Paul O'Flaherty

Text Link Ads – getting too underhanded?

All Text Link Ads users received an email this morning informing them to update their WordPress TLA plugin.

It is no secret that I use this blog to generate a little pocket money but updating the plugin today has made me question whether or not the time has come to part ways with TLA.

The big issue I have is that I like to disclose all adverting on this site.

I do not want to sneakily slip ads or links in and not inform my users.

If I have an association with a company or product I will always disclose it in every post.

When you are generating your plugin you get to customize the text that will appear on your blogs side bar.

I would like to use terms such as “Sponsors” or “Adverts” as I currently do above the Google Adsense units this site is currently displaying.

TLA will NOT allow me to do this.

Below the box where you can customize the text they have included some text which includes the following:

We encourage you to customize this field, but please refrain from using “Paid Links”, “Text Link Ads” or other title’s that suggest that the links are purchased.

Fine, I’ll take your encouragement under advisement but I want it still to say “Sponsors” in my sidebar.

You’ve got to love the use of the word “encourage” here.

What they really mean is we are going to force you not to use words like “Paid Links”, “Text Link Ads” or other title’s that suggest that the links are purchased.

Try putting in words like “Sponsor”, “Advertising” or anything of that nature into the box.

You just can’t do it!

If you try,you get a pop-up which says:

Please choose a different title. We suggest your website title.

WTF? My website title?

Are you asking me to lie to my readers and imply that I personally endorse the links?

I will not do that!

Those links are advertising and while I may allow a product or site to be advertised on my site, the fact that the advertising is there does not mean that I endorse the damn thing!

It just means that I’m paying the bills and is not in anyway a personal recommendation.

Also what’s the deal with changing the name of the TLA WordPress plugin?

The previous plugin was named “tla_102941.php”. Not very descriptive, but at least it wasn’t a plain out lie like the name of the new plugin: “related-links.php”!

Lets call a horse a horse and a spade a spade here folks – related links they are not!

It’s fairly obvious that I think that TLA are crapping on my rights as a site owner to designate how advertising appears on my site in the hopes of a better bottom line.

It  should also be fairly obvious to TLA that without folks like you and me they will have no business at all.

So what about it folks, should I give them the heave-ho or wait and see if they address the issue and allow folks to call things exactly what they are?

What the heck is Buzzwatch and why is it eating your bandwidth?

A good friend of mine got hit with a notice from his web host today that his site was exceeding his allocated bandwidth for the month.

The site in question has a bandwidth allocation of 2.75 GB which should be more than enough for it’s current traffic load.

Anyway, I was asked to take a look at the site to see if there was any reason for such a spike this month and this is what I found on the list of hosts:

That is 513.85 MB being used up by one host in just January alone.

The IP address resolves to a site called Buzzwatch which appears to be a product of Lokion (introduced at the end of last year) at who’s site only offers this brief explanation:

Buzzwatch identifies your market and brand opportunities by distilling the comments and information posted on user sites such as blogs, forums, and review sites. Used in conjunction with usability studies and focus groups, this invaluable view into consumer commentary gives you actionable insights in a cost-efficient manner.

Actually the Buzzwatch site itself does not offer much more of an explanation and does not contain much more text than this:

Buzzwatch identifies your market and brand opportunities by distilling the comments and information posted on user sites such as blogs, user forums, and review sites. Buzzwatch also culls information from sites where online communities discuss your brand or industry. Used in conjunction with usability studies and focus groups, this invaluable view into consumer commentary will give you actionable insights in a cost-efficient manner.

I’ve asked the site owner whether or not they’ve signed up for Buzzwatch or even heard of them before and they haven’t.

So that leads me to ask: What is Buzzwatch and why is pulling a half a gig of bandwidth form a single blog?

Can any of the O’Flaherty readers help here?

Have you dealt with Buzzwatch or have some insight into what they do and why the are so data hungry as to pull half a gig in one month from a blog?

I have emailed Lokion for more information, but if anybody has an answer tonight I’ll be happy as it’s 4:45 am and I have yet to get to bed for my 5:30 am start..

Thanks for making me choke

Donny B just sent me this via SMS. Nothing to do with tech unless you consider that it was almost responsible for me spitting coffee all over my laptop.

The sky was dark and the moon was high
All on our own, just she and I.
Her hair was soft, her eyes were blue.
I knew what it was I had to do.

Her skin so soft, her legs so fine,
I ran my fingers down her spine.
I never knew how, but I tried my best
And placed my hand upon her breast.

For what I did I felt no shame,
But all at once the white stuff came.
Now it’s finished, it’s over now.
My first ever time, milking a cow!

WordPress tags – why the hyphen?

Does anybody know why the tagging system in WordPress creates hyphenated tags from multiple words?

It bugs me as many systems recognize tags which are enclosed in quotation marks.

The lack of a unified tags standard for the web irks me (I wrote about this last November as well) as the following tags are all refer to the same web site, but do not read the same on different platforms.

• Suburban Oblivion
• Suburban-Oblivion
• Suburban, Oblivion

Which standard are we supposed to use? Hyphenated, quotation enclosed, or single word tags?

Look what Lending Club sent me!

I just received this t-shirt in the mail from Lending Club in celebration of their nationwide launch.

I’ve blogged about Lending Club before and had John Donovan (COO of LC) on the O’Flaherty podcast  a while back.

Note to everybody: Sending me stuff is always to get my attention and get me to talk about you or your company.

Vidcast: Larry King of Twitter!

While hanging out on Ustream last night, Alec Palomo, Sara from Suburban Oblivion and Scot Duke  turned up on Skype.

We got chatting about some concerns that Scot has with Twitter and the noise to value reward of following hundreds or even thousands of people.

First twenty minutes or so of this are the best. After that we kind of loose the plot.

8hands = Instant A.D.D.

I just installed the alpha version of the 8hands messaging client which allows you to track updates on multiple social networks at once.

The client promises to allow you do the following:

• One point access to MySpace, Facebook, Blogs, Flickr, YouTube and more.
• Notifications of new comments, messages, friend requests, videos, feeds, and more – in real time.
• An instant messenger where you can easily chat and share content with your social network friends.
• A way to organize your social media content (pics, videos, posts) in one place.

I like the concept of a unified messaging center for all my social network profiles and even though the 8 hands software is still in alpha, I must admit to liking it.

There are some things about it though that means it will not be running on my desktop much longer than today.

First off, while the app allows me to see the latest events on all of my chosen networks it is let down heavily by the fact that you can interact with those events.

So, lets say Alec posts a tweet and I want to reply. I have to click on Alec’s avatar to open a pop out with the content in it and then click the content inside the pop out which will open my browser so that I can reply. That’s just too much work.

There are so many great desktop twitter clients out there that the ability to reply to a twitter is expected.

However, the real reason this app will not live on my desktop is the fact that it is an instant recipe for causing Attention Deficit Disorder. The number of tweets that come through Snitter can be be distracting at the best of times.

2 minutes with 8 hands installed proved that I would never get any work done due to the barrage of information that comes through 1 application tracking what all my contacts do on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and up to 12 other places.

Their are already so many distractions in my working day that I fear a program like 8hands will result in me having zero productivity and will wrestle my remaining sanity from my grip.

A blog milestone of sorts… 500, 715 spams

While I got my two hours of sleep last night this blog crossed a milestone of sorts and crossed the half million spam comments caught since starting to use Akismet.

I will can’t imaging how I ever got on without this plugin.

It seems like only yesterday that I was passing the 50,000 mark and it has not been so long since manually removing spam comments was a time consuming process.

The joys of beta software.

 I just download the beta of Chirpscreen. It’s a screen saver that allows you to see your contacts updates on places like flickr and Facebook.

chirpscreen features:

• A screen saver for Windows (Mac coming soon)
• Automatically updates with the latest photos and status messages from your friends (via Flickr and the Facebook Platform)
• Automatically displays public Flickr photos on topics of your choice
• Provides interaction with the photos by linking them to the web page source

Chirpscreen sounds like something I’d love to have running as my screen saver, unfortunately the realities of beta software are preventing that from happening tonight and Chirpscreen is now residing in crash city.

Anybody know of any existing similar screen saver?

Vidcast: Links are money

Final video from last nights Ustream session.

We talk about domain names, personal reputation vs the reputation of your business and blogging under your own name.

As well as some confusion caused when we start looking at this post by Sara at Suburban Oblivion about receiving daft link exchange requests.

The content doesn’t start until after the first 5 minutes so skip ahead.

Also, skip from after the reputation talk ahead to around  29 minutes to the next batch of real content.

Warning, some bad language.

Vidcast: Bong or Bum?

No real content in this video. Just random chat. You have been warned!

Yahoo messenger breaks everything.

Showing the bum to Kevin.

Insulting Mr. Business Golf…

Alec is the cookie monster.

Stereo Mix in Windows Vista.