Web Blog of Greg Mathews

Yep, I am having a bad Internet day. It took me forever to drop on a few blogs this morning, ok reading them takes a while but the EC widget wasn’t loading, either the ad was not displaying or the ‘drop’ button wasn’t loading, so have given up on that for a while.

I was thinking it could be just EC, but then I went to adsense and when I  went to look at the full report for this month it said ‘no data available’ or something. I revisited some blogs and found also that some CMF ads where timing out aswell.

I rebooted my broadband router but that has made little difference, other sites appear OK, ie this blog loaded fine for me as did other sites.

Oh well, post this to my blog, try rebooting my laptop to see if that’s the problem and if not give up for a few hours and come back later. I work online, apart from periodic backups all my work is done on my server so a bad internet day is a bad day.

Entrecard announced that sponsored ads are now appearing as of 6th October 2009.

They are stating :

‘Currently, we are not taking any outside sponsors. As of now, there are only 2 ads in circulation. This first is an Entrecard ad that links back to entrecard.com. The 2nd ad is promoting Entrecard Market which is linked to entrecard.com/market‘

Now to me that tells me two things:

1. They could not attract outside advertisers, maybe they valued the advertising real estate to high or potential advertisers thought/realised that with so many ads already on a lot of the blogs their ad would NOT be seen. I don’t know why but it does sound to me like they didn’t think this through properly before launching it.

2. These sponsored ads currently running will be in competition to the referal ads that Entrecard invited us to place on our blogs not too long ago, there is nothing in the latest blog post saying if they will be using referal links or not.

Yea that’s right, it’s October so Christmas has to be planned. No Really:)

If you are considering eating out for Christmas dinner then September/October is the time to  book. A few years ago we hadn’t decided if we was going to eat out or at home until about mid October by which time it was virtually imposible to get booked up, even for just 8 of us. We managed it but in an establishment we wouldn’t return to any time soon.

Two years ago we eat out with Tracey’s family, it was a good old family get together. Last year Tracey’s parents said it was getting too expensive to eat out on Christmas day (£36/adult) so they would be eating at home and invited us to join them. Tracey accepted  although I argued the point that although it’s not cheap, I personally feel it’s worth paying for a worry and hassle free day. Nothing worse than looking at the washing up after you’ve just eaten your Christmas meal. It was an enjoyable meal but Tracey’s sister and her family had already booked a table in a restaurant so there was not such the family get together feeling.

This year I asked Tracey and her parents what the plans are, if out then we need to book. Again Tracey and her parents where umming and areing until Tracey’s Brother-in-law said ‘ok we have booked a table for christmas, do you want to join us?’. He can be a pain in the butt at times but at least now he was getting the rest of us to make the decision before it’s too late.  Tracey turned to me and asked what  I wanted to do, I repeated my stance that it’s money well spent (£39/adult) in my view but if the others wanted to eat at home then who am I to argue:). That was it, decision made and we are all going out on Christmas day for dinner together.

We had to leave a deposit and then the balance is paid on 1st December, so  now we have 2 months to save for it.

Here in the UK there is a Rhyme, ‘Remember, Remember the 5th of November’ which refers to the date when Guy Fawkes was caught in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament with several dozen barrels of gunpowder. Guy Fawkes was subsequently tried as a traitor with his co-conspirators for plotting against the government.

Fawkes was sentenced to death and the  form of the execution was one of the most horrendous ever practised (hung ,drawn and quartered) which reflected the serious nature of the crime of treason.

The following year in 1606 it became an annual custom for the King and Parliament to commission a sermon to commemorate the event. Lancelot Andrewes delivered the first of many Gunpowder Plot Sermons. This practice, together with the nursery rhyme, ensured that this crime would never be forgotten!

OK, but it’s October not November. Yes but today, the 5th of October 2009, Entrecard has decided to force it’s membership to accept ’sponsored’ ads on their blogs with no control over these ads. Members have been given three choices basically:

1. Accept the fact that EC are going to advertise on your blog, even advertising sites that you disagree or compete with.

2. Pay $50/year to not be forced to display these ads

3.  Leave Entrecard altogether.

I am not saying that Entrecard should experience the same fate as Mr Fawkes but I wonder what members can do to retain their independance. There have been a large number that appear to have left EC or have said they will today, I’ve seen just a few that are going to pay the $50 fee.

So far today I have personally not seen any sponsored ads on this blog today and I think the best way to fight this would be for everyone who is against it to post their thoughts about it publically on their own blog. Surely then, potential advertisers will not want to advertise on sites that are so obviously against the system.

Oh and if you are against the sponsored ads, why not remove any additional ‘referal’ ads you have linking to EC, surely you can not refer new members to an EC while you disagree with what is happening.

I am and I must apologise.

I had not seen/missed emails notifying me that the domain Dropaholics.com was due for renewal. The domain actually expired last night/early hours of this morning. As  is normal these days the registrar kept the domain on their nameservers and pointing to a ‘parked page’.  As soon as I found out, thanks to Joby,  I immediately managed to renew the domain so it was only down for a few hours maximum.

This did mean that some visitors to blogs with Dropaholics widgets may not have seen the widgets.

Greg