Banner advertisers on the Internet don't know diddly.

The Internet is not television.  Die-hard surfers want speed.  That should be obvious by the ever-increasing push for faster and faster Net connections.  There's no quicker way to alienate a web surfer than to make him wait on a 50K flash ad to load before he can see what he came to see.  Isn't that counter-intuitive to the purpose of advertising?

Is some dork sitting in a big office on Park Avenue thinking, "Let's see how big I can make this ad so I can alienate everyone who sees it.  Then let's saturate the market with this ad until the average Net surfer has seen it ten jillion times.  Our product name will be a household word (of what to avoid)."

No, I don't think the ad people are thinking that.  That's the problem I don't think the ad people are thinking at all.

Advertising is to sell things:  Ideas or products, it doesn't matter.  I think text ads on the Net are the direction that advertisers should take.

Metafilter and Blogger both use small text ads that:

• Display within the page.
• The ads are inexpensive.
• Anyone can purchase them.
• They load fast and change with every load of the page.

I've sat and reloaded a page a dozen times to check out the ads. Now I've never done that for a banner or popup advertisement. No-sireeeee.

Now RedRival is going to offer a similar service.  I surely hope netizens jumps on the bandwagon.

As I sit at my computer in my nightgown, I feel a diddly coming on.  In the world scheme of things, this is an insignificant ripple.  On the other hand, it continually bugs me.  So it's time to let off a little steam about it.

The last time I was in the states, I bought a blue flannel nightgown.  It's very pretty with blue lace, pink ribbons and flowers, and crocheted trim.  The bodice has three pearl buttons.  The designer must have decided that these buttons are rare and might be needed immediately if one of them popped off because an extra pearl button is sewn into the hem of the gown.

Everytime I sit down while wearing this nightgown, this spare pearl button stabs me in the leg.  When I roll over on the button in the middle of the night, I feel like the princess sleeping on the pea --which feels more like a boulder when I'm sound asleep.

Now for the diddly... why in the world would a nightgown manufacturer reason that I would need an extra pearl button for a nightgown?  In what circumstance would it be imperative to have an extra matching button for a garment that is only worn in the privacy of my own bedroom?  It isn't like I'd be at an important business meeting in my nightgown, and say, "Oh drats!  I've lost a button.  I must have a matching one immediately to sew back on."

I didn't buy this nightgown at an exclusive boutique.  If I could afford to buy anything at an expensive boutique, I'm sure I could afford to pay someone to mend my nightgowns.  I bought this gown at K-Mart.  Are K-Mart shoppers really all that worried about missing buttons or that all their buttons match on what they wear to bed at night?  Really!

Ouch!  And for that I have to keep getting poked in the rear.  Now why didn't he include a pair of scissors to cut the annoying thing off?

How much are you paying for web hosting?

Probably, too much! Check out http://......com

I don't trust these ads.  There's always a catch.  They do provide all they say, but what they fail to mention is the cost for transfer usage.  That means if you get a lot of hits to your site, then they will charge more.

Sometimes the free domain offer is for one year, and then after that you have to pay for it anyway.  A worst case scenerio is that the webhost retains ownership of your domain name.

If you have a small audience and lots of stuff, then this might be a good deal.  It allows you to get rid of the banner ads and have lots of photos on your site.

However, I wouldn't trade the support and help that I've received from Matt (owner of Rival Pro) and the rest of the users in the
Rival Pro support forum.  Anytime I have a question or problem, I have an answer or solution quickly.

Rival Pro offers low-cost webhosting, imo.  At present the Lite package, with 20 MB storage, costs five dollars per month.  The Silver Package, with 50 MB storage costs a couple of dollars more.

To provide cheap hosting, some places put a lot of sites on each machine.  This means slow download times for your site and waiting to log onto FTP.

All the things I've mentioned above, I've gathered from listening to the reasons why people have changed over to Rival Pro.

Another issue that I would worry about: If a host provides cheaper than market value for webhosting, then what guarantee do I have as a webmaster that they won't go bankrupt?  I have spent a lot of time and work to move my site.  I wouldn't want to keep having to do it over and over while webhosts go out of business.

Before I'd sign up for any of these cheap services, I'd want to talk to someone who is currently using it.

As far as I'm concerned, support is everything.  For less than $10 a month, I have a webhosting tutor on call 24/7.

This is my opinion.  YMMV (Your mileage may vary.)

I'm no military stategist, but doesn't it strike you as just a bit weird that the newscasters reveal the details of the U.S. military intentions?  For example, when a broadcast came from Afghanistan, the newscasters announced, "The U.S. is examining any clue in the background of the television transmission to determine where Osama Bin Laden is hiding."

Did you notice that the next time a television transmission came from that group there was a sheet hanging in the background?  Well, duh.

Here is a guest diddly from the composer, Jane Ellen.

Pamela,

Anything composed from 1925 forward remains under copyright at this time, even if the composer happens to be deceased (copyrights are transferred to the survivors for a short period of time). The next batch of songs to come out from under copyright won't happen for 6-7 years. This means Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" is fine as a midi (with an mp3 you are potentially violating copyright of a specific artist's performance), and so are composers like Beethoven and Mozart, and even some early Irving Berlin.

If you want permission to use Autumn Leaves, you would have to contact the owner of the copyright (which is often not the composer, but the publishing company) stating the *exact* desired use for the piece (i.e., non-profit website, generating 40 hits a day, etc.). I'm not sure how easy it is to get permission without having to pay a fee, but I'm hearing that more and more people are willing to make concessions IF people ask in the first place. If you need help obtaining any of this information, please feel free to contact me.

[soap box mode = ON]
I know that many folks have a problem with the idea of intellectual property ... but as someone who is trying very hard to make a living as a composer, perhaps I can give you a little bit of insight. I write music in all fields, from tv/radio to pop to theatre to school to church. A few years ago I wrote my first Mass and it was subsequently purchased and used in my own parish. About a year later, we got some new people in the choir and they were very excited to tell me that they already knew my Mass. Two people had sung it in two different states in their churches, and another person had heard a midi version of one of the movements on a website for a large charitable organisation. They seemed a bit surprised when I didn't exactly do cartwheels. You see -- YES I'm *thrilled* that my music is being used, I'm *glad* it isn't just sitting in a suitcase somewhere -- but it's very hard to reconcile the fact that people think your music is good enough to steal, but not good enough to buy.

No copies of the Mass had been sold outside of my home state (the publisher was local); and on further investigation I found out that one church was able to do it because someone in my own parish had provided them with illegal xeroxes, while the other church was doing it because someone had attended my church, tape recorded the service, and gone home and written out "their" version of my music. As for the website ... someone heard it somewhere, dashed off a version on their midi keyboard, and uploaded it.

No action was taken on my behalf, by either myself or the publisher. The music was/is being used for its intended purpose and it's not worth the grief, heartache and bad publicity to "go after" these people. However, the loss of income is exactly why less than 10% of the members of large music organisations in this country (like ASCAP or BMI) are making a living with their music. As it is, I only receive 10% of the cover price, so if a large work (like a Mass) sells for $5 USD, I make 50 cents. If a choir of 35 obtains copies of my work without paying for them, I have just lost $17.50. Multiply that by two churches, and we're up to $35. Peanuts you say? Sure, but just keep multiplying. What's even worse, is that the publisher will come to you and say ... "You know, we think your stuff is great, but it's just not selling. We're not going to be able to publish you anymore."
[soap box mode = OFF]

Sorry about the soapbox; didn't really mean to ramble on. But I tho't it might help some people understand why there is such a furor going on over unauthorised use/duplicating of musical works. To anyone here concerned about my being a "net cop" ... perish the thought. I have no time, desire, nor inclination to visit your website and report what music you're using to anyone. Life is FAR too short! But I will happily try to educate people in the facts of the matter at anytime

Jane Ellen Official Website

I received a polite reply to my e-mail from the webmaster of nostigma.org who will pass along my suggestions and complaints.

I recommend the National Institute of Mental Health which has text-only version for those who use programs that read the page to you.

If you are having a mental-health crisis, immediately go to the nearest hospital emergency room or Dial 911.

... and now for the rant...

While I'm watching television, I see an advertisement for http://www.nostigma.org.  Since I am sitting at my computer, I type in the URL and wait for the site to load.

I have a custom-built computer with an 800 Mhz Intel processor and 320 MB RAM.  I use MSIE 5 to browse the web.  My dial-up modem is a 56K, but mostly I connect to the Net at about 26,400.  My monitor is 19-inch.

I timed the loading of the page with

http://websitegarage.netscape.com/whowhere/

which, by the way, was loaded and doing the test while I was still waiting for the graphic to appear on http://www.nostigma.org.

Website garage rates nostigma.org:

 PAGE SUMMARY         Fair 
  
 Browser Compatibility    Poor 
 !Register-It! Readiness  Poor 
 Load Time                Poor 
 Dead Links               Excellent 
 Link Popularity          No Data 
 Spelling                 Excellent 
 HTML Design              Excellent 

 Connect Rate    Connect Time

  14.4K          250.91 seconds 
  28.8K          134.70 seconds 
  33.6K          114.38 seconds 
  56K            87.92 seconds 
  ISDN 128K      27.32 seconds 
  T1 1.44Mbps    3.08 seconds

According to my clock, it took four minutes before I saw anything.  However, my objections to the site design have nothing to do with the slow-load times.

Let's picture a person with little computer knowledge looking at the page for the first time.

I wait the four minutes for the page to load since the graphics are not stored in my cache.

Then I get the Flash request.  Animations tend to exacerbate my bipolar symptoms, so I do not have a Flash program on my computer.

I see a logo that says "National Mental Health ....words I can't make out... Campaign".  I click on it.  Nothing happens.

There is a picture fading and appearing in the middle of the page.  Is that the page or am I having another hallucination?

I see a banner at the top...  it's probably an ad, so I don't click on it.

I see the words, "nostigma.org" at the bottom left of the screen.  I click on it.  Nothing happens.

I don't give up easily, but I honestly don't know what I'm expected to do next.

I see no menu.  There is no place where it says "Enter site here".

The only other words on the page are "help" and "hope".

If I'm manic, I don't need any help, and if I'm depressed, I know there's no hope.

So I give up.

I like the color.  Blue is my favorite color, especially that shade of blue.

Okay... I didn't give up.  I clicked on "help".

Aha, something is happening.

By the way, I saw no alt tags on the graphics, so if I'm using a non-graphical browser, I guess I'm just up the creek without a paddle.

Now I'm waiting again for more graphics to load.  I can tell the right hand side has a bunch of text and some numbers, but even with my glasses -- which correct my vision to 20/10 -- I can't quite make out the words.  So I click on the browser's increase-text-size-to-larger button, and nothing happens.  The words and numbers are a graphic and so I'm stuck with the size that was chosen for me.

No alt tags here either so my computer program that reads webpages to me won't work either.

At this point, I stop looking at the page and look for an e-mail address to complain to the web designer.

I am in no particular crisis at the moment, but heaven forbid if I was, that I'd go to this page for help.  The frustration is enough to load my gun.

Tonight I was watching a television program which brought up the issue of equal pay for equal work.  Men were being paid more for the same work that women were doing.

A commercial break showed a husband and wife in an empty movie theater.  The screen lights up with the film of their wedding.  Then the man gives his wife a three-stone diamond anniversary ring.

I was struck by the incongruity of these two pictures.  Women insist on equality of pay, which I agree with; but on the other hand, they expect special consideration from their husbands.

What do I mean by that?  Well, if a women forgets her wedding anniversary, who ever hears of a husband throwing a tantrum about it?  But let a man forget their anniversary, and all ... a storm breaks out.