Friday 31 July 2009

Making Topaz Jewellery

Feeling slightly better this morning so I got this one off the backburner:

Making Topaz Jewellery
http://www.squidoo.com/topaz-jewellery-making


It covers making jewellery using backset pendants, (a type of prong setting) where to get supplies and Topaz stones and cabochons for practicing. It is part of a series fetauring my other jewellery making lenses on claw settings and snaptite. I have one more planned.

Thursday 30 July 2009

A new lens

Apologies for quality. I am still down with flu, still wishing it would go away, and still stuck with the deadline to get a book lens done by tomorrow or wash out on the Summer School Challenge.

http://www.squidoo.com/633-squadron-operation-valkyrie - one of the sequels to 633 Squadron.

At least the flu gives me an excuse to take time off and read.

Wednesday 29 July 2009

Top 100 badge

A 20x20 set of pixels makes my day. The new Top 100 badge is up on all the Giant 100 Squid lenses.
http://www.squidoo.com/tirial-badge - what can I say, look on the top right under my bio picture.

Tuesday 28 July 2009

Down with flu

Down with flu Taking a break from lens/articles/things in general until it clears. Sorry.

I'll leave you with this:
http://www.squidoo.com/support-a-day-of-hope
A lens I did last night, testing out ways to make supporting a charity by lenscrafting more appealing. And all its royalties go to A Day of Hope.

Monday 27 July 2009

A new lens and update

I've added the "discovery module" to my hatching game lenses and jewellery lenses. Lets see if it works. Even if they restore the discovery module I might leave these up - it's definitely had an effect (my average lensrank jumped from 240K to 130K).

Two new lenses went live this morning, but I still have to tackle the Summer school Week 7 challenge - write a lens about the next book I'm going to read. Now I just finished the last book on my reading list, so I am really not sure of what to read next - particularly since the one I was going to tackle is a little controversial.

I may amend the Science of Discworld one to fulfil the criteria - after all I put it live this morning so it fulfills the time period, even if it has been on the back burner for a while.

I have another jewellery lens in mind, but I'm taking a brief break now.

Magistream - online hatching game
http://www.squidoo.com/magistream

A new hatching game I have started playing. I'm still working out the ins and outs, but this lens will pick up advice and tips as I learn more about the game - much the same way the Dragon Cave lens grew.

Friday 24 July 2009

Make your own discovery Module

Hopefully this is soon to be redundant if Squidoo bring back their own official module. However this is how to produce the "Discovery Module" I have been using for my test. My Video games lenses have gained a box that looks like this:

Other Relevant Lenses:
Console Game Reviews, Suikoden IV, Ico - Ueda's classic game, Dark Cloud, Disgaea - turn-based strategy RPG, Dog's Life - Canine Capers



To create your own the code looks like this:
<p style="clear:both;margin-top:0px;padding-top:0px;padding:10px;background:#eeeeee; border:1px solid #cccccc;"><b style="#333333;font-size:1.2em;">Other Relevant Lenses:</b><br/><a href="/console-game-reviews" style="color:#333333;">Console Game Reviews</a>,<a href="/suikoden-iv" style="color:#333333;">Suikoden IV</a>, <a href="/Ico" style="color:#333333;">Ico - Ueda's classic game</a>, <a href="/DarkCloud" style="color:#333333;">Dark Cloud</a>, <a href="/Disgaea" style="color:#333333;">Disgaea - turn-based strategy RPG</a>, <a href="/dogs_life" style="color:#333333;">Dog's Life - Canine Capers</a></p>

To create the box:
<p style="clear:both;margin-top:0px;padding-top:0px;padding:10px;background:#eeeeee; border:1px solid #cccccc;"> ... </p>

To create the link:
<a href="/DarkCloud" style="color:#333333;">Dark Cloud</a>,
Change the words in Bold to the link for your lens, and the section in Italic to the name you want to show onscreen


This test has run for only three days, but the best places to put it seem to be at the end of the intro and at the top of a module below the Guestbook (if the guestbook is at the end). I have used six links since that rarely goes over two lines, and matches the original module. In practice, with some HTML skills you can add more links, make them open in new windows, or make the module's look match your lens.

I'll keep updating with test results as they come in, but it's getting tempting to add them to a few more!

Thursday 23 July 2009

Discovery module test update & new lens

Discovery Module
I couldn't resist so I added it to a few more lenses, and am waiting to see the results. However it looks like Squidoo might be bringing it back themselves (announced on Squidu today!) which will save a lot of time on trying to code the thing to automatically pull in the right lenses.

New Lens
Garnet Jewllery Making
http://www.squidoo.com/garnet-jewellery-making


Lens number I-really-don't-know-right-now is now live. It covers the basics of setting a garnet in a premade prong setting, as well as sources to get the settings and gems from (and suggestions to make it less expensive if you mess up the first few times). It's been a while since I made any jewellery, but I might fetch out my kit and do a few more like it covering different gemstones and techniques.

Wednesday 22 July 2009

New lens: Topaz Jewellery

A new lens done - it's yet another jewellery one because I am not up to writing large pieces of original content at the moment (or I'd probably be doing bukisa articles instead of lenses!)

Zimbio seems to be working at rather well in terms of traffic, so I will have to sit down and write an article about each of my lenses and get them on there. Also, my Redgage traffic has gone up (did I mention Redgage was the only feed that worked in its default setting?).

I have made no changes to the discovery module. Although it's tempting to start tweaking, it won't be a valid test if I keep fiddling with it!

Tuesday 21 July 2009

Projects updates

Discovery Module
My CSS box has been up on all the video lenses for one day, and already seems to be having an effect. The pages have had slightly more traffic than I expected, which seems to be cross-lens from the box itself. I've tried it in a range of places on different lenses and its interesting to see which ones it works on. At the end of the week I'll tally up my results.

Now I just need to figure out how to automate it.

Traffic seeker
Much pressure is being put on my finance department to approve a purchase of the software, since being able to automate search engine submissions completely would be ideal.

Zazzle
I have the new camera, which is great. I also have the blasted flu and can't go out of the house, which is not so great. This is why I am doing all the lens projects now, by the way...

Superbreak
That's right I'm now a superbreak afiliate, which means that tickets to the theatre shows (and hotels for the airshows) can be found on the lenses. At last.

Monday 20 July 2009

Discovery Modules

The Mossie one was more successful than I thought, and I only rolled it out this morning. As a result, I'm doing a full test of a discovery-style module on the video games lenses.(e.g. Dark Cloud)

Since I haven't changed these lenses for a few months they are all fairly stable in traffic terms. This means that once the modules are in place and the initial boost from the amending has gone, I can compare before and after.

Currently I am trying this by adding a hand coded piece of CSS to each intro module. In a few cases it is elsewhere on the page to see what the effect is and whether I get more cross-lens traffic. All the links are currently to my own lenses, but then I don't have permission to use anyone else's for the test.

If this is a success I will see about creating something, possibly in clearspring, that will emulate the old discovery module properly. Doing it by hand is a real chore - and I'm not looking forward to trying to update links!

More musings about Green links and discovery modules

I am seriously considering turning them off. As I said before, if I want green advert links in my text I could create my own easily enough and not share revenue (Half the affiliates on commission junction offer that option). Looking at the pros and cons:

Leaving them on gives on big advantage - money. Apparently it should almost double what we receive.

However, on the downside, this comes at the cost of losing visitors and therefore potential sales. It places links I can't control in my content, which are rarely relevant. Also the links will remain able to place all three in the intro module, which looks dreadful.

It may even be lowering lensrank. You see, my visitors books are set up so any visitor can post (and fully moderated because of it!) Most of my comments were from non-squidoo members. Since the links came in, that has almost stopped. Since comments count towards lens-ranking, some of my higher rated lenses have dropped quite badly.

Of course, if I did turn them of the option would be following Squidoocool's lead to replace the cash loss. Might try it on a few of mine and see how it works...

Discovery Modules
Squidoo used to have a "discovery module" which displayed related links (three of yours, three of someone else's). These were a great traffic source, but they were turned off on the new templates.

de Havilland Mosquito is the site of a test - whether I turn this into a full module or not will depend on the results.

Sunday 19 July 2009

Zimbio

I had a suggestion that I should start adding my content to Zimbio, the wikizine article.

Zimbio works by users submitting articles which are then adding to various zines set up by other users. Each article can nly be submitted to one 'zine for obvious reasons (stops spamers)

It can take automated feed from blogs so you don't have to rewrite your article each time. Unfortunately, these feeds are of variable quality e.g. I just went through manually adjusting the articles for any squidoo links I uploaded. The bukisa feed is less than ideal as it only pulls in the ratings bar, so it you use it have a paragraph or two ready from your article to enter through the edit screen. The blog feed? I'm sure its great, but my blog content (being personal ramblings about marketing) isn't really suitable for 'zines. The Redgage feed works pretty much perfectly however.

Does it work? I started setting it up yesterday and I'm already getting traffic so I'd say yes. Its pretty obvious, but the trick seems to be taking the time to find the right wikizines.

The other new thing was adding blogrankings to my blog. This site assesses blogs based on visitors and updates and assigns a rank. I'm languishing in the three hundreds, although we have already found that some visits don't appear to register - we suspect that if multiple people are on the same IP or using IP masking it doesn't count them, but we haven't confirmed this.

The new buttons for Zimbio and Blogrankings are on the side of the blog.

Saturday 18 July 2009

#206 The Highwayman


#206 The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
http://www.squidoo.com/the-highwayman


This is another summer school lens. The challenge was to make a lens about something using only 5 modules. Pretty shortly afterwards this was relaxed to possibly not include the intro and Guestbook, but I went with the more restrictive version.

It proved tricky as it wasn't possible to add everything I wanted. For example, the musical versions are absent and I focused entirely on the poem. Usually I avoid extensive CSS on Lenses because they can be very unpredictable (Squidoo's code filter plus browser differences occassionally equals a right mess!) but with this one it was the only way to assemble it.

If you are on Squidoo why not try the challenge yourself? Even if you aren't in the summer school, it's well worth it just for the practice.

Friday 17 July 2009

Two new lenses, and an approach change

Two new lenses in progress, but these are a change of direction.

http://www.squidoo.com/garnet-jewellery
http://www.squidoo.com/iolite-jewellery

If these looks very different for what I usually do, that would be because they are my first attempts at commercial marketing lenses, and because they are likely to leave my account fairly soon. If the first few prove successful, they will be off to a good home in a different account with a lensmaster who wants them.

I hadn't thought of doing lenses for money before, but strangely I find myself not at all upset at the idea. If this works out, I might throw up a lens offering the service and work out a ratecard. (Meanwhile, if you'd like me to do a lens for you drop a comment on the blog or through my lenses, and I'll let you know...)

A new camera - at last!

Crystal Palace Dinosaur Montage print
Crystal Palace Dinosaur Montage by tirial
View more Dinosaur Posters

I spent yesterday struggling with Photoshop, trying to get the resolution on the images to a decent level for Zazzle. The result was things like the poster on the left. It forced me to admit that mabe my old camera (which I have had for several years now) really wasn't up to scratch anymore. Since I had been keeping an eye out anyway, I took the plunge.

And I have a camera! It's Samsung, not Sony, and definitely not top of the range, but it's good enough for what I want and looks pretty durable - essential for long term use.

Since the resolution is higher, hopefully the quality of my Zazzle products will also go up, and with a larger memory card (and a lens that isn't completely wrecked) a lot more options are available. Also with access to video, even low quality and a bunch of freeware editing tools I might see about adding a few videos or my own to the aviation lenses.

I suspect I might attend the next airshow with a pocket full of memory cards. Who knows, if it works out there might even be a lens on it!

Wednesday 15 July 2009

#206 Team Lotus


#206 Litespeed / Team lotus
http://www.squidoo.com/litespeed-team-lotus


A new lens, about the possible return of Team Lotus to Formula One. Admittedly it would in fact be the Litespeed Team F3 racing under than name Lotus, but the green and gold might be making a comeback. If they don't get a place this lens is likely to be short-lived, but it's certainly interesting to watch the news as it breaks.

To be honest, I was feeling rather neutral and not particularly impressed about it right up until I read about their weekend at Oulton Park. Summarised it goes: crash the car, sweep the pieces up from a 100M wide area, spend twenty-four hours sticking it back together and race it anyway. Considering some of the stories about the unconventional Colin Chapman (e.g. strapping a colleague to the bonnet to test airflows - at 100mph. Daily Telegraph), it just seems a rather appropriate.

Other than that, my update program rolls on. The lens with the most changes so far has been one of my more recent ones: Isabella, she-wolf of France.

Focusing on the Queen of England who was married to and overthrew Edward II, I noticed a few issues with the lens. My original concept had been to do it as an illustrated manuscript, but having done so I noticed a few flaws from the user's point of view: Lack of resources for further reading. I've added links to several of the better biographies. Too many typos, some really quite poor. And obviously all the problems caused by the changed layouts. Hopefully all are now fixed.

Just remember, if you read this lens and wonder why some of the well known bits of the history are missing, I'm trying to keep the fourteenth century PG rated. It's not easy!

Tuesday 14 July 2009

Squidoo Charity Advice

Well, I just posted my first piece of advice to a Squidoo charity. It's difficult to know what level to pitch it at, so I'm hoping I haven't made it too basic or folksy. Now I just need to wait for feedback.

Although the guidelines say write 3 or so paragraphs and provide a link, there was a bit more to say, so I hope I am not too far outside what they are looking for. Fingers crossed.

To be honest, I haven't felt this nervous since I did my first consulting role!

#205 Zopa - Peer-to-peer lending

A new lens about Zopa, the peer-to-peer lending company. It works by allowing people to contribute money to a pool which borrowers can draw loans from, effectively cutting out banks and middlemen.

There are a few issues with it, but since it can be used in some provider's pensions (Sipps) and lenders can set their own rates it is becoming rather popular as an alternative to conventional loans.

#205 Zopa
http://www.squidoo.com/zopa-lending


(If my count seems out it is because I have one R-rated lens that is not always included in the total, depending on whether or not you are a squidoo member.)

I have also had it confirmed that I am one of the new charity advisors. It's a new scheme so we will have to see how it shakes out, but we've already had our first request in.

Monday 13 July 2009

And the update goes on

This is taking some time. My apologies to anyone on twitter since I had not realised my update would be pulling in every page as I updated it (It's meant to show one an hour at most...)

On the other hand, the Avro Vulcan video showcase is now looking much better. Its still not my greatest lens, but it has links to the Amazon.co.uk DVDs and actually has some working videos on it. Then again, it was my first squidvids lens and it really was showing its age. Several of the others should look a bit fresher as well!

Might actually be getting involved with this new charity panel for Squidoo, so I'll fill in more details as I get them.

Also Squidoo are running a competition to give one squidoo charity $3000 - see here for details: win $3000. (I just wish a few of the ones I support would sign up. I'm getting tired of pulling the funds out of paypal and wandering across to their charity pot.)

Finally, for anyone interested, an update on Trafficseeker: Frankly it's been a godsend. Trying to manage 200 lenses and assorted sites on the search engines was a nightmare. I've had the entire lot automated for several weeks and it really has helped.

The automation tool is very powerful, but the cut down version with the Pro version which is limited to ten automated projects and 200,000 submissions at a time, really is too small for what we are working on. We are currently duscussing whether to upgrade to the Enterprise edition, which would allow me to set up everything as automated projects.

The Pro version would be fine if you have eight or ten websites (or groups of lenses) to submit. Once you get more or if you are doing this commercially, you are likely to need something larger. I'll give an update on what we decide.

Sunday 12 July 2009

A quick update

It's mainly lens updates at the moment, although with 200 lenses this is going to take a while. A few things lensmasters might want to watch out for:

The new templates, which were amended again this week for the advertising banners, have affected layout more seriously than I realised. For anyone who uses floats or complex layouts you might want to check yours.

More productively, after stumbling over a new trick with Zazzle that lets you embed zazzle products without using the Zazzle module (as long as you are an affiliate), I'm running back through my lenses updating them. The Halifax Bomber page has gained a cut-away design of the aircraft, and I'm looking for a few more for some of the other planes.

The lens that took the most work so far was The Untouchables. Not just a few poster problems but wikipedia refusing to pull in, the layout broken and worse. I've now fixed all of this, but it took a good few hours.

Thursday 9 July 2009

#202 The Grace Spitfire

Lens #202 The Grace Spitfire
http://www.squidoo.com/grace-spitfire


About the Grace Spitfire (ML407) and Carolyn Grace the only female spitfire pilot in the world. I'd been considering this for a while, but there's a distinct lack of material online outside the official site. Nonetheless, when the Squidoo summer school assignment for the week was someone you felt should be acknowledged this lens simply seemed appropriate.

I will hopefully add more to it as I find more display videos and resources, but for now there's enough there to start anyone off who is interested. The real problem is, as always, writing a lens about a living person, where the one thing you really don't want to do is get it wrong - or worse cause offence. Hopefully this tribute lens won't do either.

Wednesday 8 July 2009

A new badge & Squid Squad updates

I just got this in my inbox. As you can imagine, I am rather chuffed particualrly since the award was by voting from other Squid Squad members!

The Squid Squad did very well:
Every member going for giant who got more than 50 lenses made it
The Top 100 Team won the challenge with 221 lenses

Squid Squad MVPs:
Giant: hlkljgk
Top 100: tirial

My lens progress since the challenge has slowed. I have a whole set of lenses building up in WIP at the moment, because with working full-time I have written the content, but haven't spent the time in front of a PC to select the right books, posters and affiliates for the lens. There might be a few upcoming this weekend.

And of course there's still the summer school challenge: write a lens about someone you respect. Too bad I can't submit the lenses on Brunel or Bazalgette!

Monday 6 July 2009

The green ads on Squidoo - a good thing?

As a bit of background, Squidoo are trying out text adverts. Certain keywords in the text are highlighted and linked to adverts. They are trying it for one week, and have promised that there will only be three on each page to stop them being overwhelming, and that the green double underlined links will be discreet.

I wasn't going to blog until the week was over to give them a chance, but frankly my mind is made up at this point with one day to go. Despite a neutral outlook initially, a few issues that have occurred have decided me against. I'll cover the issues with an example of each below:

a) Lack of relevance Not just bad advertising but offensive. The Lancastria lens is about a war grave. Advertising diving holidays is in very poor taste.

b) Ads in the intro The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight lens had all three ads in the intro. Two timeshares and a broadband host. Clustered like that it takes people off the lens before they've had a chance to read it.

c) Overriding links Ads have replaced existing links in Amazon or eBay modules. On the TJX data theft case lens they overrode my links to the articles I was citing.

d) No back button Once someone has left your lens, that's it. They can't get back.

e) Opening in the same window This would not be such a problem if not for d. As it is, if someone clicks on the link they get a fullscreen ad with no way to go back.

I can see d and e irritating users as well as lensmasters. There is also the issue that lensmasters' content is being interfered with and isn't appearing as they intend.

Overall, I don't think the ads are a good thing, and will probably opt all my lenses out. This is a pity as at the start of the trial when three discreet ads appeared, well spaced, and even relevant, on the GWR lens I honestly thought they would work out.

ETA: I've just realised what they remind me of: CoolWebSearch, a rather nasty browser hi-jacker/malware program which I had to clean off a client's machine. CWShredder is probably the best way to get rid of it.

A Zazzle experiment

Since Squidoo has launched a co-brand for Zazzle, I am trying to set up a lens in there for my products. It's a bit tricky, since the auto pickup is working oddly and I'm probably going to end up with multiple modules which I populate manually. I haven't created anything in the Zazzle store recently, so I also need to work out what resolution to set my images at for new products.

Oh well, it's all good experimentation.

Also they are looking for citizen squids to mentor charities. I'm not sure if I'd be a good mentor, but particularly for US charities since the timezone could be a problem. Might apply anyway - it would make more sense to give something back by doing that and it only takes an hour a week.

Sunday 5 July 2009

Badges Update

I've been doing some updating and might take a break from new lenses for a while, while I go through and get my old ones up to scratch. It's surprising how poor some of my earlier lenses look to me now I've had a bit more practice.

Meanwhile I've added my Giant 100 badge to my badges page. An online trophy cabinet may be rather self-indulgent but it keeps me motivated.

Wednesday 1 July 2009

What makes a good lens?

There was an interesting post on Squidu.com, that got me thinking:

[quote=interstellaryeller]I do not understand this. Anyone that has 100 or 200 lens in my eyes is a form of spam in itself. nobody can be a expert in that many fields and so I just sift over one or two of their top lens. I really think anything over 10 lens is just nonsence. But squidoo rewards this with lens rank and purple stars. But of course that my opinion.[/quote]

I find that an interesting opinion, but it got me thinking about why I make lenses and what I look for in a lens. I've written well over a thousand reviews. Technically I could turn each of them into lenses (although I prefer to write original content each time) but it would not change the fact that that would be one thousand lenses written from a position of knowledge.

It is certainly possible for one field to generate more than one lens. Astronomy for example has its history, photography, how to take the pictures, the best places to camp to avoid light pollution, observatories, famous figures, equipment etc. so someone who is an expert on those can do lenses on those fields where it's almost certain they know more than their visitors. That's seven fields with space for multiple lenses already. And to rebut the idea that people can't be an expert in more than one field, look up polymaths (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath). People like Leonardo da Vinci or Rupert Gould were experts in several. To a lesser extent it used to be expected of the upper classes.

Rather than an expert's guide I tend to see my lenses more as telling enough of the story to involve the visitor, more of a portal site or guide than a complete detailed view. An expert would write an entire book on some of these subjects, and lens don't have the word count to cover everything to that level - nor do most readers have the inclination to go into that depth on their first encounter with a topic (I certainly don't).

In general I'd say a lens is not spam if the user comes away knowing a bit more than they did, having enjoyed the read, and not feeling as though they wasted their time - ideally with more of an interest in the field.

That's just my view, other people may disagree. Any comments?

And now for the waiting

Well, it's now the 1st July 2009. The Target 200 Challenge is over, and successful :)

Aside from that entry to the other competitions:

The Top 100 Club entries
The Team Challenge

are now closed and awaiting lens reviews for the results to be announced, as are the smaller competitions like the MVP challenge. Why do I feel like I did back when I was waiting for my A-level results?

I spent most of yesterday beginning to go through and improve the lenses - working on tags, adding them to groups and more. At some point I need to lensroll (cross link) them all, which is going to be a big job with that many!

Still got to do the Summer school assignment which is a restaurant review - the problem is that if I do any of my actual favourites it neatly locates me. Might have to do a chain or a picnic suppliers instead! And there are always the small tea-shops I've stopped in while visiting various places - usually to do lenses.