JimWorld Gazette Issue #90 04/30/2000

JimWorld Gazette - Issue #90 - April 30, 2000

CONTENTS

• All About Free News
  
• All About Spam Cop
  
• A Search Engine Forums Thread
  
• Some Great Free Stuff For You
  
• Getting It All Done Requires Tools
  
• Snippets

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g90

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ALL ABOUT FREE NEWS

This week's top news is all about... well, it's news about news.

It all started when the nice folks over at Anaconda sent me a copy of their Clipper program.

I've had it on my list for months to add daily news feeds to the JimWorld sites, and just never got around to it. You know how that goes. Things like that take so much time to research and implement that the only news you wind up with is the news that you never got around to installing news. Bummer.

I let the Clipper sit in my Inbox for several weeks before I felt guilty enough about the delay that I set aside three whole days to installing it and reviewing it for this article.

It's a good thing I set aside three days. I used half a day installing Clipper with 1,500 news sources broken down into over 260 user selectable categories, plus adding a NewsHub top technology news feed to the JimWorld home page, and built an entire site to house the Clipper news feeds.

I called it NewsKlatsch, only because CoffeeKlatsch was already taken. http://newsklatsch.com

Take a look at it and also at the center column news feed at http://jimworld.com

When I was all done, I found that I still had two and a half days left over so I spent the time with Nick (my son) checking out new golf clubs for him. Did you know that the biggest passions among the 14+ year old crowd is golf? Go figure that one out. They'd better all get really good jobs when they have to start paying their own greens fees.

Anyway, the entire news thingie turned out to be so simple that now I'm here red-faced to tell you that you don't need to wait. Your communities will love you for it. Even without any advance notice other than asking the Get High Forum members to review the site for problems and suggestions, NewsKlatch is already getting several hundred visitors daily. And most are return at least daily from their bookmarks, which is the most desirable traffic you can get.


THE SITE

Needless to say, the site design and implementation was a piece of cake since I started with a Free Site Template from http://freesitetemplates.com and yes, that is one of the JimWorld web sites. The site looks good and loads FAST since I keep an emphasis on fast loading sites in the templates database. Professional looking design and slow loading sites do not have to go hand-in-hand.


THE SOFTWARE

Anaconda! Clipper
http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=957143146
Price: us$149.00
Installation: us$49.95

Anaconda! Clipper provides your site with live news headlines instantly. This new product will fetch (clip) headlines from iSyndicate.com, NewsHub.com, or their newest addition: MoreOver.com and insert them into your site in real time. The latest news about Sports, Weather, Business, Finance, Science, Entertainment, Technology, Health, and more.

Headlines can be aggregated into your own categories. Headlines and full text of articles can be searched.

Clipper also does "remote SSI", fetching pages from another server for integration into a local page. This allows you to "grab" just about any content from any page(s) on the Web and integrate it into your site in real time. I intend to play with this one soon. It has the potential to do some great cross -promotion within your sites. It also has the potential to be a powerful copyright infringement tool. Please don't use it that way. You'll get caught and that could be costly.

Any good tool has the ability to be misused. That doesn't make it a "bad" tool. Bricks are great building tools, but do we blame the brick when someone throws it through a window? I guess that's a bad example, considering that lately we always blame the tool in America. But that's a whole different article.

The only drawback to the Clipper is that it is too easy to install. Where's my joy of accomplishment after fighting my server in a death duel?

At the bottom of the pages on NewsKlatsch I put a link to "About this site" where you can get a bit more technical information and download the HTML page and Clipper template I used to get the system running.


THE NEWS FEEDS

MoreOver
http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=957078817

I chose the MoreOver news feed to power the NewsKlatsch site. They offer over 1,500 sources organized into over 260 different categories. There is no charge to run their headlines on your site.

Visit their site and use the online WebFeed Wizard to customize your news feed. It takes about one minute and you are ready to rock.


iSyndicate
http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=957147168

iSyndicate offer a wide range of product, but the headlines they offer you for free are excellent. They have content from 861 sources and you can design your headline news feed to satisfy your community.

In addition to their free headline feeds, you can purchase full story news feeds to run on your site. It's not cheap, but it is excellent.

You can syndicate your content through iSyndicate. Their most popular plan allows your headlines to be syndicated to other sites and each person that visits your site to read the full story results in a small charge to you. The per-click through charge is in the range of 2 cents each. This can be a very attractive way to generate quality, low-cost traffic.


NewsHub
http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=957146986

For variety, I chose the NewsHub feed to deliver headlines to the homepage of JimWorld. I tried both MoreOver and iSyndicate, but for a news feed directly placed into your page without the formatting benefits of Clipper, the NewsHub headlines are the best looking.

Use the "My NewsHub" button on their site to access their Wizard to custom design your headline deliver to your site. For the home page display on JimWorld, I used their wizard, cut and pasted the code it generated into the home page HTML, uploaded it to the server and haven't touched it since. Five minutes at the most.


The Weather Channel
http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=957146662

While it isn't exactly news, you really should have some other content available on your news page. One category that goes hand-in-glove is local weather. For any location in the U.S. you can offer a search box to bring up a person's local weather, or weather for any city or zip code they want to enter. They just enter the zip code or location name and up it pops.

And it is, of course, free. Check out the NewsKlatsch site to get the coding for the search box.

Now that you have all of the tools at hand, go forth and add some new energy to your sites. You'll gain in newfound traffic and increased loyalty from your community.

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Jim Note:
I've been playing with HearMe this weekend and it's easy to install and simple to operate. The sound quality is excellent and reliable. If you have any interest in personalizing your relationship with your site's visitors, this is something you must give a try. Besides, it's fun. If you install it, let me know and I'll drop by for a chat. BTW: it includes a nice text chat system as well.

ALL ABOUT SPAM COP

A couple of subscribers took exception to my comment about "morons that use SpamCop" and after I wrote one back giving my reasons for that observation, I actually had a convert! Imagine that.

So, I thought that maybe if I explained to all of you, I might find one other thinking person that had just never stopped to think about what they have been doing. Two conversions. Wow! It's a long shot, but what the heck?

Let's start with SpamCop's own introduction:

"Welcome to SpamCop!

"SpamCop helps you punish spammers for sending you their junk mail. This service is free. Often, spammers lose their accounts and even get charged "cleanup fees" by their internet providers. Unfortunately, life is still too easy for the spammer."

Once you've read this warm, informational piece of eHate, you are free to move right on into the web shredding area of this "tool" and really start punishing everyone in sight.

Let's use a past sample of the Gazette as fodder for this thinking man's eHate tool.

The average Gazette contains about 50 links and 10 or so email addresses.

We now paste this issue, which was subscribed to by our roaming Spam Terrorist, into the SpamCop Fully Automatic Web Shredding Machine. Let's really get even with everyone we can find! Let's send out our ripples of ehate worldwide.

The SpamCop shredding machine analyzes the entire content of the Gazette looking for every URL and email address it can find.

Now for every one of the 60 URL's and email addresses it finds, it researches the hosts for each domain name and the entire upline hosts for all of those hosts. We now have about 10 businesses identified for every domain name it locates in the Gazette. It then generates addresses for several alternate user names at each of those ISP's. abuse@, spam@, postmaster@ and sometimes a few others.

We have now identified approximately 240 evil companies participating in this evil email newsletter that was requested by the moron complaining. And SpamCop has come up with some 4 addresses at each of these evil predators to which it will send it's hate mail.

Given that the Gazette is about 30K in size, and we are sending out 960 email complaint messages, this one simple email newsletter has been used to clog the Internet with over 28.8 megabytes of wasted bandwidth. Oh, didn't I mention that SpamCop sends the entire message, including the Gazette text, to every address.

So, why is this bad Jim? Doesn't this help put pressure on spammers?

In their own words, SpamCop tells their users the following and then goes right ahead and shreds the sender even if this advise is not followed. That tells you just how seriously they take this bit of buried advise.

"To unsubscribe or not to unsubscribe? If you have signed up for a newsletter or product updates, or otherwise agreed to receive email from a legitimate company, you owe it to the sender to at least try the removal process provided in the email before you cry "spam!" It is very difficult for a legitimate sender to remove you from their list if they learn about the problem from SpamCop. So it's generally much more effective to remove yourself using the sender's procedure. If you have tried unsubscribing to no avail, but you think the company normally makes an honest attempt to remove people, then you can file a spam report, but please include a note stating what you have done to try to be removed in the comments section of your spam report - you will have an option to add comments to all your spam reports. This will lend credence to your claim of spamming."

Now, we all know that Spam Terrorists are logical, thinking people, right? Not! They never stop to think of the damage they can do. They are just getting their jollies spewing venom at everyone in sight.

Let's stop for a minute and look at the people damaged by all of this hate.

Of the 60 links and email addresses listed in the Gazette, about 50 of them are people I write about and resources I list for you to use to improve your web sites. Many are personal sites run by individuals. None had any say in the fact that their sites and products were listed in the Gazette.

Many have ISP's that employ unskilled, not-very-bright people responsible for enforcing their company's Terms Of Service so they immediately threaten the poor site operator that just happened to do such a good job that I wrote about them.

The real targets these hateful people want to pressure, my ISP and list host, are very familiar with JimWorld and the Gazette. They know that there are only two ways to get listed and both of them exclaim in big red letters that visitors are subscribing.

So why don't I send off a nice message to the person running SpamCop and explain the situation, ask him to investigate, and if he agrees that the Gazette isn't spam, he can simply add it to the list of sites his "tool" won't send complaints for?

Well, that was fun. I got back about as obnoxious a message as I've ever received. It isn't his fault that people misuse his "tool" but rather the fault of the person sending his fine, intelligent users this life threatening SPAM.

No hope of communicating in a meaningful way with anyone this angry at life in general.

So, when you run over to SpamCop and use his "tool" to get even with the evil spammers, you are mostly hurting hundreds of completely innocent people who just happened to get caught in the line of fire.

Why not try something as simple as clicking on one of the THREE links to send an unsubscribe message that will not only take your name off this list, but block it from EVER being subscribed again?

When I go to SpamCop and use their looker-upper and put in http://virtualpromote.com, it tells me:

"Statistics: This host is "clean" - it has not had any spam reports related to email origination."

This, in direct contradiction to the 3 or 4 people that use the service to whine about twice each month.

When I add 20,000 subscribers to the list, about 3 "people" send off their hate attacks instead of using the simple unsubscribe.

Just makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Please, before you take your anger out on people, stop and do one thing that is becoming a lost art: THINK.

Much as I hate regulation, I'm starting to think that we do need laws to determine that people registering domain names have measurable brain activity.

A SEARCH ENGINE FORUMS THREAD

The following thread in the forums is worth spreading around:

-- Keensurfer
The more and more I read these boards I wonder if I am the only person out there doing web positioning that doesn't use cloaking, mirroring, redirecting, etc. on any of my clients web sites. I do use Doorway pages buy only very sparingly and usually only if a client had their website designed so "un-search-engine-friendly" that it doesn't have a prayer of ranking well anywhere.

I tell my clients that those that are cheating to get rankings are doing so at the risk of being banned someday and that I don't believe the short term gain is worth the long term risk. What are your thoughts on this matter?

-- Antbear
Rest assured you are not alone.

--Jim
Far, far from alone.

Many of the heavy hitters here work hard to get their clients well ranked, but they also put a lot of effort into great content, which will always rank well in the long run.

The people that put all of their efforts into "Rank at any cost" tend to get wiped out every time the engines change. That leaves them with no traffic.

The professionals that take the longer view may lose some traffic, but their content driven traffic lasts forever since it feeds the spiders exactly what they are looking for: content.

-- Want to share your view on this subject?
http://searchengineforums.com/Forum13/HTML/000450.html

-- What are the Forums all about?
"I absolutely love it here!! I intend to follow the most conservative, cautious advice I can find here, just to stay on the safe side. There's nothing sadder than to think that some people can get themselves banned as spammers, through totally ignorant mistakes when they knew nothing, and were just submitting the best they could. I totally like the feel and sense of ethics of the people here, and find the advice invaluable."

"Jim has done something very special here that you do not see on any other board. He has created a spam and flame free forum. The reason it works is that all the community take our information seriously. We are many pros here that do nothing but SEO (search engine optimization) for a living."

If you haven't started taking advantage of the massive amount of free, accurate information in the Search Engine Forums, you are in for a real treat. You're welcome to just drop in and read, or ask questions and when you're comfortable, share your knowledge with the rest of the community.

http://searchengineforums.com

SOME GREAT FREE STUFF FOR YOU

We all love new tools to play with on our sites... especially when they are free.

Here are several that I found that should install easily and offer you some real value for your sites.

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SpellChecker
http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=957141827

The SpellChecker product line not only implements a web based spell checking tool to your web site, it also adds a robust Grammar Checker and Thesaurus. With easy set up and integration you can provide a powerful and often requested user benefit.

• The SpellChecker, a Grammar Checker and Thesaurus functions support multiple languages.
  French - 137,000 words German - 295,000 words Italian - 283,000 words
  
• The SpellChecker operates in a separate browser window so your work is not obstructed and traffic never leaves your site.
  
• Corrected text is automatically returned to the form
  
• HTML tags are ignored during the spell check process
  
• The SpellChecker supports banner advertising. Insert your own banners.
  
• A custom dictionary is supported for each user
  
• By adding a few simple lines of HTML code and inserting a small script, the SpellChecker can be installed on any HTML based web site with ease
  
• SpellChecker can be installed on several systems with the Automatic Installer feature

We are planning to install the SpellChecker in the Search Engine and Get High Forums. Imagine, forums with no spelling errors! Can it be?

If you install this feature on your forums (bulleting board), not only don't you have to pay anything, but the folks at SpellChecker will pay you $50. Hard to resist that offer. Some conditions apply.

When you sign up, please use the referral code of "1299". That way, you get $50 and I get $25 just for sending you. Cool. Then you can start sending people and getting the $25. Again, cool. Maybe we can get that new server for the JimTools.

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Hosted Shopping Cart/Catalog
http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=957141637

Freemerchant.com imposes no hidden charges.

Here's a shortened list of your free services from freemerchant.com:

-- Internet Store Hosting
-- Secure Shopping Cart
-- Internet Store Builder
-- Unlimited Store Catalog Size
-- Traffic Logs
-- eMail Account
-- Merchant to Merchant Banner Exchange
-- Shipping Calculator
-- Tax Calculator
-- Coupon Creator
-- Discounted Corporate Services & Offers
-- Technical Support And Much More.

Any service that is honest enough to post things like the following on their selling page deserves our attention and consideration:

"You Make it Happen
If your Internet store becomes great, it will be because you made it great. If you spend a day putting up a bare catalog and then sit around for months waiting to get rich, you are going to be disappointed. You as the Internet storeowner must take on the responsibility to make your store a success: build an attractive site, advertise and promote your store, communicate with your customers, provide great customer service. If you are willing to put in the time, energy, and resources required to make your Internet store a success, you will be rewarded."

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Nishita AD Rotator Service
http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=957141693

With Nishita AD Rotator you get advanced features required to rotate your sponsor's ads on your website. Sign up today and start making money by rotating your sponsor's ads effectively.

FEATURES:
-- Real-time banner ad impressions and click through report
-- Set banner weights
-- Support any banner size
-- Support rich media
-- Unlimited impressions and click throughs
-- Set banner expiration dates and impressions
-- Set up within a few minutes
-- Set category for targeted advertising
-- Tested on Netscape & IE
-- They DO NOT place their ads on your site
-- Completely free

EASY SETUP:
In order to get your free Nishita AD Rotator Account you simply fill in the registration form and push the submit button. Immediately after an email is send to you, containing the setup instructions and the address where you can set up your sponsor's banner ads and generate Nishita AD Rotator HTML code. No CGI and SSI are needed. After placing the HTML code on your page, it will automatically rotate your ad banners.

While looking around the Nishita site it was flattering to find that JimTools had been given their highest rating of 5 stars. That just shows that they really do know what is going on around the Net!

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Netwhistle
http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=957139358

Could Your Lifeline Be Offline?

Netwhistle can monitor your Web site for you, for free. If it ever becomes unavailable, they'll send an e-mail to your online address or to your alpha pager with detailed error information.

I have been using a similar service for a couple of years and can't imagine getting along without it. However, I'm moving to Netwhistle because they offer pager messaging which I don't get currently.

Now my web sites can ruin my day regardless of what else I might be doing. I'll have to get used to leaving my pager in my locker when on the links doing regular practice in getting out of sand traps.

GETTING IT ALL DONE REQUIRES TOOLS

One of the most frequent inquiries I get goes something like this:

"Jim, how do you manage to get so much work done? Writing the Gazette and launching new online tools must take a lot of effort by several people."

When I read these messages, it makes me pause to think of the real "secret" to effectively growing an online community. The secret is organization, and organization requires good tools. This having been said, I'm going to start telling you about the tools I use to make it possible for me to get-it-all-done and still have a semblance of a life off the Web.

My biggest secret weapon is my laptop computer. Well, not really a laptop. It's actually considered a handheld computer.

Freedom from my online desktop computer is essential if I am to balance real life and online life. I needed to get work done at times I am not at my desk, but I wanted something simple to use and easy to carry.

My solution is the Compaq Aero 8000 H/PC Pro computer. It uses the Windows CE operating system, has versions of Word, Excel, Internet Explorer browser, Outlook, Power Point and others built into the system. You can download tons of new applications from Windows CE sites all over the Web.

The screen is about 10.5 inches and the keyboard is 95% the size of a normal laptop's keyboard.

There are many ways to provide data input, including: Type II PC Card slot, CompactFlash slots (2, 1 internal), serial port, infrared port, PS/2 port, audio in/out and built-in microphone

There's a built-in 56K modem, output for a VGA monitor, mouse and keyboard inputs, speakers and a bunch of other stuff that frankly I don't use.

The system, including charging station/docking bay, spare battery, travel charger, and everything else you need weighs in at under us$1,000.00 street price.

I wanted the machine to give me freedom. I wanted to be able to sit at one of Nick's baseball games and get some work done between innings. I wanted to be able to do some writing while having lunch. I wanted something that worked for me and didn't fight me.

The Aero 8000 does all that. It weighs under three pounds including a battery that lasts up to 10 hours. It fits into it's upright docking/charging stand and synchronizes all of its files with my desktop computer.

When I open it to write something or look up a phone number or check the street maps for directions, it starts running instantly. No waiting for Windoze to boot up.

It has no hard drive because it doesn't need one. The software is stored in memory as are all of the files I create. So there's no waiting to start working. Just open the lid and start typing.

Does not having a hard drive bother me? Not at all. My Aero 8000 has 128 mega bytes of storage and I can add as much more as I want using slide in memory cards. I don't do any CAD drawings at lunch and have no need to create high-resolution graphics for four-color separations while standing in line at the DMV.

I just need something light, long lasting, fast to start using and easy to maintain.

That about defines the Aero 8000.

http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=957199910

SNIPPETS

Required Reading: Fireclick White Paper
< http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=957204181 >

Once installed near the web server, Blueflame performs real-time click-stream analysis. By analyzing the page traversal patterns, Blueflame is able to prime it's small Java Applet with information about likely pages or elements that will be requested later. For example, it is very likely that a user reading e-mail will browse their first email, then the second on the list, and the third, etc...

While the user reads the first message, Blueflame is loading the second into the browser cache, and so on, eliminating the latency typical of retrieving each message.

A consumer shopping for a book may call up a list of the top ten bestsellers, and then want more detailed information on the top 3 authors. Blueflame primes the user's browser cache with page elements that will be required to service these upcoming requests, thereby delivering a much faster response to the actual request. On a shopping site, the GIF image of an item can be pre-loaded into the consumer's browser while she is reading the item description, thus eliminating the painful wait time typically associated with large images.

Fireclick’s a server based software system to give high-traffic sites better conversion rates, higher customer satisfaction and more repeat business.

That’s why it won "Best of Show" at Internet Commerce Expo.

Predictive servers are the wave of the future and this is a great opportunity to learn the basics for free.

To order a free copy of the white paper, go to: http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=957204079


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Pay Per Click Directories
http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=957167962

If you are looking for places to bid on keywords to generate traffic, I've put together a list of 16 and made them available in The1000.com directory. Bid on some traffic and get your site jumpin'.

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New ICQ Beta Release
http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=957193553

If you are using ICQ as part of your online communications scheme, you'll want to check out the new features offered by ICQ 2000a Beta release. There are a ton of new features and the reports from the Alpha test indicate that it is pretty stable.

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Are you an affiliate program manager? If so, we have opened a new forum just for you to network with your peers.
http://gethighforums.com/