I have been running this great hosted chat solution on my ad9 site for a few months - the basic package is FREE gratis . It allows you to chat with you website visits , and also see statistical information of vistitors - what pages they visited and where they came through , what keywords they enterd - all in a live environment .
I must say i was pretty impressed - only 1 problem the other day - the Zazachat site went down (Microsoft XP diagnostics reports it could have been due to "internet congestion") , i was going to award this a 8/10 but the trouble is when their site goes down so does yours! You install the snippet of code on your web page(s) - i put it on all my pages - a few thousand , and all stopped being downloadable as soon as there was a problem - not good . This happens whenver you have a hosted solution serving data to a blind client server application (eg: with affiliate programs such as Amazon and TD the same will happen) .
Consequences - you can loose money! If you are spending a lot on PPC and this happens the consequences can be devastating - you might not know - the only way is vist your site regularly - or purchase a polling application .
It would be much better if hosted enviroments used a sharing protocol with a timeout (not more than a couple of seconds) , to prevent your site from crashing (and thousands of others) .
1 work around of course is not to install on all pages - then you don't get the stats - i have Google Analytics installed anyway , which , touch wood , has been 100% robust ie: no downtime (i wonder if this has a timeout? in the event of the Google server crashing).
Anywey to sum up , in my mind this is a great piece of software that works 99% of the time , but you need to keep an eye on it if you intend installing it on "mission critical pages" of your site !
I have just received back a reply in less than 2 hours from he Zazachat support ticket to say their Detroit servers went down (for the first time 2 years) , so there support looks good too , so i will be using these again once this glitch is over.
Thursday, 14 June 2007
Monday, 4 June 2007
Resale Prevention
I write this as a cautionary tale , to anyone thinking of buying anything on the internet - read the small print .
I recently purchased some pretty expensive music software called Hauptwerk (and a Virginia theatre organ add on CDrom). Total cost was over £200 . I bought it with the view to sell on later when something better cames out . Well the day came when i decided to sell so i thought the best place to sell it was on the Hauptwerk forum - i thought i'd check it was OK with the owner of the site , and was rather shocked to be told by the author of the software that the licence has written into it a clause about not being able to transfer ownership , and that if i did sell i would therefore be breaking the law .
Is this really UK law ? Can this software provider really insist on me never being able to sell the software ? I have the kept a copy of the email that Hauptwerk and Milan Digital Audio sent me telling me that i cannot legally sell my licenced copy of their software .
From their point of view it makes sense - they have a specialised piece of software of limited interest - only to people interested in sampled sounds from pipe organs , and if they allowed buyers to sell on their licenced copy it would reduce demand for the software . I would however never have purchased this knowing i'd be stuck with it .
So consumers beware - always read the small print of any licence or contract - even it amounts to thousands of lines (it's so easy to click the i agree box at the bottom of the contract , when you buy a licence online). The safer alternative is NOT TO BUY - the saying BUYER BEWARE has never been truer .
These days purchasing items it would appear can be a minefield - the consumer needs a degree in law to understand what the contract they are signing up to . In my opinion (but i am biasedhave being sold something i cannot sell on ), if such a contract can be enforced , then it should say NOT FOR RESALE in big red writing next to the price (not in the small print).
I suppose no i have had a chance to reflect - it is however fair to say this software is infact not a mass consumer appeal and the authors do say it is geared towards business - ie: performers rather than the home player .
The software does what it says on the box , and is constantly being worked on by Crumhorn studios so it will be interesting to see how this software develops - perhaps it will have larger appeal - maybe to the keyboard manufacturers - Yamaha et al .
I recently purchased some pretty expensive music software called Hauptwerk (and a Virginia theatre organ add on CDrom). Total cost was over £200 . I bought it with the view to sell on later when something better cames out . Well the day came when i decided to sell so i thought the best place to sell it was on the Hauptwerk forum - i thought i'd check it was OK with the owner of the site , and was rather shocked to be told by the author of the software that the licence has written into it a clause about not being able to transfer ownership , and that if i did sell i would therefore be breaking the law .
Is this really UK law ? Can this software provider really insist on me never being able to sell the software ? I have the kept a copy of the email that Hauptwerk and Milan Digital Audio sent me telling me that i cannot legally sell my licenced copy of their software .
From their point of view it makes sense - they have a specialised piece of software of limited interest - only to people interested in sampled sounds from pipe organs , and if they allowed buyers to sell on their licenced copy it would reduce demand for the software . I would however never have purchased this knowing i'd be stuck with it .
So consumers beware - always read the small print of any licence or contract - even it amounts to thousands of lines (it's so easy to click the i agree box at the bottom of the contract , when you buy a licence online). The safer alternative is NOT TO BUY - the saying BUYER BEWARE has never been truer .
These days purchasing items it would appear can be a minefield - the consumer needs a degree in law to understand what the contract they are signing up to . In my opinion (but i am biasedhave being sold something i cannot sell on ), if such a contract can be enforced , then it should say NOT FOR RESALE in big red writing next to the price (not in the small print).
I suppose no i have had a chance to reflect - it is however fair to say this software is infact not a mass consumer appeal and the authors do say it is geared towards business - ie: performers rather than the home player .
The software does what it says on the box , and is constantly being worked on by Crumhorn studios so it will be interesting to see how this software develops - perhaps it will have larger appeal - maybe to the keyboard manufacturers - Yamaha et al .
Friday, 1 June 2007
Niche Keyword Marketing
The number of internet searches done daily is rocketting as more and more people use the internet at home and work . It is erplacing other forms of media for finding out answers to questions and shopping for goods and services . Even town libraries and complete towns are becoming broadband enabled so there is definitely a huge potetial for rapid growth in the number of keyword searches performed .
Equally though the number of websites indexed by the major search engines is drastically increasing . All the single word domain names are taken eg: shopping.com , shopping.co.uk and shopping.net and as Google and other search engines weight the domain name highly when scoring a sites ranking in the organic results , there is little point in trying to optimise a site for "shopping" , but if you drill down to longer keyword phrases , eg "London clothes shopping" then there are less than 1000 sites targetting this keyword and the domain londonclothesshopping.co.uk probably exists , all you need do is SEO your site to this niche and you can be king of the castle for this niche . Making a living from niche keywords however requires the traffic - if no one searches for "London clothes shopping" everything is in vain - so choosing good niche phrases that will draw high traffic is the other side of the coin .
Keep an eye on TV commercials for new products / services - and sound bytes - remember "hello moto" for the motorola advert , consumers sometimes latch onto soundbytes , and by being quick it can mean you benefit from someone elses advertising !
Equally though the number of websites indexed by the major search engines is drastically increasing . All the single word domain names are taken eg: shopping.com , shopping.co.uk and shopping.net and as Google and other search engines weight the domain name highly when scoring a sites ranking in the organic results , there is little point in trying to optimise a site for "shopping" , but if you drill down to longer keyword phrases , eg "London clothes shopping" then there are less than 1000 sites targetting this keyword and the domain londonclothesshopping.co.uk probably exists , all you need do is SEO your site to this niche and you can be king of the castle for this niche . Making a living from niche keywords however requires the traffic - if no one searches for "London clothes shopping" everything is in vain - so choosing good niche phrases that will draw high traffic is the other side of the coin .
Keep an eye on TV commercials for new products / services - and sound bytes - remember "hello moto" for the motorola advert , consumers sometimes latch onto soundbytes , and by being quick it can mean you benefit from someone elses advertising !
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