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By Les Scammell, January 31, 2010 11:23 pm

Are we entering an era in which newspapers censor what can and can’t be published on websites and blogs. I know it is drawing a long conclusion from recent events, but that is a possible result from recent events. Newspapers are now resenting people referring to their content and linking to it. This goes to the heart of public debate.

If they make comments, or write a story, that you or I disagree with, we should have every right to write an article with counter opinions. Now, from memory, you cannot argue, or give an alternative opinion, if you don’t in some way refer to the original content. This could include quoting snippets from the original and it would have to include some reference to the original material – normally in the way of link. We do this of course to make it easier for our readers to go and read the original content. They can then form an opinion based on both sides of the argument.

WebProNews reports on the issue and they have their own spin on the issue. Small Business Mavericks takes a different spin and asks – is linking unethical. I think newspapers may be taking this issue beyond common sense. Yes, they do have a right to their content as I have a right to my content. However, when I put it out there in public, I have to cop the criticism or applause. If people want to link back to me – I say yes please.

Some online news services now want to charge a fee for you link back to them. This is like the banks that charge us fees to borrow our money, or paying money for a tax service franchise to save us paying too much in taxation.

What these newspaper don’t realize is that down the track, the newspapers that stay open and who are prepared to welcome comments and inbound links, will be the ones who rise in popularity. They will be the online news services that we go to read. In fact, with luck, those newspapers will go the way of private school teachers - they are being laid off – so too will the newspapers.

Is this a potential threat to our freedom of expression online? What are your thoughts?

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By Les Scammell, January 29, 2010 12:48 pm

I probably shouldn’t poke fun at this poor guy. I mean, how would you be, standing at the sink washing the dishes when a lightning strike takes you out. At least you don’t have to finish the dishes. What are the chances of it happening – a million to one? Yet it did.

Modeling may save some moms from both the dishes and cooking. It seems if you have a Plus Sized Hourglass Body Shape the fashion industry may soon be calling. There is a movement now to get away from the traditional twigs on legs that we call fashion models and move to using models that better reflect society. There is hope for all of us yet.

Where Can a Medical Transcriptionist Go Wrong? You have to trust these people but they are human. A recent case in the UK highlighted why medical transcriptionists need to be soooo accurate when transcribing from an audio tape. It seems a specialist had recommended a specific type of treatment but the transcriber made a tiny but crucial mistake with the medication quantity. He was very happy for several days.

His wife has now found that Yoga: The Great Stress Reliever, is the only way she can calm him down. Cold showers don’t even work. BTW – he is 85 and she is 80 – go man go.

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By Les Scammell, January 21, 2010 12:53 pm

Sometimes I get some strange emails. Today I received one touting a franchise business that promised income of $75k-$200k with a total outlay of only $45k. I am always a little suspicious when the first thing they throw at you is the income. Carpet cleaning (and mattress sanitizing) is big business. The market is also pretty full.

The New Hot Franchise Sizzles! that appeal to me don’t involve cleaning or any intense sales. I would prefer a hot franchise opportunity that had customer coming to me – a franchise like fast food since it is always going to be popular.

I had an offer several weeks ago to sell a new range of toothbrushes that were set to revolutionize dental care. Now I know that Gum Diseases Should Be Identified in Time and that dental care is very important. But at $0.50 commission paid on every toothbrush sold, even in my humble town, if I could get everyone to buy one, I would still only make around $25k – and there are always expenses.

What I would like to buy into is an online franchise. With an online presence, you can have multiple income streams. Even with an online presence, I would be wondering – Can Small Businesses Earn Affiliate Money? I think they can if the affiliate program was related to your business in some way.

Really, what would please more than anything right now is not having to read silly emails that promise me the world.

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By Les Scammell, January 19, 2010 11:06 am

You know, there are times when I think we print signs and posters without realizing what we are saying. I know there are times when people print signs to be intentionally funny as well. Take this sign – I have a feeling the double meaning was intentional – It would certainly have people talking.

If you were to buy into that business as a franchise, would that sign encourage you or put you off? I am not sure how I would feel being associated to a sign like that. Sure it’s funny to start with and very clever, but like all franchises, being funny and clever doesn’t always equate to good earnings. Being able to filter out whether what is being offered is a New Franchise Opportunity or Rumor can be difficult. Research is the key – just don’t be misled by any clever slogans.

Messages are often confusing or misleading. Do you like leading life on the edge. You may jump at working as an excavator operator if your saw this message – Excavators Take You To The Edge. It’s true, excavators often work sitting precariously on the edge of a trench or large excavation – but it’s not really living on the edge.

Even businesses make changes without completing the job. Look closely at the shop door and the operating hours. It says quite clearly in large letters, open 24 hours. Below that is clearly shows shop hours that indicate it closes each night. It’s not then 24 hours is it?

Our web sites are the same. I see some sites with links that are supposed to go to internal pages – instead I am met with 404 page not found errors. Or I am sent off to an affiliate page. Your internal linking is important. It guides your visitors around your site – it also guides the search engine bots around your site. Mislead them and watch your site drop out of the search results. Read this post if you need to know What Kind Of Link Structure Should You Use?.

Misleading signs – the world is full of them.

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By Les Scammell, December 7, 2009 4:11 pm

The way things are going, Tiger Woods could take on cult hero status, not for golf this time, although it will be for scoring birdies. The US pay-for-scandal magazines are still shaking the trees to see how many more birdies they can get to fall out of the trees.

I mean, p-l-ease – haven’t we heard enough. Men around the world are getting green eyes, women will start to look at him and wonder, and the journalists are going to have a field day. If Tiger Woods wants to go around the world landing birdies and hitting holes in one – let him. What business is it of ours.

And everyone thought that golf was a boring sport. Mind you, those big dollars coming in every time he hits a ball certainly helps.

We are obviously a little short on sport stories – particular juicy sporting stories at present. Andre Agassi has had his run. The Williams sisters have had their spat for the year. There are no Olympics so chasing drug cheats is out. Sorry Tiger – you’re it. The journo’s have hit the bottom of the basket and don’t have anyone else to pick on.

photo credit: Keith Allison

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By Les Scammell, November 4, 2009 10:27 am

Over the last couple of days I have been looking at ways to improve my website. I know posting more often helps – and I am working to a routine on that front. Other areas included a new theme, removing a lot of the unnecessary clutter on the sidebar and perhaps creating a monthly newsletter.

The one are I have absolutely no experience with and feel somewhat helpless at times is in building a mailing list. Everywhere I look I see the words “the money is in the list”. Well hang the money, I just want a loyal group of readers who would be happy to receive a newsletter each month. Building the list is the only thing that has stopped me to date and being such a novice, the last thing I want is see my money going down a big hole with no return.

To cut a long story short – I went searching for list building advice and everything led back to Aweber. That’s fine, I checked out their site and everything ’sounds’ good. The problem is, it is a monthly subscription. Now this blog doesn’t make $1 month so spending $19 (I know it’s not a lot, it’s just the principle) is not an investment – it’s an expense that needs to be considered.

So – now to the affiliate marketing angle. As a buyer, not seller, I often wonder what price a product would sell for if it didn’t rely on affiliate marketing. For Aweber, they pay 30% or a little over $5 per sign-up. Being a cheap-skate, I would rather pay the $14 each month instead of the $19. Small dollars I know. However I was looking at a different program over the weekend that cost $70 per month. It had a 50% affiliate payout.

To my mind, that means I am paying an extra $35 each month over the true worth of the program (if the owner is happy to accept $35 each month then that is its true worth). Like I said, it all adds up. suddenly you’re paying $2oo per month when it could be as low as $100 if there were no affiliates.

It’s just my little rant for the week. I understand that sellers need affiliates to spread the message and that affiliates need the income to survive. Now here is a question for everyone involved in affiliate marketing.

Can I register as an affiliate marketer – clear my cookies, then buy through my own link?  As least then I get the affiliate selling fee (effectively a discount).  Your suggestions would help?

photo credit: ChrisLB

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By Les Scammell, October 26, 2009 10:42 am

I have to wonder how green the Greens are when it comes to politics. And I don’t mean green as in novice – I mean green as in environmental. We have a situation now in Australia where the Government wants to go down a particular path in an effort to reduce green house gases with the big focus world wide on carbon reduction.

Rightly or wrongly, the Federal government wants to introduce a system of carbon credits and carbon trading. The long term aim is reduce the amount of carbon produced.

The opposition groups in the Australian upper house have rejected the legislation and are now proposing changes – basically rewriting the legislation before it comes back into parliament.

The Greens are the political group that have me befuddled the most. We have had ten years of climate denial in Australia. The former Howard government basically denies there was a climate problem. Even I have doubts so I can understand their position somewhat.

We have gone from a position of denial to a position of nothing is better than making a start. At least, that seems to be the view of the Greens. Now my thinking would oppose that. Making a start would get people thinking, talking and acting to make some changes in their lives.

I can understand the Greens want more controls put in place. However, as I stated, a start is a start. Instead, the people of Australia along with businesses both small and large are all being left in limbo not knowing when change will happen, what that change will be, and how much that change will cost us in terms of jobs and our weekly expenses.

What is the biggest fear faced by humans – the fear of change. I don’t agree fully with the legislation either but I do know one thing – once we make a start we can then think about any fine tuning that needs to be done. The Greens? They seem to be more about political grandstanding than actually doing anything constructive about the environment.

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By Les Scammell, September 6, 2009 3:43 pm

That may be a strange statement given the banner that will fly on this page throughout September. In all honesty – I don’t particularly care about the politics of Iran, or any other country really, even though I am a political person.

I have a serious distrust of all politicians as I feel they are not in office because they care about us, the general population. They are there to push their own agendas and often, we, the general public, suffer for that agenda.

Reports from Iran suggest the election was rigged. Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn’t but in a way, tell me any election that isn’t rigged. Here in Australia we have compulsory voting. I didn’t like any of the candidates standing at the last election, yet I had to vote for one of them. Is that not some form of electoral rigging?

One of the arguments used to prove the Iranian election was rigged was that government opponents even lost in their home towns. Referring again to Australian politics, former Prime Minister John Howard became Australia’s only Prime Minister to lose his seat in office at an election. It does happen.

So why this post and why the banner? It matters not the politics nor the country. Where I will stand up and have a say is when free speech is denied. China and Burma have been classic cases of restrictions in free speech particularly when it comes to the blogosphere. Free speech is the life blood of blogging and I will always stand up for our freedom. I was struck by two paragraphs of a post by Andrew Sullivan on the Daily Dish:

“The forces of democracy have marshalled in Iran for accountability, transparency and fairness. Wherever they marshall, we should stand with them, especially in the blogosphere, where our Iranian brothers and sisters built the foundation for this moment.”

Putting aside the philosophy of democracy. The point that stands out for me is the use of the blogosphere to form a movement because this leads into a second paragraph later in the post:

“Ever since I penned The Medium Is the Middleman: For a Revolution Against Media, I’ve been waiting for this moment, which I predicted, twelve years ago, would come: a great day when the corporate media got pushed out of the way by authentic media from below. What is occurring worldwide, with the Iranian crisis as catalyst, is the emergence of the very kind of media from below that the human race – particularly the working class and the poor – so desperately needs.”

The media that everyone has access to is blogging. Whether you’re a multi-millionaire or the poorest person around, if you can access a computer and the internet, even in a public library, you can voice your views. In fact you can do it almost completely anonymously. Of course I don’t support blogging that is anyway destructive on a person level or designed to malign innocent individuals, it can be an important weapon against injustice.

Add to the blogosphere the power of Twitter and other social media and you have the potential for a new political force around the world – at least – a huge voice.

I don’t care about the politics in Iran, or China, or anywhere else. I do care about the rights of individuals to have the freedom to voice their opinions – DO YOU?

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By Les Scammell, August 12, 2009 12:42 am

Giving birth! What could be more natural. Women have been doing it for ten’s of thousands of years – without doctors. The only help they had was from other women who had been through it all before – the original midwives.

The Australian government has for some reason taken a dislike to home births and midwives. For a midwife to participate in a home birth, the need to be registered. The governments proposal is that midwives can only be registered if they have indemnity insurance.

Problem – no insurance company is prepared to offer indemnity insurance to midwives participating in home deliveries. No insurance, no registration, no more home births.

What a ridiculous situation. Home births have proven to be very successful in Britain. Rather than making life difficult for midwives, we should be supporting them and encouraging the practice. Furthermore, with only 200 midwives participating in home births, we should be working to increase that number five or six times.

Just think of how much money can be saved by not having to take up hospital beds. Wake up Kevin – think forward not backward – but then, he is a male, perhaps he just doesn’t understand childbirth. But then, I am a male too, but I certainly support home births for those who want it.

I have written a fuller post on home birthing on my parenting site – feel free to visit and comment.

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By Les Scammell, May 19, 2009 11:03 am

The Australian government has recently announced the budget for the 2009-2010 financial year – as a budget, it wasn’t too bad. Raising the old age pension has been on the cards for ten years now – I am surprised it has taken this long to implement it.

Infrastructure spending was always going to be the center piece and I guess you can thank the Howard/Costello era – they ran infrastructure spending into the ground so there are plenty of areas to spend big dollars.

Australia has been called the lucky country and to an extent we are. We have ridden on the back of a resources boom for the last decade and it will be resources again that take us out of the recession. China is one country that will be hit hard but it will bounce back faster than most countries – and they are one of our biggest customers when it comes to resources.

So the budget was a ho-hum affair really. The biggest issue to come out of it has been the mean testing of the private health insurance subsidy. I don’t quite follow the argument. I cannot for the life of me see why someone on $75,000 a year or more, would drop their health insurance because they lose a couple of dollars a week in a subsidy. In fact, I don’t know why we are subsidizing families on $150,000 plus with a seven dollar a week subsidy (and that is all it is really). It seems to be a storm in tea cup used to try and knock the budget.

No-No Mal, leader of the Liberal Party and supposedly our alternative Prime Minister, has been on a negative track since taking on the role. In Australian political history, no opposition leader has ever won office with a negative campaign. In fact, they have often lost ground.

His latest suggestion actually has me wondering what economic credentials he has – but of course, he was a banker before entering politics – and who got the world economy into its present state? Bankers!

The Liberal Party has suggested a return to the old days where beer and cigarette taxes are used to fund government spending. There is are number of problems with this approach – first, beer and cigarette taxes tend to hit those on lower incomes the hardest. Their suggestion to increase the tax on cigarettes by three cents per stick sounds harmless. However, the effect is an increase of around $1 per packet. With about 1.5 million smokers, that is effectively 1.5 million dollars taken out of the economy – each day.

Can our economy afford that at present? I think not. The 1.5 million would be better off going through the cash registers of local businesses, keeping people in jobs and keeping the economy moving.

Once we start to come out of the recession, and once we need to start cutting the federal governments budget deficits, that will be the time to increase these taxes.

My question is – when will we get a federal opposition that really is thinking of Australia’s future rather than their own? Right now, Turnbull and his team of negative pollies are doing neither!

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By Les Scammell, May 15, 2009 4:09 pm

It is hard to put Aldi stores into a category. Whilst they are predominantly a grocery chain, they do also sell a wide range of non grocery items.

It is also hard to determine if they are low quality, medium quality or high quality. I have always placed them in the medium to good quality range – however recent purchases leave me wondering.

Aldi Stores are a European setup that have established themselves in Australia with a wide network of stores. Their products in the main have been good – some products very good. Apart from a narrow range of grocery items, they have weekly sales items which are only stocked until sold out. These items range from televisions to computers to dishwashers amongst other big ticket items to smaller items like clothing, toys, electrical goods and million and one other items.

I recently purchased one of their electric kettles – one which is along the lines of the old fashioned kettles. It works well – in fact it actually boils water, it doesn’t switch itself off at the first sign of steam.
Unfortunately, for a kettle that isn’t exactly cheap; looks and works well; it has a simple design fault that makes it almost

unusable and decidedly dangerous. The kettle is built using a tiny little screw to hold the handle in place – two screws actually, one at the spout and one opposite where traditional handles sit. Within weeks one screw works itself loose and, like most things in life, if they are going to break they will do it when you least expect it – like pouring boiling water into a cup.

I was fortunate – I felt it giving way and stopped before wearing the contents. I wonder how long it will be before someone does wear a pot full of boiling water.

This is not the first product. We recently purchased a salt and pepper mill. Again – they look great and the price was okay – not dirt cheap but not expensive. They only problem is – there were no instructions on how to open the darn things to put the salt and pepper in – I still haven’t worked that one out!

Simple issues like these will eventually turn people away from products. Trust is an important issue so if you cannot trust a business to provide value for money – they will shop elsewhere. For a supermarket chain that is still trying to establish itself in the Australian market, I am surprised they have allowed these products through their quality inspections – if that is, they have a quality inspection team to start with. I wonder – is Aldi now sacrificing quality for profits? Long term they may be sacrificing profits by losing reputation.

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By Les Scammell, May 2, 2009 9:41 pm

It seems that as businesses grow, one of the first areas of business to get left behind is ’service’.  If you have noticed my extended absence it is for one simple reason – moving house. What does that have to do with service – don’t get me started.

We recently moved to a new home. The move went surprisingly well. I wouldn’t say we were well prepared but the removalist were good and, whilst we had budgeted for four or five hours – they had the job done in three.

That was a great start to the move. The electricity had been connected, no drama. We even had the telephone connected with little drama. However, when it came to getting our ADSL internet connection working – forget it. Talk about a run around.

Once the telephone connection was up and running, we called the internet service provider (the same company as the telephone) and requested the move.  No problems, once the line was tested it would take around 12-24 hours. That was okay – we had planned for that delay.

Day two – still no internet. Rang to find out why and got the push button option merry-go-round. After following prompts and answering questions we finally arrive at the help desk. No problems they said the internet should be up and running by noon the following day.

Day three – you guessed it. Still no internet. Back to the telephone for another dance with computer generated prompts. This time I had to reboot the modem, reboot the computer, reboot them simultaneously, nothing of course worked. So we end up with yet another help desk person who takes us through the exact same routine.

Now it gets tricky. “Your computer is at fault – get a new computer” was the first response. Hello – I have three computers that I have tried, two of them brand new – not only that, everything was working fine until the move.

“Okay, it’s the modem then, it must be failing. Get a new modem.” My response, it is six months old and you supplied it.  “Okay – we will escalate this to a major fault – someone will get back to you within two working days”.

A week later and still no joy – we are a total of ten days without the net, the so called ‘two days’ was a joke. I finally managed to talk my way through to someone who actually new their job. Fifteen minutes later and the problems were solved and we were back on line.

What I want to know is – WHY COULDN’T I ACCESS THIS PERSON FROM DAY ONE – sorry to shout – but why the runaround? Why all the drama and why the wait?

For Australia’s major communication company to stuff up a simple house move, and we are only talking a short distance – a long walk at most – is beyond me. More importantly, why I couldn’t access a help desk that new what they were doing is also beyond me. As I said in my heading – big business generally couldn’t care about service. Add to that a limited number of competitors and you can see why service is no longer important.

I can tell you now – I still want SERVICE – I don’t care about the smile – but I still want SERVICE.

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By Les Scammell, April 14, 2009 10:28 pm

Most bloggers would be aware of google’s dislike of paid posts – more importantly, paid links in paid posts. If the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) gets its way, paid posts as such will be illegal.

The FTC is looking at plans to update its policies and their sights are set fairly and squarely on bloggers, paid posts and viral marketing. For bloggers who earn their small dollars each month writing paid posts – the time may have come to look else where.

Why the attack on paid posts? I said Google doesn’t like the paid links. For the FTC, they see paid posts as dishonest reviews – in other words, rather than writing a truthful review of a product or site, you are being paid to write a positive review.

Now I know there are a couple of pay for post sites that pay for the link. You don’t have to actually review the site or the product. If the link is to a kitchen sink site, just write any old post about kitchen sinks and include a link, it doesn’t have to be a review. Now, I wonder if the FTC will include them in their ban?

The next question is what will the FTC do to those bloggers that do write paid reviews? Will they prosecute and turn them into criminals? That is fine if you are based in the US. What if your based in Britain, Europe or Australia – will the law cross borders?

This is the biggest hurdle to any government agency trying to control the internet. You may be able to control what is happening within your own border, you cannot control the events from outside your borders. Still, I guess they will try. In the meantime, the poor old blogger is the one that will cop it on the chin – again!

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By Les Scammell, February 9, 2009 4:25 pm

AS temperatures soared to 45c (113f), most of Australia held its breath. We all know what high temperatures, strong winds, a dry earth from a decade of drought, and idiots with nothing better to do with matches than cause mayhem, can do to our fragile environment.

And that was the sorry tale that many Australians woke up to on Sunday morning. Almost half of the state of Victoria turned to ashes in what has been described as the worst Victorian bushfires in history. In fact, the worst bushfires in Australia’s history.

Estimates are that nearly 200 have or will lose their life, 33 people from the one hamlet have died. At last count, over 750 homes had been destroyed with countless schools, halls, churches and businesses in ashes. In some areas, complete towns have been wiped out. I don’t mean tiny villages either, I am talking small towns with populations of around 1000. Australia has not known such devastation since cyclone Tracy wiped out Darwin many years ago.

One can only imagine the terror that many families have endured. In fact, it’s not only the families. Emergency services such as firefighters, both paid and volunteer, state emergency services, police and ambulance. They have all been involved in the fight and now, when a lot of the danger is over, they must help with the clean up. It is their job to search burnt out properties and vehicles trying to account for every person known to be in the burnt out areas.

I know lightening caused many of these fires, however there is now evidence to show that quite a few were also deliberately lit. Why? That is the question on everyone’s lips.

Australians are a resilient lot. We will band together, forget issues that often divide us, and get stuck in to clean up the ruins and yes, rebuild again. Hundred’s of thousands of dollars have already been donated including $100,000 from Football Federation Of Australia along with a pledge to replace soccer equipment in all schools and clubs.

In what many would consider sheer irony, the northern parts of Australia are recovering from cyclone damage and suffering from huge floods – the weather at its extremes.

The Victorian bushfires may have been one of our worst disasters on record – but that is only a statistic. We will regroup and rebuild. We will get on with our lives. It’s the Australian way. We don’t quit – we fight on.

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By Les Scammell, February 4, 2009 11:22 pm

The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced a very broad and very expensive economic stimulus package yesterday, one which seems to be hailed as ideal in some quarters and yet in others labeled as economic vandalism. For the ordinary Australian, it is hard to know who is right and who is wrong. It seems though the politicians are playing  politics while the economy stinks sinks.

If the truth be told, even the experts don’t know. That is probably the biggest problem with the world’s economic problems at present. No one really has any idea how to get things moving again – of course with that comes the guess work as to how long the world’s economic woes will continue for.

I am no expert and I take a rather simplistic view on the whole situation. It starts from the basic premise that we did elect Kevin Rudd and his Labor colleagues to run this country – part of that job is trying to run the economy. A closer look at the package makes it very attractive.

We are trying to avoid falling into a recession which is defined as being two consecutive quarters of negative growth. The stimulus package is divided into  a now and later. The now involves cash hand outs in the hope people will spend. That will prevent these next two quarters from going into the negative.

The second component involves infrastructure spending. This is where it gets interesting because every dollar allocated is going into areas where the funds really are needed.

Our schools have been desperate for this type of funding for a long time.  Public housing has needed a boost in funds for about ten years – it has a real boost now. Even the rebate for insulation is welcome addition.

The opposition proposes simply bringing forward tax cuts. For a ‘liberal’ party, they are very conservative. From my perspective, tax cuts mean nothing. Petrol price rises along with the increase in price of basic foods, particularly fresh food and meat, means the tax cuts are already spent.

Malcolm Turnbull, the opposition leader says 72 hours is not longer enough to consider the package – yet 12 hours is long enough to consider it and so no, we will vote against it!

The minor parties of course are looking at how they can capitalize on the package for their special interest groups. The Labor party was elected to run this country. It should be left to do the job. In our current economic environment, we cannot afford political grandstanding.  Economic experts have all come out in support of the package. That is good enough for me.

Turnball says the pre Christmas hand out did little for the economy. At the same time statistics reveal that pre Christmas spending had the biggest growth in over 20 years.

My fear is that this country’s economic future will be held to ransom by a politician who was once a banker – and who started this whole mess – bankers!