Category Archives: Information

Blogkits site asking webloggers to put tracker on websites!

Information

I went over to the Blogkits site thinking that this may be a opportunity worth checking out. With the possibility of a way to develop some more revenue towards hosting and upkeep cost of this website. Their questionnaire was pretty straight forward and non-obtrusive. But when I submitted my information they provided a piece of code that they wanted me to implant on this site for a tracker that is hosted on their server which would have allowed them to tracks hits to this site and god knows what else.

Their is no way in Hell I am going to allow a third party have a look at my sites statistics especially not knowing what they are capturing. It does not take a genius to build a tracking application that builds a detailed site statistics report. But I refuse to be party to their information mining efforts. No other company has ever asked this of me in the past and I was shocked to see it.

So I caution fellow webloggers out their read their FAQ very carefully and then decide if it is worth your integrity to sell your site statistics. I will discuss with companies that talk to me my hit rates but will never sell or knowingly let someone track our readers activities.

Any company that wants me to review their product and give them and the readers of this site a honest assessment of their product just need to contact me, but it will be a cold day in hell before I release my site statistics to someone I have not a clue what their bona fide intentions are. [www.blogkits.com]

A Traveling Story

Apple, Information

I just got back to Washington after a long trip over the holidays back home to Wisconsin. I wanted to pass along a quick story from my trip.

While waiting for my flight out of Seattle, I ran into a staff photographer from the Chicago Tribune. He does photos for the hardcopy paper only, not the online version. He was in Seattle for a story they were running on Boeing. I asked him what he used for a camera, certain it was a 35mm but was shocked to hear they converted a few years ago to Digital. But then the real surprise came, they use a Nikon D1H, an old 3 megapixel SLR Digital. I asked why only a 3 megapixel camera and he told me that it was all they needed for news print quality. This year they are converting to a D2X which is a 12 megapixel camera, but they are in no rush. He travels with a Mac iBook and uploads the photos via FTP to the Trib’s server every evening.

Just goes to show you that the megapixel aspect of a digital camera is not as important as some companies tend to make you believe.

The Price of Admission to the Marqui Content Management System

Information

As I have been traversing the Marqui Content/Communications Management System as one of their paid to blog, webloggers my thought process has continually drifted back to how effective would this tool be for a small business. Hence the question in the interview yesterday. My initial conclusion is that it would be very effective.

My second thought was how much is it going to cost. I guess most business owners would probably ask that question first. I like to be able to buy a product and own it. I tend to shy away from re-occurring cost it’s easier for me to swallow a one time payment even if it is going to be a big one, in that I know there will be few surprises down the road.

Currently the Marqui CMS pricing is based around a subscription model. Honestly I don’t care for it. The tool is terrific but will it increase my organizations productivity enough to support the subscription fee. Hunting around the Marqui site I was unable to find a pricing model, this has a tendency to make me wonder why. So as a objective paid reviewer of their service I am going to suggest a couple of things.

1. Put pricing on your website
2. If it is as I suspect structured on the features you implement build a table with that pricing broken out.
3. Consider a one time flat rate purchase for the product.
4. Better yet have both models to fit the needs of all business owners.

I realize this may not fit their current business model but from the perspective of a small business owner I think it would help you gain market share in areas that they are not currently penetrating. [Marqui]