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Summertime Wets – August 2010

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010
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Summertime Wets!

What does that mean, “summertime wets”? Well, I guess that’s my way of complaining about the weather recently! Up until last weekend, we had had only two days without rain in four weeks (but at least they were both Saturdays)! Then we had two days of sun, but today, rain again.

I guess I shouldn’t complain too much – after all, it didn’t rain all day all of those days (although some of them, yes it did!). But if it had rained all day all those days, Switzerland would be on the way down the Rhine to the North Sea or the Rhone to the Mediterranean or the Engadine via the Inn and the Danube to the Black Sea or the Ticino via the Po to the Adriatic (depending on where in Switzerland you happen to be). In any case, we’re not the only ones with rain problems in the world – in India and Pakistan and northern central Europe (Poland and eastern Germany) they have (way) too much, and in Russia with all their brush/forest fires, not enough (none to be precise).

Well – enough about weather. We have a few new websites, and we have dropped some as well:

New sites:

  • STARWIND is a contract site about the STARWIND brand wind turbines in the MegaWatt class, and it belongs to the STARWIND AG here in Switzerland
  • Also new is the long-named Cure Infertility and Get Pregnant Naturally for the poor women who are having problems conceiving a baby. This is a JV website on Sue and Craig Websites

Sites that we have dropped for various reasons include

  • MophieBlog.com
  • BuyingMophie.com
  • HypnoticBeachApts.com
  • HypnotikBeachApts.com
  • HypnotiqueBeachApts.com
  • and a few others

We will continue to weed out non-productive websites in the coming months, mostly as their domain name renewals come due.

We are in the process of updating all our WordPress blogs to version 3.0.1. The improvements that came with version 3.0 resolved a number of technical problems we had with various hosting operations, and that is still the case with 3.0.1. Thanks guys!

I guess that’s all for now. Thanks for looking in!

Craig
for
Jimmy Craig Websites

Summertime Wets – August 2010

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Spring Is Getting Here – April 2010

Monday, April 12th, 2010
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Spring Is Getting Here – April 2010

Hello everybody,

We’ve been inundated with problems and issues and – as one of my business administration professors used to say – “challenges and opportunities!” But we’re slowly digging out of all the mess. And, after all, it IS spring!

We have taken this opportunity to redo the Websites part of the site to reflect more accurately just where we are. If you take a look there, you will see the number of websites we have that are off line – it’s more than what we have online! We also updated the WordPress theme – same theme (“This Just In”) but a newer version and new graphics as well.

But what’s going on here is just one part of the bigger picture, and we like big pictures, right? Yup!

There are a lot of things underway, and the surprising thing is that many of them are combining solutions to the old problems with answering the challenges of the new ones. That’s called taking advantage of opportunities when they present themselves.

We also have some brand new websites:

  • Who Is Jimmy Craig – an autobiography,
  • Web Hosting By Jimmy Craig, a php site that has a current listing of what we think are the best web hosting offers around, plus – eventually – also reseller web hosting,
  • The Ruppin Family, a history of the Ruppin Family around the world, plus a section on genealogy
  • and Blogging 1oh1, a new blog about blogging under a pen name.

Well, I guess I should get back to work

Thanks for looking in!

Craig
for
Jimmy Craig Websites

Spring Is Getting Here – April 2010

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Update Jan 2010

Saturday, January 16th, 2010
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Update Jan 2010
Hello again,

We’ve been busy – and still are – putting websites back on line with the necessary conforming text for the new FTC regulations, and also after some major revamps. One in the highlight at the moment is Practical Greenology. It has a bright new theme; yes, we finally got rid of the rather simple-minded original one. Also, it’s daughter blog, Go Green – Save Green, is being roled into one blog at Practical Greenology to combine some of our efforts and to keep from having to tend to some of our sub-domain sites, which tend to be difficult to promote. We also have a new site named iPhone Mophie (http://iphonemophie.com)to try to capitalise on some of the moentum we’re making with the Mophie Blog site.

There is, of course, much more less-visible work going on as well. We even have one old blog (it’s in WordPress version 2.5.1 and this one is now – as of this writing – at 2.9.1) that we will probably remake based on a modern theme. It was originally a Blogger product, so this will be the second move for it.

In keeping with our decision to discontinue the brokerage and face-to-face consulting business in Bulgaria, there will be some changes to our Good2004.biz FrontPage site as well – and some of them have already been initiated.

Our cooperative efforts at Sue & Craig Websites include a new website for the coop itself at http://sueandcraigwebsites.com. It has a very attractive theme and has lots of promise, although it is really just a storefront like this blog.

We are also re-doing the original Webmaster-Resources.info training site into a more modern Webmaster-Resources-Info.com after we had some problems with the hosting and domain name provider for the original site.

As you can see, we’re not just sitting on our backsides enjoying the winter weather! But I have to say that the weather here in central Italy is much less unpleasant than our partner Sue’s weather in northern Ontario! And that will also be the case when we finally get back to Switzerland; even though we’re in the Alps there, we’re not that high up.

Thanks again for looking in,

Craig
for
Jimmy Craig Websites

Update Jan 2010

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FTC Transparency in Advertising

Monday, January 4th, 2010
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FTC Transparency in Advertising

Hi there,

Long time no write! The reason was that we were really busy taking care of the existing websites in face of the new FTC rules/regulations about transparency in advertising. We have most of our major sites back on line, but less than half of our minor sites. From what I can see while surfing (not much time for that these days), we’re part of only about 5-10% of the publishers on the Internet who – as of this writing – have done anything at all! I have to say, I’m really surprised.

I thought that this new situation would cause a big ripple in online advertising short-term, with lots of contracts put out to modify websites on a wholesale basis. This, even though I really think that – eventually – the new stuff will become a common fixture and will be ignored just like the text on cigarette packages.

Anyway, we still have a number of sites off-line, pending the changes that WE think are necessary. The description of the notices that we are using as a working basis is that they should be as descriptive as if you were explaining to your 9-or 10-year-old child what they should know before, why they should (or should not) click on an advertising link, and what happens when they do.

I don’t think this is – in general – a bad idea, but it came upon us very suddenly, and we’re still reeling from the effort involved to get all the sites redone. Actually, it also pointed out some of our sites that really needed a complete re-do in any case, and those are (obviously, I hope) still off line.

If you’re interested, here is a link to a summary of FTC publications concerning advertising guidance for publishers in various types of media – this is not an advertising link, and it leads to a USA government website – http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/guides.shtm . Use your browser’s “back” button to come back here.

The FTC shows a lot of information, including many examples in the first booklet listed, “Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising [PDF]” at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus41.pdf but that is only the tip of the iceberg as far as we can see. If you have any questions about this stuff, I’m sorry, but please do NOT ask us. We are not even located in the USA, so for us to give any specific advice would be foolish on our part for giving it and foolish on your part for accepting it!

If you are in our business (and also many others that are similarly affected), all we can say at this point is, “Good Luck!”

Thanks for looking in,

Craig
for
Jimmy Craig Websites

FTC Transparency in Advertising

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Technorati…

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
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