Monthly Archive for October, 2005

Wealthy Belgian Bloggers v2.0

Published on October 31, 2005 in Belgium. 5 Comments


Some prior remarks:

  • Where do the $ numbers come from? See Wealthy Belgian Bloggers v1!
  • In order to limit the length of the list and to make it easy to see if your blog should be in this list, I only list blogs with a value > $10,000 (almost 50 now). I know that’s tough, but remember: it’s not real money anyway.
  • I had a lot of input from BVLG who also has made his own Top 60 based on Blogshares. Interesting comparison.
  • For some reasons the skynetblogs.be sites all have value 0$. For a blog like boy-meets-girl that is a bit surprising.
  • blogium.be is not added to the list because it is not a blog, and for thesame reason jahsonic.com has been removed (even though it has a blog page, there is no RSS feed)
  1. $270,979 : dopplerradio.net
  2. $251,784 : veerle.duoh.com
  3. $120,811 : lvb.net
  4. $99,359 : zattevrienden.be
  5. $91,455 : mathibus.com
  6. $83,551 : dominiek.be
  7. $73,390 : blog.forret.com
  8. $70,567 : standaard.typepad.com
  9. $65,486 : coolios.net
  10. $62,663 : kapingamarangi.be
  11. $60,405 : pdw.blogspot.com
  12. $51,937 : gent.blogt.be
  13. $51,937 : culture-buzz.com
  14. $49,679 : domilog.be
  15. $47,985 : sempermagis.be
  16. $44,598 : pietel.be
  17. $42,905 : eug.be
  18. $38,953 : onepointzero.com
  19. $38,388 : blog.coolz0r.com
  20. $34,436 : kruimels.blogspot.com
  21. $33,872 : druppels.be
  22. $32,178 : maarten.typepad.com/blogologie
  23. $28,791 : 7seconden.be
  24. $28,227 : kurtminnen.be/tafelzoetstof
  25. $27,662 : polskaya.be
  26. $23,710 : wereldkeuken.be
  27. $23,146 : maarten.typepad.com/brusselsblog
  28. $22,017 : smetty.be
  29. $21,452 : bloggingthenews.info
  30. $19,758 : users.skynet.be/chipsandcookies
  31. $19,194 : pascal.vanhecke.info
  32. $19,194 : baeyens.net
  33. $18,629 : blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn
  34. $18,065 : www.middernacht.be/udn
  35. $16,936 : katrien.blogspot.com
  36. $16,936 : antwerpenblogt.be
  37. $16,371 : zonderzever.blogspot.com
  38. $15,807 : promethee.blogspot.com
  39. $15,242 : kerygma.blogt.be
  40. $14,678 : www.studiomuscle.com/blog
  41. $13,549 : weblog.dederdebelg.be
  42. $12,984 : clopin.be
  43. $11,855 : percept.be
  44. $11,290 : edublogs.be
  45. $11,290 : brussel.blogt.be
  46. $10,726 : benbk.blogspot.com
  47. $10,161 : dwangbuis.blogspot.com

So who wants to help in updating this list?

  • If you have – or know of – a Belgian blog (EN/NL/FR) that has a valuation with the above system that is > $10.000, please let me know by adding it to the comments below. Or send me an email at blog @ forret.com.
  • The only criteria are ‘Belgian’ (written by a Belgian, or in Belgium) and ‘blog’ (must have RSS/Atom, archives, …). Podcasts, videoblogs, photoblogs, … are welcome.

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Web 2.0: nieuwe trends in Web projecten

Published on October 31, 2005 in NL and Web2.0. 1 Comment

(post in dutch – a plug, even)

I.T.Works doet een special over Web 2.0:
16 Nov: Guerilla Knowledge Management: Wiki’s, blogs en syndicatie
30 Nov: Web 2.0: nieuwe trends in Web projecten

De agenda van het laatste seminarie ziet er als volgt uit:

Dus als u mij eens wil horen vertellen over Pagerank, linkfarms en spiders, dan is dit uw kans. Voor alle info: itworks.be.

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Spam economics: government role

Published on October 30, 2005 in spam. 0 Comments

The Belgian Minister of Economy, Marc Verwilghen, recently announced the efforts the Belgian government would take to restore trust in the Internet as a way of doing business. This includes a directory of trustworthy online shops (e.g. in the travel business), but also some efforts to reduce spam. On the site spamsquad.be the following 4 basic rules are described to avoid spam: 1) don’t leave your email address, 2) don’t answer dubious emails, 3) camouflage your email address and 4) protect your computer.

As I said before, I think they forget one important detail, the main reason spam exists: “Don’t be an ass”.

  • Don’t buy your V*agra from people who can’t even spell the drug’s name right

  • If you buy the product that would make you “SCARE PEOPLE WITH YOUR HUGE C*CK”, how exactly is that going to help you?
  • Don’t give money to a perfect stranger who needs you to help recover X million from his father, the recently deceased president of some banana republic.
  • Don’t buy a economics degree on-line, you’re only proving you’re not worth it.

SPAM ECONOMICS
If you try to distill the spammer’s logic into a simple formula, check this:

P$ = [N * (I% * S% * W% * B% * M$)] – (N * E$) – (L% * C% * R$)
where
P$ = profit, bottom-line

N = number of emails sent (can be millions!)
I% = % of addresses that are valid/correct
S% = % of addresses that are not intercepted by anti-spam software
W% = % of emails to cause the receiver to go visit the website
B% = % of site visitors that actually buy the product
M$ = margin per product sold

E$ = cost of sending 1 email

L% = risk of having legal action taken against you
C% = risk of getting convicted when you’re in court
R$ = average fine you would have to pay

The parameters I%, S% and E$ are defined by technology, and government should not mingle with that. Spam detection technology is a very active line of research and new products and/or services are coming out all the times. Yahoo, Microsoft, IETF, … are trying to reshape email so sending email to 5 million addresses isn’t so darn easy, but again, these issues are technical, we don’t need any minister to tell us or buy us a solution. L%, C% and R$, on the other hand, are very much things that should be dealt with on a national level: law-making and law-enforcing. But I doubt if many of the big spammers are Belgian, so there is little the Belgian government can do about that.

SPAM-EDUTAINMENT
The main focus of this country should be focused on reducing W% (website conversion) and B% (buyer conversion), the ‘naivite’ parameters, and the weapon of choice there is education. The Belgian federal agency Fedict has already done a fine job by launching peeceefobie.be, a consumer-oriented portal on PC security with some good advise on spam-mail (Dutch). But to reach Average Joe and Jane, they should use TV and radio. I would like to see an entertaining program on internet security that teaches people the PC security basics and that has humoristic sketches like In De Gloria. I would like to hear a program on Internet crime in the Sample Minds style.

If someone drives a gasoline car and fills it with diesel/fuel, he will be made fun of, because you’re supposed to know these things when you have a car. The same should happen with someone who lost money in an on-line scam. Invest $500 and get $50.000 from a dyslexic Russian dude who won’t disclose anything but a Hotmail address? Come on, you fell for that one?

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FON is the P2P of Wifi

Published on October 28, 2005 in wifi. 2 Comments

Open Wifi is certainly gaining momentum. An experienced Spanish/Argentinian entrepreneur, Martin Varsavsky, has started a new kind of telecom company: one that embraces the municipal Wifi movement instead of fighting it. The idea behind FON is to turn people’s ADSL and cable connections into basestations also accessible to other FON subscribers. Those who offer their broadband to others get access to all FON access points, those who don’t can purchase a FON subscription.

FON is based on the premise that with wifi now being 54MB on cable and DSL platforms of 1MB or more that wifi users are only taking advantage of 3% of their capacity on the average or in other words wasting 97% of their capacity. At the same time what users want is for their laptops, PDAs, wifi phones, and soon wifi enable ipods, wifi enable digital cameras to access to everyone else’s wifi so they can walk around cities taking pictures, listening to music, playing games on wifi playstations, etc. And this we accomplish by turning millions of wifi installations into a unified wifi FON network with a standard interface to accept all kind of wifi enabled devices.
(from martinvarsavsky.net via productdose.com)

The initiative is positioned as a ‘movement’ more than an enterprise, which is probably a good idea. FON needs some degree of grassroots cooperation for this, so a very corporate profile would be scaring people away. On the FON registration page they distinguish between 2 types of subscribers:

  • BILL: (Bill Gates’ model: make money with your WiFi broadband connection by charging non-FON members that use it).
  • LINUS: (Opensourcer model, share your WiFi broadband connection in exchange for using the WiFi of all the other FON members).

He certainly gets the way marketing is done in these blog days:

But at least we won´t be broke idiots as it happened to many during the bubble as we are spending exactly O euros in advertising and very little on all the rest. In FON so far there´s a lot of talent among the people who work there, but no money spent on marketing. Blogging has turned the equation of being a big success or a big failure into being a small failure or a big success, I like this new risk profile and will do whatever I can to turn FON into a big success.
(from martinvarsavsky.net

I’m interested to see where this is going!

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Open Wifi Hotspots in Brussels

Published on October 27, 2005 in Brussel and wifi. 0 Comments

Free-hotspot.com announced the Top 10 European cities for free wireless Internet access:

1 Paris 84
2 London 21
3 Dublin 16
4 Barcelona 15
5 Brighton 11
6 Munich 9
7 Amsterdam 6
8 Vienna 5
9 Cologne 5
10 Edinburgh 5

from free-hotspot.com via De Standaard Blog

According to that hitparade, Brussels only has 1 (one) entry in its database. I am very aware of that, because I’m the one that entered it last week. I don’t see free-hotspot.com’s database expanding to the dozens or hundreds of open hotspots that exist already now all over Europe. They use the ancient DMOZ model of data processing: you submit an entry, hope it gets processed within the X days and then never find the time to update it if anything changes. This might work for the first couple of entries they get in the database, but does not scale well.

I believe more in the Plazes.com model: you ask your users to install a simple launcher and every time the user connect to a new network, it prompts for the name and coordinates of the place. If it’s a ‘Plaze’ where another user has been before, it automatically recognizes this and asks for nothing. It then maps all these (wired/wireless, private/public, free/for-charge) locations onto a Google map. That is a scalable model: an auto-updating, grassroots-generated, minimal-effort map of hotspots. It already has 8 open hotspots for Brussels. If WiFi on-the-road is of any value for you: Plazes! It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

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My tango wiki has launched!

Published on October 27, 2005 in Tango. 0 Comments

I have had a tango site for almost two years now. You know how it goes, you start with collecting some tango-related links (hey, look, a description of the giro!) and before you know it, you have developed your own poor-man’s-wiki-like tango glossary. Hard to extend, hard to update.

So I thought, let’s bite the bullet and install a real wiki (MediaWiki), and drop all my tango information in there. I installed it 3 months ago, spent a lot of time copy/pasting the info while annotating it and here it is:
tango.smoothouse.com – the Tango wiki
featuring info on tango music, tango movies but first and foremost: the Tango Glossary – an extensive list of tango words, steps and figures.

Why a wiki?
The type of information I want to collect on this tango site is ideal for a wikipedia-like set-up. When you explain what the Cruzada position is, you need to talk about the Paso basico (8-count basic step), so you would link to to it. And from there you would want to link to the Salida, the Resolucion, … So you have a lot of interconnected words and concepts that all link to on another. There is no concept of a publication date (which is so typical for blogs). There is no concept of a question/answer (like forums). So obviously a wiki is the way to go.
The main advantage for me is the ability to edit on-line in a web-interface and easy interlinking ([[KEYWORD]] creates a link to the explanation of KEYWORD). Even better, I am not the only one who can edit the data, anyone can add to the site. I am of course worried by possible abuse (e.g. the standard “Help:Contents” page has already been attacked by several bots who fill it with links to dubious sites), but for now I will go with the community spirit, fingers crossed.

So anyone with some experience in tango: you too can participate in the adding/updating of my Tango Wiki! Just click “Edit” on any page and start writing!

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Contextual advertising without JavaScript

Published on October 26, 2005 in Google and Web2.0. 7 Comments


A recent article on Jensense: Monetizing from those with javascript disabled made me ponder a bit on the possibilities of contextual advertising *without* JavaScript. This would be primarily for places where you cannot add JavaScript (e.g. in RSS feeds, in blog posts). And I think I have found a solution.

Minimal Javascript code for Adsense
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
google_ad_client = "(publisher-id)";
google_ad_width = (width);
google_ad_height = (height);
google_ad_format = "(format)";
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http:// pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ show_ads.js"> </script>

How does Adsense work?
To use Adsense now, you need to embed a piece of JavaScript code into your HTML pages. The first part sets your personal ID and the look and feel of your ads. The second part is a link to a piece of code that Google constructs on-the-spot. They can take into account:

  • WHERE: what is the content of the page the ad is featured in

  • WHO: who is the end-user: default language of the browser, IP-address (which can be resolved to a country + city location), maybe the time of day
  • WHAT: what keywords do advertisers want to pay for

This is called contextual advertising: it is tailored for the page and the viewer.
Currently Google Adsense uses JavaScript, because it’s the best way to insert full-featured HTML into someone else’s web page.

Adsense without JS
Imagine we don’t need the whistles and bells of HTML, and just work with an image. Could we do contextual (i.e. tailored) advertising? Well, I think we can. Let me present “PicSense”:

  1. a publisher puts the following code into his HTML page:
    <a href="http://picsense.example.com/fwd/(client ID)/" > <img border="0" src="http://picsense.example.com/img/(client ID)/(format)"> </a>
    (from those who are not familiar with HTML, this creates a clickable image)
  2. when this HTML page is visited in a browser, the image http://picsense.example.com/img/(client ID)/(format) is requested from the example.com service.

    3. The server also receives in the request: the URL where the image is showing in (i.e. “WHERE”), and the details on the browser and network location (i.e. “WHO”). The server then selects one of the offers it has from advertisers (”WHAT”), and sends back a ‘302 redirect’ to http://picsense.example.com/adv/(advertiser ID)/(campaign)/(format) (which means: go fetch the image from this other, new location).
    So this is as much contextual as current Adsense advertising!

  3. the visitor sees an image appearing with an ad from advertiser X (maybe a colorful image, or just some lines of text rendered as a GIF file). If the offer interests him, he clicks on the image.
  4. now comes the tricky part: the picsense.example.com service must use exactly the same decision algorithm to make sure that the visitor who clicks on the link arrives on the page of the right advertiser. The algorithm must be deterministic, there cannot be a random element in it. If there are e.g. 3 advertisers that offer a blogging service, then the service cannot pick 1 of the 3 images at random to show on a blog-related page, because there would be no way to send the visitor to the correct advertiser afterwards

Why no JavaScript?
Javascript is powerful and (therefore) dangerous. In some browsers it is disabled for security reasons. You cannot include JavaScript in a Blogger post. JavaScript is blocked in webmail (OK, sometimes images are blocked too, but less often than Javascript). It would be handy to have an option for inobtrusive advertising in those cases too.

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Wealthy Belgian Bloggers: the blog dollars top 60

Published on October 23, 2005 in Belgium. 21 Comments

Since I’ve been told my “Popular Belgian Blogs” series (Jan-Feb 2005) was very much appreciated, I’ve just spent some time coming up with a new version. The main reason being: thanks to Dane Carlson’s Blog Value Estimator it is now so easy to put a value on a blog.
Some prior remarks:

  • Where do the $ numbers come from?

    “Data from Technorati and inspired by research from Tristan Louis. Photo CC by Cmiper” (on How Much Is Your Blog Worth?)

    In short: WeblogsInc got sold to AOL for something between $25 MIO and $40 MIO. When Tristan Louis calculated the # of links to WeblogsInc blogs in Technorati, he could thus come up with a $value/link.

  • Only data from Technorati => only links between blogs have value. If I’m not mistaken, only ‘recent’ links count, which are the ones in the last 6 months.
  • Where did I get a list of blog URLs to check? I used my own Belgian Top 30 v4, the attendee list of the Brussels Bloggers Dinner Bart and I organized, the blogs on blogium.be, links from blogrolls, and blogs I know. Even if it’s a pet topic of mine to keep an eye on the Belgian Blogosphere, the list is by no means complete. For additions, check the feedback possibility under the list!
  • I’ve listed 60 Belgian blogs that had a value > $0. I actually checked around 100 blogs.
  • I only checked 15 FR blogs, and most of them had a value = $0. So any new suggestions there are welcome!
  • Any system that lists my own blog in the top 10 must be REALLY accurate :-)
  1. $270,979 dopplerradio.net
  2. $251,784 veerle.duoh.com
  3. $120,811 lvb.net
  4. $99,359 : zattevrienden.be
  5. $94,842 : jahsonic.com
  6. $91,455 : mathibus.com
  7. $83,551 : dominiek.be
  8. $73,390 : blog.forret.com
  9. $70,567 : standaard.typepad.com
  10. $65,486 : coolios.net
  11. $62,663 : kapingamarangi.be
  12. $60,405 : pdw.blogspot.com
  13. $51,937 : gent.blogt.be
  14. $51,937 : culture-buzz.com
  15. $49,679 : domilog.be
  16. $47,985 : sempermagis.be
  17. $44,598 : pietel.be
  18. $42,905 : eug.be
  19. $38,953 : onepointzero.com
  20. $38,388 : blog.coolz0r.com
  21. $33,872 : druppels.be
  22. $28,791 : 7seconden.be
  23. $27,662 : polskaya.be
  24. $23,710 : wereldkeuken.be
  25. $22,017 : smetty.be
  26. $19,758 : users.skynet.be/chipsandcookies
  27. $19,194 : pascal.vanhecke.info
  28. $19,194 : baeyens.net
  29. $18,629 : blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn
  30. $18,065 : www.middernacht.be/udn/
  31. $16,936 : katrien.blogspot.com
  32. $16,371 : zonderzever.blogspot.com
  33. $15,807 : promethee.blogspot.com
  34. $15,242 : kerygma.blogt.be
  35. $12,984 : clopin.be
  36. $11,855 : percept.be
  37. $11,290 : edublogs.be
  38. $11,290 : brussel.blogt.be
  39. $10,161 : dwangbuis.blogspot.com
  40. $9,597 : lichtpunt.carreconfiture.be
  41. $9,597 : cotontige.canalblog.com
  42. $8,468 : hoegin.blogspot.com
  43. $7,903 : babynox.blogspot.com
  44. $7,903 : netlash.com
  45. $7,903 : lena.blogt.be
  46. $7,339 : inflandersfields.blogspot.com
  47. $6,774 : mechelen.blogt.be
  48. $6,209 : podcasting.be
  49. $6,209 : blog.pakal.org
  50. $6,209 : brice.org
  51. $5,645 : 2ourallies.typepad.com
  52. $5,645 : turnhoutblogt.be
  53. $5,080 : conversationblog.com
  54. $3,951 : rikboey.be
  55. $3,951: gelebanaan.blogspot.com
  56. $2,822 : blog.reys.be
  57. $2,258 : denjames.blogspot.com
  58. $2,258 : atog.be
  59. $1,129 : www.zoekmachine.optimalisatie.jwi.be
  60. $564 : bartek.blogsome.com

So who wants to help in updating this list?

  • I would like to keep the list manageable. Should I limit this to a top 30 or 40, or only list blogs that have a valuation > $10,000? Your feedback is welcome!
  • If you have – or know of – a Belgian blog (EN/NL/FR) that has a valuation with the above system that is > $0, please let me know by adding it to the comments below. Or send me an email at blog @ forret.com.
  • The only criteria are ‘Belgian’ (written by a Belgian, or in Belgium) and ‘blog’ (must have RSS/Atom, archives, … – e.g. humoliegt.be looks like a blog, but it is – deliberately – not one). Podcasts, videoblogs, photoblogs, … are welcome.
  • I was thinking of also putting the names of the people responsible for each blog, the author(s), next to the URL, so you get an idea of who is active where. But this top-of-the-pops list might score high in Google for those names, and I’m not sure every author would like that (cf Jakob Nielsen #9: “Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss”). Maybe only those authors who put their name on their blog? What do you think?

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