Category Archives: Marketing

New Look

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My web host made a change last week to bring their supplied-with-the-package blogging up to more-or-less modern standards. Along with a new database, a new look, and new themes, we lost the much loved plug-in, Can You Do Math. That means we have gained something else.

Spammers are TurkeysSpam.

I investigated the replacements for the little adding two numbers app. I closed comments on articles more than 30 days old. That’s not too much of a burden since many pieces here are topical. And I turned on moderation. That’s a burden because your startling, fascinating response gets delayed until the moderator notices it.

There were nine (9) new messages waiting this morning. That’s been about average since we made the change. Plenty of sites get hit by more. A lot more.

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Certified?

beats by dre wants us to buy some noise canceling headphones. “These have a microphone within on every earpiece that perform with an electronic circuitry that creates an opposite audio breaker to scale back breaker.”

Yeppers, I’m definitely clicking on that one.

How about the Viagra 150 mg for which I can get an advance payday loan?

<PLONK>

Do they really, really think I’m going to click there?

I read all about the Top 10 WordPress Anti Spam Plugins. That article was published in 2007 and about half the apps offered were out of date.

Akismet is by far the most popular anti-spam plugin; Some 12 million peeps have downloaded it. This Automattic program is completely free for personal use. I don’t want to use it for two reasons. One is that it has to confer with the mother ship; the other is that, as one reviewer noted, “it can get a little overzealous.” In a two week test, he found that Akismet blocked 653 spam comments of which five were not spam. I don’t want to lose any genuine comments, particularly if they come from first time readers.

The bottom line seems to be that most of the plug-ins will weed out the spambots but even the math programs can’t intercept all the human spammers.

Bear with me. We’ll be experimenting with juggling fruit and writing equations in the coming weeks.

 

Pop It

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I almost managed to ignore an online quiz the other day:

    What’s your favorite kind of popcorn when you’re at home watching movies?

  • Butter
  • Healthy-style
  • Salty
  • I don’t eat popcorn

Who doesn’t eat popcorn?

And why do you have to be watching a movie?

We need a replacement for the microwave popcorn popper the Posts gave us as a Christmas present (not a wedding present as I had remembered) a few decades ago. It worked perfectly. The bowl shape allowed the kernels to explode from a well at the bottom but kept the unpopped ones in that concentrated area for best heating. Pretty much every kernel popped and rarely did any burn. Sadly, it cracked up the side and around the edges and ended up spilling more fluffy, white, popped goodness inside the oven than inside our tummies.

microwave popcorn popping bowlI think air popping is the best way to explode corn kernels; it doesn’t add oil and it doesn’t toughen them the way a microwave can. That said, I prefer microwave popping anyway because it requires the least clean up. I definitely do not prefer the overpriced single-serving bags1.

Woolworth’s was still in business back when they bought that popper; they probably paid about $1.99 but it may have been as much as six or seven bucks. I figure that translates to no more than ten bucks in today’s non-inflationary economy.

Inflation is such an important word. A kernel of corn has three essential components, the outer hull, the endosperm which is starch and water, and the embryo.

The water in a popcorn kernel plays the crucial part in the popping process. When we heat the kernel to about 400°F, the water found inside hull along with the starchy endosperm turns into steam which expands it to about 40 or 50 times its original size. All that steam pressure inflates the hard starch in the endosperm which, in turn, makes the hull pop (it actually flips inside out to allow the steam to escape). Microwave ovens are better at heating water than almost any other kitchen tool.

Google is my friend™. Some of the time.

I found what, by illustration, looks exactly like the Posty Popper. And at $4.95 (plus shipping and handling) it was such a deal I bought two, one for North Puffin and one for South.

You can spend a lot more than ten bucks on a gourmet popper, even a simple plastic one, so I doubt if this plastic bowl rises to that level.

In fact, it is a disappointment. The first batch burned in about 20 seconds of popping. The second batch, half the size of the first, lasted a little longer before the flames appeared.

I searched again and found an “Amish Country Popcorn Microwave Popcorn Bowl.” Ten bucks. The description calls this microwave bowl “a great alternative to ‘the bag’! The bowl and lid are dishwasher safe.

Huh.

Odd to think that the Amish might have microwaves and dishwashers.

I stocked up on sandwich bags. I haven’t burned any of them down yet.

1A one-pound bag of do-it-yourself popcorn in the grocery store here — good for about 10 “individual” Dunning-sized servings — costs a couple-three bucks; paper sandwich bags add another three cents each to the cost.

Bringing the (Movie) Audience to Attention

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Viacom had an exclusive deal to hype the raunchy R-Rated new comedy, Movie 43, starring Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, and Richard Gere (really). The movie opens today.

“Prepare for a motion picture experience that’s unforgivable!”

movie posterMovie 43 will riff up blacks, the blind, dwarves, high school boys, women, homeless, homeless women, and pretty much every other politically incorrect group except straight middle-class white guys.

Warning. Once you’ve seen this, you can’t unsee it.

Viacom, parent company of Comedy Central, MTV, BET and VH1, promotes its own Paramount Studios content vigorously in-house. I’m thinking they saw a nice tie-in to get paid to advertise a movie that stars (alphabetically) Elizabeth Banks, Kristen Bell, Halle Berry, Kate Bosworth, Gerard Butler, Josh Duhamel, Anna Faris, Richard Gere, Hugh Jackman, Justin Long, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Grace Moretz, Chris Pratt, Liev Schreiber, Seann William Scott, Emma Stone, Jason Sudeikis, Uma Thurman, Patrick Warburton, Naomi Watts, Kate Winslet, and more on all of their cable channels.

You may have seen the world premiere of the film’s PG trailer on Tosh.0. He gave his audience the first link for the real trailer (caution, YouTube will make you sign in to see it). That led to some 4 million views. Spike plastered the arena at a live mixed-martial arts fight with pictures. MTV is running a “Balls Out Uncensored Weekend Sweepstakes.”

But wait! There’s more!

Movie 43 is also advertising on hardcore porn sites including YouPorn, the popular but sort of XXX-rated YouTube.

It’s not the first time. Viacom’s Paramount Vantage unit paved the way with 2010’s Luke Wilson movie Middle Men. The ads then and now weren’t just those flashing banners to drag your attention away from the regular content. These commercials are full trailers and more.

YouPorn, the free pornographic video sharing website, is advertising supported. Launched in 2006, the Porn 2.0 (Web 2.0) site has become the most popular adult website on the internet and is one of the top 100 sites worldwide. The Top-100 include Facebook and Twitter, Tumblr and Google, and now perhaps the No Puffin Perspective. YouPorn consumes more than three terabytes of bandwidth daily.

Probably shouldn’t search for the trailer from the office although “searching for the trailer and this just, um, popped up” strikes me as a unique and fully excusable reason to visit a steamy site.

On the plus side, here’s a movie with no character and a potty load of brainless funnies. It’s very slick and wildly offensive. And it’s advertised on YouPorn. I think we have a winner.

We Go Fast, Part I

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In a recent Comcast commercial from the Martin Agency, Dennis Farina looks straight at the camera and says “Xfinity has the fastest Internet and CenturyLink doesn’t.”


I had a little trouble with some downloads around the time the commercial aired. Many small podcasts took many big minutes. Skype kept telling us the connection was too slow for video (Skype asked if I had checked my dial-up service).

The following chart shows how long a file the size of that short podcast should take at advertised speeds. My !@#$%^ Comcast connection averaged 8 minutes.


download speeds
I ran an independent speed test.

speed test

Comcast provides a speed test that shows download speed, upload speed, and ping time. The Interweb fora are filled with reports that the Comcast results are, ah, less reliable than other testers.

(Just so’s you know, I showed the SPEEDTEST.NET results to a Comcast rep who said they were wrong, that I needed to use Comcast’s own servers to get a “valid” result.)

Alrighty then. Here are some more of !@#$%^ Comcast’s own servers, starting with the same date and time of the test above.


speed test

speed test

speed test

I understand what !@#$%^ Comcast does but did they have to make Dennis Farina do it for them?

For the record, it took only about 2.6 minutes for Mr. Farina’s 30-second spot to load and play over my fastest-in-the-nation Xfinity connection.


speed test

Cyber Monday Is Back! One Day Only! Shop Now!

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home depot spam
Woo Hoo!

Anne got spammed this morning. For whatever reason she gets email from Home Depot and I don’t. Today, they sent “Cyber Monday savings.”

Cyber Monday savings return!
Add HomeDepotCustomerCare to your address book.
View as a web page | Forward to a friend.
Ensure that you get the emails you want from The Home Depot.
Local store prices may vary from those displayed. Products shown as available are normally stocked but inventory levels cannot be guaranteed. Prices valid through 12/3/2012.
Please do not reply to this email.
To customize the settings for your profile and subscriptions, click here.
NOTE: All offers may not be available in all areas. Products on homedepotdotcom are currently only available for delivery to street addresses in the 48 contiguous United States. Select parcel items can ship to Alaska & Hawaii. We cannot ship to APO/FPO, P.O. Boxes, or U.S. Territories. Prices are in U.S. dollars and are subject to change without notice.

I don’t wanna shop now. See, I’ve done my part for the economy this year. I spent almost my entire $423 right here last weekend.

The average shopper took advantage of “door buster deals” over the Thanksgiving break to spend $423, up from $398 a year ago, while total spending reached an estimated $59.1 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. The average person spent $172.42 online during the same period, or approximately 40.7% of their total Black Friday spending.

We counted on our fingers and figured out that my television here was 17 years old. I bought it (on super sale, of course) from my store-owner friend, Christy, when Sears decided to put all their independent stores out to pasture. It was a top-of-the-line RCA then but it has a few foibles, not the least of which is a purple haze that covers people’s faces in one screen quadrant some of the time. It has performed flawlessly since I got back here to South Puffin but I figured the time had come.

Likewise, my cordless drill works perfectly. Of course, it has a very limited life left because the charger stopped after charging the batteries one last time. I can’t find a replacement for that charger anywhere.

And then there are two of the Uninterruptible Power Supplies we use to keep the juice flowing. After all, we can’t lose electricity right in the middle of these stirring phrases or during a stunning upset in the National Hockey League playoffs.

Oh wait. There are no hockey games this year.

The UPS under the desk is still in warranty but the 1987 model that powers the audio/video center is out-of-pocket.

The new television, cordless drill and light, and the UPS totaled up to about $422 but that doesn’t count the camera lens and hood I bought online.

Do you suppose it still counts since I wasn’t buying anything for Christmas?

In the It Figures Department, yesterday I trash picked a 32″ Sharp television at the lovely, new, yellow house a couple doors down on the other side of the street. It came with a genuine Sharp remote and a review that says it has “spectacularly bright and vivid color images and dramatic stereo sound.” I couldn’t find a manual on line. It’s a slightly curved CRT but probably has a better picture than the new LCD. Oh well.

I really snatched it up because it came with a truly nice and almost big enough TV stand for the new flat screen. I wanted a small table as a temporary measure until I can build-in the new A/V cabinet. This will do pretty well and I can keep it to go back under the new-to-me Sharp in the guestroom.

Cyber Monday is back!

Woo.