New Year's resolutions

You can tell it's the new year, the supermarkets are full of fitness equipment and half the ads on TV are for "quit smoking support" products.

My good deed

I was out getting pizza for dinner and I saw an old guy with a white stick and a dog lead with no dog. 4 feet behind him is a golden retriever sitting quite happily while the old guy shouts
Pedro!, here boy! , c'mon Pedro!.
The dog just site there quite happily.
A blind man with a deaf dog - maybe not the best combination - the dog probably wasn't deaf, it just couldn't be bothered to move.
I told the guy his dog was just a few feet behind him but he didn't seem too interested in moving, he held out the lead to me and said "can you put that on him please" which I did and dragged the dog to him.
"I hope I've got the right dog" I said - "golden retriever" he said; don't know what I would have done if it hadn't been the right dog - laughed my head of probably.
Made me smile.

Advertising on money

Coins can circulate for up to 50 years, usually one side is reserved for a particular image, in the UK this is currently the queens head. The other side is usually the same however often special coins are released to commemorate specific events.
When there are no events to comemorate, why not sell advertising space on that side of the coin?, or maybe design notes to have a small advertising square built in to the design that companys can pay to advertise on?.
I know most people don't really like advertising but this type isn't as "in your face" as most other methods like tv, radio, billboards etc. If the money wass all given to a particular cause - perhaps in the UK it could be the NHS - then I think people wouldn't mind.
It would also give coin collectors something else to collect.

What percentage of content on the internet is unique?

I was looking at www.boingboing.net and at the end of each post is a link to technorati showing all the blog comments for that item.
So I clicked on this to see what people were saying about a particular item and found 8 posts that mentioned the item; only ONE of the blog entries actually discussed the item at all, the other 7 "comments" were simply verbatim reproductions of the item.
What is the point of blogs that just reproduce other blogs?, does it take so much effort even to add just a few words to give your view on an item?, if not then why blog?
Also the one blog that didn't just copy the original item only reworded it, no other views / opinions / information was added.

Alternatives to traditional advertising for Retailers / Merchants

Some musings on a subject I know little about :)

10 Alternatives to traditional advertising for Retailers / Merchants
1. Product placement - on TV, in films, in video games, have a famous person be seen using your product (note: give your product to a few famous people who you think may use it)
2. Normal Reviews (send a sample to a high volume review site / blog)
3. Paid reviews (pay a high volume site to do a review - a good review if possible)
4. Blogs - retailers own blog
5. Sponsorship - sometimes hard to separate from adverts but generally links a retailer / product / service to a popular item.
6. SEO (search engine optimisation) - If I search for beer, which breweries will get the highest ranking?
7. Word of mouth - viral marketing, If you sell pizza's, go to the pizza websites and the pizza newsgroups and follow them for a while, find out who the most respected members are and send them some free pizza's to ask for their opinion. If you open a pizza shop in some town then find a newsgroup about that town and do the same, a free pizza for the 10 most prominent members.
8. Affiliates - like adverts but the advertiser only gets commission on actual sales, not on views / clicks - vet your affiliates carefully as affiliate spam can be damaging.
9. Branded items, a pen with your logo and phone number on it will cost about 20p (6.5p* each for the really cheap ones) if you buy a few thousand, why not give one away with each pizza order? (people love free pens)
10. Vouchers, not used so much in the UK, but offer 10% off your next order using a voucher (add an expiry date so that the customer comes back sooner rather than later)

P.S. If you do plan to give away free pens then feel free to send me one, I may even post a picture of it here on this blog that no-one reads.
* 6.5p (around 10 US cents) for quantities of 25000

Comment on websites that don't allow comments

There are quite a few big websites out there that post information / opinions but don't have any method for the reader to provide feedback.
There is now a platform for feeding back which allows you to comment on items on these websites.
The following websites are currently supported
www.theregister.co.uk
www.boingboing.net
postsecret.blogspot.com
www.gizmodo.com

The comment site can be found at:
http://www.floodle.net/comments/

Shortest day of the year

Woo Hoo !, it's the shortest day of the year which means from now on the days just get longer and longer.
I hate going to work in the dark then coming home in the dark too - I barely see daylight.

I feel better now :)

Search Google, Yahoo! and MSN all at once

Save time !! - cool new search engine shows results from Google, Yahoo! and MSN all one one page.

The 3 top web search engines all on a single page; get the best results every time.

http://www.floodle.net/ssearch.php

Search Ebay for Misspellings, mispellings or even misspelings.

0.37 % of US sellers on Ebay can't spell, it's amazing but true. You'd think people would spell items correctly to make it easy for you to find them but they don't.

for example, searching for playstation on ebay.com returns 59103 items, searching for miss spelt versions of playstation on ebay.com returns 217 items, so
On ebay.co.uk it's 15783 and 112 which is 0.71 % so UK Ebay sellers are much worse spellers that US sellers.

To have a look yourself go to http://www.floodle.net/extra/ebayinfo and select the "Ebay Spelling Mistakes" link - you may find some bargains or at least have a bit of a laugh.