When your relatives call you and ask you “Where’s the one half key?”, this is probably what they are seeing on Facebook. As if Capcha wasn’t annoying enough already.
I should be sharing recent projects with you but my brain is fried (mostly from staring at PhpMyAdmin for too long) but in a moment of clarity a month ago I wrote this. It is almost entirely fictitious 
Applied Knowledge Vs. Monkeys
Office of the President of Expensive Widgets Inc., Mr. Donald Von Van Vlardigen
President: Stephen, my wife said something funny last night. She said: “Put enough monkeys together and they will eventually type out Hamlet!” You know it would be great to have that on our website.
Stephen the V.P.: Errr… Why?
President: It sounds funny and clever! Anyhow, you figure it out.
Stephen the V.P.: Hmmm… I will sir.
(1 week of cogitating goes by)
V.P. calls on a consultant.
Stephen the V.P.: Hey, I need this program on our Website that attempts to explain the probability of an infinite number of monkeys writing Hamlet on a typewriter. And then people can paste text into a box and it will calculate the probability for that specific snippet of text.
Friendly Webmaster: Infinite Monkey Theorem! The low probability of that is actually hard to understand for most people. How do you tie it into your business of selling expensive widgets?
Stephen the V.P.: Errr… I want something viral! Yeah, that’s it.
Friendly Webmaster: This is a theorem of utter improbability yet people use it to give an impression of probability to a statement… Anyhow… Perhaps, you could use this to convey that the quality of your expensive widgets didn’t happen by accident and is based on novel design, carefully planned research and thorough testing?
Stephen the V.P.: Yeah, errr… Exactly!
Friendly Webmaster: So you have a page that has a quick simplified explanation on the improbability of the Infinite Monkey Theorem. Then translate it to something people can understand like the maximum amount of time it would take before the monkey hits the magic combination of keys. Then you have a Flash monkey that will start typing really fast the words you paste into the text field and a timer quickly tell you how long it would take.
Stephen the V.P.: LOLs. That is actually cool!
Friendly Webmaster: I would put a slider there so you can change the number of monkeys in order to lower the time. And then of course you can send a message to your friends with the info and have an opt-in for your New Widgets newsletter so you get something out of this. You know most people will type in something simple like their own name.
Stephen the V.P.: Hahahaha… Sounds cool, when can that be done?
Friendly Webmaster: Well, I would have to call a few experienced Flash programmers and a kick-ass graphic artist and get back to you with a time line. The engine behind the statistics model is somewhat simple so a mock-up could be made for approval quickly.
Stephen the V.P.: I should give you the name of our artistic director to see if you guys can work on it together.
Friendly Webmaster: That would be ideal!
Stephen the V.P.: How long would it take for a monkey to type out “I love you Caitlin”?
Friendly Webmaster: One sec.
A minute later…
Friendly Webmaster: It is much lower than I expected but I’m fumbling with the window’s calculator here… I think it would take 1 monkey 467,394,568,112,854,000 years if he types 2 keys a second. I do not know how you call that stuff above the 568 trillion. At this point I would apply more monkeys to the task to get a number I can conceptualize! Actually this number is wrong because I did not account for the space bar
and the leap years. Argh…
Stephen the V.P.: Lolz
Friendly Webmaster: It would be nice to have it spelled out below the clock as well (I can look up the info and add it) but I’m sure it would take longer to spell out the name of the number than the text the people put into the box.
Other ideas…
Should we be maxing out the number of monkeys to the actual number of monkeys left on this planet (based on WWF?) Should we let people add lemurs, ferrets, cats and/or any other animal that could possibly type? I am just asking because you would have to hire a LOT of friggin’ animals to come up with a time span that is understandable for your average person. Should we have a cost calculator as well, to figure in the space, equipment and human staff required to upkeep the experiment?
Stephen the V.P.: ?!
Friendly Webmaster: You know it would be so cool if you had a turn-of-the-century design like Metropolis, with a huge circus of animals! Actually the animals could be steam-powered robots and then we would have to figure in the cost of each robot units. But then there would only be robot monkeys ‘cuz making robots in the shape of all sorts of animals would become cost prohibitive in theory.
Stephen the V.P.: This is craaaaazy…
Friendly Webmaster: No it’s not, it’s just driving the point of how improbable the theorem is by using something people could conceptualize easier than probability. At least it’s more entertaining. You know if humans could understand probability they would never utter the Infinite Monkey Theorem to begin with. More importantly it makes the case of how the quality of your widgets could not happen by accident and is based on applied knowledge, science and research. Adding many simulation variables makes it fun beyond 30 seconds and more likely to be used and shared.
Stephen the V.P.: Yeah! Throw in all the crazy variables you can think of!
Friendly Webmaster: These ideas are not random btw, they are based on applied knowledge, science and research.
Stephen the V.P.: LOL
(a few weeks goes by…)
V.P. is in the President’s office.
Stephen the V.P.: So you can play with the number of monkeys, the words typed and it will tell you how long it would take. Also it will tell you how about the required coal-to-steam energy and how much it would cost in today’s money. It will also tell you the carbon footpath and but also when the
experiment would stop because of lack of available resources.
President: So it would take 5 and a half years to type “Donald”… That’s all?!
Stephen the V.P.: We assumed that all the monkeys are steam-powered random programmed robots so they only need maintenance and power and they work forever. When this experiment was created for real, the monkeys kept typing in the same letters and quickly took to destroying the computer. Your first name only has 6 letters, put in your full name and you will get a different story altogether.
President: 1 quadrillion (…) Oookay, that is a lot of years! I need more monkeys!!! Hmmm… This is fun! Isn’t my wife brilliant!!! Great job Stephen!
Stephen the V.P.: Thanks sir, that should be on the website within a few weeks after the design is approved.
President: Yeah, about this immense old factory with mechanical monkeys? What does that mean?
Stephen the V.P.: I looked it up and this is an up-and-coming style of science-fiction called steampunk and it is very popular with young adults. It seems old but it’s actually very new and forward thinking.
President: Err… Could you make it futuristic like in The Jetsons?
Stephen the V.P.: Well, for the exercise to be accurate it should be set before the digital age. Monkeys randomly writing on a typewriter is a fabulous example of a gargantuan analog task which is what the Infinate Monkey Theorem is all about.
President: Hmmm… Okay well I’ll show this to my wife, see what she thinks! She is a great designer! she decorated the new house you know?
Stephen the V.P.: Very well sir.
Oh the horror!
I’ve just agreed to write a movie for Sony and producer Scott Rudin about how Facebook was invented. I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I’ve started this page. (Actually it was started by my researcher, Ian Reichbach, because my grandmother has more Internet savvy than I do and she’s been dead for 33 years.)
Ian Reichbach writing on behalf of Aaron Sorkin on the Facebook Group that asks Facebook users to write to movie for them.
Looks like someone just read Wikinomics!
I doubt a movie just about how Facebook was invented would be interesting… Then again it could also be 90 minutes of this:
Gemma Christine Wallace writes:
I just read an article on the BBC website - and you CAN’T write a film about Facebook - darnit! That was my idea, and have already started getting the plot together. And it wasn’t going to be about the inventors, as they merely planted the seeds that have grown. It’s the relationships, 6degrees of separation between the bedroom geek and stardom/ greatness that make facebook interesting. I am sooo disappointed. You have success, recongition on your side where as I am a mere scrat.
Hey, I feel you pain Gemma! I am sure there are hundreds of us who are both creative and actually use Facebook on a daily basis. We can all come up with our own awesome plots!
I have a TONS of Facebook screenplays in my head. All quite subversive actually. One is a mockumentary about Freddie & Dick those two guys who are married on Facebook. Another one actually unfolds over four medias and Facebook is only one of them. I was very surprised that the second story was loved by a 60 year old woman who has never used or seen Facebook.
But will a movie about Facebook have wide appeal?
If Sony is going to put a lot of money into this then maybe other production companies will see the topic as worthy on investigation. And you can’t have only one movie about Facebook come out by itself. You need at least two movies about one topic to come out within 6 months like Dangerous Liaisons/Valmont (1988) or Armageddon/Deep Impact (1998). Can you name two or three similar movies that came out together in 2008? (C’mon readers, use the comments to do the research job for me. I left you the easy decade!)
In 2009, let’s have:
- Facebook: The Base Wing by Sorkin
- Facebook: The Garden of Eden by Gemma
and Facebook: The Mockumentary by me 
I have made it a point to watch at least one GoogleEngEDU Teck Talk per week. I often download the more entertaining ones to my Samsung - P2 for later viewing. This video has practical information for all those who have a website and track visitors through stats, whatever program they use.
I always install Google Analytics upon launching a new site or making a huge change one website that isn’t using it yet. Stats are only useful if you know how to read them and Matt Bailey explains how.
From Youtube:
Analytics Into Action
Analytics according to Captain Kirk - The original Star Trek series explains many of the principles of analytics and the necessary tools for understanding visitor motivations, segments and website analysis. By looking deeper into the trekkie phenomenon, analysts can better understand how to make website data actionable and enjoyable. Speaker: Matt Bailey
I have not written on the blog for a while so I thought I would start showing you the projects I have been working on for my clients.
Author Charlie Cardinal has decided to publish his story via an episodic Wordpress blog. American Messiah is the story of powerhouse Billy Lansky as told by his long-time assistant. It is published twice a week on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
Thank you so much for your help the other night– it worked! What a great, simple solution! Your help was amazing and very timely! It was so clear and useful, especially because of the screenshots and step-by-step directions you sent me. I am not tech-savvy at all, but was able to easily understand what you wanted me to do, and the fix you recommended worked like a charm!
- Stephanie
So what happened to Stephanie? She recently moved from Typepad to WordPress and noticed that WordPress gets all confused when presented with duplicate post slugs. WordPress will never let you get away with creating duplicates. While you may be able to create posts with the same title, WordPress always appends the slug (this-is-a-permalink-page-slug) with a unique number.
So what do you do when you import duplicate data from somewhere else?
First, try to revert to the classical post structure in Settings > Permalinks (or Options > Permalinks.) Depending on your version or setup, this might be all it takes to distract WordPress long enough to go change your duplicate posts slugs manually.
In 2.3.3 You will find the slug in Manage > Post > Edit Post as one of the expandable options on the right side.
In WordPress 2.5 you will find the post slug right under the title. Be aware that you have to click [Save] under the title and then [Save] again on the right else your changes will not take effect. Click on the picture below for a more visual clue.
Now that may not work at all, espescialy if you can’t edit offending posts. The you’ll have to pull out your database ninja skills and go into your database to do the deed on Mr. Slug yourself.
Don’t worry you can do it. The following instructions come with screen shots with big red arrows because I KNOW some of these buttons seem quite elusive at first glance.
Go into PhpMyAdmin (usually in your CPanel). The first screen you see has a list of tables on the left. Click on wp_posts.
A list of column will appear on the right side. Click Browse to view a list of the posts in your blog.
In the next screen you will have to find the row with the post you have to edit. To make things a little easier for you you can sort the title column so your duplicates will show up next to one another. The click on the pencil.
There you go, you are in the same room with your target, Mr. Slug. The first Arrow point to the title but the second one point to the culprit, the slug.
You can modify the slug to add a number to it but since your slug counts for Google relevancy points, why not just add a juicy word in the slug. It will show up in the URL but not in your title. For example instead of this-was-a-great-day you could make it this-was-a-great-sunny-day.
Here you go and if you have questions you can post them to the WP-Pro mailing list where I try to answer questions as much as I can because it exposes me to new bugs and issues and allows me to grow as a WordPress Pro. All I ask in return is that you tell me if it works and some questions I will feature here for other people to use.
You can also send questions to me directly.
After seeing one of Dave’s screencast I was intrigued to join his online video service and watch him explain a few of his concepts. Most of these topics lead to a series of videos that can add up to a few hours of watching. These are narrated screen casts so it’s VERY visual and quite painless to take in. All of these videos are available here and you can probably go through the series that pertain to your business model within a few weeks.
I never join online marketing services so I didn’t know what I was going to get but I was pleasantly surprised. Here is a list of the titles that can apply to blogging. The are many more that deal with marketing techniques and eBay.
Advanced Blogging Secrets
How to create titles that bring the hits!
5 Methods for Getting Instant Traffic Within 1 hour!
Setting up a Word Press Blog using an Addon Domain Name
Setting up a Newsletter … from start to finish!
A Unique Method to Finding what People Search for on eBay!
Watch me DOUBLE my Adsense revenue … I have PROOF, watch this!
How to Setup a Free ClickBank Account
How I Made $768 in 5 Minutes - The Launch Leech Method (NO list required!)
Creating a Membership Site Using Aweber, PayPal, and Protected Folders
How to create an ebook product, website, and Paypal delivery system
How to Make Money with Google Video and YouTube
List building tactics using eBay, Google and other methods
Setting up a Web Site Series
How to Make Money by Giving Away Reports on eBay
Google + ClickBank = Online Profits!
There are many eBooks gems that relate to blogging available within the membership site but I am still going through each one of them to validate the content (and pointing out to Dave what is out-of-date!) I know you don’t have time to read 12 200-page eBooks so I will post a follow-up on this with my hot picks.
In the past week I have pondered the question: “How much time is too much time to spend getting something to work?” It seems like I have spent most of the week trying to get things to work, most of it time I will never get back. Often, when it is for me, I seek out an alternative, make something from scratch or postpone it indefinitely. When it is for a client I have to be more careful about when I draw the line. If it doesn’t work, how much time should I spend hacking it to work when doing so obviously “voids the warranty”. But that is a whole other subject.
This week I learned that not all hosting works with WordPress not matter what hosting companies sell you on.
I have a client who is hosted on Yahoo Small Business and he hadn’t noticed that his RSS feeds don’t work. Of course if you have a blog with no valid RSS feed, very few people will be able to pick you up. Yahoo promotes a plan at less than 9$ a month for hosting that support WordPress in one click.
This one click installs a crack version of WordPress 2.3.2 with permanently active plugins that promote Yahoo!’s services over others. I suspect this is killing the regular feed but I couldn’t find documentation about it.
Officially Yahoo! is NOT recommended by WordPress for hosting anymore but the articles promoting the fact that it used to be are still coming out first in Web searches.
I convinced my client to move to my own hosting service because of the shady plugin situation and also because Yahoo! Small Business hosting in painfully slow. It takes me 35 seconds to log into the dashboard! I have never had trouble running blogs off 1&1 and host all my beginner blogger friends and non-profits on my own developer account. I find it’s easy for my clients to find their way around the slick management interface (much easier than CPanel). One thing that is interesting with 1&1 is that the hosting is very generous with domain pointing, databases and even free domains included. The 1&1 Home package has 2 domains included with others being 6.99$ per year. You can build a blogging empire with an account costing as little as 40$ a year. Right now this plan is free for 3 months with no cost to setup.
I love having alternatives.
As an experiment I subscribed myself and one of my clients to A Small Orange. I had been a client before and never really used the account to its full potential. I like that company nonetheless. They offer quick competent support via e-mail with people who never make you fell like you are dumb for asking a question. I could not get WordPress installed because of a permission issue. Incorrect permissions prevent you from being able to edit your code or plugin files and don’t allow for SEO-friendly permalinks to be used. I tried installing WordPress every which way it could be done (manually, Fantastico, SSH, etc.) to no avail. I tried to fix the permissions manually after the install. I followed the clear and quick instructions I got from customer service to a tee and still failed to make WordPress work. I looked into the forum and tried implementing the tips I found there but failed miserably and informed the support that I reached my limit and would like a refund. I gave it a day of back and forth and that is a VERY long time by my standards. I figured if I found the solution I would put all my clients on ASO by default as the price cannot be beat.
I am used to installing and configuring WordPress in 15-30 minutes and that is why I charge very little for doing it for others. I’d rather spend my time fixing complicated problems or customizing WordPress than installing it.
Tire of boring old galleries? Animoto offers easy to make, free 30-second videos to display your pictures in a very engaging way. You will need about 15 photos to create a video. These photos can be easily pulled from online photo catalogs such as Picasa and Flickr. You can choose from many music styles and remix your video at will. Post the end result in you blog or choose from automatic posting in a myriad of online communities and Youtube.
Featured below are some of my 2004 pictures from the Hudson British Car Show. This year it will be held on May 25, 2008.
Flickr video launched a few days ago and I didn’t look into it beyond noticing the sleek integration and video quality. Compared to YouTube, it’s outstanding!
Some people are mad. I don’t understand why.
The new video-sharing feature lets Flickr ‘Pro’ users upload 90-second videos. Some users are protesting that the site will become full of crap like YouTube. How is allowing users who pay 25$ per year to upload really short video clips going to make Flickr worse? First of all, spammers will not pay to pass along their crap. Secondly, 90 seconds is not long enough to compete against YouTube’s generous 10-minute video allowance. This limit in length will make it hard for people to repost copyrighted content. Would you watch a whole TV episode if it was sliced into 15 or 30 clips? Didn’t think so.
Say hello to portrait oriented videos! Pictured right is Les Chutes Dorwin à Rawdon, Québec, Canada. Chipple, friend and former employee who moved to Japan, shot this video at a 16:9 aspect ratio showing the new possibilities that await when you turn your camera sideways!
Flickr is also good at managing adult-oriented content. When Flickr was still in Beta I once searched for the word ‘Eye’. I got a really odd result page filled with pictures of babies and penises and a few actual eyes. (I have a screen shot somewhere…) Normally this would totally turn me against a website but I really like Flickr and with more than 1,400 pictures uploaded, commented and tagged, I am personally invested in their success. Instead of throwing in the towel and saying “Well we can’t really control what people put on our website, it’s the Internet you know…” They have kept things classy. I’ve been very satisfied with Flickr’s implemented of content rating management on many levels. I wholeheartedly support a company that put a lot of effort into managing its users content without completely squashing free-speech or refusing adult content based on arbitrary rules that puts ‘breast cancer’ on the same level as ‘breast pictures’. I have a safe-rated account and it efficiently blocks all inappropriate (flagged) and adult content from my view but will not prevent me from finding artwork from an artist who just happens to paint nudes.
Flickr is part of the solution I offer all my clients who do visual arts. There is no better community to share crafts, paintings and other art. It is on Flickr that a publisher noticed my work and contacted me for a book deal. I welcome the human and business benefits that come from displaying my work on Flickr. I hope my artists will be excited about Flickr video’s ability to properly convey the three dimensional aspects of their work.
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