iPad Thoughts - Will I Be Buying One?

I've just watched the Apple iPad announcement and Steve Jobs does seem particularly proud of the iPad. He made a good case that there is a gap in the market for another mobile device that's bigger than a smartphone and more user-friendly and portable than a traditional laptop.

Steve went on to explain that a netbook is just a small cheap laptop which doesn't fill the gap and I believe he's spot on - I've never bought a netbook for that reason.

The iPad is essentially a big iPhone, it can be totally touch controlled or, via a dock, using a real-keyboard for anyone who needs some serious text input. The big advantage virtual keyboards have is the ability to present context-sensitive input options, for example, a number pad would appear when entering numeric spreadsheet data and so on.

Although I find my iPhone intuitive and easy to use I don't use it to its full potential mainly because it's small so it seems likely I would make better use of an iPad and, as Steve Jobs pointed out, along with 75 million other people, I already know how to use the iPad out of the box.

I can envisage leaving iPads lying around the house, perhaps on the kitchen worktop where I'll use it to follow recipes, or perhaps on living room coffee tables to settle arguments and look stuff up on Wikipedia. The iPad could breathe new life into traditional board games and I'm excited by all those possibilities.

A docked iPad with a real keyboard is going to be all most people ever need and traditional laptops and desktop computers may well become the preserve of geeks in darkened rooms once again. Consider how quickly the iPod and iPhone changed the way we listen to music and how we use mobile phones and it doesn't take a huge leap of imagination to see the way we use the world wide web is about to change - in three years, just as Apple announce the iPad V3 we're all using tablets, you read it here first!

I can't be certain until I've had some hands on experience whether I will take my iPad around the house or have several lying around but it seems likely we'll have one each because future iPads are bound to interact with each other and our iPhones like virtual pets forming a House-Wide-Web and will change the way we interact with each other, our friends and the wider online world and my daughter won't need to ring the house phone to get her dippy egg in bed!

There's a pretty good chance technophobes, like my wife and my mum, will get carried along with the iPad wave. My wife already has an iPhone, admittedly turning it on/off is still a challenge but we're getting there and my mum loves sitting beside me while I drive my computer for her touring Picasa and Facebook photo albums and buying her shopping online - she certainly knows how to point her finger and she's good at gestures so she's halfway there so I should be careful what I wish for or we'll all be reaching for the blue pill!

Meanwhile, back in the real world, a friend of mine (Hi Antonious!) said "NOT ME MATEY" along with this list of reasons he won't be buying one - but of course he WILL cave. Quite a few of the items on the list relate to lack of ports on the iPad which can all be made available via Apple or third party iPad docks and another accessory industry is born. I've appended my specific comments after each list item:

• Unspecified widescreen aspect ratio for video playback (so what?)
• 1024 x 768 aspect ratio not widescreen video friendly
(so like most TVs they'll be a black bit top and bottom)
• No integrated USB ports (via dock)
• No card reader (via dock)
• Non-removable battery (would be better if it was)
• Non-expandable memory
(would be better if it was, but will buy the biggest anyway)
• No GPS in the WiFi only model (durr)
• Unlocked iPad not great when network's don't use the micro SIM
(any network which gets the contract surely will?)
• Mono audio speakers (via dock)
• Prolonged typing on glass? (use a keyboard via a dock)
• No integrated camera (Gotta love Apple keeping something back for iPad 2)
• No HDMI/Displayport (via dock)
• No Ethernet Port (via dock)
• Still no Adobe Flash support
(It's bound to be Adobe dragging its heels, would prefer an alternative to emerge)
• Limited codec support i.e. AAC, MP3 and H.264 (can be supported via software update)
• Proprietary iBook eBook format
(Steve Jobs said it WAS an open format and I think all publishers will jump on this bandwagon or risk being left out in the cold)
• No breakdown of 'up to' 10 hours battery life
(Steve said he could watch video on a flight from LA to Tokyo and that lying around not being used and iPad would still have power after a month)
• No mains power cable included (via dock)

So yes, I will definitely be buying a WiFi iPad and, if I like what I see, probably more than one. Am I alone or will you be buying one? If so why? If not why?

If you'd like to watch Steve Job's Keynote speech and watch the iPad video for yourself click the Apple icon top left on the UK Apple Store homepage.

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OTOH Hitler is NOT Impressed!

CantBarsed.com 10th Anniversary Year!

CantBarsed.com was launched with no fanfare early in 2000 with no commercial ambition and no real direction.

The only thing I had in place was free cantBarsed.com webmail accounts which I thought were great fun and they remain popular today.

It was a chance email exchange with Dan Mountain (MD, Buyagift) that changed the direction of the website and led to my career in affiliate marketing.

Having quit my design job in London and retired over a decade earlier to become one of the first house husbands in the playground I was living the cantBarsed lifestyle and tinkering around online in my spare time as the World Wide Web stumbled into existence and the dot.com boom became the next big thing.

We heard a comedian using "dot com" as a punchline which stuck in my mind. One of Deb's favourite expressions back then, and even now, remains: "I can't be arsed" and I started chiming in with "dot com" every time she said it. At some point I casually checked whether cantBEarsed.com had been registered - and it had, which could easily have been the end of the story.

However, lying in bed, late one night, the image of a bumble bee between the words can't and arsed popped into to my head (yeah I know it's stupid but stick with me) and the idea for a domain named cantBarsed.com was born. I registered the domain and it was only when I was playing with logo designs I realised the letter B turned sideways made a bum shape and the original cantBarsed logo was born. The logo was subsequently animated and tipped up at an angle so it's easier to read and the design is now protected as a registered TradeMark.

I also registered cantBarsed.co.uk and several years ago I finally managed to get my hands on CantBEarsed.com for £3700 - which is most I have paid for a domain name so far and a sizable company expense at the time. I remember Nadeem Azam telling me it was news in the domain name industry and I also remember Nadeem making himself ill during the .eu domain sunrise period trying to buy them ALL(!) which prompted me to pre-register cantBEarsed.eu and cantBarsed.eu and those, along with a bunch of other variations, all end up at cantBarsed.com website.

The cantBarsed.com screenshot is dated 14th August 2000 and, from memory, I'd just revamped the site with the idea of making money aiming for an Austin Powers multicolored blocks feel - I still like it!

Keen affiliate marketeers will notice I was already up and running as an Amazon affiliate and the Firebox.com and Cheeky Monkey banners were running via UKaffiliates - which later transmoglified into Deal Group Media. I think the mp3.com banner is an early Commission Junction program.

After several years of trial and error, learning from my mistakes along the way, cantBarsed.com eventually started to make money and went on to establish itself as one of the first popular UK affiliate marketing portal style websites in the UK.

The peak year for CantBarsed.com was around 2007, before dedicated code sites dominated affiliate marketing, but even now, in CantBarsed.com's 10th Anniversary year, the site still makes money from over 700 hand-crafted static HTML pages which continue to rank well in search engines for many popular search keyword terms.

Future CantBarsed.com Plans
We continue to add content and keep CantBarsed.com up to date and during 2009 we finally managed to automate the promotional code handling to comply with IAB regulations. During 2010 we're planning to move away from static hand crafted HTML pages using Adobe Dreamweaver to an online Content Management System which should free up more time to add more original and useful content.

I find the continued existence of CantBarsed.com, in today's über-corporate world, purely as a result of a string of co-incidences, remarkable and I'm looking forward to working on the site to secure it's future well into the teenies.

MacLife - Part 7 - A Few Teething Problems?

Thanks to Dan Williams who recently made the switch from PC to Mac after having a play with my set-up:

"Hi Joe, I'm now all set up with my Mac and very happy with it. It took me less than half hour yesterday to set up the Mac, Airport Extreme all working, broadband on, laptops can connect to the broadband, PC in with ethernet cable, Printer setup. I've also got firefox installed, exported and imported all saved passwords for hosting/networks etc and I have MSN messenger installed".

Check out Dan William's voucher code site here...

Chatting with Dan reminded me of some of the things most people ask when they start using a Mac so let's take a closer look:

The UK Mac keyboard layout
In an earlier blog post I couldn't come up with anything that's better on a PC than a Mac but I take that back, the Windows keyboard layout is better and less confusing than UK Mac keyboards!
The Mac keyboard is cursed with THREE modifier keys for no good reason I can think off. They are called the [Control], [Alt] and [Command] keys BUT people also refer to them differently! For example the [Command] key is often called the "Apple" key and the [Alt] key is also called the "Option" key, so that's three keys, five names and two stupid little graphic icons nobody can relate to for starters - and I've got more!
There's no Delete key on laptop keyboards. Instead you get a backspace key (top right) which, if you hold down the [fn] key (bottom left), can be turned into a "proper" Delete key, still with me? You probably noticed the @ key is inconveniently located above the 2 key but can you find the # key? Well, no prizes for guessing there isn't one and you can get a # by holding down the [Alt] key and pressing the 3 key but why on earth is it missing?
I have more, but I'll stop because I don't want to put you off switching and after a couple of weeks you'll get past the keyboard shortcomings and be back up to full speed so it's just part of the Mac switching experience!

Expose & Spaces
Most people also seem to confuse Expose and Spaces, which isn't surprising since they share a System Preferences Panel and the "Active screen corners" concept but if we take it a step at a time it's easy enough to get a handle on:

Spaces are "virtual screens" so instead of buying a second monitor you can turn Spaces on and have up to SIXTEEN virtual screens - that's a lot of screen real-estate and quite a lot to get your head around in one hit. For ages I avoided Spaces and settled for one screen but after I spotted my daughter zipping around 9 screens I decided it was time to teach this old dog a new trick and I experimented with 2 screens side by side. I've eventually settled on 4 virtual screens arranged in 2 rows and 2 columns and I can move between them effortlessly using the [Control]+Arrow keys. You can also set which applications open in which Space so they are always where you expect to find them. Anything not specified opens up in the current workspace.

Expose basically "exposes" stuff, it's the way to show windows which are hidden under other windows, just press the F3 key to activate Expose and you'll soon grasp the basic concept and tweak as you go along to your requirements.

Both Expose and Spaces can be controlled using the keyboard, mouse and active screen corners or any combination which suits the way you work. I've included screenshots of my Expose and Spaces set up at the top of this post.

I prefer to use the mouse for scrolling and moving the pointer around so I don't have my mouse set up to control Expose or Spaces.
Since the Expose Panel is on the left I have the top left of the screen set as an active screen corner for Expose, along with the F3 key, which is set up by default. Extending my reasoning I have the top right of the screen set as the active screen corner for Spaces along with the F5 key. Finally, I have both bottom corners set to reveal the desktop along with the F6 key.
I also make heavy use of the [Command]+[Tab] key combination which cycles through the active applications, whichever space they're running in - similar to the Windows [Alt}+[Tab] combination.
So with Spaces and Expose set up and in conjunction with the [Command]+[Tab] key combination I have total control over what appears where and how - it quickly becomes second nature, trust me.

However you set your system up you can tweak it later and you'll soon evolve a setup which works best for you - and I'm here to help, just ask.

Back to MacLife Part 1...

Apple Black Friday Event

The Apple Black Friday Event is the only day each year Apple discounts it's own products so if you're planning to buy anything Apple for yourself or as Christmas gifts you can save yourself a few quid by ordering it online today. There's up to 6.5% discount off an iPod nano, up to 8% off an iPod touch, up to 8% off an iMac, and up to 8.5% off MacBook Pro laptops - which are all pretty good discounts. There's also discount off Apple TV, Time Capsule, Mac software and loads of iPod docks and accessories so it's well worth a look.
You can also add a free laser-engraved personalised message to personalise all iPod models which make great Christmas gifts and there's free delivery storewide on all orders over £76.

Mac Life - Part 6 - Readers Questions Answered

You can thank Neil for this Part 6 because when I started replying to his comment to Part 5: "[I would...] be interested to hear how you got on with your software switches. For instance, I use Dreamweaver, Fireworks, IPSwitch FTP etc. Presumably, you can download MAC versions and use original License Key?" my reply got so long I thought it deserved this follow up post.

There's good news and bad news on the software switching front.
I also use Adobe Dreamweaver and Fireworks and the REALLY bad news is you have to buy a NEW licence - you didn't really think Adobe would miss a chance to screw even more money out of you did you?
The not-quite-so-bad news is you can upgrade and change platforms so it's effectively a crossgrade.

[Update]I am aware of at least one person who has successfully switched their Adobe software license from PC to Mac by signing a "software destruction letter". This may or may not work for you and may/may not work in the future but it's got to be worth asking Adobe nicely before you part with your cash.[/Update]

I didn't get along with earlier Mac DW versions which I found both buggy and slow but the current release running in Snow Leopard is stable and you can save your workspace layout how you like it which is great - I hated the Mac style floating palette and tool menus.

It still took everyday use to adjust to the Mac Dreamweaver way of doing things. Mac OS generally displays file lists differently to Windows and I don't think there's any way around that (although there's bound to be an utility to patch this, anyone know of one?...) so my usual way of handling file uploads by displaying files by date modified and merely uploading the files at the top of the list doesn't work for subfolders which remain stubbornly alphabetically sorted even when files within those folders have been updated which is very irritating!
You could put your faith in Dreamweaver's file syncing features but I've never trusted them and have lost files using it so maybe it's just a problem of my own making. Fireworks is buggy, crash prone and a memory hog but it's no worse than the Windows version and it's still my preferred web image editor so maybe it's just me that has problems with it?
I haven't used IPSwitch, I used Globalscape's CuteFTP Pro for Windows and was pleased to find there's a Mac version CuteFTP MacPro which offers more features than I use but works well so I haven't looked any further. Again I had to pay for another license.

One the plus side I have found BBEdit to be a worthy successor to my beloved Textpad text editor, which is sadly Windows only so has now been retired. I've never needed a word processor - everything I write ends up in an email, a blog post, a DTP package for printed magazine publication or on web pages - I'm writing this in BBEdit before cut and pasting into Blogger.

I do have MS Office for Mac installed [hangs head in shame] because I purchased it a couple of years ago - the last time I was on the point of going totally Mac. It's a nice safety net to have around but it's expensive and I rarely use it - consider using Google Apps free online spreadsheets or Apple's iWorks which features a pretty decent spreadsheet called Numbers, a combined word processor and DTP application called Pages and Keynote to create Powerpointesque presentations. All three come with excellent quality templates and video tutorials and single and family pack licences available at sensible prices.

Part 7 - Some common teething problems explained...

Mac Life - Part 5 - Living In Cloud Cuckoo Land

I'm trying to keep my feet on the ground but my head is definitely in the clouds these days.

In previous blog posts I've mentioned cloud services including Mobile Me, Evernote and Dropbox. The big idea is to make it possible to get at my emails and data from anywhere with an internet connection but it has taken me years to figure out the advantages, limitations and feasibility of working with my data in the clouds.


Cloud Based Calendar and Contact Sharing
Apple's MobileMe service has this covered and can keep your contacts and calendar appointments up to date and synchronised across all your machines, including Windows, Mac and iPhones.

Cloud Based File Sharing
iDisk is part of MobileMe and gets you 10Gb online storage where you can store files and share them via a public folder with other users but what I really want to do is share folders with other MobileMe users, friends and collaborators and I don't think that's possible at the moment. Until it's most useful feature is to share files between my Macs, virtual PC and iPhone.

Unlike MobileMe Dropbox makes it really easy to share files and collaborate with other people. Dropbox offers you FREE 2Gb storage to get started with extra free storage if your friends sign up via your link and there's a paid Pro upgrade option if you need 50Gb or more storage.

There are other online file storage services floating around but Dropbox is free and easy to set up and use so I haven't had any reason to try the alternatives.

Sharing Notes & Documents
I use EverNote which is an awesome FREE cloud based service, with paid upgrade options, that's perfect for sharing searchable notes across all my machines and with my iPhone. Visit the Evernote website and watch the video tutorials which will blow your mind.

Email handling
Moving my huge archive of Outlook email has been my biggest headache. Fate intervened and I lost years of old emails when my PC hard drive failed as I was porting them across to the Mac!

I'm using Mozilla's Thunderbird on the Mac and to port the email across from the PC I used a nifty utility called Email Alchemy with memory booster active which works well - unless a hard drive fails on you.

In a blog posted titled Only Send Me Junk Mail From Now On! I explain why it's better if you don't email me with anything important. I'm still trying to arrive at a workable solution and the current state of play is to use Mailwasher Pro to look at all the emails sitting in my mailboxes across various accounts and services and delete and reply to anything urgent from there.

I think the way forward is to use google mail. When setting up new projects, especially where I'm collaborating with other people, we've been using Google Apps and the free google email services looks like the most workable solution for large volumes of email so far.

Project Sharing & Project Management
Google Apps is where it's at. It's another awesome free service which makes it possible to share spreadsheets and documents between collaborators online and in real-time and access them from anywhere using a web browser on any machine, PC, Mac or PDA.

Using a shared Google spreadsheet you can see other people editing cells in real time and chat with them at the same time. I hardly ever need to use Excel anymore, another MS application consigned to the scrapheap with no tears goodbye.

I'm not sure if chatting in real-time is strictly a cloud service or not but it remains a crucial part of the way I work in the clouds. The real-time chat mode in Google Apps and MSN make it easy to keep up to date with any project.

Cloud Based Multimedia Sharing
My son lugs around a heavy case stuffed with DVDs and music CDs, he thinks he owns them. I'm past that. Being in possession of shiny silver disc means nothing. You can't own music, TV programs or movies - they belong to the original creators and all you ever have is permission to listen or watch them so I've been content to have my music delivered to my ears via iTunes and more recently Spotify which only stores files locally on your iPhone for offline listening.

iTunes now offers Home Sharing which allows your to share your media between up to five machines which reminds me of my Apple Inspired Vision Of The Future posted back in 2007 - it's all coming together nicely.

Conclusion - Was Mac-Switching Worthwhile?
Unsurprisingly, given I started writing this on my PC and I'm finishing it on my Mac, the short answer is YES.

My Mac setup is an excellent affiliate marketing environment which means I can work from my office desk or get away from my desk by removing four cables and I'm good to go with my entire working environment without rebooting - it's an almost perfect fusion of desktop PC and portable laptop.

The biggest remaining challenge is figuring out the best way to organise local file storage and sharing. Although cloud services are the future they're still slow and need an internet connection so I still need to store some data, music and pictures locally.

Everything is backed up to a Mac Time Capsule so if the machine breaks or gets stolen I can, in theory, restore everything from the last backup at the click of a button.

So that's my Mac Life, how's yours?

Part 6 answers readers questions

Mac Life - Part 4 - Running Windows Programs On A Mac

Ok, you've got your Mac, you've still got your PC and you've set up Windows so it runs on your Mac, now it's time to set up any Windows programs you still need and make sure they work before you finally shutdown your PC for the last time.

Most of the issues I've experienced can be resolved or minimised by tweaking the settings in your virtual machine or by changing the way you work, particularly how and where you store and share files which I go into more detail in Part 5.

Generally speaking most software applications run just like they do on real Windows machines but even with a top spec Mac the trade-off is speed - you are effectively running 2 computers on one machine so the more grunt your CPU has and the more memory you have installed the better.

Here's how I got the following Windows programs up and running on my Mac, your mileage may vary.

Affmeter Pro - On the Mac
Once you've used Affmeter Pro manually logging into each network to check stats seems tedious and inefficient so here's how I migrated my copy.

Download the original archive from the link in your original registration email somewhere you can get at it from Windows running on your Mac.

From within your virtual PC open the affmeter archive and it will prompt you to install the Microsoft .Net framework. On the Windows update site select the runtime version which will take some time and then install updates.

Next, make sure Affmeter Pro is not running on either machine then copy Affmeter Pro's data file:

C:\Program Files\Affmeter\Data\affdata.afx

to the Affmeter\Data\ folder within the PC environment on your Mac.

Run Affmeter Pro and enter your serial number which is also included in your registration email.

That's it. I have had a few issues upgrading between versions but it generally runs fine under Parallels.

Mailwasher Pro - On the Mac
There is an old Mac version of Mailwasher Pro but don't waste your time with it because the current PC release is much better. You can download the current release version from the Firetrust site here:
http://www.firetrust.com/download/mailwasher-pro

Install within the PC environment on your Mac, cut and paste your registration key from your original registration email. To migrate your blacklist, friends, filters and training data to your new installation you have to copy some files.

Open the About Mailwasher dialog from the Help menu and enable the extended error logging checkbox.

On your original PC open the About Mailwasher dialog from the Help menu and enable the extended error logging checkbox.
Click on the path below to open MailWasher data files directory:

C:\Documents and Settings\Joe\Application Data\MailWasherPro

Within the PC environment on your Mac open the About Mailwasher dialog from the Help menu and enable the extended error logging checkbox.
Click on the path below to open a window displaying the MailWasher Pro data files directory and shut down Mailwasher Pro.

Now copy the Training folder, blacklist.txt and filters.txt from your orginal PC to the Mac.

Relaunch Mailwasher Pro. At the time I switched there was a problem with the mailpv.exe in the download archive so I had to manually recreate my mailboxes so if it's not fixed by the time you switch you'll have to do that as well.
Preferences are not migrated so I suggest running Mailwasher Pro on both machines and going through the Options dialog making sure everything is set up to your preferences. Finally you can toggle off the extended error logging checkbox.

I use the Mailwasher Pro preview window extensively to follow links and write Quick replies to emails and with the Parallels environment on the Mac these actions will open the default PC mac client (usually Outlook Express) and default PC web browser (Internet Explorer) but since the aim is to go Mac I was pleased to discover Parallels can be set to open internet applications either to the default PC or Mac applications - in my new Mac setup that's Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird.

You'll find these settings in the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog under Internet Applications.

Quickbooks Pro - On the Mac
Every affiliate needs to keep HM Revenue & Customs happy so you're going to need some accounting software. I've been using Intuit's Quickbooks Pro for years and although there is a Mac version it's only available for the US market. A UK edition has been promised for years but I wouldn't hold your breath - I'm STILL waiting Intuit!

The PC version runs fine within the Parallels environment on a Mac I just have trouble getting it to play ball with the my Mac network printer for which Boujour for Windows, another mac innovation, comes in handy.

Part 5 covers using Cloud based services

Mac Life - Part 3 - It's Decision Time

Once you've made the decision to switch from PC to Mac and BEFORE you make the switch is the time to think carefully about the hardware you'll need, the way you work and the applications you use.

If you haven't already bought a Mac you can add buying a laptop or desktop machine to your research and planning. As I mentioned earlier I prefer sitting at a desk when I'm working but I eventually settled on a MacBook Pro laptop and a 24" LED display which gives me the best of both worlds. At my desk I dock the laptop to the monitor which already has a mouse and keyboard attached along with integrated webcam and sound. To work on the laptop all I have to is disconnect 4 cables and walk, no reboot needed, it doesn't get much better than this (one plug would be even nicer Mr Ive).

Many popular applications are available on both platforms. Most web browsers including Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office and Apple software including iTunes, QuickTime and other applications have logical alternatives on the Mac platform which are widely discussed on the Mac Switching forums which are well worth a read.

In an effort to make the time I spend working as productive as possible I've already been working towards using browser and cloud based applications and services including Google Apps, MobileMe, Dropbox and Evernote which leaves me with just three PC only applications I need. In my case these are:

Affmeter Pro because it gives me a quick overview of what's happening to my affiliate income.
Mailwasher Pro because it's the quickest way to keep an eye on all my mailboxes.
Quickbooks Pro because although there's a US Mac version this isn't available in the UK.

Before we get into the nitty gritty of setting these up on a Mac it's time to decide how you are going to run your Windows software on your Mac. There are three main choices:

Boot Camp
Apple includes this as an optional install and it works well but you have to boot into Mac or Windows mode and I want to run both side by side and cut/paste and copy files between them in real-time so it's a non-starter for me.

Parallels
Parallels can run Windows, Linux and pretty much any OS as a virtual machine within the Mac environment and once set up it's an almost seamless experience. it works well and has proven reliable so I'm pleased to recommend it. There's a free trial available so why not give it a try?

VMware Fusion
There's a free trial available but I haven't tried this software. It appears to offer similar features to Parallels which I've been using for years so, if you're not already using Parallels, give it a try and make your own mind up before making a final decision - feel free to share your experiences by commenting below.

All three options require a legitimate copy of Windows so make sure you have that to hand before you install your chosen software.

Part 4 covers running Windows programs on a Mac

Mac Life - Part 2- Virtual Machines & OS Merging

Although I'm now exclusively using Mac hardware I am still "OS merging" - I still need Quickbooks PC accounting software and down the years I've picked up a few other PC only applications including Mailwasher Pro and Affmeter Pro which I don't want to be without so I'm running them using the Parallels Virtual PC software.

Virtual Machines - Better Than The Real Thing?

(If you're not planning to run any non-Mac software you can safely skip to Mac Life Part 3)

My Atari background offers me a unique insight into the pros and cons of working with Virtual machines compared to the real thing. Atari software ran much faster on both Mac and PC hardware than it ever did on real Atari computers and I've run up against all the typical issues which ALL need to be addressed before finally committing to using a virtual machine:

Switching between the guest and host OS
This can involve a complete machine reboot or a keyboard shortcut and everything in-between.

Accessing software from the other OS
Parallels makes it possible to run the host and guest OS in parallel so it doesn't get much better than this.

Accessing, moving and copying documents and files between the OS's
You'll need to find a way of working which makes it easy to access documents and files which need to be available across OS's and you're going to have to find what works best for you on a trial and error basis.
My solution is two-fold. I run a local network with shared storage and I use remote cloud services - which I'll go into in more detail later on.

Hardware compatibility issues
If your software relied on any hardware which isn't supported or emulated by your Virtual machine you won't be able to use it. There's no easy solution to this one.

Problems with peripherals
Printing is the most common area which always throws up unexpected problems.

Keyboard layout handling
The Mac and PC keyboard layouts are different. A few crucial keys are in the "wrong" place or simply missing! Switching to a Mac and continuing to use Windows software is a challenge that requires practice and a measure of perseverance and reference tables.

Part 3 covers what I think you should do before finally making the switch...

Mac Life Part 1 - Switching to Mac

I've owned personal computers since 1981 and I have been looking for the perfect set-up ever since. There have been some great machines along the way and decades later thanks to the Parallels virtual PC software, which makes it possible to run PC and Mac programs side by side on a Mac, I now have the best working environment so far.

I've retired my last office PC so I thought I'd share my experiences and encourage anyone interested in kicking the PC habit to do the same and switch to a Mac.

Why didn't I switch earlier?

(It's complicated, you won't miss much by jumping to Mac Life Part 2 if you've already bought a Mac and want to know how I've set mine up.)

Because I've been using computers since 1981 I have decades worth of prejudice and baggage to unload. I prefer sitting at a desk using a computer with a "proper" screen, keyboard and mouse and my first Apple Mac was the unrivalled Mac Duo which cleverly combined the desktop computer experience with a neat netbook sized laptop which could be ejected and used on the move. The Duo concept remains the best computing set-up I have ever used until my current Macbook Pro setup which is why it's taken me so long to finally make the switch.

Renegade Publishing Ltd was originally formed to publish Atari Computing magazine so the Mac versus PC debate wasn't an issue - we were promoting Atari machines and software. However, after Atari development ran out of steam, I had no choice but to migrate from Atari to PC and Mac software at the same time Renegade Publishing Ltd evolved into online publishing and marketing, new age media in modernspeak.

The business needed accounting software and the only choices back then were Sage and Intuit Quickbooks and neither have UK versions that run on a Mac so I bought my first PC and I've been running both Mac and PC systems side by side ever since.

The PC versus Mac Debate
My Atari background has helped me remain objective when weighing up the pros and cons of each platform and I've had a longer look at both hardware platforms and operating systems than most computer users will ever have and combined with my professional background in technology and product design on this subject I really do know what I'm talking about! Here's my overview:

Apple Pros Superb product design, headed up by Jonathan Ive, CBE, originally from Chingford, Essex, one of the world's foremost product designers.
Reliable, out-of-the-box lifestyle solutions people love using - even if they don't know it yet!

Apple Cons Comparatively expensive, Apple only cables, standards and conventions.

Mac OS Pros Reliable, easy to use, easy to keep up to date, generally virus free, compact, free software included which works and is easy to use for most common tasks.

Mac OS Cons If it does break, it can be serious.

PC Pros There's a dazzling choice of hardware available which means it's possible to build anything from a budget priced general purpose machine to a state of the art gaming platform.

PC Cons The flipside of supporting such a wide range of hardware is compatibility and software driver problems.

Windows Pros I'm struggling to think of any, help me out here Windows fans...

Windows Cons The Windows interface has never been a seamless experience and it's very tedious to keep to date and virus free. New hardware often leads to driver and software compatibility issues.

Part 2 covers Virtual Machines & OS Merging

How To Encourage Affiliates to Update Creatives...

Because we work with hundreds (thousands?) of merchants all competing for our atttention we have to make choices about which merchants to update first in our ongoing mission to keep everything up to date across our websites.

We're more likely to update merchants that work best for us so we don't miss out on future sales and we're always responsive to requests from staff at networks, agencies and merchants with whom we have built-up a personal relationship.

We also keep an eye out for any threatening emails we get from merchants who may remove us from their programs if we don't comply with their requests at which point we make a judgement call about how to promote them in the future - working with merchants who make unreasonable requests and threats, especially at short notice, often results in us promoting their competitors ahead of them.

Today we got this email from Boden, via Affiliate Window:

Dear Boden Affiliates,

Boden are encouraging all affiliates to remove any stale promotions and to update their sites with the new 10% off, plus free delivery and returns, Autumn promotion. For affiliates doing this, Boden are offering 3 x £100 gift vouchers to 3 lucky entrants.

Now that is a simple and effective way to get affiliates working with you that demonstrates an understanding of how most affiliates work and I'd like to see more of this carrot instead of stick approach in the future.

Update...
Boden have also put up a further 3 x £100 gift vouchers to encourage affiliates to add Boden home page links and feature Boden in newsletters.

Well done Boden.

Google Slap and Back In Less Than A Week

I was checking my stats late one night when my eyes beheld a heart stopping sight - google had stopped sending cantBarsed.com any traffic and the PR for most of the popular pages had dropped from PR4 down to PR0 and were missing from the SERPs - eek!

Because the site has been online since before the millennium we've seen some dramatic spikes and depressing slaps before but we've never experienced PR0 pages and NO traffic at all so something was clearly wrong.

My first instinct is always to do nothing but after asking a few affiliate chums if I had missed anything obvious the consensus was it was most likely we had tripped an automatic penalty or perhaps a manual penalty - eek2! I had a look around for news about Google algorithm changes and nothing set any alarm bells ringing - the site hadn't changed before/after the slap so I feared the worst.

Apparently a Google manual penalty will be displayed in your Google Webmaster tools account so I nervously logged in and was relieved to see I had not upset the google traffic gods so WTF was the problem?

I took a good look around GWT and the only thing flagged up was errors in the sitemap.xml file. I manually created and update that file so I knew I hadn't made any recent changes and that left me puzzled how that could suddenly cause errors. I re-uploaded my local copy, validated it then resubmitted it to Google and within 24 hours most of the pages were showing up in the SERPs and the PR had returned - phew!

We're still well down on traffic but I'm sure that will improve as we add new content which will get crawled.

I was surprised that fixed the problem but it does leave me wondering whether to remove the sitemap.xml file altogether and let google make its own way around the site - or maybe it was just a google blip, either way it was a bad day in Joe World!

Is Skiing Skiving? Affiliate Marketing Jollies...

In my ongoing quest enjoy life more I've come to realise affiliate jollies are vital research.

My latest jaunt was a week in Austria with Prezzybox organised by Barney Edwards. Barney is Zak "The Mighty Box" Edwards' younger brother and shares the same "Joie de vivre" and easy going nature which immediately put us all at ease. I was chuffed to learn Gulshan, my roomie from last summer's Barbados trip, was also coming along so we shared a room again and picked up the banter and drinking where we left off! It was also great to meet Luke, Ben (The Ginger Ninja) and Andy (The Machine) who keep us amused with CB radio chat.

The skiing and boarding worked out well because Barney and Luke were both good skiers, Gulshan and I signed ourselves into ski-school and Ben and Andy hung onto the slopes as best they could.

After my ski-trip to Whistler last year I knew I needed more lessons so ski-school was perfect for me and Gulshan and I joined an intermediate group and as we worked our way up the slopes our gang developed a great team spirit - it turned out most of us were staying at the same hotel, Hi to Helen and Pete, Andrea and Hennrik and top ski instructor Stefan.

By the fourth day we skied from the top to the bottom of the HartKaiser mountain on blue and red ski runs which was an achievement I'm really proud of but the highlight of the trip was stopping for lunch up a mountain at a tiny place run by an elderly couple who still cook traditional Austrian food on a wood fired stove right next to our table. I think we all really enjoyed the food, drink, each others company, ambiance and exhilarating (OK, scary) ski trip back to basecamp through whiteout conditions on the mountains.

As the feelgood factor wears off I think I've cracked a rib which is a souvenir I could have done without BUT I've just found out Barney broke his wrist on the trip so respect to him for carrying on - he's hardcore! I suspect we'd both still do it all over again though so no complaints from me.

So What Have I Learnt About Affiliate Marketing From This Trip?

Affiliate jollies throw into sharp relief the difference between working from home and my working life in general. I always find sitting at my desk after affiliate trips and get2gethers a real struggle. I'm pretty sure it's the routine rather than the tasks themselves and sitting at my desk does focus my mind so perhaps it's a necessary evil - I'm still having an internal dialogue about it and I'd be interested to learn whether other affiliates can get by without a desk.

I've learnt I can run my business from a laptop in a bar with a beer in well under an hour a day. For a business that's paid me a decent salary for years I'm still impressed by that. However affiliate marketing is a fast moving industry so to maintain a decent income going forwards it's important to spend, at least, some of my "free time" working - doh!

Research and creative thinking are both things I've always done, paid or not, so from my perspective I'm just playing at work which means I don't really have a life-work balance as such - there's just life and striving to live it the way you want to live it.

I've proven to myself again that all I need is a laptop, an internet connection, something to play with - snowy mountains or waves preferred - and some company to share the experience with.

Living life the way you want to live it sounds a bit selfish on the face of it because we all have responsibilities and I'm mindful and content with mine but I do wonder where the person that owns a house full of possessions and craved all the latest gadgets went?

My "tai chi journey" is part of the answer. Tai Chi has improved my health and spiritual well being, it's something I do together with my wife, Deb, and it's given me the inspiration to take on new challenges, appreciate my family and friends and be open to new possibilities.

Several months on from the blog post where I talked about "letting small bad things happen" here's an example which also ties in nicely with my "black box approach to affiliate marketing" blog post. Before I set off for Austria I turned off my last remaining Adwords campaign so I didn't have to worry about site downtime while I was away and of course, me being me, I forgot to turn it on again until I had a site outage a few days ago and went to turn my Adwords off and they were already off. Great, I thought - I'd been meaning to black box experiment whether Adwords was adding anything to my profit margin but I couldn't bring myself to turn them off for an extended period to find out.

The black box result is I'm leaving my PPC ads off - for now. I could analyse the stats and improve the campaign but black box me says put it on the back burner and if times get hard then will be the time to take another look at it.

I appreciate this laissez-faire approach wouldn't be possible if I was starting my affiliate business today but for now I'm content to settle for a little less money, a little less hassle and have some built-in slack to fall back on.

So where next? I'm off body boarding the week Existem have organised their beach party which is bad planning but I am meeting up with the IWOOT guys later this month so the next affiliate jolly is just around the corner.

How to Break the Research then Failure Cycle or ...

... Joe's Black Box Approach To Affiliate Marketing Success.

So there I was posting to Kirsty's (excellent) blog mentioning my binge personality and how I try to ride my positive waves of enthusiasm and resist those pesky stat checking urges when I realised I'd made my own personal breakthrough in time management and that inspired me to put this blog post together.

Back in the day I was a product designer. Coming up with designs for complex products on demand for products we could never hope to fully understand is a creative process punctuated with dry spells and brain freeze. To work around problems I used to "black box" them which basically means leaving what goes on inside the box to take care of itself and moving onwards towards your final design.

I've just realised I've been using this same black box technique to work smarter as an affiliate, except the ultimate goal is to make more money in less time.

If you have to "think inside the box" get someone in to help - in affiliate marketing projects that could be a coder, graphic designer, SEO service, PR agency, etc. The benchmarks I use to gauge my success are the output from three black boxes:

1. The PPC black box: How much I've spent on PPC (if any) in a month.
2. The Commission black box: How much income I've made in the same period.
3. The Bank account black box: The bottom line in the bank account.
   

So long as I've spent (a lot) less on PPC than I've earned in commission and the bank account shows a general upward trend that's usually enough analysis for me so while I'm moving on with my global domination plan hopefully you're all trying to work out the answer to affiliate marketing success (which, to save you wondering, is 42) buried deep inside those black boxes.

As Kirsty points out in her 13 Reasons You’ll Fail At Affiliate Marketing in 2009 blog post this is where many people fail.

I used to carefully research niches but using my black box approach, which appears to be the exact opposite approach to Smingle's (also excellent) help and advice for newbies and people who need a kick up the backside in 2009 forum thread, I can get something online within minutes of coming up with a new idea without doing ANY research.

Sometimes it's a blog or a simple website but so long as it's live you can jump straight to measuring whether the idea works or not and come back to it on the next wave of enthusiasm - or not. As a wise man once said "There is more than one way to skin a cat."

Go On, Open The (Black) Box!

I remember being unemployed during the 80's recession so it was easy for the credit crunch to infect my thinking and I'm prepared to admit there are times when more detail is useful.
I've opened the Bank account black box, analysed my outgoings, and cut costs.
I've also opened the PPC black box, chopping some PPC networks altogether, and reduced the cost per click and squeezed some extra traffic out of the same budget on others.
I'm still keeping the lid firmly shut on the Commission black box because I can be really anal about stats and I'll get very cross if I start looking too closely in there!

Instead I'm going to keep my SAD symptoms at bay by pushing ahead with all my projects and coming up with new ideas - failure is not an option.

Only Send Me Junk Mail From Now On!

I was having one of those days where whatever I started went wrong or led to three other things that needed doing more urgently so when Hannah Swift popped up on MSN asking why I hadn't replied to her recent email about a bean bag I'd won courtesy of Bean Bag Bazaar and I had to confess it was just one more thing which went wrong - I hadn't seen the email.

Like many affiliates I get hundreds of emails to multiple email accounts every day from networks, agencies, friends, ads, spam and other nasties. I use the excellent Mailwasher Pro (discount code here) to monitor email live on my mail servers which makes it easy to react in near real-time to any incoming mail needing urgent attention BUT only if I'm at my desk and on the case. When I'm out of the office or not paying attention and I run a send/receive/delete email cycle without checking for urgent emails first everything ends up in Outlook where mail rules organise them neatly into black holes and hyperspace folders containing in excess of 35 THOUSAND unread emails.

The only way I can find emails in Outlook now is to do a google desktop search and frankly things are so bad I'm giving up on email.

I've been trying to improve my workflow and productivity and have been inching ever-closer to a paperless office. As part of that process I've been using online services like Google Apps, Evernote and Mobile Me so I can work online anywhere and still have access to my resources from anywhere on a laptop - which in itself is part of a longer term plan to be entirely mobile at around the same time my kids all leave home.

Tim Ferriss' inspirational blog includes a similar tale of email woe. Tim's solution is to "accept that small bad things will happen" and not to worry about it. That's certainly an interesting approach but what about the small good things? If two wrongs don't make a right surely ignoring bad emails risks the wrath of the karma gods and the good emails will dry up too?

So my new cunning plan is to tell everyone NOT to send me important emails any more which just leaves unimportant emails and spam which I can safely ignore - tada!

I must admit I'm feeling quite pleased with myself so please don't go picking holes in my plan.

Getting rid of email is just the latest in a long line of hermit-like strategies I've deployed to free up more "me time." My fax machine ran out of paper years ago so I put it in the loft, feel free to try and communicate with it if you like.

The telephone is another comms device I've mentally consigned to history. I do still have one, but I generally don't answer it unless I know who's calling (of course I have caller ID enabled and an answerphone) and I do sometimes have a weak moment listening to anyone brave enough to leave an answerphone message and pick up but it's usually just to abuse and taunt hapless callers.

The answerphone message relayed by digital Dorothy says I'll get back to you but she's telling porkies. After several attempts at recording my own message inviting people to leave a message I decided she/it strikes just the right blend of FOAD I was looking for - feel free to give her a listen on 01206 835032 during office hours.

If you REALLY need to tell me to do something or NOT to do something I'd like to encourage you to chat with me by MSN, it's immediate, I usually reply if I'm about or later when I have time - it's a virtual post-it slapped on my monitor so there's no better way to grab my attention. MSN also keeps a record of conversations so there's every opportunity to incriminate or contradict yourself and my blackmail folder is growing steadily! My MSN address is joe(at)cantbarsed.com.

I also like to communicate sporadically on the a4u forum where I post as renegade, on Twitter and on Facebook so there are still plenty of ways to get hold of me pretty much anytime.

I believe Howard Hughes became a recluse suffering from OCD after accumulating his millions so now I'm washing my hands even more often and restricting myself to virtual human contact it's surely only a matter of time before I accumulate some millions too?

Happy New Year

CSS - Oh No I've Got Can't Shop Syndrome!

Looking after mega shopping directory (CantBarsed.com) and monster discount codes website (DiscountCodes.tv) means I always know which stores are holding Events, Mega days and Spectaculars and where to look for pretty much anything from LCD TVs to pants - which is how I feel about online shopping at the moment!

Even my wife consults me for shopping advice - that's just WRONG! I'm suffering shoppers burnout and there's still another couple of juicy shopping weeks to go before I can get off to sleep without seeing my christmas list, promo codes and catwalk models wearing lingerie before my eyes - oops did I write that last bit out loud?

CSS, aggrevated by post traumatic shopping stress disorder, has rendered me incapable of making a purchasing decision - even after doing my due diligence comparison shopping on my own sites, and Froogle, and BillyBargain (shamless plug) when I get to the store checkout I come over all rabbity-headlighty when I see that field where you can enter a promotional code or discount voucher.

Yeah, I know it's my business to know all about codes but even when I'm sure there isn't a code I can't bring myself to complete the purchase so I waste hours looking around other code sites and forums just to make sure I haven't missed the bargain shopping saving opportunity of the century and the end result is another abandoned basket, yep, I've definitely got CSS.

Then there's trigger levels. It all seems innocent enough with teasers like "get an extra 10% discount when spending over £50" so there I am working out whether to split my order into two, maybe across 2 or more stores, and before you know it I've got half a dozen store checkouts open and another bunch of abadoned baskets and every day is one less shopping day and if I don't get help soon I'm going to have to head into town and shop in person!

I could start a victim support group "CantBarsed to Research All Purchases", CRAP for short. Then when I get to the checkout and think "Oh CRAP" I'll know who to call. CRAP advocates an alternative take on the IAB best practice:

When there really, really, really isn't a promo code, freebie or deal just plainly state:

"There are NO codes today. Don't waste your time looking elsewhere. Don't Worry, Be happy!"

The CantBarsed Affiliate Marketing Lifestyle Experiment...

I've been around the UK affiliate marketing industry since the early days and there are so many great things about the industry every now and then I take time out to have a look around and see what other affiliates are up to and to remind myself not to take anything for granted because standing still really is going backwards in this industry.

Learning new stuff and trying out new ways of making money are two of my favourite things and two of the most important qualities anyone interested in making a living from affiliate marketing will need along with determination - lots of determination.

It's not easy to think outside the box, especially on demand, but my background as a product designer means I'm adept at coming up with alternative ways of achieving the same result and when I suffer from designers block I buy other websites and take a look under the bonnet which gives me an insight into someone else's mindset. Because they're selling up there's every chance it turns out to be a cul-de-sac but nevertheless it's always fascinating.

My fascination with websites extends to domain names and I'm always on the lookout for new domains to support existing projects and inspire new ones so feel free to pitch yours to to me!

I'm not a domainer but I can spot a good deal when I see one. I recently enquired about a domain which the current owner thinks is worth a lot more than I do - nothing new there if you read my earlier post about domain name haggling. I asked one of my favourite web developers with domain name expertise Paul Lasikiewicz for his opinion and he reckoned the asking price was about double what I felt the domain was worth. The owner isn't budging so I'm content to let the credit crunch bite and have another go later. Learning to play the long game is another essential skill affiliate marketeers need to learn.

Affiliate Marketing feels like a game of Monopoly to me. On the roll of the dice (my google rankings) I cruise the board buying web properties which I develop adding houses and hotels on them in the hope that people will eventually land on them I and make money.

I got chatting with Paul (this means typing in MSN in JoeSpeak) and it turned out he has been busily developing his own web properties including a nice discount code related domain Discount.org.uk and we struck a deal and now I have another code site to look after - it's good to type!

I tend to look for domains with two keywords or something catchy that's brandable and I've never been a fan of generic domains. I also hadn't really considered org.uk domains as worthwhile properties until that purchase but Paul explained the site could rank well for searches like "[retailer] discount" and "discount for [retailer] and I can see his point so I learned another important affiliate marketing skill - listen to what other people have to say and adapt to prosper and stay in the game. I've since registered a few org.uk domains including billybargains.org.uk, renegade.org.uk etc.

We chatted about SEO and I realised not being a domainer isn't my only lack of expertise - I'm no SEO expert either! It just goes to show that however much you learn about affiliate marketing (and I've learnt a helluva lot) you must never stop learning. I make a decent living as a jack of all trades but the challenge is to do even better. I love being my own boss, I get to choose when I work and I'm a tough taskmaster.

My conversations with Paul really inspired me and I'm working on new projects and looking forward to battling with my fellow affiliates for those top slots on all the search engines.

It's the a4u Expo this week so I've been working flat out to get things done before my head explodes to free up some headspace for new stuff at the Expo sessions. I've already picked the sessions I want to attend and have added them to Evernote so I can read or change my itinerary from any machine or my beloved iPhone. It all depends how quickly my cold clears up, how much beer I drink and whether I'll be able to get in or stay awake to all those sessions! I managed to soak up some useful stuff last year without any planning or effort, doffs hat to Mr Lee Mccoy, so my plan is to be just a little bit more professional this year.

For starters I've got some shiny new business cards to give out, assuming I remember to carry them with me, and the in/famous cantBarsed booby lady remains a key feature - after seeing her traded for poker chips at a previous a4u event I know she has legs! However, in my quest for professionalism on these overly PC times I've cut up some post-its and censored the sensitive areas by hand so peel to reveal or not - the choice is yours! I'll cover them with a scratch panel next time. If you do see me wandering the Expo or asleep in the sessions do say Hi and ask me for a card.

Affiliate marketing CantBarsed style really does suit me and, like the best experiments, it's much more exciting when you don't know the final outcome.

Affiliates to Give 200% Cashback to Charity

If that got your attention perhaps you'll also be snagged by a new breed of spam emails featuring incredulous and witty subject lines. I'll admit I was enjoying this spam and I was a bit dissappointed when they dried up as spam filters around the world sussed the format so for posterity here's a few highlights:

• NASA to use Space Shuttles to kill birds
• Switzerland To Be Devoured By Black Hole (one for James Avery there)
• Home Office to deport anyone with IQ below 100
• ICAN To Shut Down Email Services World Wide
• Obama Captures Osama
• Mccain vows to withdraw all troops from the US
• Paris Hilton to operate new atom smasher
• Paris Hilton's Vagina Bites Penguin
  

A different email spammer is sending out more believable subject lines which just don't have the same appeal:

• Ronaldo leaves Man Utd
• Cancer cure from American plant
• UFO sighting in downtown NY
• Steve Jobs to resign from Apple
• London Olympics cancelled
  

...and so on
It really goes to show the importance of your email subject lines and for affiliates sending out newsletters there are lessons to be learnt.
I filter my incoming mail by subject line into folders and when I send out my weekly newsletters I always start each email with "CantBarsed.com" to make it easy for my newsletter subscribers to do the same and now I'm wondering if I would get a better open rate if I mixed up the subject line so it wasn't so easily filtered or maybe that would just annoy my subscribers?

Witty one line comments welcomed ;-)

Is Less More?

Salesperson: "Hello Sir, Mobile XYZ here phoning about your mobile phone contract, we..."
Me: "It's an iPhone."
Salesperson: "That's lovely sir, anyway about your mobile..."
Me: "They're exclusively with O2, you're wasting your time... and mine."
Salesperson: "..."

It's happened twice already.

In my vision of an Apple inspired future I hadn't foreseen the welcome side-effect of the demise of mobile phone contract parasites (or that being scewed by O2 would have an upside) and it got me wondering what else in our lives would be better if we had less choice?

Do we really need to choose which company sends us a bill for our electricity, gas, water etc? If comrade Stalin-Brown nationalised the lot again we'd have less choice but we'd all pay exactly the same and we wouldn't have to endure those pesky comparison website TV adverts.

Do we really need so many seperate remote controls with myraid buttons we'll never use? I don't. Apple's remote control is an marvel of self-restraint which everyone can use without a manual, it just works. There's even an Apple iPhone App(lication) which lets me control iTunes from anywhere in the house. All we need now is some smarty pants to come up with a box of tricks which let's me control everything from my iPhone and I can throw all my remote controls away - I see there's already a company working on this, but I'd rather Apple took charge and did the job properly.

Less is more was always my favourite design philosophy but it hadn't occured to me having less choice might also be a good thing. I'm certainly losing brain cells quicker than I'm making new ones these days so working smarter is good but working simpler is where it's at.

Given a free choice I choose less choice.

Apple iPhone 2.0 Updated At Last

After my earlier rant I finally managed to upgrade my iPhone to 2.0 at around 8pm Friday evening.
It wasn't a good user experience and days later the MobileMe service is still a bit clunky so it's hard to get a handle on how useful it will be to me.
I've just discovered there's now a Windows MobileMe control panel to set sync preferences and now my email, contacts and calendars on iPhone, Mac and PC are all in sync which is cool.
I've just spent some time in my happy place (new tech toys to play with) browsing around the new Apple Apps Store downloading and playing with some of the excellent Apps.
Here's my first thoughts:

The Facbook App The original web app was great and although this app doesn't really offer anything new it feels more seamless and it's cool to instant message with other online Facebook users.


Shazam Load this up and play any piece of music and in around 15 seconds it'll tell you the track, the artist along with links to YouTube videos and more - perfect for setting arguments and combating brain freeze. The only downside is this is a time limited version - so how much they want for it will decide whether it remains on my iPhone.

Remote Control your Apple TV and iTunes music libraries from your iPhone. It's free and works really well but I also want to be able to play the music on my iPhone via remote speakers. There's also a remote control web app which replicates the Apple remote features and I'd like to see these two remotes combined into one killer app.

Twittelator Twitter on the move from your iPhone and it will also update your Facebook status (if you have this set this up in your Twitter account preferences).
In addition to posting twitters you can add photos from your camera roll or take a snap. There's a "panic" feature which posts your location along with a shout for help which is bound to save someone's life before long.
There's also Twitterific which is available as a free ad sponsored version or a premium version costing £5.99 which removes the ads but Twittelator gets the job done for free so I'm not sure there's a future for a paid version.

Shanghai Mahjong I'm not into console games but I do have a weakness for Mahjong when I need to chill for half an hour. There are already 6 different Mahjong apps on the Apps store priced from £0.59 to £5.99 so I plumped for this version from MobileAge which cost me £2.99 and it's an excellent implementation with some great features and a wide range of tile designs and backgrounds. I do need a zoom feature for this app because my eyes soon became tired of staring at tiny tiles.

iPhone Stuck In Hyperspace!

The problem with being right about the popularity of the new iPhone is I didn't get one and now my 1st generation iPhone is useless too!

For me the trouble started with Apple's decision not to sell the new iPhone online and I buy all my Apple gear from the UK Apple Store online and I didn't want to queue at a shop for their PR benefit.

Then O2 sent me an text message upgrade invitation, excellent I thought, I can still upgrade online and get an iPhone delivered to my door this Friday morning.

Then the O2 website broke due to overwhelming demand (event though O2 had been testing their servers all week to cope with a 250% increase in demand).

By the time I managed to get a working website the O2 online store had sold out and I decided to wait and have a play with the new 2.0 iPhone software on my 1st generation iPhone since I do most of my browsing via WiFi at home the 3G and SatNav features are not top of my priority list.

So I kept trying to download the new software via iTunes and eventually managed to download it mid-afternoon only to find after backing up and restoring my iPhone that the iTunes upgrade activation servers are down so now even my existing iPhone is stuck in Hyperspace.

Way to go Apple to piss off one of your most loyal customers.

Barbados - Message In A Bottle

I had several other working titles for this blog post:

"Barbados - The Pleasure & The Pain"
Pleasure because it really was a pleasure to spend time in the company of some of the nicest people around the affiliate marketing scene, some I'd known for years like Pete, Lee, Chris, Ian, Keith, J Lil with apologies to anyone I've forgotten and new friends Gulshan (my roomie), Nic, Meisha, Neil, Tom, Aldo, Elizabeth, Naomi, Hannah, James Avery, Mike, Sinéad, Siri, Ben, Sarah(s), Mark and quite a few others whose names I can't spell until you get in touch with me. I think we're all agreed Barbados is a beautiful island and it was a pleasure to explore and interact with the locals who are generally chilled, mild mannered, intelligent, respectful and delightful people.

Pain because I managed to badly sunburn myself the first afternoon. In my enthusiam to go bodyboarding, one of my favourite things to do wherever I go in the world, I picked up some waterproof SPF50 lotion slapped it on all over but it clearly didn't work as advertised because I ended up bright red for the rest of the week and now my skin looks like a contour map of the island! And there were the hangovers!

"Barbados - Mixing Business With Pleasure"
I can't imagine any better way for a network to switch me on to their message than jetting me off to Barbados and Affiliate Future have evolved this winning formula over several years which works remarkably smoothly. There were no formal presentations, no hard sell, just plenty of suggested outings and things we might like to participate in. The only onslaught is alcohol which, as an affiliate, is beer off a ducks back. AlcOClock usually kicked off after breakfast with a poolside bottle of Banks, the local lager, followed by Rum & Cokes (Barbados is famous for Mount Gay Rum which has to be the smoothest rum in the world) leading inexorably to Happy Hour and strawberry Dacaries before heading out for the evening - and we had some great evenings.

My highlights of the week were:
Scuba diving: I was really nervous about scuba diving, I'm comfortable in the sea hanging off my bodyboard but trusting technology to help me breath underwater is huge leap of faith and thanks to Andrew at Eco Dive and Frostie for making that leap a little less scary. We dived down to a shipwreck at around 15m and I also saw a sea turtle, octopus, shoals of fish, all in all a fantastic first experience and I can't imagine a better place for a first dive.

Touring the island in a Suzuki Jeep: We hired a bunch of vehicles and headed off to explore Barbados which is just 166 square miles (by my reckoning about the same size as the Isle of Wight) which means you can get around the entire country in a day! We headed off to a silver sanded beach up the west coast, stopped for lunch at an excellent restaurant, then headed up to the Flower Caves situated at the most northerly point on the island before making a mad dash down to Crane Beach on the Atlantic coast where we arrived at dusk. Don't ever follow Lee, or try to overtake him, which left me in an awkward catch 22 situation as he made an unorthodox manouvre just as a bunch of local schoolchildren started to cross the road off to my right. Ian shouted "KIDS IN THE ROAD" so I slammed on the brakes and stopped just a few feet away from half a dozen of them as Lee hurtled past in the opposite direction. Neither the kids nor Lee (aka "Team Fun") seemed in the least bit concerned so we put the episode behind us and we had our very own catchphrase for the rest of the island tour.

Bodyboarding on Crane Beach: We organised a gang in a local Taxi for an afternoon of boarding therapy. The waves were very messy with no opportunity to do anything other than hang onto them and ride straight up the beach or get wiped out. These waves were really mean - I got dumped unexpectedly more times here than anywhere else and I ended up banging my head on the bottom for my troubles - not the best place for beginners to learn but I had a fab time.

Karaoke: In the spirit of doing something outside my comfort zone I ended up singing Karaoke in the hotel bar. I joined in with James Avery, Ian and Lee for an interesting variation on "Don't Look Back in Anger" and after a succession of Mancunian anthems I roped in Ian, Tom and Lee for my choice of "Puff The Magic Dragon" and by the end of the evening there was incriminating video evidence on most of us.

Fish at Oistins: Great food after dark on the beach mixed with lively music and great company is my recipe for happiness and the Marlin and macaroni pie was the best food I ate on the island. I had planned to do a bit of shopping but I think it was Nic that put a stop to that with a bottle of Mount Gay rum and we started on Rum & Cokes. As I've grown older I haven't really got any wiser and that evening I went for it. I don't remember travelling back to the hotel, I do remember having a fab time in the hotel bar with Nic, Neil, Ian, Kieth, Tom, Sinéad, Chris, Sarah and Ben - who went to bed early and consuming a brain shrinking quantity of Rum & Cokes. I don't remember eating street meat and I don't remember how I ended up in bed face down with my clothes still on but it was a great night.

I also enjoyed a couple of drinking sessions at The Ship Inn and a Bajan evening at Harbour Lights where the "young bloods" of the gang really made a lasting impression - one I'm still trying to forget!

Anyway, I settled on "Message In A Bottle" partly because my blog posts have a running theme of song titles and I can imagine sitting on a secluded beach somewhere spamming the oceans with messages in empty bottles of Banks:

"Please tell Deb to come and join me and give our kids the site logins so they can pay their way through university."

"THANKS to Affiliate Future for stranding me on Barbados and rescuing me from my daily routine"

The CantBarsed Blog is moving...

I'm in the process of moving the CantBarsed blog from http://www.cantbarsed.com/blog to http://blog.cantbarsed.com so I can use the new blogger.com template features to give the blog a makeover.
I suspect it won't be seamless and it could well be messy or unavailable in the short term but it should be worthwhile - I'll be back!

iPhone 3G brilliant BUT iPhone 2.0 Software & MobileMe Inspirational!

I've just watched Steve Jobs presentation to the WWDC and while I'm really excited about the new iPhone what I'm most looking forward to is the free forthcoming iPhone 2.0 software update and MobileMe (a revamped .mac service) which together will make a big difference to the way I work as an affiliate on a daily basis.

MobileMe is described as the "cloud in the sky" which synchronises data between your all your desktop and mobile devices in near-real time over the air (3G, 2G or WiFi).

This is perfect for affiliate marketeers. For example I'll be able to read and reply to an email on my iPhone and both my desktop computer and laptop will know I've already read and dealt with that email so I won't have to read it again or mark it as read on my other machines.
I'll also have access to all my contacts and spreadsheets anywhere and any changes made will be updated on my other devices seamlessly - no more multiple, but different, copies of the same documents on different machines.
I think I'll be able to do the same with dreamweaver web pages but putting the pages live will still be a separate task, I look forward to having a play to see what's possible and what's practical.

This time around Apple have made a huge effort to get the business world on-board. A whole bunch of Fortune 500 companes were signed up to the beta program and with full support for Microsoft Exchange, Cisco and the ability to open Word, Excel and Powepoint documents in place demand is going to go through the roof.

Add July 11th 2008 To Your Diary
That's the day the iPhone 3G goes on sale in Apple and O2 stores across the UK and it looks like they're NOT going to be available online (as an Apple affiliate that's REALLY bad news) and can only be activated in-store. I'm not happy about having to queue up and activate in-store but from O2's POV it makes perfect sense because it will reduce iPhone hacking/unlocking (again this is bad news for O2/CPW affiliates).
At an estimated 12 minutes per customer there's going to be some long queues outside stores which means lots of media coverage.
I can't decide whether to play their game or wait and play with the iPhone 2.0 software on my existing iPhone and run the risk of the iPhone 3G going out of stock, especially because at a price point equivalent to $199 they are going to fly off the shelves (although I want the more expensive 16Gb white model), decisions, decisions.

More Apple News
Last July I blogged about how iTunes was the Trojan horse which lets Apple loose on Windows machines and alongside a new Apps Store you'll also be able to install iPhone apps from iTunes and I'm looking forward to seeing how MyMobile interacts with Apple TV, where you can now rent and buy movies along with popular TV shows. It's all coming together rather nicely now isn't it?

I CantBarsed to Blog About The A4U Awards, Oh Allright Then...

Well I didn't win anything - which wasn't a surprise since I wasn't nominated but I still managed to get nervous for 2 award nominees I felt quite strongly about.
Happily Julie Wood romped home (judging by the cheers) as the Publisher’s Choice Of Account Manager and Kirsty McCubbin just missed out to Kieron for the Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2008. As I was waiting on the balcony alongside Kieron I reminded him I'd voted for Kirsty and he agreed she would be a worthy winner so I was delighted when he told me after collecting his trophy that he intended to give the sunshine.co.uk holiday vouchers to Kirsty and Duncan could so they could have a mini holiday after their wedding and before the A4U Expo.

Of the 14 other awards I correctly guessed 7 and was only left scratching my head over a few.
I expected sunshine.co.uk to pick up an award but Chris Clarkson picking up the Affiliate Manager of 2008 is a real achievement up against old hands like Zak and Graham.
Virgin Games winning the Gaming vertical award ahead of Jackpotjoy was odd. They'd been squeezed onto Kieron's "affiliate only" table and disappeared downstairs just before the award was announced so I'm guessing they only attended at the last minute and knew in advance they'd won the award - which is better than not attending and filming a cheesy video - probably! I wasn't even aware there was an independent Virgin Games affiliate program so I'm guessing they actively canvassed for votes which feels wrong to me but it's within the rules and even actively encouraged but I still don't like it. OTOH the Virgin Media guys sat either side of me and Deb at lunch and they were both really nice and we drank a glass or two of their celebratory Champagne so I've no cause for complaint - I bet Jackpotjoy Jasper and Claire will be canvassing for votes next year!

So as an 'umble affiliate plus missus was it worth attending?
The comedian Michael McIntyre made my face ache with laughter which partially numbed the pain of spending around £600 all in including tickets, hotel, breakfast, trains and taxis to eat and see a few mates pick up awards. From a business perspective I wouldn't get it past my expenses manager (happily I don't have one) and the A4U expo is a much better opportunity for networking. OTOH as a glitzy event to take the missus along too and spend some company money it was just about worth it but I probably won't attend next year unless it comes immediately before or after the A4U expo so I don't have to make an extra journey and hotel booking.
It's also always good to spend time in the company of Elaine and Dave, Kieron, Frostie and others. I also learnt Redcar is up north, oxygen can be flavoured and that I can drink a lot of Champagne, to date, I haven't been able to afford to find my limit.
I didn't give a toss about the involvement of the IAB at the awards - it's been largely irrelevant to my affiliate life and similarly I don't understand why people seemed pleased NMA wanted to be involved. As a magazine about new media they'd be stupid to ignore a sparkly event tailor made to fill column inches - maybe they were pleased NMA isn't as stupid as they thought it was.
Congratulations
Once again Zak from Prezzybox and Graham and Dan from Buyagift pick up awards and it was really good to catch up with Julian from IWOOT and talk seafood again. It's also always good to put names to faces of all the other merchants and affiliate managers I chat with by email, telephone and MSN on a daily basis and best of all it was great to celebrate Julie's win at our own mini after-after show party with Nadeem, Martin and Carl from the A4U forum.
As usual there were loads of people I didn't get around to chatting with but, thanks to Matt and the Existem gang, the A4U Expo is just a few months away so we can all catch up again there.

Karma Chameleon - The Times They Are A Changing

Our recent 25th Wedding Anniversary party and my 50th Birthday seemed blogworthy enough milestones so here I am again.

We don't throw many parties because we're not fans of the traditional village hall format and the prospect of having our house trashed becomes ever-less tempting. I was explaining this to my friend Chris and we ended up talking about Packing Shed Island, which sits just above high tide off the coast of Mersea Island in the Blackwater River estuary, and we both agreed it would make a great alternative party venue so a few phone calls later the shed was booked for our anniversary party.

Booking the shed really was the easy part because everything from people to toilet rolls has to travel by boat to the island, and back again, which adds an extra dimension to even the simplest tasks with plenty of scope to FUBAR!

Parties need music so I spent a long time going through my iTunes collection picking must-have tracks from each decade and ended up with enough music to put on a music festival rather than a party!

I always enjoy browsing the pictures people traditionally put on the wall at parties but getting those mounted up and onto the island was never a practical proposition so I decided to put together a noughties style slide show using my Apple TV and an LCD projector. I generally hate scanning photos but it was therapeutic scanning pictures and amazing to see small snapshots spring to life on a much larger screen. The slideshow seemed popular so I've uploaded the lot to my .mac web gallery for anyone who missed it or wants copies of the photos you can grab them yourselves.

It's great to get presents but there's really nothing we need so we'd decided to organise a charity raffle and thanks to the generosity of our sponsors (especially IWantOneOfThose.com and Buyagift) and all our party guests we raised exactly £500 for our favourite charities.

From our perspective the party went really well. The island mentality led to us over-ordering food and we even had some alcohol left which is more a case of us getting old rather than over-ordering I think. Apologies to anyone I didn't get around to chatting with, that's always the problem with parties, but everyone had a smile on their face in the photos and they're also available online here or on the Facebook event page.

So fifty is bloody old, especially when I grew up in the cold war and remember being told the world might end today at infant school, so I've been counting my blessings ever since. We can't help growing old but we don't have to grow up and figuring out what's important is more important than learning stuff and milestones like anniversaries and birthdays make me maudling and reflective - please feel free to skip my self-indulgence.

I've been practicing Taoist Tai-Chi for over four years now and although the gentle body changing exercises have undoubtedly improved my physical health it's the taoist aspect which has been the key to becoming more comfortable with myself so here's what I think I've learned so far:

* Don't judge people too harshly. Most people are lovely, mostly harmless and often ineffectual but lovely nevertheless and the more people you meet and friends you make the more lovely experiences you will have in this life, it's simple probability in action so just do it.

* Do something outside your comfort zone every day. Say YES when you're screaming NOOOOOOOO on the inside and see what happens - it almost always turns out OK. I'm really uncomfortable at the thought of public speaking but it gets a little easier each time.

* Break your habits and embrace change. Challenge yourself, stop drinking tea or start drinking coffee - it really doesn't matter, changing your behaviour is the key because it challenges your self-image and ultimately how others perceive you. Be open to new ideas and experiences, life inexorably narrows our potential so don't make it any easier.

* Be useful and be generous. From personal experience I know the law of karma works. Often being generous is useful too so it's already karma payback, did you see the movie Pay It Forward?


Finally, and on a lighter note, I'm reminded of this essential tidbit for men of a certain age: If you have the opportunity to go to the toilet, take it - and if you're lucky enough to get an erection use it!

Whistler, IWOOT, Curly Wurlys & Jet Lag

I'm not a fan of February(ies) in the UK so the idea of stomping my carbon footprint across Canada was appealing - especially when the entire trip was organised and paid for by IWantOneOfThose.com - the worlds favourite gadget site.
We flew with British Airways, the worlds favourite airline, that cancelled our flight because the pilot was "ill" - I still can't believe that excuse, the more I think about it the more pathetic it sounds. Do BA really not have a single backup crew?

The upside was a stopover in Toronto on route to Vancouver and Whistler mountain where the original plan was for a gang of affiliates to go boarding.

Instead we went up the Canada National Tower in Toronto, drank large quantities of beer and cocktails, with some serious eye contact, ate Twirly Wurlies and got into an outrageous pillow fight at a swinging party - I'd like to tell you more but fight club rules apply on holiday but you can read more about IWOOT in Whistler here - I'll just talk about me and skiing.

Learning to ski is easy enough but convincing your brain to let your body slide down a slippery slope with minimal control is a LOT harder - at least until the adrenalin rush kicks in and you're back on the chair lift for another run.

Harvey, my ski-lesson buddy, was fearless but clearly his brain doesn't work because he lost his ski poles, his lift pass, his googles and then ME up the mountain!

Everyone who knows anything about skiing says Whistler is THE place to visit but without anything to compare it with all I can do is agree with the instructors who reckon it's awesome dude, mental even and it certainly got under my skin in more ways than one.

I always suffer jet lag returning from America and it takes me well over a week to get back to normal so here I am wide awake at 2am yet hardly able to stay awake during the day - of course I'd love to do it all over again and to Paul, Julian, Julie, Ian, Jamie and Harvey I'd like to say thanks very much for your company.

Valentines Day Messages - Will You Marry Me?

It's that time of year again and we're publishing Valentines Day Messages on CantBarsed, anonymously if you prefer, so you can share a little love, or start some rumours around the office.
This is the third year we've run this online event and we've just had our first marriage proposal - How cool is that? It's also a leap year so look out guys, the tables have been turned!
Every message is also entered into a Free Competition to Win 1 of 5 Valentines Romance Calendars kindly sponsored by Prezzybox who deserve a mention because they've sponsored the event every year.
The closing date for entries is midnight 14th February 2007

Code Sites - Reasons To Be Cheerful?

Back when we started publishing promotional codes on CantBarsed.com there really weren't any dedicated code sites and we enjoyed top positions on Google, MSN and Yahoo for several years for most of the popular keywords. Happy days indeed but back then the general awareness of promotional codes was really low so those keywords were nowhere near as lucrative then as they would be now. However we did offer early internet shoppers a way of getting deals online they couldn't get by visiting participating stores directly and everyone was happy.

As awareness of promotional codes increased and we saw the launch, and increasing popularity, of dedicated code sites it became confusing for visitors to CantBarsed.com to find our promotional codes mixed in with our content and our stats showed a marked decrease in visitors so we bought DiscountCodes.tv and worked really hard to build the site database with daily updates so now by cross-linking the two sites we can offer our visitors the best of both worlds.

Code sites have recently come in for a LOT of criticism, some justified and some unjustified accompanied by bandwagon jumping, petty sniping, jealousy, back-stabbing and, worst of all, in-fighting and slanging matches between code sites owners which isn't good for anyone. However the glare of publicity has resulted in closer scrutiny of the way code sites work and has resulted in some positive developments.

To anyone thinking of launching a code site I would remind them about all the other seemingly easy ways to make money which turned out to be a lot harder than they first appeared. For example, how many decent cashback sites are there left? What happened to all the datafeed driven websites after google wised up to them? How many independent and useful broadband and utility switching sites have you visited lately (and how on earth do those comparison sites advertising on TV make any money?). I could go on.

Back in the real world producing a functional code site is just the first (and I would say easiest step) of a HUGE undertaking. To properly maintain a code site people will want to re-visit you'll need to commit to learning everything there is to know about the UK online shopping scene and endless late nights!

This means signing up to every retail program and reading hundreds of merchant emails daily, investigating what each new merchant has to offer, removing stores which go bust or close their affiliate programs at a moments notice and that can be a full time job even before you add a single code.

Then there's the codes. Some last ages, some last hours. No sooner have you added a code you have to remove it. Some codes just don't work and others can't work because your site design didn't allow for every permutation. Some codes can be published, some cannot, some can be used by you and no-one else, some can be used by all affiliates, some can only be used my the recipients and others can only be used by groups like NHS employees and YOU have to decide this for each and every code you publish.

Of course you can look at other code sites (I do and I know we all do) and if they have a code I don't I'll go after the merchant, agency, networks for a similar code. However there's also a really uncomfortable balance to be struck between offering what your visitors want (ALL available codes) and what you can publish (NOT all the available codes) and it's very frustrating to be sitting on literally hundreds of codes we are clearly NOT allowed to publish and other codes which fall into a grey area.

In fact you'll soon discover there's more than one grey area! There are merchants that are completely paranoid about codes and/or code sites, merchants that still haven't heard of codes, merchants that don't handle codes well and just a few switched-on merchants and agencies which really get it.

I'd like to think I've made a positive contribution towards helping merchants understand discount codes and maximise this valuable marketing resource and further our aim to build long-lasting mutually profitable relationships with merchants.

Don't expect everything to run smoothly when visitors hit your shiny new code site. If your site can be broken it will be broken. If anything can be misinterpreted it will be misinterpreted and your mailbox will fill up - and it won't be with thanks and praise, remember the buck stops with you!

It's tempting to cut corners and steal content from other code websites, but anyone doing so will soon be found out. At the last A4U Expo a bunch of code site owners shared a beer and discussed the issues between ourselves and with a couple of enlightened UK networks (Paid on Results and Webgains) and we (the aforementioned bunch of code site owners) are working together to resolve the problems which have been thrown into sharp focus as code sites hit the headlines for both the right and wrong reasons recently.

There will be some self-regulation and there will be some rules that have to followed and although, in my opinion, these can only ever be a work in progress given the diverse nature of discount codes, it's a lot better than nothing.

Just like any other niche code sites appear, stagnate and disappear and just like any other niche a few sites eventually attract the lions share of the visitors. It's usually the sites which offer unique content and/or unique features that emerge with the visitors and they deserve their success OR sites which break all the rules and get away with it until at some point the rules change and their model no longer works. For the record, we're striving to be one of the good guys by creating a great site visitors want to revisit that doesn't step on too many toes.

I'm frustrated by the negativity surrounding code sites and frustrated being lumped together with a few rogue discount code sites. We've worked really hard to ensure DiscountCodes.tv offers our visitors unique content and exclusive codes. We've always worked within network rules and merchant terms and conditions (even when they are added retrospectively) and that's no different to affiliate marketing in any other niche.

Putting my thoughts about discount code sites into words has been a kind of therapy and we're already into rehab as an inexorable process of closer co-operation with the networks has begun so I look forward to a time when we're released back into the community and code sites are no longer newsworthy and the next bandwagon rolls into Dodge.

My Head Is Going To Explode

So Christmas was good and Happy New Year to you all while I'm in here struggling with the pixelmajigs. The weather is much like my runny nose and I'm not sleeping very well with so so many ideas buzzing around I think my head is going to explode.

The nub of my problem is the everyday mundane tasks that get in the way of my insatiable appetite to do something new - anything new! I'm not talking big ideas or ground breaking concepts here - some new or rediscovered music to listen to ((listening to Daft Punk at max volume right now), tinkering with my iPhones (Oh yeah! I won one of those legitimately UNLOCKED euro iPhones in a competition run by RedSave.com - how cool is that? - and I plan to hack it and write about it here - erm... soon) - so pretty much ANYTHING other than what I HAVE to do to keep our websites ticking along is what my body WANTS to do.

The end result is I always feel that whatever I am doing right now I should be doing something else so my blog posts are sporadic and rambling at best and I have so much unfinished business kicking around but when you look after a website called CantBarsed.com you can get away with it - up to a point.

With my sensible shoes on link building is one of those jobs I can't imagine anyone enjoys but, when done right, it can also be one of the most productive too. I've only ever been interested in linking in context with plain text links so don't bother offering me your link pages, but anything else is welcome. You can email me or get me on MSN via joe at cantBarsed.com and show me your wares. One upside has been some great chats with other webmasters and that's given me even more ideas - doh!

Sales are still going in the right direction and, inspired by several other affiliates publishing their stats, my snippet is total sales approaching... £5 million during 2007.

As others have pointed out there is also an unwelcome downward trend in commissions combined with an increase in advertising costs so it's certainly not getting any easier, especially for new affiliates. This can't be good for the industry in general and next time I'm in a bad mood I'll be dumping merchants with low or zero commissions which are unacceptable.

iPhone - MyPhone - The Story So Far

It's no secret I'm an "Apple fan boy" and I've been waiting to order a proper UK iPhone since playing with one in the Apple Store in Florida over the summer.

The only decision to be made was whether to drive into town on a dark cold winter evening to buy from my local O2 store or buy from Apple online and wait a few days for delivery. No contest!
So on Friday 9th November at 6.02pm and a few seconds I logged on to Apple's site half expecting the site to be broken but everything worked fine and a few minutes later my iPhone was ordered.
The iPhone arrived, as promised, the following Tuesday and I had my own sad unboxing and picture taking ceremony (see pics).

Apple packaging is always gorgeous and I can never bring myself to throw it away so everything ends up in the loft and I'm going to have to buy a bigger house or start a museum eventually!

I lost my previous Sony Ericsson mobile at the Latitude festival in the summer and replaced it with a Nokia N95 switching to the O2 network because I knew O2 had won the exclusive UK iPhone contract. The Nokia N95 is a nice phone, I liked the GPS feature but I couldn't surf websites reliably on it and the camera combined with my photographic abilites were both dissappointing.

As an existing O2 customer (if you want to keep your number and existing contract) activation is different so I've put together an O2 step by step activation series of screenshots for anyone who wants to see exactly what happens. It took around 20 minutes from start to activation but I was taking screenshots along the way so that's a worst case scenario and it was relatively straightforward but dull.

If you've ordered an iPhone and you're waiting for it to arrive read my iPhone setup Guide and when your iPhone arrives you'll be ready to synchronise and play in minutes.

I'm not going to hack my iPhone for a couple of reasons. First of all since I have an O2 contract so the phone features work(!) and secondly because Apple have agreed to open up development early next year and I can wait a few months for some "official" widgety enhancements.

However I do hugely respect the efforts of the hacking community because I doubt Apple would have released the SDK without being pushed, it's not in their nature.

By belatedly following the advice in my iPhone setup guide I've now got all my contacts, photos, music and bookmarks neatly organised on my iPhone.

I work mostly online so the most important iPhone feature for me is WiFi support and internet browsing. I prefer the Firefox browser but Safari is a capable and reliable alternative and now for the first time ever on a mobile device I can browse my websites and login and make urgent changes from the iPhone - that's a huge step forwards in Joe World!

I have literally hundreds of passwords which I need access to on a daily basis and I normally use RoboForm on PCs and 1Password on my Macs. They're both excellent web form fillers and password managers and I recommend everyone gives one or the other program a try - especially if you're using the same password for all your online services.

I was scratching my head trying to figure out the best way to store all my passwords on the iPhone and was interrupted by the latest 1Password software update which now supports the iPhone - brilliant!

1Password generates a special encrypted Safari bookmark which is synchronised to your iPhone along with your other Safari bookmarks and although it's not automatic on the iPhone it's the best available unless you know different?

My friend Antonius has a hacked iPhone (it took him all weekend and the rest of family gave him a wide berth) so we met up to compare notes over a pint in the pub. The hacked interface is amazing with lots of toys to play with and I sincerely hope Apple takes a positive attitude to build a community of iPhone developers so we can all enjoy their efforts.

Time will tell, thanks for reading, if you have any questions fire away, I'll try to answer them...

How to (or not) Haggle for a Domain Name

Like many affiliates we "own" hundreds of domain names but we're not "domainers" and I find it quite entertaining haggling for domains that I really, really want but don't need.
I particularly enjoyed this conversation and haven't yet decided whether to continue the "negoiation" or not, perhaps your comments will help...

Dear Joe,
Thank you for contacting us about [domain.name]. The domain is priced at £5,000 or above.
[snip]
The price bracket indicated is based on a previous brief initial search of related websites and businesses using the term "[snip]", statistics such as Internet Traffic and advertising revenue and takes into account previous interest and offers on the domain name as well as the value of the term as a potential brand and Internet keyword.
We don't keep an exact price for any of our domain names on file... [snip] ...exact sale prices fluctuate over time so we research these on a case by case basis as and when required when we receive serious interest in a domain name.
If you do think this will be of further interest given the indication above and you would like us to look into this further for you and investigate a definite current asking price, or if you have any other questions or comments please let us know.
Best regards, ???

---

Hi ???, Thanks for your reply.
The domain has been for sale for ages (years) with no takers so I feel my £1000 offer is realistic irrespective of your estimated valuation. I don't need it, it's just a nicer fit for [snip]
Our main business is affiliate marketing through other websites.
As I stated in the initial form I have no plans to resell it for profit so you wouldn't be missing out and £1000 has to be better than it being parked for another year.
Regards, Joe Connor

---

Sorry Joe but that's not how it works, Regards, ???

---

Hi ???,
> Sorry Joe but that's not how it works.
I recently bought a domain where the initial asking price was 18k for 3.7k through Sedo so I know that's exactly how it is.
A domain is worth what someone will pay for it and given it's been sat there for years unused it's clearly not worth what you value it at.
I'll email you again next year ;-)
Regards, Joe

---

Hi Joe,
"Sat there for years unused"? you make it sound like an old washing machine! Like I say that is not the way it works and you clearly have no concept of my businesses model in this area, something which has nothing at all to do with whatever a bunch of jokers on Sedo may get up to.
I am not going to enter into a debate with you on this and explain the situation because I get hundreds of people come out with similar nonsense to me every year and I never normally reply.
But to put you straight though on this on this occasion it is suffice to say whilst your thoughts on this are a nice idea for you and your desire to try and secure this domain name; and a good attempt at an angle for you to try and bargain a lower price on it, they are fundamentally incorrect.
An asset in this instance a domain name like this one that is firstly appreciating in value and secondly generating revenue does not fit with your description, as someone who makes money out of parked domains with advertising on them you must surely be aware of this second point. If it were like an old washing machine and becoming out of date, obsolete and depreciating and something I had to pay storage and rent on and was falling into disrepair then, yes, you may have a point, and yes I would then be wise to look at trying to secure a deal, but the situation bears no comparison to that and your reasoning is clearly flawed.
So nice try, but regardless of your past experiences in buying domain names there is no way I will be selling this domain name for any less than the price indicated whether now or even if I still have it in 10 years time. If I were in a hurry to get rid of it and needed the money I know two places where I could sell it for more than three times your offer, immediately, today guaranteed.
If however you are in the future in the position to make a genuinely "realistic" offer if say your business grows for example and you have more money to spend feel free to let me know.
Best regards, ???

---

So the domain probably has a true value somewhere around £3000 and I could probably get it for £5000. Follow up suggestions welcomed...

Cheeselets - More Like CheeseLESS!

We always look forward to cracking open our first tube of the new Cheeselets season and this year United Biscuits have taken the biscuit - literally, about half of them by our reckoning.

It's not all bad, the useless opening pull strip that always breaks off is gone (hurrah) and they've changed the flavour again - they taste different, a bit crispier, but still good.
Our kids pointed out they're 40% less fat... less salt... less everything because the biscuits are 40% gone!

And it's not just one tube, we checked several, and it's not because they've compacted down either, if anything there's fewer broken biscuits than normal. Quite frankly we're cheesed off!

A4U Expo - Expose!

Congratulations to Matt and the gang on the best conference style event I have ever attended and for getting it near-perfect first time, that's a fantastic achievement.
In the spirit of constructive criticism, here are my personal observations:

Ticketing: I got a conference pass in the post but at the event the passes were all printed out again which seemed to be a waste of time, effort and paper - worse still my printout said "Agency" which marked me out as a conference leper before I started! I tore it off the bottom of my pass which then got me into hot water with one of the a4u staff (didn't recognise him).

Planning: I was planning to go to the after show party but main event finished at 5pm and I'd checked out of my hotel so had nowhere to go between 5pm and 7pm when the after show party started - which was too long to wait after a long day so I went home. I understand exhibitors had to pack up and get organised but next time somewhere warm visitors can hang out for a couple of hours to keep it seamless would be cool.

Music: I've mentioned this one for a few previous get2gethers. I love music but the volume of music in the after-show parties is way too loud. I know I'm getting on a bit but the volume got to a level where even face to face 1 to 1 converstations were impossible and the next morning my voice was shot - maybe that's a good thing I hear some of you say but I wasn't the only one to mention it.

Food & Drink: Generally, really well handled by the Excel centre (contract staff?). I liked the brown paper bags and paper packaging but a lot more could be done to improve wastefulness on their side. The Awards evening fish and chips was tasty but a real bun fight, with some people getting more than one and others waiting ages, that needs sorting if the same venue is used again.

A4U Awards: I enjoyed the David Brent lookandsoundalike (although he did go on a bit) and I'd like to offer my congratulations to the winners, especially Matt, Hero, Kieron, Bruce and Zak. From my perspective there were some distinctly odd results and daft categories but it was generally good fun. Again the noise level detracted and the stage being at ground level made it hard to see what was going on so, depending how important/prestigious the awards become, perhaps this should a more formal event held in the conference halls - I recently attended an-after show event at the Excel centre with 1000 attendees so it can be done.

The Exhition Hall: For me this was the really HUGE plus because it meant the network staff (at least some of them) are nailed to their stands. I finally got to met CJ staff for the first time (Yes, they are real live HUMAN BEINGS) and add more names to faces at all the networks - all prizes to the address in my profiles please guys :)
At previous a4u get2gethers I've been to everyone is in a bar with a drink in their hand and network staff tend to stick together which makes it a lot harder to break into their conversation.

I even joined a new network called alltogether digital run by James Little and Kenneth Cheung. Unlike most new networks, they have already got 2 merchants I want to work instead of the usual rubbish pseudo deals so respect and good wishes to them with that project.

The Sessions: These generally exceeded my expectations and are a great addition to the mix. They're also a welcome opportunity to sit down, nod off and learn stuff depending on the particular session. From the a4u forum gang Dixon, Jess and Lee did a great job, I missed Graham, Jason, Kieron, etc but with concurrently running sessions that was inevitable. Ciaran Norris was my favourite speaker, a natural public speaker, so upgrade him to the main stange and make sure you catch him next time. Perhaps an award for the best sessions could also be organised?

Merchants: It was great to see a few larger merchants with a stand. I had a really useful chat with Lesley on the Littlewoods stand which cleared up my mis-conceptions about how the Littlewoods and Littlewoods Direct and associated brands fit together. I also bumped into other merchants touring the floor. I learnt Elaine has a merchant program (Doh!) called Childrens Rooms on POR, I can't believe I missed it or that Elaine or Dave hadn't hassled me but I've signed up now so where's my codes Elaine? ;)

As the event was closing Frostie introduced me to the Euroffice duo, Jonathan and Vincent and they showed us their new site layout which look great and perfect for B2C customers - the old site converted well enough but seemed to have B2B focus so hopefully the new site will convert even better for me. I also had several good chats with Alyssa O'Mara from CardScan (part of Dymo group) who made the trip over from the US and is looking for affiliates with suitable B2B sites, you can check out their program which is running on CJ and Webgains.
I'd like to see more merchants taking stands rather than walking the halls so affiliates can find them more easily, perhaps smaller, cheaper stands in another hall, perhaps one day only, or even just informal merchant meeting points or merchant speed dating sessions would be a good addition to the mix?

Thanks to Matt, the gang and all the sponsors and I look forward to the 2008 event.

With discount codes being the hot potato ATM the a4u code site owners gang (except those that bottled it) held a mini summit meeting to air our views and now Frostie, Ray, Keith and myself are best mates - well sort of! :) Thanks also to Clarke for talking about POR's new system and Hero for her input explaining Webgains POV.

Finally, I'd like to thank all the usual a4u forum members for making the event even more enjoyable including Jess, Dixon, Keith/s, Paul, Julie, Elaine, Dave, Jason/s, James, Clarke, Jude, Zak E, Graham, Kieron, Malcolm, Nadeem, Pete, Kandevil, Mark, Bruce, Lee, Tom and put some faces to a few a4u members I hadn't met before - Hi to Kirsty and Duncan, Bruce, POR Graeme, Kenneth, Alyssa.
Apologies to anyone I've left out, especially one random guy in the loo - I was heading towards a kids urinal next to him when I noticed and exclaimed "That looks a bit small" - his reaction confirmed "low" would have been a better word to use!

Mac Undercover

Mac computer users should take a look at Undercover which effectively renders a stolen mac useless to a thief and there's even a chance it will help you get your Mac back or see what the thief looks like!

Once installed if your mac is ever stolen you visit the Undercover website and enter your unique ID number at which point they start looking for your mac.
As soon the the stolen mac connects to the internet the IP addresses and router address is logged which helps trace the physical location of your mac and, if your mac has an isight webcam, sends pictures of the thief every few minutes.

If you still don't get your mac back at least you have the satisfaction of knowing the thief won't enjoy using your mac for long. After half an hour Undercover simulates an intermittent hardware failure (even if the mac isn't online). If the thief decides to sell you mac or take it in for repair Undercover will track this and will shout and display a full-screen message alerting the reseller (or someone who bought the Mac from the thief) that the Mac has been stolen and should be returned along with Undercover's contact information and reward offer.

They seem to have thought of everything and the prices are really cheap:
* Single User license: $49
* Household license: $59
* Site license: $249
* Student license: $39
* Volume educational license: $8/Mac

I should mention I have no connection with Undercover apart from being a customer.

There's also iAlertU which is a free alternative to Undercover, it doesn't include the network tracking but is a more in-your-face deterrent. There's no reason why you couldn't use both.