Dawn of the Geeks

The creator of Palmwalk.com sent me an e-mail yesterday thanking me for getting the word out about his site. He also told me to look up Gail Wynand on Google.

Gail Wyland

Gail Wynand is a major character in Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead. He is a newspaper and real estate mogul who worked his way up from extreme poverty in Hell’s Kitchen. The crown-jewel of his empire is The Banner, based in New York City. The Banner is tremendously popular, and is of sleazy, tabloid quality.

Gail Wynand is described in the book as a man who wanted nothing but power. He admits this. Unfortunately, this marks him as a “second hander” according to Rand. He ultimately finds out that he had no power, and that giving in to the public whim - giving the public what he thinks it wants - was a tragic waste of his life.

Normal children look up to astronauts and firemen. Not sleazy tabloid creators. Thanking me for “getting the word out” indicates to me that he values bad publicity. It’s all he’s been getting. This is the exact opposite of the type of marketer that good companies are looking for. His site is far from being innovative or original or useful. The only things he’s succeeded in being is lame and creepy. He has no creativity and no marketing talent. If he had talent, people would be writing about how awesome the site is and how it’s doing something positive. But, I guess that wasn’t what he was going for.

When the officials of a major university are telling you to stop, maybe you should. Sane people would instantly recognize his site is not worth having, much less fighting for.

One of the most popular sections of this site I used to have years ago was called “Dear Jesus” which was a collection of bizzare and strange things from around the net. But, after getting a couple complaints I pulled it. I’m not a fan of censorship which is why I have The Library which contains mostly books that have been banned at one time or another. A major university links to one of the documents I have posted. But, some things I don’t need to personally post. I won’t tell other people to take those things down but it’s not the type of content I want on this site anymore. Maybe McCarthy will grow up one day and realize what a dumb and pointless site he’s running simply for the sake of getting attention.

It’s a great example of how not to generate buzz for a product.

In the movie version of the story, Wynand kills himself.

Making a pig’s ear of defending democracy

Alas, the United Kingdom’s descent into dhimmitude is beyond parody. Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and “pig-related items” will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee’s box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. And, as we know, Muslims regard pigs as “unclean”, even an anthropomorphised cartoon pig wearing a scarf and a bright, colourful singlet.

Hi. My name is Lucas and I’m in Kindergarden. I’m 5 years old and need some help selling for my school. Please help me reach my goal. Thank you.

*****************

JACK HARMON ELEMENTARY is having a fundraiser. You can check out the brochures online at www.fiestafundraising.com/store. The group gets profit from the sale and the seller will receive prize credits. Enter the seller ID below to begin.

Seller ID: JA6078

Thank you for your support.

*Icarus Independent does not recieve anything from sales*

indie-mobile has over 51,000 unique ringtones available for free download to your cell phone or your PC. We have what they have, their competitors have and then some more and we don’t charge you for any of them. How can we do that? Midis are tiny. The amount of bandwidth used to support this service is negligable.

If we don’t have the song you’re looking for, we offer myMobile which is also free. Upload anything you want (mp3s, pictures, etc) to your account and then download them onto your phone. Want 50 Cent’s latest song as a ringtone? Use myMobile.

It’s all free, supported by Google AdSense.

Your cell phone service provider may charge a per KB fee to download data to your phone. Icarus Independent recieves and requests no payment to download tones.

Currently about 52.5% of visitors to the front page of this site have javascript enabled. This is up from being “a little less than half” when I first started keeping track. 61.5% of visitors to the devzone, drivers and indie-mobile have javascript enabled. This is probably because if you don’t, you can’t download anything.

So yes, it is possible to change visitor behavior. You just have to give proper motivation. Javascript is quite a useful tool used by a large number of web-sites including Google. I think people have forgotten that after all the hype about how your privacy can be invaded and other non-sense.

Maybe I should put together a site documenting all the information that javascript can collect. If sites could steal anything worthwhile simply by using javascript people wouldn’t be setting up fraudulant sites asking you to enter your information manually.

SMC

I still don’t think that they are a great source for internet or mail order information because their materials are just too thin. Not enough meat. For mail order or internet marketing, you are much better off picking up a book (like mine) or one at Amazon on the subject compared to what they teach in their stuff. They are really more for the flea market crowd.

The only thing this guy is selling is a book on how to market on-line since the SMC doesn’t provide much in that area. And he doesn’t link directly to it or make any claims about how it’s the only book to buy. He points you to Amazon.com to find that information in possibly other books.

I requested the free information from SMC years ago and ended up passing up on it. This review talks about the old vs the new material. So, maybe it is better now. Back then I wasn’t as nearly as skilled in web programming as I am now. Now I’m confident I’d be able to build an on-line store for any line of products that I or my fiance would be selling. The other issue was a lack of easy to parse information. Meaning, I’d have to manually scan product pictures and manually type in product descriptions and prices, etc. If companies want you to sell their products they need to make it as easy as possible to build and manage a store.

And of course, in the end, no matter what you’re selling you’re success depends on your business sense. The ability to market and sell.

DoublePayback.com is linked to from every page (as far as I can tell) of alwaysreview.com

alwaysreview.com is a collection of short lame articles downplaying all the “make money at home” programs followed by, of course, an ad for his own make money at home scheme which he claims is the only one that works.

I did a quick look at “paid surveys” where he claims companies don’t actually pay you $10 to $20 to take a survey. And that is where I stopped reading. I’ve been a member of www.gozingsurveys.com for awhile now. The only reason I don’t take the surveys is because most of them I get paid $1 or $2 for a 15 minute survey. Most of the time it’s $1. That works out to about $4 per hour which just isn’t worth it. I stopped bothering after I completed about $20 worth of surveys. gozing pays cash through paypal. They’re very much legit.

However, if you’re involved in making very expensive purchasing decisions such as in Information Technology, yes you can be paid $20 or more and no, they aren’t lying. Companies do actually pay people for their opinion. The reason most people don’t make that much is because they don’t fit the demographic. I’m a college age guy. I get squat when it comes to surveys. If you’re a married middle age women, you can be sure you’ll have no shortage of paid surveys to take.

But, that’s all heresay. The point is, this guy is just giving lame reasons to not take part in other paid opportunities simply because he’s try to peddle his own scam.

I found him while looking up information about SMC, the company where you sell their products (trinkets) to make money. He claims it’s a waste of time. But, his opinion is worth $0. So, I’ll keep digging.

The ultimate job is making a lot of money doing little to nothing with nobody telling you what to do. These tend to be called “work at home” jobs and there’s no shortages of promises aimed to make you think you can make it rich. My fiance has become interested in finding a legitimate work at home job so I’ve decided to post my research in the wiki as we look into various companies.

I’m not a big fan of going into work myself so these types of ventures are of interest to me as well. Fortunatly, in the mean time my real job allows me to “work at home” by way of a laptop. My fake job, this web-site, also allows me to work at home but the pay is absolutely terrible. Unless I were living in a third world country. Then I’d be rich.

Stay tuned!

Bush made his announcment for the replacement of Sandra Day O’Conner and it’s Harriet Miers

I don’t think there could possibly be any less enthusiasm. Powerline Blog calls her a disappointment.

We’ll see what happens.

Thomas McCarthy wants to say that his palmwalk.com site is a good thing because it shows how “hot” ASU is and therefore will attract more students. Both men and women go to ASU so I did an experiment to see how many pictures I’d have to rate before I came across a guy on palmwalk.com. There are no guys on palmwalk.com.

Maybe some women choose a school based on how “hot” the girls are. But it seems to me that McCarthy is only interested in attracting guys to ASU who pick schools based on how “hot” the girls are.

Maybe this will increase enrollment. But maybe it will turn off girls who don’t want to go to a university with some guy running around with a camera snapping and posting their picture without their consent.

We’ll see.