Monday 31 August 2009

More google sites & Widgets

Cooking with Madeira just got a fairly major hack around since I was trying to find out what I could do with Google sites.

The answer, it appears, is quite a lot. For example I'm probably going to start moving a few sites I built through free hosters onto Google sites - its easier to manage analytics, add Adsense and since all the ecommerce is third party anyway it's not a problem to integrate it.

The only thing I would say is that we will be building a few custom widgets - its range of eBay ones is not that good and mainly US only, which is not ideal.

I am currently waiting on Squidoo to publish user figures and royalties for this month. This should be the first month where infolinks are included, so its make or break time regarding whether I am going to turn them off, and possible migrate my content.

Friday 28 August 2009

Google Analytics and new videos

Well, apart from updating the Google sites I'm setting up, I'm trying out the Analytics tool on my websites to see how well it works. It's easy to add to the google sites, as you'd expect, but I did end up doing a bit of a hack on the template for this blog to get the validation code in.

I haven't worked out how to integrate it with lenses yet, but if it runs for a few days it should give me a lot more detail on my visitors. Hopefully it will also provide information in enough detail to work out the best settings for trafficseeker. Best of all, of course, it's free!

Also, for anyone who hasn't seen them I've uploaded rough cuts of my Bournemouth Airshow and Eastbourne videos to redgage:



When I get decent editing software I will clean the clips up a bit more - Bournemouth for the sunlight and compression issue and Eastbourne because it was my first time with the camera.

Thursday 27 August 2009

Cooking with madeira - a google site

I spent a bit of time yesterday evening trying out Google sites. Here's my first:
Cooking with Madeira

There are advantages and disadvantages with it
The good:
- Free
- Pretty easy to use
- Monitisaton is easy, as Google ads are integrated

The bad:
- Its tricky to get started
- There are limits to where you can move pages once you have created them.
- Most of its power is in widgets, but these can run oddly.

There were also some odd integration issues with Amazon that I ended up going to the HTML to resolve. (The one with the Amazon Carousel was never fixed).

Overall I'm not too upset with the site, and will probably leave it up. I might even add more recipes as I find them, although I haven't yet settled on a format for the site.

Now I just need to find a madeira seller to link from it!

Tuesday 25 August 2009

A quick note

Join SheToldMe.com with tirial as your referrer!
Shetoldme has worked quite well. After putting a few links up on it and leaving them, the Adsense ads do actually appear to be being clicked on (a rarity!). I've added a few more articles this morning.

Don't be put off by the girly banner - most of my clicks and votes have been on heavy engineering, steam trains and warplanes, so it takes a real range of content. It's also my referral link so if you want to join or join through here, I'd be grateful.

Real life is gettin in the way right now (sick relatives, selling a house, moving a business, all the little things...) so my updates may be erratic. Sorry.

Sunday 23 August 2009

A quick update

Despite sunburn, I've added a few of my images and a rough cut of some of the video clips to Redgage:

Once I get my video editing software working, there should be something a bit better coming up.

I'm also currently adding my content to SheToldMe. Its an indexing site like redgage and if you have a Google adsense account you can link it directly to your content to get the ad revenue. This is a bit of a test, just to see if it works.

Saturday 22 August 2009

Bournemouth Airshow

Just got back from the Saturday. Despite the best efforts of British Rail when the train broke down halfway, we managed to mget there for part of the morning. I have the photographer's sunburn to prove it - through Factor 70, so if you are going take your sunscreen and long sleeves!

Sad news about the Sea Vixen, whose pilot suffered a stroke shortly before the airshow and is now recovering. This means unfortunately no Sea Vixen display, but hopefully the pilot will make a full recovery. Best Wishes to him and his family.

Other displays were the Vulcan, Team Guinot wingwalkers, the BBMF (sadly without spitfire) and several phenomenal acrobatic teams.

A very interesting show, although I have to say I prefered Eastbourne. The Bournemouth show had more on display but long gaps between the flights, and while Eastbourne had a range of stands and a funfair on the seafront, Bournemouth's facilities seemed pretty limited to food and WCs. That said, it's a nice location and a great show, so go early, take water, suntan lotion, and find somewhere to sit and enjoy it! If you know a local it helps, believe me.

I'm sure I should say something about the Eurofighter Typhoon, but it was at the end of the show, so it let us get away early. Can't argue with that.

Wednesday 19 August 2009

Eastbourne Airshow

We went last weekend on the Sunday for a fantastic show. The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight did their usually stunning display, two Folland Gnats showed why they were the last fighter aircraft to be used in display by the Red Arrows (those things can move) and there was even a display by the Eurofighter right when I needed to get an ice cream!

Sadly no Vulcan, although that should be rectified at Bournemouth this weekend. I did however get a selection of videos clips with the new camera. The only thing we will probably be doing at the next airshow is using the new camera purely for video - small fast moving objects at great distances turned out to be too much for it.

A lot of my Eastbourne Photos are now on Redgage, as well as a roughcut of the BBMF display which I am using as a tech demo.

Tuesday 18 August 2009

Endless Ocean

An embarrassingly late lens on my favourite Wii game.

http://www.squidoo.com/Endless_ocean

This has been a wip for a few months now, so I thought I'd better finish it - particularly when endless ocean two is on its way out!

Friday 14 August 2009

Sumer School graduation

One quick note: I'm one of 47 entrants who managed to finish the Squidoo Summer School.

All the graduates are listed here:
Giant Squid Summer School Graduation

Congrats to everyone who completed it!

Thursday 13 August 2009

Another lens

Okami Sticker sticker
Okami Sticker by Akuosa
More Okami Stickers

A new lens went live today:


http://www.squidoo.com/okami-game
Okami


About one of my favourite PS2 games, Okami by Capcom. It's been on the backburner for a while, so I thought I'd better finish it.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that another fan has done a range of excellent fan artwork on Zazzle, including a baby, growing and adult version of Ammy. An example of their designs for a range of merchandise is on the left.

What's been taking most of my time at the moment is a manuscript. With my second novel almost finished, most of the words I write are going towards that at present, so apologies if the updates slow down.

Thursday 6 August 2009

Squidoo Summer School complete

Eight lenses over eight weeks. Doesn't sound like much compared to target 200, but it's a lot harder when someone else is setting the rules. I just submitted my completed list for assessment.

  1. http://www.squidoo.com/farthing-downs-tour
  2. http://www.squidoo.com/most-prized-possession
  3. http://www.squidoo.com/yo-sushi
  4. http://www.squidoo.com/grace-spitfire
  5. http://www.squidoo.com/zopa-lending
  6. http://www.squidoo.com/the-highwayman
  7. http://www.squidoo.com/633-squadron-operation-valkyrie
  8. http://www.squidoo.com/chelsea-physic-garden



And over the course of it, I'd say it's given me a chance to try lenses outside my normal remit, a chance to play around with new ways to use modules (particularly the Week 6 challenge where you only had 5 modules to use in total) and some ideas for future lenses.

Time to see what credit these are worth towards the summer school. I suspect I washed out on Number 7; done in a flu-y haze I missed the fact it was meant to be a squidLit lens, but then I don't like that template much regardless.

Wednesday 5 August 2009

Fotolia cancelled

Account closed and deleted. They failed to send the confirmation email twice, and then would not use our correspondence address. If it's good enough for the bank and HMRC, you'd think it would be good enough for Fotolia, but apparently not.

Of course the bank took a hint when they tried to deliver a card onsite to me when I was working at an airport, without telling me in advance. Airport security can be quite strict about unexpected deliveries. Hence correspondence address...

A quick update

I'm having fun with Fotolia, which doesn't seem to be able to get my account fully active (there are issues with our address). I have just added this site to blogexplosion, but I doubt I will be very active on there, as I am spending most of my time working on Squidoo and redgage. I am hoping to get to the Bournemouth and Eastbourne airshows, so hopefully there will be some good pictures coming back.

And I'm currently working on a new manuscript offline, which is taking a lot of my time away from Squidoo.

Which brings us back to the green links...

The good is that the double underline is back, so they can actually be told from normal links on the Gone Camping squidoo theme. The bad is that they are multiplying: one of my lenses had four in the intro and another further down. In more bad news, one of the other users had an ad that appeared to be selling 12-year-olds (fortunately it turned out not to be actual kids, but that was quite disturbing!)

I've left them on so far because its a test, and its al good money for the cuases I support. However it looks as though the extra money from them will be 24%, which may not make up for the drop in traffic and sales that I and a few others noticed.

I'm swinging towards just turning them off globally. I'd love to see them work, but right now there just seem to be too many drawbacks.

Monday 3 August 2009

Fotalia - trying out stock footage

I've had a few people ask for copies of my photos - in fact more than a few. So to make things easier (and hopefully make me some money) I've signed up with Fotalia as a test. The new camera is just good enough to take photos at their entry level, so I've sent a few images across to see whether they will be accepted.

Of course, if this works, there will be a lens upcoming - particularly if I can work out how to use the affiliate links with Squidoo! (A new clearspring module possibly?)