Richard Giles Blog

Ever wondered which web site gets the fourth most hits in the world. No. Well I’ll tell you anyway. Neopets.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Neopets the chosen one for a whole matrix of kids, the kids website, with the premise similar to Tamagotchi craze in the 90s, is fourth only behind eBay, Yahoo! and Google.

Now I’m a pretty bleeding edge type of guy, but it is fairly obvious that my daughter Mia, is going to be far more tech savvy than I in no time at all.

I’d also hazard a guess that perhaps in the real world Baby Boomers are the demographic that marketers are after due to their amount of disposable income. But online Generation Y and Z are those that should be catered to, if only because they’ll be so familiar with the technology that playing, browsing, and buying online will be all too common.

I was thinking on the way back from last nights Weblogger Meetup, the first ever here in Perth, the contrast between it and the meeting I rushed from. In fact the contrast was a lot like the food at both. Carefully served up beer, wine or soft drink, with plates of unsatisfying hors devours, or beer on tap and as much pizza as we were willing to order.

Attending was Middle~Path, Not The West and son, and Still Got Butterflies. Given how much of a geek I am, it’s not surprising that son of Not The West said “they talk about computers all day long, then they talk about computers at night”.

In fact the mix was fantastic, philosophy student, musician, marketing guru, technical wizard, and, well, I’d class myself as a geek, but I’ll wait for their classification. As you can imagine, the talk varied wildly.

I’m looking forward to the next, which we plan to hold at a place with wifi, food and alcohol. Any suggestions?

As it turns out my brain is slow. OK, not slow, but my brain switch is. Apparently that means I’m similar to a mathematician in that my brain doesn’t switch from right to left as often as those more artistically inclined.

What the hell am I on about? Professor Jack Pettigrew, Neuroscientist at the Vision Touch and Hearing Research Centre, School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Queensland, has what he thinks can test the rate at which your brain switches, hence determining things such as if you are better suited to math or music.

More intriguing is that monks can stay in the left side for hundreds of seconds, which is the more upbeat hemisphere.

Swing on over to the ABC for a transcript of the TV program Catalyst where Pettigrew is interviewed, Nature for an old article, and Jack’s site for the Bonneh’s Illusion to test your switch rate.

I scored a 2 the first time, and a 3 the second.

I watched Matchstick Men last night, directed by Ridley Scott, starring Nicolas Cage and Sam Rockwell. It’s a great movie, reminding me of The Sting from 1973.

The best bit of the DVD was a brief section of the Tricks of the Trade: Making ‘Matchstick Men’ documentary where Ridley wanders up to see some people at a park with Jack Russells. Apparently he owns his own and stops to chat with other owners when he gets a chance. The hilarious part was what the editors did with the dogs. They digitally smudged their faces. What the hell for? So when you see them in the street you don’t bother them? To hide the identity of the innocent?

Only in LA right!

I want one of these, or preferably this. A service in Australia like this, which is one step better than this, that I might just start using. One of these would be cool. On a hot Perth summer day I’d like one of these, always have the right to do this, but to be honest I’d settle for one of these.

You’ve got to love those online scam artists. They have a good crack at ripping everyone off. The sad thing is that I’m sure it’ll work on some people who aren’t as aware. In this case the URL behind the “Continue…” button didn’t work, so anyone planning on complying would have been lucky. For more info, check Visa Consumer Tips.

“* Fraudulent email may bear the authentic trademarks, logos, graphics and URLs of the spoofed company.
* The HTML tags behind the link will reveal that the underlying URL usually does not link to a page within the authentic domain. Check
* The email requests confidential or personal information. Check
* It may request immediate action to keep accounts or cards activated
* Grammatical and spelling mistakes are not uncommon
* The communication may be addressed “Dear Sir/Madam” or “Dear Cardholder” i.e. not directly to you Check
* You did not initiate contact with the sender or may not have expected to receive it. Check
* The linked web site may not provide secure and authenticated communication (i.e. it does not show the closed padlock at the bottom of the web browser).
* You may not even be a cardholder.

Will someone explain to me why anyone listens to analysts. This guy just cost investors a lot of money.

Analysts are paid to examine companies and report how they see a company will preform for its investors and customers. Most of this community is concerned with the long term. Traders, who are more concerned with shorter terms, use other metrics.

So how can an analyst be paid for changing his mind in a two month period, where that change just cost investors who listened to his advice at least 66 cents a share, if not more, in that time.

Onlineblog is reporting that Nokia will release an app called Lifeblog Multimedia Diary. It seems Nokia has its finger on the pulse, given they’d be the first to release a mainstream blog application. My only gripe is that they obviously aren’t aware that blog is short for WEBlog. So why is it rumoured as not publishing to the web.

Thanks to The Unofficial Apple Weblog for the link to JunkMatcher, an add-on for Mail.app that adds greater strength to its Spam filtering with IP-based filtering, and flexible regular expressions. We’ll see how it goes over the next couple of weeks.

Scoble links (indirectly) to Jeff Sandquist’s idea for a virtual round of golf as a way of networking with potential customers.

Admittedly, that’s easy for a Yank to say, bandwidth being cheap in the U.S. and all. It’s still intriguing seeing online gaming moving this way.

Yes, ok, people got married in Neverwinter Nights years ago, but you have to admit that was a little Obsessive-Compulsive. This is a step toward the mainstream.