Statcounting the visitors

Now Google has honoured the site with a dash of PageRank green, I've decided it's about time to start seeing how many people are visiting the site, if anyone in fact is apart from me and the odd puzzled work colleague.

So, after a quick search, I've plumped for the stat counter below. Unfortunately, the powers that be at blogger.com don't seem to allow me to put the javascript into the site, so it's the html version only. The html version tells me very little and I'll have to content myself with a simple number rather than more juicy information on where people are visiting from.

Fortunately, this also comes with an invisible option, so if the stat stays at 1 for months at a time I can do the decent thing and hide my embarrassingly small visitor numbers from the world. Erm, not that the world would be watching in that case, but still...

Blogging my way into Google

The web is a big place, too big in fact. With all the billions of sites out there, just how do people find your site, or more importantly my site?

I've downloaded the Google toolbar and despite my efforts and writing the kind of (semi) regular content on all kinds of (semi) vital topics, the PageRank bar (indicates Google's rating of your site) has resolutely remained at zero despite submitting to Google several months ago. It's enough to parade my blog in front of Inktomi and get my valued readers from MSN, Freeserve and the like.

However, all that has changed on the latest Google rotation and a trace of green has appeared on the Google toolbar giving my blog a score of 3. So what's changed since then?

Well, I'd like to think that Google has finally come to its senses and recognised my efforts, but I think the guys at Blogorama have more to do it. The blog is now featured in their list of blogs and clearly that's good enough for all-powerful Google to get out the green paintbrush.

Surely, it's only a matter of time now before that elusive (and lucrative) Sunday Times column comes through.

Move over Britney and Madonna, there's a new PR queen in town

Debate has been raging about whether Janet Jackson's 'wardrobe malfunction' was in fact a well/ill-chosen (delete according to today's whim) PR stunt. Ad Age recently featured an article from a PR firm praising it as a stunt saying 'It raises the bar for all of us' in a nice bit of PR for his agency who I've already forgotten the name of.

Despite an unlikely reported 200,000 complaints (that's some serious switchboard action), she has got her conveniently timed single to the no.1 slot, leaving us to wonder whether this is finally proof of the old PR adage that no publicity is bad publicity.

All this leaves me wondering just how long it will be until we start getting waves of publicity-desperate celebrity streakers?

What's that? Oh, yes... Jordan.

The publicity gravy train

Is it just me or does E-bay's publicity machine just keep rolling out the same story over and over again with no sign of media weariness? The dot com success story is in the press every other week for endless subtle twists on the 'someone sells something weird on E-bay' story. Great kudos for their PR agency and early to the pub for the hack in question (and good luck to them both).

One look today reveals Germans selling tanks online and a Bristol University student auctioning her virginity online (surely the Britney $7m bid a few years ago scooped this one?).

What next, cholesterol-reducing cholesterol?

Birthdays can be sobering times. Before you know it, you're the wrong side of 30 and looking down the barrel of belly expansion, high cholesterol and dodgy knees.

To counter the inevitable, I've started to take an interest in those little yoghurt things and Benecol spreads that all claim to lower my double-cream and red meat-fueled cholesterol levels, but now even my bread is chipping in with the goal of batting my poor health into the next 30 years through an attack on all fronts.

It all makes me wonder whether in the future even my cholesterol is going to start reducing my cholesterol levels?

Janet Jackson goes tits up

For once Wacko Jacko has found himself upstaged on the bad publicity front by his own sister, Janet. Her crime? The cardinal sin for our friends across the pond of exposing a breast.

For the nation that airbrushes out the infinitely corrupting nipple out of its quasi-porn men's lifestyle magazine segment, exposure on the TV holy grail superbowl slot has induced mass hysteria. For those of us this side of the pond, we can only wonder at the damage done to the youth by the tassled mammory gland and hope that the hideous image is soon erased by a daily diet of screen violence.

In fact, she has made internet history as the most searched-for name of all time, pipping the mighty Britney and even Paris Hilton's promotional video, according to the Search Engine Journal. Let's just be grateful she didn't display the full set or George W would have had to invade.

Virals of the season to you

OK, OK, so it's been a while since my last post and with Christmas coming up, it's probably going to be a while until my next one. What better way to sign off from the world of internet communications with a seasonal viral. And not just any seasonal viral. This one is so bad, that it's great. It just goes to show that some of the best virals are the ones with the least effort behind them and the humour is not that of the author but the perception of the recipient.

Here you go and don't forget to set your expectations to low. Really low.

And if you're really in the mood for festive idleness then play the Supa Snooper game and help a young boy achieve his dream of being an ace reporter.

What's your spam name?

You know how you can work out your porn name? There's many ways to do it, but my favourite is you take the name of your first pet followed by your mother's maiden name. This makes the stud Jeremy Dubois in my case (watch out ladies!).

Given the amount of spam anyone who's had an email address for more than 5 minutes gets, surely it is just a matter of time before the formula for calculating your spam name comes out. There's a guy who has collected a list of the names he's been spammed by from the delectable 'Lavonne Crowe' to the slightly distubring 'Domingo Mann' (www.anentropic.com/writing/spamnames/index.php).

But I've yet to find a good formula for the must for every netizen their own spam name. How about the name of your favourite site, plus that of the spotty kid in your class - Beeb Crawford. Not bad, but it's not quite there is it? Steve Bulmer could end up with Microsoft Gates and that's a scary thought. So, let's open it up to the floor. I think I'll have to stew on this one and blog again.

Bright ideas to jasonbenali@hotmail.com a.k.a. Beeb Crawford

I don't blog, I nanopublish

First there was trying to explain blogging to people - 'it's an online diary' seems to register - and now the humble blog is spawning its own sub-sets. Now blogging has hit the big time, the inevitable attempt to categorise, jargonise and a whole other bunch of '-ise's is starting to take root. As the great Ice Cube prophetically said, 'giving our music [read: blogging] away to the mainstream, don't you know they ain't down with the team.'

Now there's moblogging (surely the Ice Cube thought this name up?) which is putting words and pictures on the web via your mobile phone and now nanopublishing (or mo money mo blogging?), a form of micro-publishing, with the aim of making profits from blogs. This might be in the form of taking advertising on the blog, requesting donations from readers or even good old affiliate links from Amazon. With the likes of Google investing heavily in blogging software (Google owns Blogger.com now) the humble blog is becoming big business. Will it be the next internet bubble, only time will tell, but given its take-up and the once bitten twice shy business mentality now dominating online, it's likely that blogging dollars are here to stay.

Comments to jasonbenali@hotmail.com

Harry Potter film turned into book

Now if only I'd thought of this while on the dole...
http://www.satiresearch.com/go.asp?sid=21883

Good piece of reverse reasoning.

What's happened to Salam Pax?

He was the famous 'blogger in Baghdad' describing the build up to the war from an Iraqi's point of view. There was a great deal of speculation as to whether he was a plant (not that kind of plant) or if we were witnessing a new phenomenon - reporting by the people for the people, powered by simple blog software. Anyway, it appears he turned up when the Guardian signed him up as their new reporter, claiming he was a 29 year old architect (no doubt despairing as the final remains of Baghdad's architecture was blasted to pieces).

I wanted to include details of his site for a presentation and the site was down. OK, could be a local problem I thought, so I asked a friend to check out the url. Nope. I searched on the net and double checked the url http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/. Hmm, so I went to the Guardian's website above and followed the link, still getting the invalid url error. All the links were pointing at my url, but still there was the invalid '_' character. OK, then, time to go back to good old trial and error and I reached a site this time that certainly looked right at http://dearraed.blogspot.com/. I'm pretty sure it's the right guy, but why does Salam Pax have a nme.com email address and near perfect command of English? You could form a rational argument to explain each of these oddities and either way it's still a fascinating read. You wonder whether we'll ever know the truth.