2. Get back to that Bill Gates guy..who is he and why does he keep calling?

Um...if my article was responsible for 1500 visitors, why does the counter presently show only 113 people read my article? 

Could someone explain this to me?

Presently they can only "preview" and then watch it disappear. That Stephen Black is particularly noisy about this. He also mentioned in that unforgettable post of his that he didn't understand what "parent" and "reply" were on the form which appeared. What an idiot!

2. Make FusePress the best goshdarn place on the web.

3. Get back to work on fixin' that Middle East situation....

In doing this I set off Google's spam detector. After a flurry of emails to Google, I did receive a response:

-the limit of emails is 500 per day

-your account will also be frozen if you are sending out a large number of gmails which turn out to be undeliverable.

After an unspecified period, your account will return to normal.

I could not find this information out before the fact.If it happens, there is no pop up warning: you just lose the ability to send.

I have been involved with FusePress for a week and I have really enjoyed it. It has been/is an experiment, however. The experiment attempts to answer the question: Why join a group like this?

So, a few notes, in no particular order....

1. I am still unclear as to how WE make money.I know the money goes directly to us from Paypal. I worked my way through that maze and seem to have it working properly.

How does being a part of FusePress increase my earnings? I know Todd is working hard and people are writing, but I don't see how my blog is going to drive "my" readers to the other blogs.

The introductory staement says that half the time the ads are on FusePress, half the time they are on my blog...or something like that.....?

2. I just checked adsense for the last 7days. I have 21 page impressions. I have zero clicks. My earnings:0

This is not a complaint. I think it is foolish to expect instant income. However, I don't think it is unreasonable for someone somewhere to strip away all of the nonsense and state realistically how much can be made.

Todd has displayed his considerable adsense earnings. I would be happy to learn his topics.I don't think he was describing his wall decorations or sharing his poetry. I'll bet he was consistently producing high quality pieces of writing....weren't you Todd?

Let's set 50 dollars a week as a target. How many clicks or page impressions or WHAT are necessary for MY account to show 7 or 8 dollars a day? (Why is it so hard to find clear information on this topic? Scams galore, but an honest article is hard to find-why should we be afraid of the truth? Yes, its hard work, but how realistic are the rewards?

3, Topics(related to point number 1). Anyone can publish-fantastic. But how is it to my advantage for my blog to be amidst other blogs unrelated to mine. I suppose the categories will expand in the future?

4. How will we eventually get picked up by Google/other search engines? At present, I see very little content that is unique from the thousands of blogs already out there....

So, yes, this has been a fun week. The points above are meant to be supportive. We are in beta and this is the fun part-we can influence the future for the betterment of all....                                                                              

The attachment shows a small image from the film as well as other information on my various projects.

Richard Waller on Japanese Apples

Tales of passion and revolution

   An exiled leader’s triumphant return to wage a battle both contemporary and futuristic. The struggle to defeat enemies, both heartless and many. A visionary’s quest to realize a world where ideas flow freely and all are given an equal voice... Okay, maybe I have been reading too many manga, but the recent presentation by Richard Waller concerned a company that is revolutionary in every sense of the word, and the leader of that company is one of the legendary successes of our time. Mr. Waller’s topic was Apple and the vision of its leader and founder, Steve Jobs, the Comeback Kid.  

   Informal yet informative, Mr. Waller’s presentation was not what one might expect from a Director of Finance. His presentation carried a genuineness that ad copy and commercials can only hint at. He spoke  of the initial Apple excitement-and how Steve Jobs had to recreate that spirit for the Apple brand to survive. Mr. Waller used words like “passion’ and spoke of Apple’s almost romantic relationship with consumers. My notes show only four references to numbers over the entire evening-the first being the two million iMacs sold, the second a reference to the 23 home addresses that Mr. Waller has had and the third being the fact that the G4 is up to 10 times faster than any other chip! The mixture of business, entertainment and philosophy continued throughout the evening. What is the reason for Apple’s great success? Mr. Waller: “We like to think it’s because we have a soul.”   

   His comment that “we have to make the obvious obvious”-when talking about how to sell computers-is classic, and should be in every advertising textbook. Answering the question of “what does it do?” was, and is, one of Apple’s greatest challenges. Remember that in 1978 there were only about 500,000 computers-half of them Apples. Most people were ignorant or terrified of computers…even the experts who “wrote code” experienced “crashes”! Given that mindset, how would you sell a computer to a typical housewife?

   As Mr. Waller demonstrated, the answer is “humor”. From the beginning, Apple’s advertising campaigns have featured a humor that is casual but sophisticated; hip but classic. (The same could be said of Apple’s approach to design; twenty year old Apples still look fresh.)

  Mr. Jobs and co. communicated-and the housewives bought. And the students bought. And the business community bought. And thousands of designers, writers, artists and people on the cutting edge bought, all wanting to be part of a revolution-the personal computer revolution. Computers could be part of our emotional life-this was the vision of Steve Jobs. Apple wasn’t just a company selling number-crunching data management systems, but a group of people committed to making machines that could benefit and empower people. The concept of personal computer is deceptively simple, yet Apple immediately and passionately (that word again!) began to express the full meaning of the concept.

 Apple's advertising has used some of the most innovative and inspiring thinkers of our time: Albert Einstein, Issey Miyake, Alfred Hitchcock, Amelia Earhart, John Lennon, Gandhi, Martin Luther King…The 1984 Super Bowl spot, with its reference to Big Brother, is still talked about in advertising circles.

   Recently, the ads seem to be selling a variety of spiritual candy: sweetly colored computers glow against a white background. Below the offering, like a mantra, is the word “Yum”. As in all of the Apple ads, the logo, one of the world’s best known, is small. Apple has foresight and a list of firsts to prove it: pioneers in desktop publishing, the creators of the plug and play concept, the first to use track balls, the first to put CD-ROMS on all models, the first to add speakers and microphones.

Apple knows a thing or two about human perceptions as well. As part of their Japanese pre-release publicity campaign, only the housings were put on display at the Axis Building in Roppongi. It may have been the most “touchy feely” moment in the history of technology. Mr. Waller used the phrase “computer stroking” and let’s leave it at that…

  When Apple looked at the potential market for the iMac, they saw the need to include more women in the Internet vision. They knew they needed more than the music of Barry White and come-hither voice-overs. The convenience and beautiful design of the iMac made it a natural for the female market. Realizing that Akihabara is not exactly a woman’s shopping paradise, Apple sought out more fashionable locales. A tie up with the Shimamura music store resulted. An issue of the women’s magazine Figaro featured only two ads for mechanical products amidst the cosmetic and fashion spreads;one for Cartier watches, the other for the iBook. 

And has all of this work paid off? Is Steve Jobs' vision still a sales point? Has the company that created the revolution become part of history? Think different.  

The iMac was Japan’s number one selling retail desktop computer for the nine months following its introduction. The new iMacs were launched in October and, for the first week, Mac models took ALL top 10 places.

The battle rages on.

For Arleen Schloss

 “The world is a collage”

This is a poempaintingwordperformancepiece. All of the following words describe scenes. All of these wordscenes contain signs. The signs may not obvious, but they are there. In some cases, there may be a large number of signs, in which case, all are to be included. The colors of the signs, the numbers on the signs and the text and language of the signs are to be emotionally and chaotically combined on one huge imaginary and ever-present canvas, an eternal painting dedicated to Arlene Schloss.

The signs exist in the following situations:

Nurses talking near hospitals before they begin work on autumn days when the moon is full, the mailmen in Nakano who drink canned coffee by themselves, retirement age janitors at the Louvre looking over new tools, young miners in elevators that cough and spark beneath the surface of Virginia, mechanics with legs sticking out from underneath cars with nearby oily radios pouring out 20 year old music, people with hangovers standing near open graves, hippos that go into the ocean, gardeners driving to buy trees with roots wrapped in burlap, people leaving yellow cabs in a hurry at night, an urban area full of people flying kites, parades in cold weather, parades in hot weather, soccer games, baseball games, mushroom hunters, tennis games, the fingers of weavers of silk carpets, football practice with a small body on the ground, smugglers who do so to feed their children, archery ranges, barbecues for groups of people ranging from three to three thousand, streets being paved for the first time, the clothes of divorcees who still live together being hung to dry, hunters who do not drink when they are hunting, the tallest building in Manila, fishermen who drink but stay on shore, volunteer firemen in southern border town of Iowa, trappers who do so with respect, amusement park employees who have lost their keys, children who sleep in tents in their backyards, photographers stranded in Mozambique, moviemakers who sleep well, people who use handphones during meetings and housepainters who do a good job. Places where elephants have sex, shelves full of books about ferns, silver airplanes that float like paralyzed flying birds, the happiest person in Uganda, old red weather balloons on a flimsy shelf, magazines launched in the ‘70s, instructions for assembling tents, Vietnamese tour guides, the cost breakdown for a satellite dish to be installed in Yugoslavia, ugly public sculptures, the Vatican, Domino Pizza, Mecca, the Holy Land, toothpaste factories, a place where a picnic table was accidentally burned, a barnyard, a waterfall, flocks of thin white birds, grey lines of highways, the only stuffed armadillo to be found in South Africa, lakes holding sailboats, a Paris metro ticket. Canoes on rivers, the oceans slapping big ships, the most loved Swedish politician, the most elegant shoe store in Mumbai, fog eating a city, a birthday party for a three-legged cat in Hougang, organic apple orchards, alphabets, Christmas tree farms, strip mined landscapes, desserts full of unwanted testing, an environmentally friendly golf course, a fireworks display watched by an Amish family in a bus station between Chicago and Kansas City, bonfires, the diets of djs, traffic accidents as a result of animals crossing highways, unemployed male prostitutes in Taipei.All of the black and white UHF channels, railroads used by bikers, places that serve take out prata, housing subdivisions, the Empire State Building, the Pyramids, the 47th page of the 1969 Guiness Book of World records, the shopping list of newlyweds in Bowling Green, Ohio, the first Chinese cookbook in Peru, the Tokyo Dome, a kindergarten in Bonn, the most depressing high school in Teaneck New Jersey, the harbor of Rio de Janiero during an eclipse, the Great Wall of China being discussed by mathematicians, Red Square being discussed by visiting Irish tourists, Kmarts in Canada, driving schools, elephant orphanages, missile testing ranges, forest fires, a Gutamelan dentist’s office, emailed images of a child's first steps,power plants in Minsk, black boxes of intergalactic spacecraft, Kyoto florists located within the train station, the insects which live in the main Xian post office. The humidity within the Sydney Opera House, the deli on the corner, New Orleans classical musicians taking well-deserved naps, Microsoft paper useage files, cloud seeding programs, what Google's great grandchildren will evolve into,cancelled glider competitions in Norway, ancient light houses that are now underwater, beaches where there are no beach towels, umbrellas on Avenue A, Coney Island, the dreams of a Singaporean civil servant, a painting of an aerial view of the  Great Lakes hanging in a Green Bay bar, the video collection to be found on a typical North Sea oil rig, the Rocky Mountains, the garage of the grandson of Dali’s least favorite barber, the Amazon, the Urals, the Andes, the Great Rock, Mt. Fuji, the Pyrennees, Ireland, India, Idaho, Inokashira, Iran, Iraq, Iowa, people on horses, goats in trees, the Statue of Liberty, every bridge in the world, every phone line in the world, every bit of dust on Broome Street, every modem, every email ever written in Spanish and the oceans.

The following is a reply to Revelator's reply!

Hello Revelator,

Again it is supportive to find that you have had similiar experiences.

A few points, in no particular order:

-Writers vs. Bloggers....Absolutely, there is a difference. I would like to be surrounded by writers who can blog and bloggers who can write as opposed to writers who can't blog and......

-I mentioned this to Todd: To find writers, you have to look OFF of the net. Toastmasters, for example, write speeches- good speeches, usually on a frequent basis.  What if Todd gave a speech at the local Toastmasters club? In one evening he would be meeting at least a handful of people with experience in COMMUNICATING. I am sure Todd's personality, enthusiasm and track record would result in some great results...and good news travels fast. As long as Todd doesn't promise them the moon financially, you can be sure some of those toastmasters will write AND will tell their toastmaster friends....

Now, what other organizations could Todd visit? ( I realize this is unfair as Todd undoubtedly is working the kinds of hours which are unhealthy and make socializing difficult.)

Could I do that? Would I do recruit?Certainly-but I would need to see the math as to how I would benefit. Call me capitalistic and cold-hearted if you will, but for me to recruit experts/great writers would take time.

-There is a cloud in the sense that I have not yet seen how the adsense revenue is split. I do not think anyone is doing is anything dishonest. I think the adsense/fusepress split is 50/50. Wouldn't it greatly benefit FusePress to offer a clear financial incentive to bring in talent?

- Yes, at present, FusePress has a nice atmosphere. If I were Todd I would be very selective about who comes in. Or, I would be preparing a Pro version-perhaps with a different name-so as to have a stable where good and productive writers are 'treated a little differently.' What that would mean exactly, I can't say as I don't know enough about the technical and financial side of things. As you know, in the real world good writers have agents. So...just as the internet has changed things for writers, so it will change for agents. An 'agent' could actually mean not a person networking in the physical world, but a person who is familiar with the content and knows how to fine tune article placement, search engine placement, website placement, links etc. so that the good writers can write as opposed to get caught up in these things which seem to mutate every six months.

I am sure someone out there will offer this service soon, if they are not already doing it. A digital literary consultant perhaps? Todd is taking steps in this direction, it seems. Go Todd go!

-I have registered with everything except XML. It seems easy to register with them as a user, but it didn't seem obvious to me as to how to register as a provider.

-You may have read my post thanking Todd. You may have read another post of mine in which I wrote how surprised I was that someone had sent that reply out into Digg...

-The internet is, in a way, not the real world. Those who can combine real world experiences with various internet practices have an advantage.

-All in all, these are exciting times for writers. There are challenges, of course, but that is life. I am here because it seems like the place for me to be now. Will that change? Who knows? I have to keep writing to find out.

Anyway, Revelator/Clay, it has been good writing to you. I don't think we are complaining nor are we being negative, but maybe we can exchange these sorts of emails between the two of us and then present a post every now and then, a post that would be constructive and encouraging. I think we agree that this is a fantastic opportunity and that we both want to make the best of it, for everyone involved.

All the best!

SB

   At this point in time I feel that the word 'game' is still too closely-linked with the extremely high budget, fast paced games that often center around activities like sword play, high speed driving, earning points and competing against and/or killing others. We need more Sims! We need positive, truly CREATIVE virtual experiences which we cannot yet imagine.

   Although the CDK offers a number of ways that users can earn points, our main goal is to create sequential learning experiences that build upon each other. The CDK encourages this by providing multi-media compatibility, multi-user functions and teacher/student interactivity templates. Awarding students points when they answer a question correctly is certainly acceptable in some circumstances but we want to move beyond that.

The CDK is capable of experiences which are interactive; experiences which allow creativity to be developed and for real learning to take place- as opposed to just memorization.

     To be clear, I am not opposed to the word 'games'. There is an entire industry being built around 'serious gaming'-those games which are used for training.(Recommended:Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform by David Michael and Sande Chen).

   However, in my meetings with teachers, I find many who, understandably, have a bias against anything even remotely associated with the fast-paced competitive games that they see children playing alone or in arcades. Also, teachers have a hard time explaining to parents how 'games' can teach.

   As the gaming industry and the education sector get to know each other and collaborate more, it is certain that the word 'games' will be perceived in a better light. For now, however, I prefer the phrase 'virtual learning experiences'...VLEs.

Also recommended: What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee

If there are any FusePressers here in Singapore, come on down!

(This is also a test to see how FusePress displays images!)

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