I was playing my voice messages and apparently an MBNA call center agent was trying to "upsell" me on my MBNA account. I know this because the call center agent didn't realize my voicemail picked up, she forgot to hang up, and she started talking to her fellow agents about "call sales". I recorded it here, take a listen.
She asked her fellow agents if they knew what "call sales are" and then explained it by saying "Call sales means they are already a MBNA customer or have been before. The first thing you want to do on a call sale is thank them for being a customer and let them know how much MBNA values them as a customer. Those are the things you want to emphasize on a call sale".
Gee, just what I wanted to hear. MBNA agents have a script for thanking me for being such a valued customer. Such feigned gratitude! Thanks a lot. Granted I already knew it was scripted, as are all these types of calls, but I didn't need it blatantly pointed out to me. Now I feel like just another MBNA number. Just for that, I'm going to transfer that entire $20,000 MBNA balance over to Chase - they've got this 1.99% promotion for the life of the balance going on any way. Yeah, yeah, I'll show them for treating me like a number.
Recently in Personal and Humor Category
A few weeks ago I was leaving church when my wife and I were sidewiped by an out-of-stater, who apparently thought the left lane was clear and tried to make a left hand turn right into our Taurus's passenger doors. Damn New Yorkers! So we pull to the side of the road and after confirming my wife was ok, I calmly get out and ask the driver if he's OK. I know in the past I've gotten hit and I was really ticked off, but for some reason I was at peace. Maybe the fact that I just got out of church had something to do with it, who knows?
Anyway, I then proceed to dial the Danbury police to file a report for the accident. Luckily I was carrying my Nokia N90 cellphone, which I have been meaning to review as part of the Nokia bloggers program that Andy Abramson is heading up. Side note, Corante's well-written Get Real blog has an interesting post titled Nokia N90 Blogger Promotion: On Fire and Catching Heat discussing the controvery and objectivity of bloggers that review the Nokia N90 since it's a "free phone". I wouldn't call it necessarily "free" since the phone is merely on loan.
Anyway, not wanting to dial 911 since it wasn't a "true" emergency, I decided to dial 411 from the Nokia N90 and ask directory assistance for Danbury police. The 411 operator asks me if it's an emergency and I say "no" and she then connects me to the Danbury police. The phone rings and rings and rings and no one picks up. Then I get disconnected. Wonderful. "Ah screw it, I'm dialing 911," I said to myself. So I made my first 911 call and I was asked by the operator my location. Gee, isn't that just grand? There is no e911 service for mobile phones but VoIP is required to provide e911 location?
Anyway, the operator connected me to Danbury police and in less than 1 ring a police officer answered the phone, I told him the situation and they sent someone out.
Long story short, the driver who was given a ticket for an illegal and unsafe lane change. I got an estimate for the damage by his car insurance and they immediately cut me a check for around $2700. The Taurus has 150,000 miles and ironically we planned on trading it in in just a couple months for a Grand Cherokee so we could fit two adults, our two labradors, and our impending baby. Prior to the accident, we called around to a few dealers and they told us the Taurus is only worth around $500, making it virtually a worthless trade-in. So it made the most sense to not repair the Taurus, making it basically "free money" and then we used the money to help purchase a used 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee. With all the impending expensive baby purchases, including nursery furnishings, this money definitely couldn't have had better timing. Who says it doesn't pay to go to church?
Ironically, a few weeks later (just a few days ago), I was leaving TMC's parking lot driving the banged up Taurus and a sales person flags me down after noticing the damage. I should point out that he is an atheist - which is fine with me, in fact I have a few atheist friends. I don't push my beliefs on anyone, but for whatever reason atheists I personally know never seem to miss an opportunity to poke fun at my beliefs, which does then require some "push back" on my part. That's exactly what happened with my conversation, as seen here:
He asks, "What happened?"
I tell him, "I got sideswiped after leaving church"
He smirkly says, "Thanks be to God for that, huh?" implying that God didn't help me or was somehow at fault.
I simply say "Yeah, EXACTLY! Thanks be to God. I received a check for $2700. It's free money!"
Failing in his bid to mock God, he simply shrugged and I drove away. An "open mouth, insert foot" moment for sure.
So I'm just minding my own business, surfing my own blog yesterday when I noticed I received some Google click-throughs (referrals) directly to a blog post I just wrote yesterday, ironically about Google that apparently was picked up by Google just hours after I posted it. I was curious how the heck Google was picking up my blog post titled "New Google Adsense Graphical Ads" so quickly, so naturally I Googled "new google adsense graphical ads" the blog title - nothing. Hmmm, that's odd. Why is Google giving me referral links directly to such a new blog post? So then I added "keating", as seen by this Google Search to try and narrow down the search results:
google.com/search?l=new+google+adsense+graphical+ads+keating
and see if Google had indeed cached my site and new blog post yet. I scroll down and still see nothing in the Google search results. However, as is common the case, I got sidetracked and lead off into a tangent by something else while scanning the Google search results. In fact, the very LAST search result caught my eye (Google search results partial screenshot below), just as I was about to hit Ctrl-W to close the Firefox tab. Just think, if my eye had been a bit slow in scanning or my Ctrl-W trigger fingers had been slightly quicker this blog post would have never have happened.
Curious, I decided to click-through to find a search engine called Strategic Board displaying a search of the key term "CPM". I didn't see my blog or name listed after scrolling about 3/4s down. I was about to close this Firefox tab as well, when I saw my name and blog listed, as seen by this screenshot:
My eyes light up. Performancing.com mentioning my VoIP & Gadget blog? Hey, I know these guys! I've come across their site quite a few times - they're the developers of the new and increasingly popular Firefox Performancing plugin - a WYSIWYG editor for publishing directly to Blogger, Wordpress, and Movable Type blogs. Heck, I just installed the Performancing for Firefox plugin about two weeks ago to try it out.
I've only been testing it with one of my test blogs and it works pretty well, but I already installed the WYSIWYG HTMLArea directly onto my Movable Type server, so I already had a graphical editor I've been using for years. HTMLArea features other stuff like spell-check, ability to enter in ping URLs manually, and a few other formatting buttons. Since HTMLArea is no longer supported I've also considered switching over to the open-source FCK graphical editor. Still, I like the Performancing Firefox plugin enough to play around with it some more once I have more time.
So anyway, I guess I got off on a tangent here. I did mention I do that sometimes, didn't I? So I click-through to the Performancing.com blog and see that they are doing an "Extreme Blog Makeover" - and guess who's the lucky blogger getting the makeover? Yep, you guessed it - me. I feel so honored.
In Andy Hagan's blog post titled, "Monetization Makeover: Tom Keating's VoIP Blog", Andy critiques everything from my blog's advertising placement (Google Adsense, Chitika, Telebay, etc.), to advertising network selections (thumb down to Chitika and thumbs up to Adsense), to the choice of which Adsense layout to use (he likes the wide 160 pixel Adsense ad over the 120 pixel version) to which color-scheme I should use for my ads. Heck, he even includes a screenshot of what my blog looks like "before" and a Photoshopped screenshot of my blog "after" he incorporates his suggested makeover tweaks.
Here's a slighly scaled down version of the before/after "Extreme Blog Makeover" Andy did to my blog. Note the "What Would Andy Hagan" Do: 
Andy writes:
Welcome to the second edition of Monetization Makeover. In this series, I review the monetization of different blogs, in terms of both strategy and ad placement, and make suggestions for improving profits.
Today’s lucky blog: Tom Keating’s VoIP and Gadget Blog. Optimized correctly, a blog like this can make bank...
Tom Keating's VoIP and Gadget Blog is a very well read site in its area. The niche he's in is one that pays very well with contextual advertising, since CPC bid prices for VoIP-related keywords are very high (trust me, I know). With this in mind, let’s analyze a "permalink" page. As a long-established blog with gobs of content, Tom Keating's blog receives tons of traffic from search engines like Google.
Well Andy, thanks for the kudos, but you may not want to fill my ego any more -- it's big enough already. Least that's what my wife tells me.
.I figured I may as well critique Andy's "critiques". It's only fair.
>>Make the skyscraper part of a left column - Skyscrapers nearly always perform significantly better on the left.
Very true and I agree 100%. People read left-to-right, top-to-bottom so the top left corner attracts the most eyeballs. So you are right, but hey, my major blog redesign back in September 2005 could have worse - you could still be looking at this old VoIP & Gadgets blog layout or even this ugly layout from 2004
I've actually been considering moving Adsense to the left nav bar for quite some time due to the higher click-through rate. It's on the To-Do list.>>Change the sky to 160 width (it was 120 before) - 160 sky’s perform a lot better than 120 sky’s. The human eye can read the wider text much more easily (and thus click more often).
Ya know, I read that somewhere too, but heard other so-called Adsense experts saying just the opposite - that 120 pixels was better. I'll give it a shot and see how it goes.
>>Blend the skyscraper - The default Adsense color pattern (white background, blue border) performs terribly. Blending = good.
Blending is indeed a good idea - it does indeed make it harder to spot that they are advertisements. The main reason I hadn't changed the color scheme was because like you sted in your post, I have 6 ad units and I figured I'd sacrifice some click-throughs for the sake of being "honest" about where the Adsense ads are located. Having such a large number of ad units and hiding/blending the Adsense ads just seemed a bit disingenuous to me. Or at least a blog advertising whore with only the almighty dollar in mind. I suppose if I drop the Chitika ads (another one of your suggestions) I might be willing to blend the Adsense ads
>>Put the graphical skyscraper below the Adsense skyscraper - This one comes with a caveat as I’m not sure what kind of deal, CPC or CPM they get from these. But chances are, they pay a lot less than Adsense for a topic like VoIP. So feature the Adsense.
An obvious choice, but alas my company, TMC sponsors that graphical skyscraper, so it has to stay. I originally had Adsense above the graphical skyscraper, but TMC's marketing department overruled me here. But hey, if the TMC house ad helps drive people to Internet Telephony Conference & Expo which builds up TMC's overall revenue, eventually the "trickle down economics" will reach me via a pay raise reward, so it's all good.
>>Drop Chitika - For a theme like VoIP, Adsense is going to wildly outperform a program like Chitika (again, I know from experience)
You're a mind reader. I was thinking of pulling them this week. Ironicaly, I was asked by the owner of the popular Vonage Forum how I like Chitika since he was considering adding Chitika ads. My advice to him was that not enough relevant ads would display for his VoIP site. My site gets "some" relevant Chitika ads since I don't exclusively write about VoIP - I also write about and review consumer gadgets, but even then the Chitika ads only get around a paltry 0.30% CTR (click-through rate).
>>*Not pictured* Change Adsense title text to a more clickable color - To get that ridiculously high CTR on Adsense units, all you have to do sometimes is use red, orange or a shade of blue as the title text. Experiment a bit, as this will vary from blog to blog, but it can make a pretty big difference. (I didn’t picture this one however since I thought it might detract from the design--everything is a tradeoff.)
Agreed. I need to mess around with Google Adsense colors more.
Overall, I like your suggestions, and I think I'll incorporate some of them. In fact, a few of your suggestions were going to be incorporated by a Javascript stylesheet switcher that I've been working on. It lets the visitor switch the layout of my blog on the fly to one of their liking. I'll make the default style have the Adsense ads on the left as you suggested.
I'm still trying to get over how I was three links removed from Performancing.com's blog post and still somehow found it, but I'm happy to have experienced my first Extreme Blog Makeover!
Beer and VoIP go hand-in-hand like New York Yankee championships in October.
Bob McKenzie: "No way, hoser. You mean Red Sox."
Doug McKenzie: "Take off, eh. Aaron Boone walk off home run against the Red Sox. That was beauty, eh!"
Bob McKenzie: "You hoser, that was 3 years ago. 2004 was beauty, eh. Red Sox defeated the Yankees in 7 games."
Doug McKenzie: "No way, eh. That never happened. That Red Sox championship was just a dream I had, I mean a nightmare, eh. Of course I had 159 beers in 72 hours so that Series is a bit of a blur to me, eh."
Bob McKenzie: "Yeah way, you knob! But you were pretty drunk. You were so drunk somebody horked your clothes, eh."
Doug McKenzie: "Yeah, that sucked, eh."
Bob McKenzie: "Hey, remembered that time we got drunk and both ran onto the field at Yankee Stadium, eh."
Doug McKenzie: "Yeah that was beauty, eh. You even almost made it to home plate, till New York's finest tackled you, eh."
I could go on and on with more parodies of the McKenzie brothers from the movie Strange Brew, but I'll stop there. If you've seen Strange Brew, you get the humor which is on the same level as Beavis & Butthead. The point of this blog post? Well, Computing,co.uk reports, that Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries is installing voice over IP-based (VoIP) systems to improve services and reduce costs. I couldn't help myself but intertwine the famous beer movie and VoIP. Anyway, according to the article, "The independent brewing and pub company, whose brands include Marston's Pedigree and the 2,300-strong chain of Pathfinder and Union Pubs, plans to use the technology initially for telephony in its contact centres, but will later extend it to cover data services." more...
This past weekend my wife and I picked up a used (2000) Jeep Grand Cherokee. We hadn't planned on buying a Jeep for at least a couple months, however when our Ford Taurus was side-swiped smashing in both passenger doors and my 3000GT's clutch died in the same week, our plans changed. The ironic thing is that we planned on trading in the 1999 Ford Taurus until we learned it was probably worth only $500 due to its 150,000 miles. While I am never a fan of getting into an accident, "Providence" must have been on our side since the car that side swiped the Taurus was at fault resulting in $2700 in damage to the Taurus. His auto insurance cut us a check and we decided we were better off using the money to buy a Jeep rather than repair the Taurus.
So we did some car shopping last week via AutoTrader.com and narrowed it down to 8 Jeep Grand Cherokees, 4 of which we visited in person and then whittled it down to two Jeeps. One was a 2001 red Grand Cherokee Laredo and the other a 2000 grey Grand Cherokee Laredo depicted in the photo above. If we went with the red one, we'd have three red vehicles in the family - Viper, 3000GT, and a Jeep Grand Cherokee. I was rooting for the red one, but it has 9000 more miles and cloth seats. The grey one is fairly unique in that it has a leather interior. Most Laredos do not have leather and as such you have to go with the more expensive Limited V8 edition to get leather. The red one was a year newer, but the fact that we have two labradors that shed hair and leather is much easier to clean than dog hair sticking to cloth was the main deciding factor.
So on Saturday we went to go look at the grey Jeep and to negotiate price. I whittled him down from $11,495 to $10,700. He didn't take personal checks and it was past 3:30pm so our bank was closed. I decided to call my credit union and finance the car. Unfortunately, the credit union closed in about 30 minutes and we were about 35 minutes away and I didn't know how to get there. Fortunately, my wife decided to splurge this Christmas and got me a Garmin StreetPilot 2720 (retail $699.99) to replace my broken PocketPC GPS. We were able to fly from Naugutuck to North Haven on back roads were weren't familiar with, sign the loan paperwork, pick up the check, and return to the used dealership in no time. We would have had to return another day to pick up the Jeep, so the GPS certainly paid dividends already and so did the Jeep's 4X4 transmission since it snowed twice since we got it.
Yesterday, was an extemely busy day for me as I had conference calls with both Microsoft and Linksys. Two huge big shots in the computing and networking worlds. I also an in-person meeting with one of my favorite software applications of all time, namely the good folks from Nero, who develop the popular Nero 7 Ultra Edition CD/DVD-burning software application.
Nero stopped by TMC to talk about their VoIP softphone application called SIPPS Connect. As far as I know, I was the first to discover Nero was offering a VoIP softphone application when I wrote about Nero back in October 2004. I also had a phone briefing with Pangean Technology, to try and solve some multicast issues I was having with their VoIP IM application that I am currently testing & reviewing. I also acquired a quote from Cisco (who owns Linksys) to use in the Microsoft and Cisco ICE announcment exclusive that Robert Liu and myself wrote yesterday.
So between meetings/phone briefings with Microsoft, Cisco, Linksys, Nero, and Pangean, yesterday was quite the busy day. Oh, and I forgot to mention I streamed and listened to an important video/audio broadcast from Congress. It was a staff discussion on draft of legislation to create a
statutory framework for Internet Protocol and Broadband Services. I actually have an MP3 recording of the hearing I'm going to post in just a sec. On top of it all, yesterday was my 35th birthday. Good thing I didn't decide to take the day off for my birthday! I also have another very interesting exclusive on a new VoIP product line from a major VoIP player that I was briefed on yesterday, but I can't talk about it yet. I'm working on that article as we speak, so stay tuned...
Yoda breaks it down.
Check out the funny Yoda rap dance video courtesy of Google Video. Amazing what a little time on your hands and some creative computer video editing can do. The Star Wars Kid videos are still my all time fave though.
I am pretty anal about where I park either of my two sports cars. No, I'm not the type to park diagonally and take up two parking spots - those "people" deserve any vigilante justice they receive such as getting their car keyed. Ok, maybe they don't deserve such a severe punishment, but they certainly annoy the heck out of me. If you want to read about "scoring" various parking spots to determine the optimal parking spot, check out this link - a fun read.
In any event, I went to a diner the other day with my wife and I spied two parking spots in the corner of the parking lot. Decisions... decisions... The two spots were side by side, however one of the spots was in the uppermost corner (end spot), therefore only one car could park next to it. It's common knowledge that it's better to park on an "end spot" where another car can only park on one side of your car thus reducing your chances of a car door hitting your car by 50%. Actually, since many times cars have just a driver and no passenger, if you park on an end spot where a car can only park to your left (their passenger door by your driver-side door) you probably reduce the chances even further.
The obvious parking choice would be the end spot, however, I neglected to mention that on the opposite side of the corner was a row of cars aligned 90 degrees perpendicular to the row where I was about to park and one of those cars, a small Neon was parked on the end very close in proximity to the open end spot I was spying. I thought to myself, "Hmm, if I take the end spot, I will be parked right behind that red Neon. He's going to have to cut his steering wheel sharply when he backs up to avoid hitting my back bumper. Perhaps even have to do a K-turn."
My second thought was, "It's a small Neon, he can fit. Besides, the diner painted the yellow lines, so it's a valid spot." Famous last words... (The diner actually painted a curved yellow line showing how cars parked in the Neon's spot should pull in and back up.)
I parked as close as I could to the curb in front of me to give the Neon maximum back up room. I even remember being a bit nervous about scraping the front of my car against the curb which sits pretty low to the ground.
My wife and I get out and I look back at the Neon, judging the room it has to back up. I still didn't feel comfortable about parking there and made a comment to my wife asking if she thought I should move my car.
I decided that only an idiot would walk right past a bright red sports car and see how close it is to their car (the Neon) and not be extra cautious while backing up.
Alas, my faith in people's driving capabilities was hopelessly, stupendously, ridiculously.... wrong!
I didn't notice right away, but a few hours later I noticed a huge paint chip missing from the passenger-side rear bumper all the way down to the blue primer, as well as some other scapes. At first, I was very self composed as I inspected the damage. But then thoughts started racing through my mind, such as "Why didn't they come into the diner and ask for the owner of a red sports car?" and "Chicken liver bastard, hit and run on me! I hope karma or the Almighty gives them their just desserts!"
It made me feel better to think that everyone gets their just "due" just because there was nothing I could do about it. There was no one I could blame and no one I collect repair costs from. I can't even report this to my insurance since the damage is so minor the deductible itself is probably more than the repair costs.
The ironic thing is that this bumper was just replaced last year while I was leaving Yankee Stadium. And this same bumper was also dented by another hit-and-run incident in Norwalk several years ago while I was in the car (but that's another story). I tell ya, this bumper seems to be a magnet!
If you're worried it was my Dodge Viper, no worries, it was not - it was my Mitsubishi 3000GT. So I guess I can take solice in that, especially since I was seriously considering driving the Viper that day. Guess the Almighty was looking out for me after all.
Apparently, 36 dolphins trained in anti-terrorism and trained to shoot special toxic darts at divers were carried away into the Gulf of Mexico from Hurricane Katrina. Although I'm sure many disgruntled Americans at the cost of gasoline and oil would love to see the oil companies shot for price gouging, I just hope any damaged off-short oil platforms don't require any divers to go down to repair them.
Maybe the CEOs of Mobile/Exxon, Chevron, or other oil CEOs should volunteer to dive along with the dive repair teams as an act of good faith that they are willing to risk their lives with their employees - as well as a symbolic charitable gesture since they have profited immensely from the hurricanes. That's a much better charitable offering than if the oil companies offer to give billions of dollars to hurricane relief funds, don't you think?
From the Guardian Unlimited:
It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico...
more...
Massachusetts, my friendly neighbor up north, known for its generous and even notorious liberal nature (See Ted Kennedy) has decided to turn its back on any animals from areas affected by Hurricane Katrina, including Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Their excuse? That because there are no vaccine records for the animals (they were destroyed by Katrina, knuckleheads!) they don't want to chance the spread of disease to their beloved Massachusetts animals.
From the Massachusetts Katrina Emergency Animal Order:
NOW THEREFORE, by authority of Massachusetts General Law Chapter 129, Section 2, as of this date, and until further notice, no dogs or cats will be permitted entry into the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that have originated in Alabama, Louisiana, or Mississippi unless through mechanisms and processes approved by the Department of Agricultural Resources.
Yes, because Massachusetts animals welfare is so much more important than the welfare of displaced Gulf State animals. And I guess Massachusetts' animals and pets are more important than the other 46 states that have willingly accepted displaced Gulf State animals.
So, let me ask you, are you going to require any Hurricane Katrina-displaced people entering Massachusetts to have all their shots up to date as well? C'mon!
Another part of the order reads:
Whereas; animals displaced by hurricane Katrina were separated from their legal owners and unorganized removal of these animals to another location greatly decreases the likelihood of these animals being reunited with their rightful owners;
Owner surrenders are being held in southern states close by for 30 days, which is enough time for an owner to locate their animal locally and even if they don't do it within 30 days, they can still find them. Massachusetts is just clueless as to how rescue groups work. Rescue groups utilize PetFinder.com which includes photos of animals and is a great resource for owners to find their lost animals. Petfinder even setup a special website to help owners reunite with their pets. I should point out that many owners have made the very
difficult decision to give up their pet because their home was
destroyed, so there is no need to keep these animals in over-crowded shelters in the South which have very limited resources right now.
My wife and I foster have been fostering Labrador retrievers / lab-mixes primarily from the Gulf State region for years and the dogs are shipped thousands of miles via a 100% volunteer Underground Railroad-like system with no state or Federal assistance. The volunteers drive the dogs one leg at a time to a next drop-off point where another volunteer drives the dogs to the next drop-off point. So this volunteer system is already in place if we needed to reverse the "railroad" and have dogs from the Northeast be sent back down to the South at no cost to the owner. (It's supported via the volunteers' own money as well as charitable donations.)
This is not the first time Massachusetts has been anti-animals or puts their animals first. The rescue group that my wife and I are involved with has all their transports travel with health certificates for all the dogs and are fully vetted before they travel (if they don't have previous records). This is good enough for the 10+ states that the transport travels through, but apparently, that's not good enough for Massachusetts, since several of our rescue transports have been stopped in just this state in the past year. They are told that there is no entry at all unless you go through Department of Agriculture.
In fact, they require all dogs to come to one of their facilities once in MA for a 10-day quarantine, despite that they had been quarantined before traveling AND they already have a health certificate.
Several sources have told me that Labrador breeders have specifically lobbied the state legislature and the Department of Agriculture to block out-of-state Labs being placed since the in-state lab-breeders don't want competition affecting their lucrative breeding business. Several of our transports have been stopped by the DoA with police assistance and hassled for health certificates before finally letting the transport proceed since they can't catch them on a "technicality".
I haven't heard of an domestic pet disease outbreak since, well, never... I'm sure it has happened, but in my opinion it's very rare and Massachusetts is being too overly cautious. Heck, if Massachusetts is so anal about medical records, then it no doubt gives immunity shots to all of the animals in its shelters. Thus, imported animals shouldn't affect them anyway.
People in the Gulf States took a risk saving these animals, so how bout you step up Massachusetts and take a risk for the sake of these animals? Hey Mass, show me some of that compassionate liberalism you are supposed to be known for!