entirely clear WHAT I'm selling and TO WHOM.

But the more research and brainstorming I do, the more clarity I'm gaining.

See also:

Website Building Chronicles 1 - For Morons

Website Building Chronicles 2 - Eben Pagan Selling Me On Change

Privacy For The Paranoid....And Would-Be Stalkers

I can't recall if I highlighted this website before or not - Radaris.com.

Go punch your name up and you might be, as I was, very surprised how *public* your info is.

What to do about this?

Well here's a blog post that tells you how to get your info pulled from some of at least the bigger data scrapers.

Why?

You write a blog post saying, "We're going into Manhattan today to see..." and you come home and find yourself robbed.

You become famous all of a sudden from winning the lottery and your family is kidnapped...

Or, you become infamous all of a sudden and your family is harassed. For example, Steve Bartman!

Personally I really don't like how easy it is to see *relatives* on these websites too. I mean, WTF? Many of my relatives are downright embarrassing...

NY Times Readers, Complaining Of A Small World!

In the anti-spirit of Greg Mankiw....I'd like to *discuss* this:

While I think the subject is interesting in its own right, there was something nauseating about this particular buffoon, discussing the subject of closed-mindedness, amongst his boneheaded cronies at a TED convention.

It'd be like the Morons who've sequestered themselves away in say the Peoples Republic of Cambridge, Massachusetts wondering why their organic cocktail parties are dull - with everyone finishing each other's sentences in turn.

I mean the idea that in the pre-internet age newspaper editors were anchored by *gatekeeping integrity* is downright ludicrous. And anyone decrying an alleged dearth of web info TODAY ought to be branded a complete Moron.

While the speaker deprecates it, I do like and agree with this quote from the beginning:

Make no mistake, and don't ever forget that calls for *public mindedness* have never been anything but a Trojan Horse for those elitist, religious fanatics who are more accurately described as socialists.

How's this - if you're worried about suffering in Africa why don't YOU don't something about it - something that doesn't involve coercing others to help you?

And if YOU don't like the news feed from Yahoo or Headbook simply STOP using them. If YOU don't like the first couple Google search results....then YOU can scroll down or use another search engine.

Yeah Africa has problems, but here we have the burden of whiny *smart ignoramuses* and whiny *volunteer slaves*...

Thanks to jabroni LeagueIslander for sending me this one.

On Web Pollution

I only recently heard the term *content farm*. I mean I certainly was well-acquainted with eHow, ezinearticles, and friends, I knew they were fonts of garbage, but naively I didn't fully understand their sordid business/economics.

Read this very interesting *article* - Google Kills eHow Competitors, eHow Ranks Up.

Warning - that guy really, really loathes all things Google!

The web has certainly gotten very crowded the past few years. While my blog output has been increasing in volume and quality(!)....my web traffic has stagnated for the past 1.5 years.

I'm not sure exactly why but I sense that while I've been focusing on writing, my website competitors have instead been focused on gaming the search results and whatnot.

We're a *blame society*, right?

So whom could we blame for polluting our glorious internet with dating advice written in broken English by Third World Asians?

Blame Google? Blame Google because it's their AdSense network that's subsidized these so-called content farms/mills?

Nah....we rightfully have to blame the Morons who actually click on the ads!

Marginalize The Watermarkers, Too!

This week Google was in the news with a headline about them beginning to crack down on content farms.

I had thought they were already doing that?

Anyways, I have some advice for Google's search algorithm tweakers:

GET RID OF THE WATERMARKED, FOR-SALE IMAGES ATOP THE IMAGE SEARCH RESULTS.

iStockPhoto, Corbis, et al....these image-renters have no business showing up in generic search results.

Rightfully they ought to be placed in a separate category.

NO ONE, no individual, is going to pay $129 or $300 or $400 for that pic above. Perhaps some media company will, so let them transact with each other directly, no?

They definitely ought to boot these *content farms* from the top pages of Google search results.

Screed, over.

Calculator = Defunct

Y'all don't even have to find the calculator on your computer now to crunch some numbers.

Just google an expression and the answer will pop right up!

And how about those *instant* Google search results now?

CRAZY!

Cheaper Online!

1.5 years ago, during my term as the youngest snowbird in Florida....I came across and sang the praises of Chocolate Lucky Charms.

But then I couldn't find them anywhere since. And I rightfully should have included them on that list of discontinued products that I bemoaned.

A couple of weeks ago I even Googled "chocolate lucky charms discontinued" only to find that they were in fact available online. And just the other day I actually put them in my *order later* basket on Amazon. I could peel through six boxes of that in no time!

But late last night, while doing the grocery shopping I was delighted to see them in my local supermarket. Three boxes went right in my cart - and I would have grabbed more if I hadn't just learned of their availability online.

They cost $4.69 a box.

Hmmmm....Doing the math on Amazon's price I now realize that I can actually buy (and get them delivered for free!) cheaper on the internet - approximately $4.28 a box.

Guess what, coincidentally, my wife just ordered a bunch of *pharmacy stuff* from Amazon and DrugStore.com this week - all of which was cheaper, free shipping yet again, than what we'd pay locally.

And I can't even tell y'all what a hassle it is to run these errands in traffic-plagued New York and hit these brutal stores. We've probably ordered as much from Amazon in the past 1.5 months since we moved to NY as we have cumulatively before.

Ordering online is the wave of the future. Ride it!

CaptiousNut Incognito!

Recall I just upgraded my 5.75 year old PC and boy is it nice to be out of the Dark Ages!

Everything is better: the speed at which it turns on and off, the Paint program, MS-Office that's NOT from 2002, etc.

My old PC, with the hard drive 83% filled, was on the fritz and hence didn't respond well to the barrage of updates that continually flew in: Windows, Java, virus software...so I couldn't really install the latest versions of everything, nor did I feel like I needed to.

But now that I'm back up to speed, there's one thing in particular that I'm enjoying - the Google Chrome Browser. It's a vast improvement from the version of Explorer I had been using, IMO. One aspect of it that I just discovered is the *Incognito* option.

When I first saw it, I partially inferred what it was. I could open an *Incognito* browser and it would be disjoint from my extant browser sessions. Right away I successfully opened my other Gmail account in it. You see before I could only be logged into one at a time and it was real annoying. If my wife wanted to come over and check her email I had to log out of not only my Gmail account but also Blogger, my Google Docs, and Google Reader. What a pain in the butt it was.

Then when I got the Droid phone, I'd do all my personal email on the tiny *smartphone* while I had my CaptiousNut account open on the PC. It was ridiculous how I used to forward personal stuff from my phone to my C-Nut account just so I could see it on the computer without logging out of everything!

But apparently the incognito browser does more than just permit simultaneous access to multiple Gmail accounts:

For times when you want to browse in stealth mode, for example, to plan surprises like gifts or birthdays, Google Chrome offers the incognito browsing mode. Here's how the incognito mode works:

Webpages that you open and files downloaded while you are incognito aren't recorded in your browsing and download histories.

All new cookies are deleted after you close all incognito windows that you've opened.

Hmmmm.....let me see.

ALL browsing history, download history, and cookies are expunged...

If you believe this were designed for hiding *surprise birthday parties*, then you my friend, are a Moron.

BTW, there are a whole bunch of other innovations that I am enjoying on updated PC like Sticky Notes, Chess Titans (for my son), the scribble pad, the improved Movie Maker, and no doubt plenty more things I've yet to discover.

It's kind of exciting to deny yourself all the latest and greatest in some areas because it makes the eventual upgrading all the more fun - like a time-warp into the present.

Now I'm going back to planning my wife's *surprise birthday party*. Her special day was actually last week, but it's going to take me a full year (of browsing) to plan next year's soirée...

Better Blogging Chronicles 5 - Learning From Masters

With my blog output lower the past few months, an explanation is due.

While I have been busy busier with landlord fighting, moving out of Boston, limbo at my parents' house, and then moving back to New York...I've also changed the way I look at this endeavor.

A few months ago, when I resolved to take Marginalizing Morons to the next level, the fruit of my work/research screamed at me to change my approach.

So although on its face nothing looks different here....it soon will, hopefully.

I've traded some of the time that I would normally spend writing posts for time spent reading all the *internet marketing* gurus. I've been combing through their *pillar content*, aka *killer articles*, and been downloading all their free ebooks. Here are a few whom I've been consulting on the cheap:

Copyblogger

Daily Blog Tips

John Chow

Yaro Starak

Erica Douglass

Seth Godin

Chris G

ProBlogger


They all peddle their own books, other peoples products, and consulting services. Indeed they all do read like informercials and some of them are outright hucksters....promising to lead wannabes to internet gold, but there's still a whole lot of insight there. Note just about every one of them has a $500-$1,000 product where they will re-do your entire website to bring in more hits, more subscribers, and more monetization.

And it is pretty darn ironic - that almost every one of these dudes and broads made some money online but have now turned turned their attention to selling their insights as their chief product. That be like someone finding a handful of gold nuggets in 1849 and then investing that windfall in saloons, brothels, and a pick & shovel company to bilk all the latecomers!

Somehow I was thrust, at least mentally, to the frontier of the blogosphere. I now have so many ideas buzzing in my dome that I don't know where to begin. It's going to be a big job to re-organize my site, re-brand myself, work on my ebooks, AND keep spewing out content.

Having said that, I think it's time to send my kids to summer camp!

See also - Better Blogging Chronicles 4 - Too Slow?

Marginalizing The iPad

Not me, as I only have a few hunches what it's all about.

I'm outsourcing this Marginalization.

A guy on a popular blog titles his post:

Why I Won't Buy An iPad (and think you shouldn't, either)

The gist is that the device is for Morons - for people who passively consume information. *Ease of use* isn't a breakthrough but rather a tactic to hook or *re-capture* those who can't think for themselves.

Just like the gadget press is full of devices that gadget bloggers need (and that no one else cares about), the mainstream press is full of stories that affirm the internal media consensus. Yesterday's empires do something sacred and vital and most of all grown up, and that other adults will eventually come along to move us all away from the kids' playground that is the wild web, with its amateur content and lack of proprietary channels where exclusive deals can be made. We'll move back into the walled gardens that best return shareholder value to the investors who haven't updated their portfolios since before eTrade came online.

The blog post was provocative enough to generate, as of now, 895 comments....so it might be worth a read.

C-Nut Family PC Upgrades

5.75 years ago I purchased my last new PC - a Dell Optiplex with two 19 inch flat panel monitors and *gold* customer support. I didn't even go in my pocket for MS-Office and the bill for this, at the time, top-of-the-line system came to $3,000.

Its replacement, which I just ordered a minute ago, only cost $1,300. And of course it should be a whole lot more advanced, have a whole lot more memory, etc. I felt like I was splurging going for the cordless keyboard, the built-in webcam, an external hard drive, and MS-Office (my wife insisted on this $119 add-on).

I also decided to get my son (and daughter) their own PC - for $635 or whatever. There's literally so much educational stuff online for them that I could, and plan on(!) leaving them at the PC all day long. The web is rapidly even making people like me, a hands-on homeschooling parent, obsolete.

BTW, the 21 inch widescreen HD monitor pictured above retails at Dell now for $139.

I recall that my two old 19 inch monitors, all by themselves, cost me a total of $700 back in September of 2004. And that was only because I bought two and got a *deal*. One by itself was nominally listed at near $500.

The bill for both new computers came to $2,205.05. Let's see how they perform!

Never in my wildest dreams did I think the computer I'm still typing on would last so long - not given the sheer amount of use and abuse I got out of it.

WWW and C-Nut - Reunited!

Today I, still in the fog of my 4-week long staggered move to Long Island, I FINALLY got my computer set up and re-connected to the internet.

FiOS, which amazingly is now three years old, came this afternoon and after a few hours the technician was able to hook me up with a modern cable connection and a hard-wired internet line in the basement/office. No problems so far for me or my wife at her station behind me. She's hard at work after midnight, yet again, sifting through the 400 emails in her inbox.

It suffices to say it's been a long 3-4 weeks of being technologically unsettled for our entire family. Personally, I've grown sick and tired of using laptops and other people's networks. It feels good to be back in my $900 ergonomic desk chair and in front of my dual-monitor display - which, by the way, is due to be upgraded presently.

I'm trying to order myself a brand new, souped-up PC from Dell with a couple of 24 inch monitors AND a new PC for my son who needs a computer as much as anyone on this overheated Earth.

But I am having an extremely hard time navigating the Dell website. I do appreciate the fact that their computers are infinitely customizable and that their prices are near rock-bottom...

However, someone over at DELL Inc. has to design a dumbed-down/user-friendly version of their online store.

I don't well care if I save $185 on my new PC if it's going to cost me 2-3 hours of precious time to imagine what I'm buying!

Better Blogging Chronicles - 4 - Too Slow?

I have a question for some of you squeaky wheels:

Does my blog load too slowly for you?

The reason I ask is because all the *pro-bloggers* say to get your page load time down. They say to truncate posts with a *read more* link; they say not to show nearly as many posts as I do on my front page (25).

Google says that it uses *page loading speed* in its search rankings. Why? And who knew?

I have no idea how important this is, but it's a reality I must respect.

Check out this recent graph of my blog's loading speed:



Click graphic to enlarge if necessary.

Hmmmm....what happened in March to cause that spike in slowness?

I'm going to take a closer look when I get a chance - because my site traffic got crushed over that period as well. It went from over 1,000 hits a day to about 400 daily hits. My daily traffic is starting to uptick again into the 700s now. It was frustrating somewhat because I lost all those hits precisely when I started putting the effort into reading all those professional blogger sites and precisely when I started my Better Blogging Chronicles!

I only had mere hunches as to why my site got cut down so much. For example, I've noticed that when I don't blog on the stock market for a while (including Google Finance links), my traffic tails off. Also, I heard that Google implemented one of its notoriously disruptive search algorithm upgrades recently. Perhaps I was a short-term loser in that, so I wondered.

Of course there's a method to my madness and the format of my blog, and I'm defensive about it, but yet I am still interested in feedback on this issue.

It's funny because with some things I'm extraordinarily FAST (shopping, golf, talking, etc.), while with others I prefer deliberate S-L-O-W-N-E-S-S (driving, cleaning, blog-writing, etc.).

My Latin (100% Italian) wife....she has no *gears* at all. It's all-out, full-speed ahead from wake-up to bedtime - even on weekends.

I guess people that read my blog often (as opposed to Google search traffic) already have the recent pictures and whatnot from my blog stored in their temp files (?) so my pages load rather quickly. That seems to be the case for me anyway - as my slow computer loads Marginalizing Morons rather quickly.

See also - Better Blogging Chronicles 3 - Aesthetics

Yet Another Free Educational Resource

For those few non-Morons out there who are taking the LEAD ROLE in the education of their brood...

Check out this site - ThatQuiz.org - that I just came across tonight.

It's got some good exercises on it that my son has already enthusiastically attempted. Tomorrow, as part of his *work*, he'll be directed back there to learn the South American rivers, some Calculus, German verbs, and whatnot.

If you haven't already, make sure your kids check out that terrific US Map Quiz which I linked to in - So Much Free Stuff Online...