Bigger, Better, FasterWritten by Bob Osgoodby
It seems we are obsessed with concept of "Bigger, Better, Faster", however in world of technology, it might very well be "Smaller, Better, Faster". A few short years ago, 486 was hot machine, and yes I still have one. It is now relegated to running a few old DOS programs I just can't bear to part with, and my first cell phone was an absolute clunker.However, it seems that making things smaller is pretty much restricted to hardware. Because capability is so much greater, it seems programmers have gotten sloppy, and could care less if program runs efficiently. Gone are days when a program had to run in a minimum amount of memory. Disks store more data than ever, but in a smaller package. But wait - we are discussing "Apples and Oranges" here. Yes, physical size has gotten smaller, but capacity has lived up to our original concept of "Bigger, Better, Faster". We are still near very beginning of computers and who knows what future will hold. There is one thing however that will not change - enter human equation. The new and inexperienced are joining masses, and are ripe for "plucking". Like magic, their email addresses become known to world, and offers start rolling in. The con artists have simply had a change of venue, and are pursuing them relentlessly. Some people really believe that they have been selected to be in Internet Version of "Who's Who". That con goes back many years, and now there is a new audience to rope in. The old version of someone who found money, and will share it with you if you give them a good will deposit has changed a bit. Today, someone has stolen money from a backward country, and want you to help get it out. Of course, you will need to show your good faith. Almost every con you encounter actually predates computer, and has simply been brought up to date. We receive hundreds of emails, and they all promise immense wealth in a short period of time. And here is best part - you don't have to work. Well, if that were case, we would all be sitting in our "skivvies" and telling our boss to "forget about it".
| | Handsome DividendsWritten by Bob Osgoodby
So you followed our advice and went to all work to build your own website, and now it's up and running. You put a hit counter on site, and are dismayed at number of visitors who visit. Aside from your personal hits when you check activity, there have been few if any other people stop by.You notified everyone in your address book, put up a few FFA ads, paid someone to submit your site to a few search engines, and nothing seemed to generate interest. These are things often heard from website owners that are just starting out. A few years back, I wrote an article titled "I Shot An Arrow Into The Air -It Fell To Earth I Know Not Where." Some people feel words from this poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow make an appropriate strategy for an advertising campaign for their business. They purchase hundreds of thousands of E-mail addresses, and thinking of each as an "arrow shot into air", hope that some will fall to earth and hit a prospective client. The odds of this generating business for you are "slim to none". In fact, this is called spamming, and many ISP's, who have a zero tolerance for this, may discontinue your service. So forget ads that promise that you will get millions of email addresses for a very low price, and all you have to do is sit back and watch money roll in. Many of these lists are so old they have "whiskers". The majority of email addresses sold are actually harvested from web. Most of people who advertise, don't want to compromise their real email address so they get temporary free ones, and this is what they use in their ads. My experience is that approximately two percent of these email addresses are discontinued for one reason or another every week. Some were trial memberships with AOL that they didn't continue, while others were shut down for spamming. Some people with free email accounts lost interest - their mailboxes filled up (with other spam) and they were discontinued.
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