What Kind of a Week Has it Been?

The $0.47 in my Google AdSense account says "not too shabby." Yeah, I know, but for the first week of the newly re-launched Apple Eclectic it really isn't bad. In the last 7 days we've posted 85 articles, knocked our WordPress template into a shape which we're reasonably happy with, and are even starting to find our voice. We've had 668 visitors since I started the stats thing counting on Thursday, over 400 of them today alone. We've even had a commentor.

I've got a good feeling about this. Unfortunately that's when things usually start to go wrong, but we'll see.

A few random thoughts:

• Twitter: Just started following some people. One was Jason Calacanis, who instantly started following me back. I know it was just some machine of his somewhere being automatically polite, but it's still a weird feeling.


• Amazon: Having to sign up to a separate Associates programme in each country is a pain. Google doesn't require this, but then Google doesn't have to ship physical goods and follow pre-digital accounting practices. It's still a pain. I really need to find some way to get WordPress to present different Amazon widget according to the visitor's location.


• Trackbacks: We posted an article in reply to a TechCrunch piece, which got us a link on their page, which in turn generated some traffic. This feels weird in the same way as the Calacanis Twitter thing — I shouldn't be playing at the same level as these people, but I guess that's the beauty of this InterNet thingie. Go egalitarianism!

I'm sure that when I was planning this earlier I had more things to say, but that will have to do for now. Next: find a cartoonist.

419, the Old-Fashioned Way

Just to show the world what kind of a technological backwater I've washed up in: someone has been going around my home town dropping letters through people's front doors claiming to be from the window of the President of Zambia, asking for help in moving millions of pounds through the banking system. Yes, that's right: it's a paper-based version of the 419 scams. Well, would-be-scammers, the jokes on you. People round her don't trust them new-fangled banks. Give a total stranger your money rather than keep it under your bed? Not likely.

via The Dorset Echo (our local rag).

Checking Google Takes Only Seconds

"Find Your Soulmate" — presumably in the fruit and veg aisle.

(For those of you outside the UK, Asda is a WalMart-owned discount supermarket chain.)

PCW Laughs Last, Longest

In an attempt to distance myself from the rest of the Blogosphere, I followed my rant of a few months ago by shunning the typical passive-agressive stance and actually Doing Something About It. By which I mean I wrote a snarky letter (well, e-mail), which is what passes for Doing Something in the particular strata of Englishness to which I belong.

The staff of PCW, however, are professionals well-equiped to deal with uppity readers, and proceeded to implement the neatest bit of wrong-footing I've experienced in a long while, to whit: they awarded me the Letter of the Month. If you can find a copy of the October 2008 edition (which came out a few months ago in crazy magazine time — yeah, I should have blogged this sooner) and turn to page 20 you will see my words (slightly edited, but nothing to get all Giles Coren about).

You may also note that I won a prize: a Ricoh Aficio GX 2500 printer. As PCW Editor Kelvyn Taylor joked in his congratulatory e-mail, "I hope it comes with Mac drivers." Now, I was planning on ending with the words, "And we all know the answer to that," but bugger me sideways if the damn thing doesn't actually have Mac drivers. A review shall follow.