ILoveJackDaniels.com

What Makes a Great Developer?

dave@ilovejackdaniels.com — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:03:00 GMT

What makes a truly great developer? Some might say a positive attitude. Some might say a high-sugar, high-caffeine, high-bacon diet. Some might say an absence of sunlight and as many monitors as a desk can support. I say pessimism and laziness are high up the list.

ReviewMe: Internet Marketing Ninjas

dave@ilovejackdaniels.com — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 10:11:00 GMT

A ReviewMe review of Internet Marketing Ninjas, a site offering a selection of videos, tutorials and tools from industry leading internet marketing gurus.

ReviewMe: Wordze

dave@ilovejackdaniels.com — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 09:16:00 GMT

A ReviewMe review of Wordze, an online keyword research tool.

PPC Management Software: Problem Solved

dave@ilovejackdaniels.com — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:55:16 GMT

Back in August, I wrote about PPC Management Software, and my uphill struggle to find a really good PPC software provider. Well, after a few months of trawling the web and trying various options out, I've found a program that works exactly the way PPC software really should work: Kazaam from Israeli firm Kenshoo.

A gentleman by the name of Etai Rosen spotted my plea for help and got in touch to show me through Kenshoo's system, and I was completely blown away. In the training sessions since that initial sales session, and using it since the training, I could swear it's reading my mind and getting better. And there's a new version due out any minute that fixes just about every little gripe and problem I have found so far, and even adds the biggest feature currently missing from their offering.

So what's good about it ... well, it has the ability to import an XML file, daily and automatically from a URL. Awesome - that takes care of my product lists, special offers and so on. Other providers seemed to trip up on this point frequently.

There's a great system of bid policies - you set and forget (to a degree). Bids can be raised and lowered, bad keywords weeded out, all based on pre-set metrics, including an average CPA, and/or actual conversion data.

Copying campaigns from one engine to another takes 5 clicks.

A huge selection of highly automated keyword generators, some smarter than others but all interesting.

The objective appears to be to automate, as far as possible, the PPC process, and in that regard I think they've succeeded admirably. The whole system appears to be able to take control of most of the day to day tasks involved with running PPC campaigns.

It's early days yet but so far I'm very impressed. Things may change, of course, but I'll keep you posted!

Comment Peer Review With OpenID?

dave@ilovejackdaniels.com — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 09:59:29 GMT

OpenID allows us to verify that the person visiting and commenting on our sites relates to, or owns, a specific URL. This is wildly useful, and I'm looking forward to seeing it more widely adopted as soon as possible (OpenID on this site is in testing still but will be up and running soon!).

I was thinking about OpenID the other day, and one other problem that we are currently experiencing. People know that commenting on other sites will increase their exposure. Lots of people know that. So popular posts on popular sites receive a huge number of comments. Partly because they are good posts, and partly because people know a comment in the right place can be a major draw for traffic.

This creates a visibility problem. It's difficult to spot the good commenters (or good comments) in among the mess at the end of most articles. It's even harder to spot comments from people that you know personally, or whose comments you enjoy reading.

A Solution?

A site uses OpenID for commenter identities.
A JavaScript loads a small frame from another site when you mouse-over the commenter's name.
This frame includes a rating for that commenter, a link to a profile for that commenter, and rating buttons.
The profile includes whatever the commenter wants to add - standard profile stuff.
People can click the rating buttons in the frame, "Positive" or "Negative", to indicate how they feel about a specific comment.
The combination of these clicks produces the overall commenter rating.
People can also leave a note with their rating ("Comment is extra-smart") which is added to the commenter profile along with, ideally, a link to the original comment.
People who leave ratings need to be validated with OpenID before they can rate another person's comments.
People can opt out of the system.

Pros

Easy to set this up so that the JavaScript call to the centralised system included a link back to the original comment, allowing OpenID users to track their previous comments and potentially quickly check for replies.
A quick call to the system could grab the commenter (or comment) rating and change the display accordingly, allowing a skim-reader to quickly pick out the best comments from a thread.
People would get feedback on their comments!
Would be possible for individuals to set preferences within the system ("Always highlight comments from this person", "Always ignore comments from this person")
People who leave worthless comments (quick one liners using keywords instead of names, just to boost their own search engine link-love) are easily spotted and ignored.
Provides a path for non-A-list bloggers to become more widely read and A-list themselves.

Cons

System is open to spamming - people can set up multiple OpenIDs to vote themselves up. Easily fixed though - IP and cookie tracking, plus a higher weighting given to commenters with certain characteristics (member more than a year, consistently highly rated comments, rate lots of other people, don't just give high ratings when they do rate, etc).
Revenge rating (where someone leaves a negative rating and the person slighted then does the same back despite actual comment quality) could be a problem.
"Cliques" could easily form.
It may dissuade genuine people from leaving negative comments on popular blogs for fear of fanboy-revenge.

Thoughts?

I'm not entirely sure how much of a difference this could make. It would require a wider adoption of OpenID (definitely a good thing), and adoption on the larger blogs and blog networks. However, were such a system to exist and be used, I think its benefits would be enormous. I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts.