The End Of Summer – September 2010

Hello everybody,

Well, summer is definitely coming to an end. It’s not just the calendar that shows the clues – our weather here in Switzerland has definitely changed, to the point that the heat was on in our apartment building the past three nights. The nighttime temperature outside was down around 5°C (43°F) and it was foggy in the mornings. Certainly not summer! On the other hand, the afternoons have been – for the most part – glorious! Our balcony faces the southwest, and the clear blue skies let the sun warm our little “place in the sun” to around 28°C (83°F) with essentially no wind.

Tomorrow, September 22, is the official start of autumn (I think – maybe it’s the 23rd this year). I can also see the differences in the pace of our business activities. Things are picking up again, and there are more trips, both planned and underway, than in the summer.

I missed summer this year – it was not very hot this year here, and although it was drier than usual, it didn’t seem like it. We had one stretch where it rained every day (but not necessarily all day) for more than five weeks. I thought we were going to float away!

Business

Since my last post, we have only added one site, http://GetBackTogetherWith.com, which is designed to aid those poor souls who have lost their loved one, for whatever reason, and want to get back together with him or her. We’re trying out some new philosophy and some new technology to make this a success, but there has been too much other “stuff” going on to allow us to follow up on the concepts. Our “friends” at Google were responsible for part of this – they have changed their search result display to show only three non-sponsored sites matching the search keywords “above the fold” instead of the five it used to be. Some Internet marketers feel that this is putting them at a disadvantage, others feel that it presents them with an additional advantage (these people generally have sites listed in the first three places – and thus enjoy the advantage of less competition). In any case, it’s going to increase the separation of the cream from the milk in Google placements, although I think Google was really looking for more advertising income from the move. We discovered that the hits on our pages declined by between 10 and 20% on the average since the change took place.

The other change was at Twitter – they now require a much more time-consuming procedure to allow applications such as “Tweet This” to use the Twitter API automatically. The changes required now take about 10 minutes per website (so you can calculate the time required for a 40-website accumulation such as ours). Maybe it’s better for them – and maybe even for us. I’m not sure, but I am sure I’d rather spend the time adding more content!

I guess that’s it for now – thanks for reading down this far! And don’t forget to come see us again soon…

Craig
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Jimmy Craig Websites

The End Of Summer – September 2010

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