Seeking the All-in-One Solution
An all-in-one gadget is a dangerous thing to have, isn’t it? If just one part of the gadget fails to work, does the entire gadget fail? Yet, carrying two, three, or even more gadgets that all do one indiividual thing perfectly seems like such a hassle. One of the reasons I don’t have a top digital camera is because I don’t think I’d carry it around or give it any use. I bought a used digital camera, and I don’t carry it around, though it’s one of the smallest cameras on the market, even at 4 years old. So it may come as a surprise that I carry one of the top mobile phones on the market and a 40 gig iPod (from before the video and color iPods came out). The gadget I want is a top notch cell phone, digital camera, television, DVR, pocket PC, and more. Does it exist? I believe so, I just don’t know how to find it, or if I did, if it would be even remotely affordable.
What is the point I’m getting at here? At the very least, I’m surprised that there isn’t more cooperation, and that there aren’t more mergers and acquisitions.
And this whole Web 2.0 “thing” is generating some very interesting web services. But where one does something perfectly for me, it falls short in another way. I hope that 2006 will bring some people, maybe entire businesses, to swallow their pride and consolidate their work into another’s web service. Oh, and if you can make something that works with a service I already use and doesn’t require a new signup/login process, that’s even better!
Examples:
I really like MeetWithApproval.com. It makes it simple to invite people to a meeting at a convenient time. But it’s missing the ability to suggest locations to meet, like MeetUp.com.
Sleek online calendarHipCal offers all of the calendar functions I need. But I can’t import/export or show my events with WordPress.
I have been using a customized start page with Netvibes, but when I add an RSS feed or bookmark, it doesn’t get added to Firefox.
And so much more…
Am I completely off-base to be complaining and wanting more out of Web 2.0 and my personal gadgets?
Holiday Revenue and Purchases
As suspected, the last couple of days were down in terms of revenue. Traffic levels were down across the board on my sites, which is not that alarming, either. Today already looks like an upswing as people go back to work, go shopping, and just generally get on the computer after the holiday.
I purchased a domain yesterday. If I can get back $9.20 on it in the next 12 months, it will have been worth the purchase. I will certainly let you all know how it goes. It’s going to require some basic SEO and traffic, which based on my previous experiences, isn’t nearly as hard as people suggest. It’s currently (overly) advertising intensive, but I’m looking at the contextual nature of the ads and will decide how best to place them and which I think will monetize the best. For now, they all stay.
On a different note, I was approached recently about an MLM opportunity. I’m naturally skeptical and will not be getting involved. It sounds to me just like affiliate marketing, except that there are uplines and downlines which mean I would be helping someone above me get paid and someone below me would help me get paid. I find it a bit confusing, a bit sketchy, and don’t really understand the benefits. Is it that these companies create deals that are better than what the average affiliate would get? If you have any experiences with eStar Network, EXCEL, ACN, Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing, NEXX, Lightyear Alliance, Quixtar, or any other MLM company, I’d be curious to hear why people choose these companies over doing their own affiliate marketing. It seems like a waste of money to me. Perhaps people who have chosen to steer clear of these opportunities would have a better understanding than me?
Technorati Tags: wolftrust, affiliatemarketing, mlm
Spin it like a journalist
According to this comment, I put my spin on the Performancing for Firefox blogging extension and the Flock blogging browser. I’d think that “spin it like a journalist” is not a kind comment, but it’s an interesting one. I did put a bit of spin on my Performancing for Firefox post, I suppose, but I also don’t feel I said anything negative about Flock in the post. I certainly could have, but I linked to a good source on why they didn’t want to be an extension, and the reader can choose whether or not he/she agrees with the decision for Flock to be a standalone browser.
Flock should have been an extension in my mind. I firmly believe that. I’m not a developer, or even a programmer, but I already use up to 4 browsers (or at least have them installed) - IE, Opera, Firefox, and an IE-clone/add-on called Maxthon. I downloaded Flock, surprised myself at how confused I was, and promptly deleted it. It didn’t serve my needs immediately and that was that.
On the other hand, Performancing for Firefox was unbelievably easy for me to use. And it keeps me within Firefox, where I now read all my RSS feeds, upload to my server by FTP, and do all of my browsing. Believe it or not, the extensions for Firefox are just one more reason for me to stick with Firefox. I realize that a lot of these extensions may work in Flock, but it’s just not worth the trouble of figuring it out, especially since I was confused the second I installed Flock.
If you’re curious about my feelings surrounding Flock, I actually have a couple of sentences that I wrote with Flock in mind. In my Angry Blogger post, I said:
When I come across a glowing review for a piece of software, and then I download it, I want it to be a glowing piece of software. I’m finding lately that stuff I download is not all that great, and not one person is writing about its limitations and how much work needs to go into it for it to be truly useful.
I’m not a loyal browser user. I used Netscape, then IE, then Maxthon, then Mozilla or Netscape or something, then Firefox, then Opera, then Firefox. Flock just wasn’t for me at the time. It wouldn’t take a lot to get me to download it again, but it would probably take a lot to convince me to stick with it.
Update: I hadn’t noticed the Flock bashing going around, and have no idea if I fueled it by including a link to Flock in my Performancing Screenshots post. I wonder if a person has that sort of influence from one little link? In any case, I wasn’t cited in columnist Matthew Ingram’s post indicating that Performancing’s success should not be anti-Flock.
Technorati Tags: performancing, firefox extensions, flock, browser, wolftrust
