Ron Gallagher just dug up some hilarious code we wrote back in the days designed to induce people to look at and ultimately click on our banner ads. Note, this is not recommended or even legal with most ad networks (e.g. Google Adsense) today. This code was written ten years ago when things still a bit more wild west and before we gave much thought to click-quality. If you are a decent sized publisher, inducing or creating false clicks will ultimately hurt your earnings, as the best ads are those that result in a sale on the advertiser’s site. If you encourage bad clicks, you’ll end up with bad advertisers that don’t convert real customers for your sponsors — and your eCPMs will ultimately adjust downward because of it.

That said, these click inducements are still hilarious. Good times.

rmf=# select * from lines;
id | list
—-+—————————————————————————————————————————–
1 | God commands you to click on this banner
2 | If you hate hair in your mouth, click on this banner
3 | If you like kittens, click on this banner
4 | God would want you to click on this banner
10 | You cannot buy love, but you can click on this banner
11 | Clicking on this banner will not help you, but it will make us like 4 cents or something
12 | Do not click on this banner
13 | If you have rats in your home, clicking on this banner will make them nicer
14 | Banners are… well… you know the drill
15 | If you like paper hats you are a dork. Click the banner
16 | Our advertiser [above] wanted us to tell you that their product is really good
18 | Don`t think of it as clicking a banner — think of it as `button sex`
19 | The above ad has been tested for fun and scored a 10!
20 | People will think you are cool if you click on this banner
21 | Your mom might stop putting poison in your milk if you click on this banner
23 | No trees were destroyed in the making of the above banner
24 | No animals were harmed in the creation of the banner above
25 | If you think that we are cheap putting banners up on every page, teach us a lesson and click the banner so hard it breaks
26 | If you wear glasses, DO NOT click on this banner. It is for non-dorks only
27 | If you click on this banner, your penis will get bigger. [IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are a girl, DO NOT click on this banner!]
(20 rows)

Our office is in an old fashion district building at the edge of Hell’s Kitchen (West 37th St). In the back of our building, a fire escape opens up to what has to be a uniquely New York City vista. This photo was taken on the 6th floor, between 37th and 38th St, looking from west to east (from 8th ave to 7th ave side).

To see this photo in the original 1.4 gigapixel resolution, click here.

For my birthday, I bought myself a Gigapan robot it is safe to say I am slightly obsessed with it. What is the Gigapan?

The GigaPan Epic and Epic 100 make it easy to capture incredibly detailed images and works seamlessly with the GigaPan Stitcher and GigaPan.org. The Epic allows your camera to take tens, hundreds or even thousands of photos. These images are combined into a single gigapixel panorama by the GigaPan Stitcher. You can then view, share and explore the incredible detail of your panoramas at GigaPan.org.

Here are some of the panoramas we composed during the trip. Click the images to access the full resolution shots (some as large as 5,000 megabytes).

Here it is the patent text in full:
http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20100010993

About a year ago, in response to a troubling vibe I felt emanating from the Obama presidential campaign, I created the following video under the pseudonym cakesecret. I utilized a song from one of my favorite bands, CAKE, to compare the Obama movement to a religious movement (I wasn’t necessarily the first to note this analogy, but I was certainly ahead of the curve). The video became viral almost immediately, quickly generating over 100K views before YouTube/Google censored it (details here).

Last summer I created a Twitter account under that same pseudonym to help draw attention to what Google/YouTube had done. Due to my video’s success, my Twitter account attracted thousands of followers. After some consideration, my wife eventually convinced me that it was foolish not to take credit for a video that clearly struck a chord with so many, and for which I have nothing to be ashamed. I’ve changed the twitter account from @popcontest and @cakesecret to @husseymichael so you can follow me there, if you like.

Here is the video:

For the record, I did not vote in 2008 (first and last time I did was in 1996, for Bill Clinton). I subscribe to the Peter Thiel view that technology is the greatest practical force for freedom in the modern world, but the underlying philosophical ideas supporting individual rights matter the most.

“I’m very much in favor of free market economics; probably quite a bit more liberal on most of the social issues; and I believe basically that individual freedom is very important, and that we live in a world in the 21st century where there will either be a lot more or a lot less; and that the politics matter and ideas matter because the choices people make will be of decisive importance in determining, you know, how the 21st century is gonna shape up. You know the 20th century was sort of a great and the terrible century at the same time. And I think the 21st has every indication of being far greater and far more terrible.”

Follow me on Twitter here.

Patrick Nagle and I have agreed to partner up to re-focus and build RateMyTeachers.com. Patrick is well known for buying RateMyProfessors.com, improving it, and selling it to Viacom/MTVu. He is also the creator of Swooks (originally Switch Textbooks), a used textbook swap and sell service.

Stay tuned, for good things to come.


by lucillehussey

An ode to the sad life of Hillary Clinton backed by the famous Abba song, The Winner Takes It All.

The judges will decide
The likes of me abide
Spectators of the show
Always staying low
The game is on again
A lover or a friend
A big thing or a small
The winner takes it all

Look at this.

Some sample results:
Michael Hussey
Google
White Pages
Tech Blog

Update: Mashable says “PeekYou Makes People Search Worthwhile with Google Integration“

—-

Google and Yahoo currently have a stranglehold (75%) on the search market for one simple reason – for the past six or seven years they have offered users the most relevant search results. Through long-term success these two have achieved mindshare, thus significant path dependencies exist within their core user base. MSN, AOL, and Ask, own the next 20% of market share. This means that 95 out of every 100 Internet searches are owned by five companies (actually four companies, if you consider that AOL now displays Google results). This exercise asks us to consider the remaining 5% of alternative search engines as being one general entity and we are tasked with increasing the Alt’s market share to 7% or beyond.

Nearly every alt engine has its own unique quirks, positive or negative, and a considerable number of these engines do indeed offer quality of output that rivals most any search result from the major 95% market share holders. Yet most Internet users have never heard of nearly any of them. Before making direct suggestions on how to compete by creating a better search experience, it is more important to consider the products that already exist in the alt search market, and understand what drives the 95% of search users to the big five engines.

Consider the three second-tier search engines, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com. MSN has the benefit of being Internet Explorer’s default homepage (used by more than 70% of Internet users), and they’ve spent many millions working on their search technology to catch up to Google, but it clearly isn’t there yet in terms of quality. AOL has the benefit being the country’s largest ISP, therefore able to place its homepage in front of millions of people every day – but they do not offer links to Google’s advanced tools (which require a Google login). Ask.com is a well-funded company with a simple domain name that continues to spend millions of dollars driving traffic, and though their search results have improved over the years, the results are still not yet generally considered superior to Google or Yahoo. The obvious question is why would 20% of the market utilize inferior search services? The answer is likely that less sophisticated users make up a greater percentage of this 20% than Google’s and Yahoo’s user base.

For more evidence of this, cross-reference Quantcast.com’s demographic information. It indicates that Google and Yahoo attract a larger percentage of users in the 18-34 age group (the most Internet-savvy age group), generally coming from higher income households.

http://www.quantcast.com/google.com
http://www.quantcast.com/yahoo.com
http://www.quantcast.com/aol.com
http://www.quantcast.com/msn.com
http://www.quantcast.com/ask.com

There are two reasons why the quickest path to increasing market share is to focus marketing and education efforts on the demographics which make up 20% owned by the second-tier search engines. First, these users are likely newer to the Internet, and more open to trying new ways of surfing. Second, it is easier to demonstrate higher quality search results from an alt-engine over the second-tier engines, rather than Google and Yahoo, whose users are affected by stronger path-dependencies.

To attract this new audience, marketing materials must focus on how your alt-engine makes life easier and improves the online search experience; how it provides quicker and more accurate information, thus creating a more comfortable online experience.

Much can be learned from Ask.com’s growth over the page five years. Previous to their disastrous 2007 marketing campaign (“The Algorithm Killed Jeeves”), emphasizing simplicity and user-friendliness was precisely their approach. Ask created effective television commercials that in effect spoke the following message: “Go to Ask.com – type in any question in the world – and we’ll give you the answer.”

Remember, before your alt-engine acquires a Yahoo-sized market share, it has to first get an Ask.com and MSN sized percentage. Grab the users at the margin first – and then go for the big time.

-Michael Hussey CEO, PeekYou.com

See for yourself: http://www.ratemyteachers.com/info.php?type=RateRules

A tyrant demanding absolute control is the first to censor whatever threatens its power. Teacher unions recognize the threat websites like RateMyTeachers pose to their monopoly and use “cyber-bullying” as an excuse to enact censorship. The fact is, not all teachers are created equal and RateMyTeachers is making this plainly obvious to anyone with an interest in the education system (parents, students, administrators, taxpayers). Despite any rhetoric to the contrary, teacher unions by their very nature view every teacher as a cog in a great education machine.

Teacher contracts are negotiated so that every teacher, good or bad, is treated the same. Teachers who opt out of paying union dues are punished even though they are required by law to accept the union negotiated contracts. Tenure tracks ensure that horrible teachers will waste students’ time and taxpayers’ money; and in some cases, a bad teacher can seriously harm the education and mental development of a child. Pointing out to the public which teachers are creating an environment for learning (as most teachers are successfully doing) and which teachers are failing in that mission (a small minority), leads people to question a system that restricts choices.

The point issue, which the press always ignores, is that any pressure to allow school or teacher choice threatens the teacher union’s power. For a tyrant, choice is to be avoided at all costs — and censorship is always on the table when losing power is at stake.

The United Kingdom stands at cross-roads. By allowing its citizens to access websites and servers outside of the country’s borders, the UK has unwittingly granted incredible new freedoms to its citizenry, the implications of which were not foreseen. This freedom threatens many of the institutions that prop up the State apparatus; hence rumblings of this kind are not at all surprising. The choice at hand is between protecting citizens’ rights to access information freely and looking to China for inspiration in controlling people and the information they may consume. Sadly, considering the recent rhetoric ringing through the highest levels of the UK government, I would not be shocked to see the UK look east for inspiration.

PeekYou Emerges From Stealth Mode With 50 Million Profiles in Beta, Providing Easy and Efficient People Search Capabilities
Tuesday July 17, 12:54 pm ET
RateMyTeachers.com Founder Seeks to Meet Growing Demand for Online People Search
Via Yahoo:

NEW YORK, July 17 /PRNewswire/ — PeekYou.com (www.peekyou.com), an innovative search engine dedicated to finding people online, announced today that it has officially launched in beta mode. The Web site is the Internet’s first true openly edited white pages, allowing users to easily locate other Internet users with a presence on the web and access a list of all relevant links to the person being searched. The site has been in stealth mode since October 2006 and has already built profiles for over 50 million users, with more being added every day.

Created by RateMyFace.com and RateMyTeachers.com/RateMyProfessors.com founder Michael Hussey, PeekYou aims to be an open source directory of every individual online. Hussey, who has been featured on CNN, NPR and BBC amongst others looks to bring his experience developing popular consumer destination sites to building PeekYou into the premiere people search engine. Each individual will have their own personalized page and a PeekYou profile that will include bookmarked links to all information available about the target person. PeekYou differentiates itself from other people searchers by the site’s ability to link and identify numerous Internet identities to a single individual based upon tags and online identities.

The site allows users complete freedom to edit, add or remove information, links, photos, and tags (school, work, interests, etc.) associated with their profile or other PeekYou user’s profiles. In addition, PeekYou provides human created search engine results, reducing nonspecific and incorrect matches. Concerned with maintaining privacy, PeekYou empowers individuals with the opportunity to be “unlisted” (similar to the White Pages) as well as edit their profiles to ensure correct and accurate information.

“People searching is one of the most popular online exercises, but until now it has been a largely inefficient and often confusing experience,” said Michael Hussey, founder of PeekYou. “PeekYou is a true Web 2.0 ‘people search’ – we discover and map where people exist online, almost like writing a biography about your life on the net. In doing so, we are building the ideal engine for individuals to monitor their own online identity.”

“PeekYou is creating an entirely new lens from which the web will be viewed,” said Baldev Duggal founder of Duggal Dimensions, LLC, which is funding PeekYou. “I think PeekYou will forever change the way that ‘people searches’ are conducted.”

About PeekYou

PeekYou.com (www.peekyou.com) is an innovative search engine dedicated to finding people online. The site has been in stealth mode since October 2006 and officially launched in Beta Mode in July 2007, with over 50 million users and more being added everyday. PeekYou is the Internet’s first true openly edited white pages. The site allows users to easily locate other Internet users with a presence on the web and access a list of all relevant links to the person being searched. PeekYou satisfies a huge demand for Internet users looking to track down friends, family and business associates while maintaining a mutually beneficial relationship with search engines. Once launched PeekYou will be the go to site for people search. PeekYou is privately funded by Duggal Dimensions, LLC, founded by Baldev Duggal who has been at the forefront of technology and creative innovation in the photo and computer imaging field for over 35 years.

With Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame!