A new Lens - Sample Sunday

A new lens, focusing on a hashtag. SampleSunday is a weekly hashtag focusing on authors providing samples, free downloads and exerpts from their books.

Each Sunday, the tweets can be found under #SampleSunday, and they often have a second hashtag for format e.g. #ebook, #print etc, and another for genre e.g. #thriller, #kids. and provide a few details and a link to the sample.

Since it is such a busy hashtag, a lot of samples go by too fast to read, so I've split it down by genre. I look forward to seeing how it does today.

• http://www.squidoo.com/samplesunday

Christmas changes and teddy bears

It seems to be the week that web companies annoy me enough to do things I should have done ages ago.

The Regretsy debacle finally got me closing my Paypal account. There's been nothing in it since someone sent me money by mistake and Paypal charged me the money I'd saved in it to return the transaction to the legal owner.

I've advised a couple of businesses to look at Amazon checkout as an alternative now it's available in the UK, and I think that is now going to be a long-term policy change for me. The paypal-only accounts have been thrown in with a local business who handle transactions and disbursements.

The only good thing? Paypal just caved and gave the Regretsy charity money across (see here).

And now Gmail's new look, which is unfortunately unreadable (half the mail message disappears off the edge of my screen on a 17" monitor, and I can't tell where the mail message ends and the ads begin) has driven me to get a personal account against my own domain name - something I've planned for the last six months and never quite got round to.

On a bright note, heres a new lens. Nick Davis, former White Dwarf writer, has come out with a children's book, A Teddy Bear Tale. It is Tristan the Teddy's last night guarding his child from the monsters under the bed before the boy grows up. Unfortunately the monsters know this too and tonight they have big plans...

• http://www.squidoo.com/a-teddy-bears-tale

New lens and NaNoWriMo

It's been a busy writing day for me. On NaNoWriMo I've broken 11,000 words and am hopefully on course. I need to get a few more notes written, but the story is coming together. There's now a two line summary and excerpt also up.

I also have a new lens up. The Surrey Iron Railway was a horse drawn railway established in 1801. Although it was in use for only forty years, it was the first public railway in the world.

Surrey Iron Railway
http://www.squidoo.com/surrey-iron-railway

New lens - MacRobert's reply

Seasons Greetings by Hanger_19
Browse other Christmas card Cards

Lady MacRobert's Reply
http://www.squidoo.com/macroberts-reply

In the second world war, Lady MacRobert lost her sons who were serving in the RAF. Her reply was to donate a cheque to purchase a Short Stirling Bomber. She wanted to respond appropriately, and called it "a mother's immediate response."

Since then, one aircraft in 15 Squadron RAF has been called MacRobert's Reply. The lens has the full story.

A day out - and in the cockpit

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Today was a busy day in Aviation. I missed:
- XH558 at SouthPort Airshow
- XL426 at SouthEnd Visit the Vulcan Day
- Croydon Airport 50th Anniversary flypast
and instead attended one of Gatwick Aviation Museum's few open days.

With not one, but two Avro Shackletons (including one of the only two running Mk3's in the world) and aircraft ranging from an English Electric Lightning to a Harrier Jumpjet, this small unique museum provides a fascinating day out.

Sited in an area of pictoresque countryside just outside Gatwick Airport, the museum's aircraft are housed outdoors, while the buildings contain models, engines and more. Most of the aircraft are either live or under restoration by volunteers. The museum provides extensive educational opportunities for students and has a number of independant volunteers working on the aircraft.

One of the treasures of the collection are indoors in the engine rooms - as well as the Conways, and Avon engines, there are two Bristol Olympus engines from the cancelled TSR2 programme.

As a day out, the day is very much what you make of it. With a little knowledge of aviation (or picking up a guidebook and being prepared to ask questions) the open day is a chance for anyone to learn about classic aircraft and have fun doing it.

So, while I may have missed seeing classic aircraft fly, I think I made the right choice. Besides, the opportunity to have a look inside an Avro Shackleton and get into the cockpit was not one I would pass up.

There is a lens and a full review on the way.

Meanwhile for anyone interested, the museum's official site is at http://www.gatwick-aviation-museum.co.uk/ and their next open day is on October 11th.

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!

A quick note

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.

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!

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.

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?)

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.

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.

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.

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.

#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!

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.

#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.

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.

#189 Grace Darling

#189 Grace Darling
http://www.squidoo.com/grace-darling

About the heroine of Longford Light who, with her father, saved the survivors from the wrecked ship the SS Forfarshire.