What NOT to do with Your Website

I’ve seen this again and again. People thowing money into their website without a good sensible idea how it’s going to benefit their company. Recently, I saw one guy who spent $10,000 to have a marketing company set them up accounts with Adwords and Overture. Not for the clicks themselves, just for setting up the campaign. It’s something I could have done in an hour and a half. Another one spent over $5000 to have someone build his brochure style site.

I’m not saying that all money spent on a website is down the drain. What surprises me is the amount of money put into a project with no clear goals set, and how high prices people are willing to pay for such easy work. Maybe I should start doing more in this business!

Relaunch About-Auctions.com

I’ve had this site around forever, and finally decided to clean it up, install my CMS, and relaunch it. I started this site, Online Auctions back when I was heavy into selling on Ebay, did little with it and it’s languished for the last couple years. Seems this week I’m on a roll of launching or relaunching a site per day. I need to work out the buttons on the site, but am beginning to like how the coder I hired did the templating system. Now, I need to get more content.

My new CMS

I think my new CMS is looking pretty good now. A couple more additions I might like to add, but it’s starting to look like I want, and work like I want. I ran into this problem earlier this year, that I was launching so many new content sites and was not satisfied with any of the commercial or open source CMS scripts available, so I contracted a coder to build one for me. It was a long process, as pretty much anything is when I’m involved, but it’s ready to go live and near perfection. Today, I rebuilt my Go Rock Climbing site with the new CMS, and I have a list of about a dozen other sites I’m either building or rebuilding, and that doesn’t even take into consideration the dozen or so ideas I come up with on a daily basis for new websites.

How VoIP is Helping to Make Location Obsolete

Yea, I know, VoIP is a hot “buzz” topic now, but there’s some value I’m seeing in it for my future. I can sign on with a company like Vonage, and have them transfer my current phone number. I can also select any phone number in any area code in the USA I want, if I wanted a new number. Then, I can take that and move wherever. So, for example, I could move to a city in central Europe, and have people phone me as if I were still in the USA, and I can phone them as well. As long as I have a strong, broadband internet connection that is. Services such as Vonage offer a significant savings over traditional phone service as well. Another step in the direction of making locating obsolete.

Why Google Shows Low PR Pages in Backlinks

I just heard something interesting from someone attending the WMW convention this week. He said there was a guy from Google, Matt Cutts, at one of the sessions who was commenting on the recent change in the way Google shows backlinks. Apparantly, Google change it to show more low PR backlinks to give lower ranking sites more

2005 Mileage Rate to be 40.5 Cents

Milage Rate Increase - from a press release from the IRS

The Internal Revenue Service today released the optional standard mileage rates to use for 2005 in computing the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business, charitable, medical or moving expense purposes. The Internal Revenue Service today released the optional standard mileage rates to use for 2005 in computing the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business, charitable, medical or moving expense purposes.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2005, the standard mileage rates for the use of a car (including vans, pickups or panel trucks) will be:

40.5 cents a mile for all business miles driven, up from 37.5 cents a mile in 2004;
15 cents a mile when computing deductible medical or moving expenses, up from 14 cents a mile in 2004; and
14 cents a mile when giving services to a charitable organization.
The 3-cent increase in the business mileage rate was the largest one-year rise ever. The primary reasons were higher prices for vehicles and fuel during the year ending in September. The charitable standard mileage rate is set by law.

The standard mileage rates for business, medical and moving purposes are based on an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating an automobile. An independent contractor, Runzheimer International, conducted the study for the IRS.
A taxpayer may not use the business standard mileage rate for a vehicle after using any depreciation method under the Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS), after claiming a Section 179 deduction for that vehicle, for any vehicle used for hire, or for more than four vehicles used simultaneously. Revenue Procedure 2004-64 contains additional information on these standard mileage rates.

Iraq = Vietnam

Can’t help but think it. Nobody can deny anymore that it’s become a guerilla war. That’s what it is, there’s no sense in calling it anything else. When the US troops invaded, the Iraqi troops didn’t surrender, they just went underground, like the Vietcong did. There’s no winning for the US. Winning would be at too high a price, we’d have to massively slaughter Iraqis, like everyone’s seen in the video of US soldiers pumping bullets into wounded Iraqis. Terrorists? Vietcong? Guerillas? We’re just mincing words now.

Arnold Schwarzenegger for President

I was really dissatisfied with both candidates in the 2004 Presidential election, so I’ve been considering who I could consider a good candidate for 2008. My biggest beef with the current Republican leadership is the religious conservatism. I like my country best when it doesn’t tell me how I should worship. I don’t appreciate the efforts to legislate religion. So, who’s there to support for 2008?

Arnold? Frankly, I’m happy that he can never be President. I wouldn’t be comfortable if it were possible for foreigners to rule the USA. However, I am beggining to appreciate his politics. Let people worship how they want? Great, I’m in. Conservative with the budget, and pro-business? I’m there. But, you know what, I’ll vote for Rudy.

ICANN Transfer Policy Update

I just got this from on of my registrars:

[quote]
as of November 12th 2004 the new ICANN Transfer-Policy will go into effect. This new policy for all generic TLDs (com/net/org/biz/info/name) will be binding for all registrars as of November 12th 2004.

The new transfer policy brings a few advantages and some disadvantages in the handling of transfers.

We have summarized the most important changes for you:

a.) Transfer of generic Domains may only be denied explicitly by the
Domain-Owner or Admin-C (according to WHOIS)
b.) In the event, that the Owner does not deny an initiated transfer, then
the transfer will receive an “ACK” (Aknowledge) from the registry after
5 days.
c.) Even if a transfer is initiated with an authorisation code
(e.g. biz/info), then the Domain-Owner/Admin will still have the
possibility of denying this transfer through his registrar.

Advantages of the new Transfer Policy:
- The whole transfer procedure can be processed more quickly
- Domaintransfers cannot get denied due to wrong email-addresses
in the WHOIS
- More transparency for the Domain-Owner with respect to his transfers

A few disadvantages are as follows:
- It will no longer be possible to auto-deny an outgoing transfer
- Should you register domains (as account holder) for customers and these
are entered as Owner/Admin in the WHOIS, then these transfers can get
processed without any further notice from yourself (the Owner can approve
the transfer).
[/quote]