Life, the Universe and the Internet

I thought I would just post a brief follow up on my previous experiment with promotion through article distribution. For a full explanation of what I tried with this visit this blog page. However as a brief overview, I basically wrote an extended version of an article I had written here and published it to a group of article directories through a service called iSnare.

The article was entitled “Beware The Impact Of Using 301 Redirects” and although it took about a week it was eventually submitted and distributed through iSnare. The article had links to this blog in the author bio section. At the time of writing this, if I do a search on google for my article I finds 825 references too it. It’s very hard to say if this article has brought me any real traffic, but I’m sure all of those links must be a positive thing for this blog.

Even though I am not sure of the results of the experiment I will probably try it again, it was a relatively painless exercise once I had found a suitable article to use. Also even if the links don’t mean a lot to google, it is at least getting my name out there. But I would strongly recommend that if you try it, make sure it is a unique article that will only be used for this purpose. The last thing you want is to have your own sites content flagged up as duplicate content in google.

Here is my second site review through the Review Me program. For anyone who is not familiar with Review Me, it is a third party service that puts bloggers and site owners in touch and for a fee the blog owner can provide a review of the website in question. If you are interested in me reviewing your website, follow this link. The current cost for a review is $30.

My second review is for a site called WhoGets.com. Who Gets, is an online sweepstake site with a slight twist on the usual format. As with many sweepstake sites, there are multiple competitions running and anyone can enter the competitions for free. The difference with Who Gets, is that the winner is ultimately chosen by all the members of the site. All the entrants get to plead their case of why they should win and the one with the most votes at the end will get the prize. Before going further I should probably point out that competitions are only valid for US residents and even a few US states are excluded.

At the time of writing Who Gets had competitions running for Ipod Shuffles, clothing, DVD’s and some prepaid phone cards. So this should give you a good idea of the general prize values.

The Website

In terms of the site itself I found it to be reasonably well design, plenty of white space and easy to read pages. I did not really like the side navigation menu with it’s drop down options, but apart from that the site is pretty easy to get around. Each competition has it’s own dedicated page and the page contains some social bookmarking tools. There is also a comments function for members to post comments on each competiton. Registration is also free and easy to do.

Who Gets Home Page

The Concept

I have to say that I find the whole concept of this site extremely flawed, but I wonder if this is me being overly cynical. After looking around a few competitions, it became obvious that the person who would win would be the one who pleaded the saddest case. Now while this is an obvious thing, how do you know that these pleadings are genuine, with a website this is impossible. Also you read the comments on any competition and they are just full of “Please vote for me” messages.

I really cannot see the point of this concept, surely the model of a random contest winner is far more fair and fun than this pleading. I could understand if this was used in the case of a tie break, but to have it as your whole competition model just seems ridiculous to me.

Who Gets Competition Page

Overall

In terms of website design, there is little to fault with Who Gets, however as a concept I personally think it leaves a lot to be desired. By all means have a sweepstake website, but making everyone beg to win, I don’t think so.

Went to see Blades of Glory last night, the new Will Ferrell film set in the world of figure skating. If you don’t know anything about the film it is basically the story of two world class male figure skaters Chazz Michael Michaels (Will Ferrell) and Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder) who get banned for life from Figure Skating for fighting on the winners podium. They both hit rock bottom until they find out that they can re-enter champioships as a figure skating couple, but this puts them in direct competition with evil brother and sister team Stranz Van Waldenberg (Will Arnett) and Fairchild Van Waldenberg (Amy Poehler)

I have to confess I didn’t have high hopes for this film, I was kind of expecting Dodgeball on ice. Not that there was anything wrong with Dodgeball but it wasn’t the best comedy ever. So many of these films either fall flat after the first 40 minutes or outstay they’re welcome with bloated running times.

Blades of Glory however was hilarious from beginning to end. Ridiculously over the top outfits (just wait until you see the tron costumes), campness is abound as you would expect, along with homosexual undertones and even incest. Ferrell and Heder, play really well off each other, totally different characters but ultimately both the same at heart. Ferrell once again plays an overly macho, not very bright and in this case addicted to sex (including a very funny sex addicts meeting scene) character. Heder plays the innocent blue eyed boy, with a privileged and also cruelly skating focussed upbringing.

It’s not often I visit the cinema and hear lots of open laughing out loud from the audience. But this was one of those times, so I guess that is as good a recommendation as anything.