I dug this old post up from a blogspot blog that I have and never use anymore. This was from circa 2004, but still holds true.

I can’t tell you how annoying it is to have advertisements that play any kind of sound when the page loads. These are usually flash advertisements. This is very rude, this is like talking to someone while they are trying to read the newspaper. This gets even worse when the noise coming from the advertisement is some voice over speaking. Please, I did not come to the page to view all the ads, so only speak when asked to. Mute the damn thing by default. Let me un-mute it if I’m interested.
This is a new form of popup, and if your not careful, you’re advertisements, like pop-ups will be disabled with browser plugins or extensions that are already available but not widely used… yet. If such ads were to become annoying enough and numerous enough then you might see browsers including flash and/or ad blocking technology built in. Be cautious with the annoyingness factor of your ads. Be courteous of how you’re perceived or you may be shut off altogether. This goes beyond sound at startup, this advice should be taken for all annoying assuming aspects of the ads. Please don’t pop up floating divs, or expanded flash viewports that must be closed manually. These are other annoying aspects that may be turned off if it persists further. This would mean a shut down of valid browser features for webmasters that deliver wanted content.

In your face sales is annoying. No one likes it.

Webmasters - Demand that your ads adhere to a set of non-annoying guidelines to avoid people leaving your site or blocking your ads altogether.

Marketing guys behind the ads - Adhere to the same guidelines, else you may find yourselves getting blocked completely.

The whole online advertising industry has been changing quickly. It was based on Cost Per (M)Thousand Impressions (CPM). Then it was based on Cost Per Clicks (CPC). Now it seems that everything is moving toward (if not already) Cost Per Aquisition (CPA).

Paying publishers based on CPM as a metric was flawed. Flawed for the ultimate task at hand… To get an online aquisition. Conversion rates were all over the place, barely any targeted placement was being done. Relevant data, what is that? We didn’t even know how many people were actually following the ads.

Along comes CPC. We start paying out by the actual clicks, it’s a little easier to track the conversions than CPM. Of course this was not perfect and seems to be on it’s way out as of this writing.

So where are we at right now? Well, everyone is sporting CPA as if it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread (why is this so great anyways?). Pretty easy equation to figure out. If the goal is to sell something directly through an online ad, then measuring the success directly through the sale seems the only way to go. Why in the world would we have done it any other way? Seems simple, right? The advertiser needs to acquire something in order to be successful, be it payment or an email address, or an opinion (survey). If this is the final goal, why would we measure it any other way?

I’ll tell you why, it’s not the way or manner in which the product is marketed that brings it a sale. A bad product will have a bad conversion rate. On the other hand, a good product will have a bad conversion rate if marketed in a poor manner. The current state of industry is this, we must rely on hard acquisition numbers for our payouts because no one knows how to value an certain spot at any certain time on any certain website with any certain product… yet!

I believe this metric can be found, and it’s worth being proven. We do this for television commercials already. Prime time commercials are worth more. Women’s products are worth even more to the hypnotized Oprah crowd. Men’s products are not advertised during Oprah. We seemed to have cracked the code for television. Television, like the web is always changing and so are the advertisements.

Granted, the web is more complicated, more fickle. The users are starting to expect more, but we have the ability to change the ads per user, and on the fly at the last minute. We have oodles of practically free computing power to inference products, services, or whatever to target the end user at that time. We have instant access to his web browsing history, or past purchases, we even have access to the services and content of the email at times. Think gmail is completely free? Those targeted ads don’t come from nowhere.

So why should we sit back and let someone else’s product tell us how much we should make for something that has an unknown conversion? We should know how much our advertising spots are worth. At that time, for that user’s demographic, based on past purchases and inquiries. We should be able to calculate the optimum product for purchase at that time and deliver a much higher conversion percentage. If you give us a crap product, guess what, you’ll get a crap conversion.

The other side of CPM. Why does an acquisition need to be made for the Ad to be successful? I’ve never once tried to click on the commercial in the TV to buy any product. Is branding completely dead? We need to offer to build ads just for branding purposes. Stop charging for the ad, start charging for the space. Radio stations do this already. Let’s catch up to radio for God’s sake!!!

The real problem here is that no one has come up with the formula for how much an ad should be. You can bet Google is throwing a shit ton of money at finding this solution. I will be right there trying to find out how to cash in on the CPM train.

I love the new Apple TV updates. I wrote about how it may change the HD world. It really bodes well for HD and VOD. There are a few of us that were early adopters and bought mac mini’s for their Home Theater PC (HTPC), and some of us that wanted the extra juice to play their 720P 30 fps or 1080 material.Whatever the reason for owning a mac mini as opposed to an Apple TV, it seems that we are left out in the cold.

Yes, while the Apple TV was busy getting it’s update on, front row users are left with yesteryear’s interface. Of course it’s a computer and I can switch over to iTunes, but let’s face it. When you’re listening to music with friends and want to quickly browse and buy a song you’re all talking about. Breaking out a keyboard is the equivalent of the VISA check commercials when that person breaks out a check. It certainly doesn’t create a one click buying experience, putting more obstacles between me and the check-out lane. That’s the whole point of this, Apple wants to sell rentals and music. The easier they make it to buy, the more they’ll sell, period.

I hope this is on their to-do list. It would certainly encourage me to buy more from them.

The following was a post from apcmag.com

1. 80GB iPod hard drive being used as a system drive. It’s 4200 RPM slow and after years of encouraging people to amass a horde of digital media, how can Apple really expect people to fit their iTunes library, digital videos and so on onto 80GB? With notebook hard drive capacities topping 500GB in a single 2.5″ drive, surely Apple’s customers would have preferred a slightly thicker form factor with a beefier drive?

Really, most people get by on less. Apple’s customers already have this sort of form factor, the MacBook and MacBook pro have been about 1 in thick for years and the lightest available. You want speed, get a SSD drive.

2. Non-expandable memory: 2GB of RAM soldered onto the motherboard… sure, that’s a lot of RAM today, but if I were buying a notebook worth between $2500 and $4300,

Hmmmmm, I looked at the Apple site, says starts from $1799.

(update) Whoops - I saw in the comments of his page that he was talking about Australian dollars.

I’d sure as hell want the ability to add some extra RAM in later to cater for future Mac OS X upgrades, virtualisation and memory hungry apps like the Adobe suite. (To be fair, other subnotebooks also have soldered RAM, and sometimes have only 1GB, but still… looking at this from the perspective of someone looking for a thinner, lighter MacBook Pro, this is a significant limitation.)

If you start with the wrong expectations you will be disappointed.

3. 64GB flash-memory as an option in place of the hard drive is nice, but for $1400 more, it seems unlikely many people will take it up. (Update: reader Jeff Singleton points out that the SSD drive is more than “just a flash drive” — SSD disks offer greatly enhanced reliability and much faster throughput than mechanical media can, which is a fair point.)

Apple fans are notorious early adopters, if they weren’t they would buy Dells with Windows for less.

4. One USB port: not only is the MacBook Air expansion-limited on the inside, it can’t connect to many things at once on the outside, unless, of course, you carry a USB hub with you, which kinda defeats the purpose of having an ultraportable notebook to begin with. And since it’s a recessed design (a flap on the side of the notebook has to pop open for you to access the port), quite a few USB accessories aren’t going to be able to plug in there without the use of a USB extension cord.

Carrying a USB hub would defeat the purchase of an ultra portable, but so would carrying the accessories that would connect to it.

5. No wireless broadband: if anyone’s going to buy this notebook, it’s the regular traveller who is tired of toting 3KG of extra cabin baggage everywhere. These people are also exactly the same people who find wireless broadband really, really useful. But despite the fact that HSDPA modules can be manufactured as small as a postage stamp, Apple didn’t include one. Guess what you’ll be using that one USB port for? A soap-on-a-rope style wireless broadband dongle, or a fat broadband stick. It’s not a very elegant accompaniment to the world’s thinnest notebook.

Guess what you’ll be connecting to your Bluetooth [phone] device for?

6. Underpowered, last-gen processor: despite Apple claiming the MacBook Air has the ‘latest’ processor in it, it’s actually a slow old 65nm version of the Core 2 Duo, topping out at 1.8GHz. Presumably Apple’s legal eagles would argue that since Intel made a special version of the processor that has a smaller chip casing than others, it is literally using the “latest” release from Intel. But in this case, “latest” certainly doesn’t mean “better”.

This is a small definition of better. Faster doesn’t necessarily mean better, but latest is defined by release date. In fact the whole chip industry is moving toward less power. Most individuals don’t need the kind of speed that even apple’s cheapest laptop puts out.

7. No microphone port: sure, it’s not the most essential feature given the proliferation of USB microphones, but again, I’ll point out: one … USB … port.

Bluetooth, bluetooth, bluetooth.

8. Non-replaceable battery: you have to send the entire notebook back to Apple for replacement of the battery. Which will have attrocious battery life within about two years. Note to Steve Jobs: this is not an iPod.

I actually agree, but when the time comes I’m sure there will be a plethora of services to replace/upgrade the battery. (update) The time is now $129 battery replacement includes install. That’s what a normal battery costs.

9. Thin but not that thin: Steve Jobs says the MacBook Air is thinner at its thickest point than competing notebooks. But the Fujitsu Q2010 is only 19.9mm thick at its thickest point, and that’s 0.5mm — yes half a millimetre — thicker. However, in the Lifebook, you get integrated HSDPA/3G/GPRS, an ExpressCard slot (34/54), SD card slot, two USB ports, inbuilt VGA out, Ethernet, Firewire, fingerprint sensor. I’d say that functionality is worth an extra half millimetre.

I must take a look at the Q2010, but using Windows is not worth it. I have never missed Windows since the move.

10. Oh, and no Ethernet port: yeah, OK, you can order the optional USB Ethernet adaptor, but that one time your router stops working wirelessly and you really need to log in via Ethernet to fix the configuration… hope you’ve got that USB adaptor with you.

Spoken like a person who has owned many a faulty PC’s. I have never had an ethernet port stop working on any of my Macs. I have also found my 802.11 N faster than my old 10/100 ethernet. You can also login via bluetooth.

Post mortem: Yes, there are some really nice features of the MacBook Air: the multi-touch trackpad, the fact that it doesn’t have a tiny, cramped keyboard like many ultraportables, some clever workarounds for the fact that it doesn’t have an optical drive — the ability to comandeer another Mac’s drive over a network, and so on.
But the fact is, apart from the screen and keyboard size, everything else in the MacBook Air is a big compromise.
People who were looking for a viable “pro” upgrade path for their PowerBook G4 12″ will be disappointed, as will anyone who wanted a lighter version of the MacBook Pro.
Will it be a success? I’m willing to bet that there will be an initial rush of sales from people who want the hottest, latest, slimmest thing in the airport gate lounge, but for the rest of us, who are balancing the specs with the portability, the MacBook Air will ultimately turn out to be a sales dud.

I disagree with the sales dud comment. I do believe that sales will be lower than that of the other MacBook lines. But the entire ultra portable market is smaller - it’s to be expected. I do believe it will pave the way for the rest of the MacBook line. If Apple were to release a 17 inch ultra portable I would pick it up. I don’t use wires, and I don’t use the optical drive.

This is definitely an early adopter product, and Apple may be on the cutting edge, but that means they have more room to grow rather than to play catch up.

I logged into Zecco yesterday and noticed the site was broke. I was using Safari. The layout looked a little different (Most of it was broke), so I tried opening it in Firefox. Aha! It works, and it had been changed. I sent a nice email off to a contact person listed on the Zecco.com site.

The new layout is horrible for Safari. I haven’t tried it on my iphone yet, but it’s probably pretty similar.

Ok, so maybe not terribly nice, but as you can see from the screenshots, not un-truthful either. The following reply I received surprised the hell out of me.

Hello Buckley,

Let me start with the short answer: Zecco does not support Safari. The reason is this:

Zecco supports the following four dominant OS/Browser combinations:
Windows + IE6
Windows + IE7
Windows + Firefox
Mac + Firefox

We have tried to also support other (Mac) browsers, like Safari and Camino for instance. However, optimizing HTML code for these often means sub optimization for the four dominant OS/Browser combinations.

So please switch to Mac + Firefox.

Hope that helps. Thanks,

Zecco Editor

PS: I am a Mac and iPhone user too.

What really surprises me is that this is a fairly large broker who depends on it’s website for it’s business. We’re not talking about some small, short sighted “web development” house that is just ignoring a large portion of mac users.

It’s really a shame these days to not be cross browser. It’s one thing to not support some weird, hardly used browser, but Safari makes up most of the Mac users. The worst part is that it easier to develop for Safari and Firefox and gracefully degrade for IE. They support Firefox, but can’t make the layout work with Safari?

On the mobile front it’s worse now the iPhone is out. This is the most capable browser on a mobile phone. Before you Google geeks scoff, android uses webkit, as does Nokia highends.

It also says they support the four dominant browsers [used on their site]. Of course Safari will not show up there, it doesn’t work! How about, use web standards that degrade gracefully for stupid browsers (IE) instead of “optimizing” (whatever that means in his terms).

With that same type of thinking we as a society would not have anything new. Could you see any would be car company at the turn of the 20th century creating a new product and investing the time and money to sell it when no one was using cars. Of course no one was using cars, there weren’t any available yet.

It’s this kinda of reasoning that should be illegal for accessibility’s sake. It’s this sort of reasoning that keeps a 6 year old browser in the mainstream. No one wants to switch to a better browser when developers aren’t whole-heartedly supporting newer technologies. When I say newer, I mean 3-4 years old. When moron web developers who don’t know how to create a cross browser site, they encourage moron, Microsoft Systems Admins to discourage anything other than IE for their users just because they like to use a site made by inept web developers.

I’m surprised by this attitude mainly because the company runs like a web 2.0 company. They don’t charge for standard trades and they make their money on advertising and premium services. Hell, they even have a social networking section with an investing twist. Maybe I can help make enough waves to change this deficiency in the Zecco.com website.

HellaPhone 

I currently use hellanzb for all of my usenet downloads. It’s much simpler than anything I have used before and is a simple install. Very simple if you are on a Debian (Ubuntu), or Darwin System (Mac OS X).I developed this interface for my own personal use and nothing more. That being said, there is very little error checking if any, and even less error reporting in the interface. I planned on releasing this when it is more complete, but I have not had the time to spend on it due to other projects that put food on my table. The app does work pretty well for a quick newzbin search and download to your existing hellanzb install. It just doesn’t monitor the downloads or report an error if the download doesn’t initiate. I planned on rectifying that at some future date.The requirements are:

•  php5
• cakephp 1.2.x
• allow_url_open - (maybe, I may have changed it to curl, can’t remember, don’t care)
• hellanzb install with allowed network access
• newzbin account

If enough people show interest I may make time to work on it some more. Please, if you are interested in upgrading or continuing work on this project, Leave it in the comments. And of course donations are always welcome. Download from the HellaPhone page  Some screenshots   

I installed iwphone plugin and theme for iphone and iPod touch users. Now when you view the site on your mobile safari browser, you’ll get an optimized interface.

This brought to you from my iphone.

I updated my word press install today after neglecting it for so long. I also installed the wphone plugin for the iPhone admin interface. This mean that I might not neglect this blog as much as I have. Btw, I’m writing this from the iPhone.

Mark Liyanage created a command line tool for Core Image in OS X. This make it possible for scripting languages to use this. I’m a PHP and Ruby programmer and I could definitely find use for this. Core Image is ultra fast on recent hardware with a supported video card. The fact that the filters are chained together in one command makes it terribly efficient to run a series of filters on an image. I will definitely find use for this one.

I started using fasterfox, the FireFox extension, today. This is an awesome product. Everything was notably faster than before. Especially if I had been sitting on a page reading (I enabled the prefetch while in idle). If you’re a FireFox user I suggest you try this one out, and if you’re on IE, switch now and start enjoying the web.