Martyn Walker

New tools from security firms could be costing you dearly. I observed something “that could not happen” according to the makers of a Link Scanner and Resident Shield packaged with my anti virus product.

It started when I made my first search in Google after the installation. Curiously a new spinny icon appeared beside each entry as the page flowed slowly in to view. Actually that must be emphasised, the page rendering was extremely slow and not at all like the performance usually associated with Google.

I ignored the icons for a while, attempting to use Google in the same way, but two or three searches afterwards I realised this delay, even measured in micro seconds, was frustrating. I took a few minutes to try figure out what the cause was.

And presto! Suddenly on an old search that I had not cleared yet the spinny icons had been replaced with a green star and tick. As I moved my mouse over one of these a dialogue opened with a bunch of information on the link.

I noticed these icons also showed on the adverts. At first I assumed the program searched the display link, which would be no big deal, but I noticed it used the words “This page contains no active threats” and there’s only one way they can find that out.

It occurred to me that if everyone began using these and every link is scanned on every search page Adsense and other ad providers would quickly rackup massive bills for their clients.

It’s also obvious that the ad providers would have to change their terms to allow this kind of action to be taken on their results. It’s not just content theft or hijacking a site but ironically the anti virus developers are using the same technology they are supposed to be protecting you from. As their code only effects the data arriving at your computer you may think this is ok, after all, you decide what happens on your computer right? Wrong! Google are the content owner, not you!

Just because you are using AVG to access and modify the results does not mean paragraph 5.3 can be ignored. Just because Smith and Wessen made the gun doesn’t mean they are guilty of murder.

But if Google have a way to tell whether AVG, McAfee, Norton, Sophos, Panda or one of the many other providers of this software are interrogating Adsense links (and thus not charge for the visit) will every other PPC provider do the same? The short answer is No, one of my projects is responsible for many millions of PPC each day yet no one has approached us and trade journals have barely mentioned it.

So are you paying to much for your PPC advertising?

The Pale of Water Inc.,Jack and Jill run an ad agency called The Pale of Water inc, a succesful business now in it’s second decade of operation. They were both A+ students who sailed through ivy league education and started their business with venture capital funding at age 23. They specialise in promoting Interior Decorating and associated products and are the agency of choice. They own their own prestigeous offices and a multi million dollar home. Jack collects a new car every quarter and Jill is often featured in Society magazines sporting the latest fashions. They attribute their success to a combination of factors.

• An excellent education
• Above average IQ
• Quick witted and popular with their peers
• Wealthy families and friends
• Drive, ambition, determination and perfection
• Reputation based on results
• Advanced planning

Nothing is left to chance, every step of their business is rehersed and orchastrated, they are famous for being the best and deliver nothing less than their own brand of perfection.

Dave The Painter

Dave left school at 16 and could not spell IQ or even quiz. Dave is dyslexic, not just reading and writing but comprehension too. It’s not enough to be classified disabled, but enough to see him move from job to job. Although Dave is trustworthy, it’s difficult to find him anything he can be competant at.

A year after school and he was still on welfare. His last surviving parent was old and he’d been told by a councellor that on their death he would not be able to remain in the state owned property anymore.

At 17 Dave was the joke of the neighborhood, he had no home, no family and was broke. No one would employ him and Dave knew he was in a bad way.

While looking for somewhere warm to sleep he found an unlocked door into a building site portacabin. Inside he found a pot of paint, although it took him a while he figured out what was written on a piece of card resting on the paint.

Ask the job applicants to go to the hall at 7am pronto! Ask one of them to bring this paint with them.

Dave couldn’t believe his luck, if he could get the job then he’d be able to find a place to live and wouldn’t need to beg any more. He found fresh water and did his best to cleanup for the interview.

At 6am Dave stood by the door of the portacabin and did his best to look like an experienced painter. He wasn’t waiting long before someone opened the office gave him the paint and instructions to the hall.

It was an entrance hall, the largest he’d ever seen. A marble floor and carpeted walkways surrounded with expensive art and elegent statues. Two men broke from their conversation as Dave entered. One came over and with a pleasant smile asked if Dave was the painter.

Dave was taken to another room with no furniture and the floor covered with paper. A chandelier and expensive edgings were carefully masked. Three of the four walls were beige in color, the forth was black. The man took the paint from Dave and set it down in the corner. He collected a dozen small pots and a handful of oil painting brushes and gave them to Dave.

“The theme is ships passing in the night” the man said and added “So far they’ve had 4 artists try but they have all failed to deliver. I think Michael Angelo would struggle to please them.”

Dave stared at the wall and began to wonder how he’d got himself here. He’d never tried anything artistic before. Ships passing in the night. What were they looking for?

Dave asked the man what kind of pictures had been painted by his predecessors.

The man told Dave about the pictures he’d seen. Some had sailing ships in them, many of them with Galleons gliding over a moonlit sea. It struck Dave he’d have trouble painting a dingy let a lone a Galleon.

Dave stared at the black wall and the man walked toward the door, then turned back and said “You have three days at $500 per day, all materials will be supplied. On the fourth day you’ll probably need that pot of black paint to get it ready for the next artist.” Dave replied with one more question “What do you think I should paint?”

The man said “I think it must have something to do with Longfellow” and left the room.

Dave put down the paint and went to the local library. He told the librarian about the job and asked about Longfellow, the librarian returned with a book open on the right page and Dave read the words slowly.

Ships that pass in the night,
and speak each other in passing,
only a signal shown,
and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life,
we pass and speak one another,
only a look and a voice,
then darkness again and a silence.

Dave now knew what he had to paint. He returned and told the man 3 days may not be long enough but he would do his best. To save time he would like all meals delivered to the room and a bed with a sleeping bag and access to washing facilities on site. This the man agreed too and remarked he was impressed with Dave’s dedication.

The three days passed quicker than ever but Dave was well fed. The man gave him $1500 dollars and asked him if he managed to complete the painting in time. Dave replied that he had and he was confident the owners would not need to use the black paint.

Without wasting any further time the man called the owners and said the new painting was ready for their inspection.

Jack and Jill arrived. As eager to see this new painter’s creation the man followed them into the room.

They stood in front of a wall completely black. Blacker than it had ever been before. Evidently the new artist had used the black paint to put another coat over the entire surface. It had never been as black as it was now, all except for a small inscription in the bottom right hand corner which read “Dave”.

According to Wikipedia: Research is a human activity based on intellectual investigation and aimed at discovering, interpreting, and revising human knowledge on different aspects of the world.

Google cannot be an expert in every subject, rather the subject needs to be an expert in Google. How much of the research in Google is manipulated by the editors at Google?  For example if I’m looking for a new car how do I know Google does not have a special relation ship with Nissan or Toyota?

It occurred to me if Mankind can’t be bothered to research anymore, leaving Google to handle the heavy-load for us instead, then everything from politics to innovation could be manipulated by the company that claims not to do any evil.

True enough today but now with shareholders where does that leave the future? Already some countries are questioning whether they should allow Google such an intimate relationship with their politics. Some Canadians were surprised to see Google selling keywords to competing political groups. A search for “Socialist policy in [name your town]” would result in sites with distorted reports and opinion on local candidates.

So how do we research without having the results manipulated by a search engine? The problem is similar to making a decision over which newspaper you buy. We all know newspaper owners have an agenda, they have political beliefs like the rest of us, and so do the editors at Google, Yahoo and MSN (Windows, Live or whatever they call themselves this week).

There is no easy solution.  My dad would say for a balanced political view we need to read all newspapers but no one actually wants a balanced opinion, they want to hear what they want to hear and so they buy the paper that says it most often.

Google says what we want to hear most often and we accept that we will be manipulated by that opinion and humanity will follow their holy orders, but will it be forever more?  Is it possible Google is already looking a little tired?

This spider will fool all people for some of the time and some of the people all the time, but I doubt it will fool all people all the time.

If your website gets 100,000 unique visitors each day then someone somewhere will pay you something worthwhile for exposure to your community. So given that a secret to an online income is owning a community then how do you build one from scratch?

Is it Blogging?

It’s no secret that bloggers attract huge communities of readers. Is your writing compelling enough to be one of them? is a question only you and time can tell. If a 13 year old child and a blind artist can then you probably can too.

If Shakespeare was alive today it’s unlikely he would not attract the kind of numbers boingboing gets, but his community would have clearly defined interests, and it’s those specific interests that advertisers can use. In Shakey’s case Amazon would find a ready made market for dull poetry (I can here my English Literature testing a few expletives on me right now).

You have to be specific to be terrific

And that is the secret to building an online community, want to know why? Because time waits for no man. If you have been lucky enough to reach your goal or achieve your dream this will be easier to understand. Once you have what you have yearned for you want more, that’s why accessory companies do so well, and why cars come with different models.

Let’s take cars, are you really so practical that you are happy with the base model? Most people buying base models are either emotionally detached from the purchase (such as a fleet buyer) or just can’t afford to get the deluxe model (which actually means they didn’t meet with a real salesman because if they did he’d of shown them how they could afford it!).

But how do I find out what I want? With research, by watching TV, reading magazines and going online to visit those sites that cover subjects that I like.

There maybe a site that covers everything I want but how do I know they are the best? By visiting others that specifically deal with the subject of interest.

Does that mean I need SEO & $1,000’s on promotion?

Heck no! Google offers this advice which is useful if you want to get started on your own. However if your site has a community of regular visitors Google will find you without SEO anyway. I bet you’re thinking “how can I expect to build a busy community of regular visitors without being in Google first?”

Commenting

Another secret might be the answer to that but in truth your product should be good enough to be found on it’s own. Let’s take a gardening blog, chances are you read other blogs and sometimes think about commenting on articles you read. Now is the time to start doing that but adding your link in the web address field. That’s what it’s there for! This isn’t dark-side promotion, this is exactly what the author of the blog wants, he wants you to let him know how well he’s doing and he wants to see what kind of people are reading his blog. Placing your link against your comment helps him find out.

Seek out the Permalink

Keep an eye out for permalinks and use them when you can. A good demonstration of this is commenting on the Official Google Blog using their Permalinks. For example here is a post made boxing day of some great political gotcha’s. If the information is relavent to your post use the permalink. That way visitors to Google can see you commenting on their work and pay your site a visit to check you out.

Don’t worry about nofollow

If you’ve been reading blogs for a while you will know there is something called “nofollow”. This is a feature introduced by Google to reduce link spam across blogs and most blog software makers add it as an option. It has had little effect in reducing link spam and there are plenty of other better measures in place anyway. In fact the only real benefit has been to search engines and server hosts which no longer have to spend cpu time on collecting and visiting links with this attribute.

However it matters not to you. Placing your link on a popular blog as part of a legitimate and relevant comment will attract like minded visitors to your site and it’s that process that will create exposure and in time your community.

As a software developer and owner of IPR you might think I would not be happy if my code and ideas were stolen and used for profit. You’d be right.

But what if someone writes their own code that improves my original idea? Why should I have any claim over that?

Progress depends on people taking what has gone before and improve it. Any subject you care to think of is merely an improvement on a previous idea, if it wasn’t we would still be living in caves and eating berries.

If you stop people from copying ideas then you will eliminate creativity and innovation entirely. Technology will freeze and nothing new will be created.

I agree there has to be protection but it’s a two way street. There are organisations that exist only to protect patents and their only goal is to sue once they recognise a potential for profit. If they succeed then progress is temporarily halted.

I tend to be apolitical about software, operating systems and hardware. Whatever’s best for the job. But I have never been a fan of Apple, I find them annoying, they appear to swap style for functionality and I know I will get lambasted for that remark. But I do admire the company, they have achieved so much against so many odds. They have a committed user base that expands with each gadget they release.

And each time they release something new a queue forms outside their lawyers doors full of those gold hunters looking for their slice of the Apple pie. This one is going just a bit too far don’t you think?

It’s ridiculous that someone can patent code that has been in use in O/S ever since the gui was invented. Ironically the very code they claim to own could not possibly have existed without Apple creating the gui in the first place! I hope these idiots are firmly rebuked by the court (if it ever get’s there).

But therein lies the rub. The facts are of little relevance. The mood of the judge and whose story he prefers at the time will prevail. His decision may go against Apple, not because Klausner Technologies has a case but because of some legal technicality.

Klausner are professional thieves IMHO prepared to feed off other peoples work, like digital slave owners they wait for someone who is naive enough and poor enough to be beaten into submission with the might of their dollar.

Let’s hope they don’t succeed against Apple for it would be a blow to the heart of creativity and innovation.  The idea that you can patent an idea rather than a design is just plain crazy.