Science Addiction

Before I get in to this article, let me tell you a bit about myself- this will help you decide if you think my advice applies to your web site. There are many ways to make money off a web site and my methods have only permitted my web sites to pay for themselves. I run two blogs: this one and another one on film, WideScreen Glory and I have run a large Star Wars fan site since 1998, that makes up the bulk of traffic that I receive.

In a broad sense, there are three methods of advertising on the Internet: Read the rest of this entry »

A few interesting developments on the Network Neutrality front: Read the rest of this entry »

Here are a few more things you can do to get involved in saving Network Neutrality. Read the rest of this entry »

The Internet has functioned, succeeded and grown because of one major point in its favor- every entity connected to it is only judged by the size of its pipe and quality of its content. By size of its pipe, I mean amount of bandwidth it buys as a connection to the Internet. Read the rest of this entry »

The Direct Marketing Association has a fantastic Privacy Policy Generator on their web site which is a great tool for all webmasters/bloggers/administrators out there because sooner or later, you will need one for your site as well. Many advertisers require you to have one, many users will feel more comfortable if they can view yours and in general, it is a step in the right direction.

This tool asks you all the right questions regarding what personal information you collect on your site and what you intend to do with it. At the end, it will generate a personalized “Privacy Policy” for your site based on your answers. You can take a look at the one I had it generate for my Star Wars web site.

Yahoo! has quietly introduced Yahoo! Go for TV, a free DVR and media center software for Windows PCs. This software is a re-branded version of Meedio, which Yahoo! bought earlier this month and is tightly coupled with Yahoo’s own services.

This is a great entry in this area and should prove to be a significant challenge to Microsoft’s Media Center, if it is marketed and packaged well. For me, the trouble is that it is Windows-only and so would be an option only if it proved to be significantly better than MythTV or Front Row. Fun stuff- it seems like everyone is getting a head start on Vista, including those who were never really in competition.

[Via GigaOm Via John Battelle ]

While eBay has offered fixed price sales under its Half.com banner for many years, for the first time eBay has announced eBay Express, which allows buyers to buy an item without the auction process. It also features a single shopping cart and check out process for items bought from multiple sellers.

This puts them up in direct competition with similar services from Amazon and to a certain extent, from Google (with Base and Froogle). I’ve used Half for years now and actually prefer it over the auction format because some things are not always in demand. Sales that are not time-dependent (unlike auctions, which are) allow you to have something for sale for a long time; so a potential buyer can find you days, months or years later if you still have that item for sale.

The question is, why are liberal blogs more popular than conservative blogs? Granted my sources are not perfect, but according to technorati and Alexa liberal blogs get more traffic and are linked to more than conservative ones. DailyKos and Common Dreams march ahead with MyDD and The Huffington Post not far behind.

One suggested reason is that more liberal blogs have comments and promote individual blogs, participation and more which bring more repeat and continuous traffic. Also, it is possible that progressive/liberal and anti-war blogs are read in countries other than the United States; this may not be as likely for the conservative ones. The other theory is that the party in opposition has more to complain about, strategize about and work on than the party in power. In that case, I will revisit this article if things change in November of 2008 :).

In a time when a domain name is registered every two seconds, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find that perfect domain name for your cause. In such a situation, it has become necessary to devise a method to determine the best domain name for you.

Unfortunately, there is no straightforward method for this purpose. The best we can do is to try to achieve a balance between the different expectations and objectives you have about your domain name. Read the rest of this entry »

Many people around the world plan their charitable giving around this time of the year, for religious, tax or other similarly benevolent reasons. As a geek who spends an inordinate amount of time with around his computer, these are the entities that have made my life easier in the past year and deserve all the recognition, money and general fulfillment of all Amazon Wish List desires: Read the rest of this entry »

The internet is adding language to our collective vocabularies faster than any other ‘invention ‘. Here’s a prediction (if you haven’t heard enough of those):

In the future, flickr’ed will be part of you vocabulary.

Yep- you will be googling blogs with flickr’ed albums and nobody from the last century will have a clue what you just did. Maybe people will del.icio.us you too. And hopefully, AJAX-ing the CMS will be out of date. Read the rest of this entry »