monkeyspaw

Do you have a reference handy for your statement "radio is super-effective at advertising higher-revenue-generating products..."?

I don't necessarily doubt it is more effective for certain things, like local events (although Pandora could move that direction I suppose). I'm just wondering why radio would be so much more effective. Is it because they have so many more ads per hour of play, and radio "personalities" to shill local stuff?

You are right, of course. Some simple research would have enlightened me. Appreciate the detailed response.

I think my memory is being influenced by what I remember vs. what I read in history class. Reagan did say "We’re taking down the surrender flag that has flown over so many drug efforts; we’re running up a battle flag", and he did increase funding (including a big jump in the late 80s). Still, it's clearly not accurate to state he started the war (although I think he helped/supported/funding the militarization of that issue).

Please consider my incorrect view of history to be amended.

I would appreciate it. My email is in my profile (I also signed up using that address).

I was too young to remember his presidency. But my understanding was that he started the war on drugs as a major component of his platform.

I could see his war on drugs falling under economic rescue, although my understanding is that this effort has had serious deleterious economic effects in the U.S.

I'm interested in seeing some drip campaign examples. Just signed up for an account on raffle creator. Will this trigger your drip campaign to me?

This is an interesting line of thought.

What if UPS could scan your package and interpret the bits on a memory stick inside? Would that be reasonable? (They could frame it as "we scanned the bits, transferred it over the internet to another memory stick, and copied and delivered those contents".

When I use incognito mode, I see about 200k of Javascript. I wonder why we're getting different sizes.

The largest file I see is the ?shva=1 /mail/u/0 file, clocking in at 173KB.

How did you do these measurements? I would be shocked if the entire gmail webapp is 7.2KB.

Just looking at the Network tab in Chrome's inspector, I see a lot more than 7KB being transferred. It seems the main page on gmail is just loading the other j.s. files.

It sounds like you're suggesting that people eat as much salt as they like. Where's the harm in cutting back on the salt?

I agree with you that a lot of our diets (especially fad diets) are based on little to no science. At best, they're based on incomplete science. But what dietary guidelines would you recommend to someone?

Personally, I try to follow Michael Pollen's advice (Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.), whether or not it's based in complete science. Because with diet, one can't simply wait for science to settle things out.

I don't buy it either. There is every single possibility that the person who leaked the document has a financial stake in CNET and the Guardian and made the whole thing up for pageviews. </s>

I'm not sure what you mean by "every single possibility." Do you just mean "it's possible"?

Working with economic development groups in your area. They have large rolodexes and are generally well thought of by their clients. Offer reduced cost in exchange for feedback. Helps you get traction and feedback; makes economic dev groups look good.

Could you elaborate on why using tcpdump is a better idea?

There are many potential narratives that explain why companies are going iPhone first.

An alternate explanation to yours is that companies are going iPhone first because it's trendy. We all know about the SV echo chamber. Following trends seems to fit the data just as well as your hypothesis.

Interesting. So if Tesla did well, they would be able to repay the loans and keep the (more valuable) equity. If they failed, the DOE would have some worthless stock...

Still, compared to the other similar loans offered by the US government, I have to judge the Tesla loans as a success.

I respect your desire to not be tracked via referer headers, and to turn them off/use SSL/use extensions. You are a person, and your privacy is important to you.

I also respect a site owner's desire to track your referer, and to decide the rules for who gets to access their content. They are (often) a business, and knowing where to focus their efforts to make money is important to them.

I don't respect either side feeling they are owed tracking information, or content, if they aren't willing to respect the other agent's rules and preferences.

Can you explain more what you mean by QS and social engineering being the way Google is raising prices?

My understanding is that AdWords is a an auction system, where your position in the auction is a combination of your Max bid, inventory, and a QS multiple. If Google is manipulating QS, it would just change the ordering of auction winners, rather than overall CPC, right?

My first thought was that prices are rising because 1) more competition on the ads [more companies, higher prices], and 2) as a kw cost/value saturates, more companies were "overpaying" [bidding more than expected ROI], due to any number of causes.

On first glance, I'd say somewhere around $500-700 per month.

I'd work on your marketing. Do you have a series of case studies explaining the benefits? Is their ROI calculated for them?

If you're providing them with that much value, maybe you just need to bring their attention to that value.

That goes double if this is a b2b.

Adsense "users" are actually business partners with google. You share revenue, pool resources, etc. In my mind, that arrangement should encourage a higher level of service than most customers.

I'm saying that the poor service offered Adsense partners isn't excused because they're not customers. If anything, it indicates that customer service will be worse based on this totally made up hierarchy that I've just made up (partners more important than customers, should have higher priority service).

This seems like a pretty absurd response to me. First, as OP noted, they could have just unsubscribed. Annoyance gone.

Second, they wrote, "if startups keep sending forward e-mails, everyone loses." This is false. Anyone who learned about new features, or was motivated/encouraged/pushed into publishing their website, won. Many small businesses need the coaching and help to publish their site.

These messages obviously weren't targeted to you. It would be nice if you just realized this and removed yourself, rather than assuming everyone is like you and is annoyed by these emails.

I look at it this way: either I pay the website directly, or they sell my attention/info, or they get a shot at marketing directly to me. #2 is the worst option; for free services, then, directly marketing their upsell to me is the only viable option.

Businesses have to make money. When you use a free service, there is a cost to pay. I think advertising and upselling their services is a very fair option, compared to some of the other models available.

I'd focus on who would get value out of your features. Figure out what your top 1-2 features are, and think of who needs extra privacy. People in the government, in purchasing? Senators?

I think your pricing is way off unless you can find a super niche segment who are crying out for your product. People don't like to spend $50 per year on an email, much less per month.

Let me ask you this: what kind of person would need to securely share access to your email? Probably someone in charge. Work from there.

I hope you figure it out. It seems a little bit to me like you're trying to reinvent email and charge a premium for it, which is a tough product to sell.

Government sponsored embarrassment isn't the same as putting someone in jail, you are right.

However, taking away someone's ability to make a living (see the Hollywood blacklist, etc.) is leverage that can be used to control behavior. The HUAC hearings were a big bad thing that was done. It wasn't as bad as slavery, for example, but it is something that happened very recently and I think we want to avoid.

It wasn't too long ago that the US had the HUAC committee, and ruined many people's reputations by digging up what they'd said in the past.

The Phillies 1B played himself in the office, IIRC. He pitched some absurd idea to his marketing guys about a movie wherein he was a super hero. Very tongue in cheek, I found it pretty funny.

Sure, but they probably feel more a connection to people locally. This is reflected by the psychological concept of propinquity. It's a powerful influence in our world.

I'm pretty sure I agree with you, if you have a specific agreement with one of the parties.

What about "anonymous" scraping, however? (I put it in quotes because I know you can reverse DNS/UserAgent/etc. identify... but that's simple to spoof, and we're discussing within a sophisticated context.)

Can I say that "OOgle" can use my data (because I want visitors) but others can't? (To complicate, can I exclude only certain, specified, parties and include all others?)

Can terms of use prohibit scraping for reuse, while still allowing Google, et al., to index?

I genuinely wonder this. Can I say, "it's OK for XYZ to scrape, but not ABC?" (Or is it general use -- scraping OK/not OK?)

I think it's different for API usage, because you enter an agreement with an entity by signing up, etc. I'm speaking specifically to the unauthenticated scraping/indexing.

I'll confess something similar, but a bigger whiff on my part.

Wifi was becoming common when I entered college. Around that time, laptops were underpowered, especially compared to desktops.

I thought wifi was a fad. After all, you generally had to plug your laptop in after 2 hours. What was the big deal about a cable for network too?

I agree with you.

But the reason cigarettes are banned is because they affect other people.

American rules/regulations aren't built around the concept of proving something is safe. Tobacco is different from the norm because of how much evidence exists to prove its harm

I often sign up because something seems neat, or because it solves a problem I know I have.

It would be great if the 30 day trial started the first time I really start using the software.

A great alternative is for a company to offer a newsletter. Then I can get reminders about what they do, learn about how great they are, and sign up when I'm ready to use the software.

I'm bad at estimating time frames. I often think I need something (e.g., KissMetrics) next week. In reality, I won't start using it for months.