Holiday hiatus
Merry Christmas (a day late) and Happy New Year (five days early).
I’m on vacation and will not be posting to bizhack for a week or so.
(Unless I am hit by some burning inspiration that cannot stay inside.)
Tags: hiatus, vacation, bizhack, john koetsier
penisland: pen island
No, this site has not been hacked, and no, I have not decided to change my sexual orientation. Rather, this is a cautionary tale on the foolish choosing of domain names.
There exists, unfortunately, a company called Pen Island. Said company wished, unfortunately, to have an eponymous domain name: penisland.com. Said domain name, unfortunately, is easily misread by those with dirty minds. (That’s you, gentle reader.)
The problem is that not only is the domain name suseptible to conflation with rather more prurient proclivities, the content of the website is too.
Not only can you get them custom-made:
They’re also guaranteed real, not imitation. No pumps here.
Whatever your taste, Pen Island has something for you:
Even the advertising fits the theme. After all, this is a pen lover’s paradise:
Not sure what you prefer? Take a free sample for a test drive:
(OK, I know I’m going to regret this post. Probably just as soon as I hit the Publish button. Ah well - what’s life without a little pushing the envelope?
Last note: yes, I know the site is a fabrication. Check the category links … this is not a real company’s website.)
Tags: pens, island, funny, john koetsier
The best captcha is no captcha
Nicolas Koenig recently posted ModernCaptcha, a comment spam protection technology inspired by Seth Godin that is far easier to use than most captchas.
On the one hand, this is great because captchas suck. Hard. They’re difficult to read, annoying, slow down the user experience, and make people feel stupid when they can’t get them right.
In Koenig’s implementation, all you have to do is match a well-known logo to a web address. Simple - right? Probably - if you’re a reasonably savvy web user. Maybe not, however, if you’re not an English speaker or familiar with major tech companies.
But the biggest issue I have with any form of captcha is that they slow down the read-write web. They’re web 2.0 friction. And there’s a better way.
Crowdsource your comment spam problem
Akismet is a simple idea implemented amazingly well: use collective intelligence from all over the web to identify comment spam on blogs and other social spaces online.
It works amazingly well - capturing well over 99% of the comment spam on this blog. That’s about 30,000 comment spams in the past year or so.
What this allows you to do is outsource your comment-spam-control problem. Or, to be even more buzzword-compliant, crowd-source it.
The best captcha is no captcha at all.
Tags: captcha, seth godin, Nicolas Koenig, modern captcha, comment spam, john koetsier
Missing windows (1)
Working at home today … we’re getting all the windows in our house replaced.
The installers follow a sort of factory assembly-line model: first they take all the old windows out; then they put all the new windows in.
Which means, of course, that I am freezing my (insert random body part here) off.
Tags: windows, home, work, telecommuting, john koetsier
One million wishes
Have you seen the Million-dollar blog post yet? It’s not a money-making scheme, it’s a money-giving scheme.
Post your wish - one dollar will be donated to charity for each wish posted.
Here’s mine:
My one wish is not for “others” to be better, or for faceless governments to change policies, or for NGOs to make a difference, or for organizations, groups, categories of any kind.
My wish for the world is that I will be a better human being, and so doing, will be more, do more, and give more to those in need.
(Bonus wish: that you - yes you reading right now - would do the same.)
Tags: one million wishes, million dollar blog post, john koetsier
What’s the story?
I’ve been working through a lot of product identification and differentiation lately, and this Seth Godin post really hit home: the story always matters.
The most important point:
“A commodity is only a commodity if you treat it like one.”
So: are we going to treat our products as commodities, or will they be the pages we write on to deliver interesting, compelling, remarkable messages to the people who buy and use our products?
It’s only a commodity if we are so bored (and boring) to treat it as such.
People want to be excited. People want to be motivated. People want to be captivated. People want to be passionate.
Are we allowing, providing, creating, inventing, hiding, showing, and building those possibilities into the things we create? What’s the story?
Let’s make it a good one.
Tags: stories, marketing, products, seth godin, john koetsier
Lots of people say “snaining”
OK, maybe not lots. But some - Google proves it. (Yes, this is about a recent post.)
Google has 509 results for “snaining.” And the urban dictionary, bless it’s electronic little heart, has an entry for snaining.
That horrible combination of rain that is not quite snow…but soon will be.
Basically, it’s airborne precipitation that fluctuates mid-drop, and can’t seem to make up its mind whether it’s rain … or snow …
Only problem? Apparently the word was invented by a Stephanie Tyler of Eaton Township, Ohio. And here I thought I had had the privilege!
Tags: snaining, john koetsier
Pain worse than death
OK, I still don’t get it:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday ordered his staff to begin revising the California’s lethal injection procedure to allay concerns raised by a federal judge that condemned inmates are being subjected to unnecessary pain. (Full story.)
I posted on this months ago: We’re only going to kill him if it doesn’t hurt.
It’s not the pain … it’s the killing that matters!
Sure, pain is not nice. Pain is not good. Pain is, well, painful. But it’s a very small thing, really, compared to being dead, toast, BBQ’d, poisoned, beheaded.
Pain is temporary. Death is forever.
I think those who are in favor of the death penalty think it’s easier to convince others of the rightness of that position if they can say it’s a painless process. To me, that’s nonsense.
(And I happen to agree with the death penalty in some cases.)
If you can do it painlessly, great. Fine. But don’t defend the morality of capital punishment by saying it’s painless! Conversely, don’t say that capital punishment is wrong because it causes pain.
That’s just missing the point.
Tags: death, penalty, pain, execution, Schwarzenegger, capital punishment
Priceless spam
Blogging software: $0
Hosting account: $20/month
Half-decent Technorati rating: $very expensive (in time!)
Spammers spamming anti-spam posts: priceless
Little tip about using Google AdWords
(Make sure the page you’re linking to works.)
Tags: adwords, google, ads, john koetsier
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About
Sparkplug 9 is John Koetsier's blog on life, the universe, and everything,
but mostly the stuff you see big in the tags to the left.
Welcome, enjoy, buy the T-shirt, take a picture, tell your friends. -
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