A New Small Business

OK, so now I have started Hollis Internet Marketing and I am building websites and marketing small businesses in my area. It is going fairly well, but it's not really a living yet.

I have a lot of hope that eventually it will develop into an honest-to-goodness business. And one of the problems, according to my accountant, of working "for the man" is that, while you do have a job and you do get paid, there is nothing you have invested in. With Hollis Internet Marketing, I will actually build an investment.

One of the things that i hear a lot about is that Republicans favor small businesses in their strategies. Well, I sure don't see anything coming my way from them. They tell me that my taxes will go down if I vote for them, but my taxes didn't go down appreciably under Bush and they indebted our nation horribly. Fact is, in order to get the services we all want, we need to pool our money, somehow. If it takes $1 Million to build a mile of interstate highway, we need to pool our money because I know for sure that I can't afford more than a few yards, let alone a mile.

They're losing the "less government" argument with me, as the development of the Department of Homeland Security was the largest increase in government bureaucracy since the 1960s.

I think there is this Mythological America that we all like to hearken back to. An America with a very small government, one where most people paid no taxes. Where government was pretty much nonexistent. It's not true, you know. There has always been government in the cities in America. And sometimes that government pretty much ignored its citizens to enrich those who had their hands on the reins of power (think Tammany Hall). but American was largely agrarian back then. Of course if someone sold you bad beef, you got sick. If your community wanted a school, you all had to pool either your money or your work and build a schoolhouse, then pool your money to pay a teacher -- usually supplying her with a home to live in as well as an income.

So there were taxes back then. We just didn't hate them that much.

And where "government" didn't exist, it was pretty scary. After all, when was the last time you and your wife went for a stroll and ran into a known prostitute? When was the last time you were asked to join up with a number of other men to run off or kill a thief? I don't see that posses are all that necessary today and I also don't see them accidentally shooting the wrong person. Instead, I generally see very good police work and very intelligent prosecutors who take the law seriously and not into their own hands.

Oh, and one doesn't go to one's barber for surgery, either.

I think that Mythological America wasn't all it was cracked up to be. We certainly didn't have interstate highways, storm sewers, paved streets with curbs that kept your yard from flooding from the runoff from your neighbor's yard across the street and public servants who are professional and not venial and prone to corruption.

Scanning

During the course of my work, I regularly scan documents and photos. Kind of goes with the territory, I suppose. I'm currently using an Epson Perfection 3170 Photo scanner. It can be set up to do multiple documents with a feeder (or at least it could back when it was sold) but mine is a simple flatbed that takes everything in as I lay it down on the glass.

Scanning takes a while and I have just spent the last three quarters of an hour scanning in 16 photographs for a website. I'm going to need to then edit these photos using Photoshop because the photos have faded a bit and the colors are a little off. I'm also going to need to trim them because the scanner picks up the area around the photo on the flatbed.

Epson's software used to work inside Adobe's Photoshop. But now it doesn't. Took me a while to figure out why.

Epson has written its Epson Scan software for the old Apples that use the Power PC chip. Like most Apple users, I was pretty shocked that Apple switched from their Power PC chips to the Intel x-86 series because Apple made a big deal out of how much more powerful their RISC chips, produced by Motorola and IBM were.

No matter. Apple created software built into its operating system that allows you to transition easily from Power PC to Intel. Because Rosetta handles the difference, virtualizing a Power PC inside an Intel chip, the user cannot really tell that they're running non Intel-native code. Also, I'm sure Apple told Intel that they'd have to continue to make a chip that virtualizes other processors easily and I'm sure Intel was happy to do so. I do note that no Apple computer uses the "trailing edge" Intel processors that many computer manufacturers put in cheap laptops and their cheapest desktop computers.

But here's the problem. If you are using one application that is a Universal Binary (read also has Intel-specific code), it will not accept a "plugin" that goes through Rosetta. And that means the Epson scanner won't scan documents directly into Photoshop, which was my previous workflow for scanning.

Well now, I'm all concerned. A good scanner these days is not free and Epson doesn't send you their new hardware as a trade-in if they have decided to not upgrade their software to the latest Apple operating system. I'm really worried that my Epson Perfection 3170 Photo scanner will be "orphaned" when Apple releases Snow Leopard, an operating system that they've been working on for at least three years and one that does not run on Power PC.

And I would love to go back to my previous workflow. Now, I need to Scan, Save, Open Photoshop, Import Edit, save instead of Scan in Photoshop, Edit, Save.

Anyone out there have a solution?

More AT&T Follies

OK, so AT&T Yellowpages decided to let my client out of his contract. And they did so when I started detailing where his hits were coming from. the guy puts in lawn sprinkler systems and apparently, in January (when nobody is thinking about their lawns in Connecticut) AT&T was claiming lots of hits on his site. So I started looking up the IP numbers. Lots of hits (in January) from Israel. Well, they do irrigation there and I can see someone searching for irrigation to do research. When I mentioned this to the gal from AT&T, she immediately wants to let him out of his contract. She has heard enough.

In the meantime, my Podiatry client has no website! AT&T YellowPages is holding on to his domain name, apparently to punish him and this is what you now get:
That's right you get this "call us and we'll let you continue to exist, when what they ought to have done was push the website to my web host. And they know that, I have had numerous conversations with them.

So today, I get this call from AT&T YellowPages and they're looking for my wife's business. They want to verify her address and everything. I did that, because I would like for her business to be in the printed book and on their on-line website but I would love for them to provide a link to her website.

Right away comes the sales pitch. A 5-page website for a low cost. Yeah, just like my Podiatry client. I tell them that she currently has a 29-page website. So what do they do? They hang up on me! Seems they are wholly uninterested in linking to anything other than their own overpriced sites.

AT&T Yellowpages scam

I have a client who has a nice website I designed. I landed him when he complained to his computer guru that his website wasn't coming up on any of the search engines. I took a look at his existing site and noted several things:

The site was put together using 1990s technology (and many sites still out there are). All of the HTML code was inline code and he was not formatting his website using CSS. That pushes you down a lot on search engines. I redid his website in its entirety and, within three days, his company was on Google's first page in their mapping section. That's unheard-of performance.

Back in December, 2008, he signed a one-year contract with AT&T Yellowpages to push people to his website. The salesperson claimed that he'd receive 60 visitors monthly. He was told that AT&T has proprietary SEO technologies and a whole lot of gooberspeak for a sales pitch. My customer took the bait.

First of all, nobody who has no access to the actual code on your website can "search engine optimize" your website. the way you do SEO is to clean up your site's code so that you don't have much inline code on your page. Also you want a site that is W3C compliant with standards and you can validate any site here. If the AT&T Yellopages salesperson told my client that they were going to SEO his website, he didn't know what he was talking about or was simply lying to get a sale. But there is another way to drive traffic to a website and that is to create inbound links.

And that is, essentially what AT&T Yellowpages did: They placed advertisements online for my client to try to "drive traffic." My client could have done the same thing. AT&T doesn't charge per click, they charge a monthly fee. And they mark up per-click ads.

I showed my client how to create a marketing campaign using Google's AdWords. As a result, he is paying Google directly around $100 to $150 monthly -- except when it is not useful for his seasonal business to do that. He has complete control. He can run multiple advertisements, he can make special offers, he can change the wording on a seasonal basis -- anything he wants. And it's a fraction of what AT&T Yellowpages wants.

So, now he wants out of his contract. And I looked at his AW Stats, which are collected by most good Hosting Providers and I don't see their claimed 60 hits monthly. AT&T Yellowpages sent him a spreadsheet showing 63 hits on his website in January. As my client installs in-ground sprinkler systems in your lawn, I'm not thinking that's credible because nobody is planning for sprinkler systems in the middle of winter in Connecticut.

And the funny thing is that their spreadsheet did not correctly add up the monthly total hits to a grand total! It was two short and there was no formula in the totals box! Someone just entered in a random number!

So today we were supposed to have a three-way conversation with AT&T Yellowpages at 9:00 AM. At 8:29, they want to know if we can do it on Friday. They're "having trouble coordinating schedules," despite the fact that this 9:00 AM conversation was set by them yesterday but proposed on June 19th by a gal named Audrey B. She wanted my documentation and I sent over the AW Stats I had collected since December that show that there are nowhere near the number of hits on his website (pre-redesign and optimization by me) as a result of their campaign.

Oh, but wait, can't do it Friday, can we do it Thursday?

It sounds to me like they're fishing for a time when I am not available.

In a way, I pity AT&T Yellowpages. The print version of their Yellowpages (which arrived last January) is one third smaller than last year's issue. And the AT&T Yellowpages book was sold last Summer, when Bush was refusing to talk about a recession and well before any sense of economic emergency, so I would suggest the downsizing of the print edition was not driven by a poor economy. People are just not going to a book any more to find companies to do business.

But taking money from customers and not performing on your end is not a good way to do business. I wish them luck in their uncertain future as more and more of their clients catch on to their scams.

Don't sign up with AT&T-Yellow Pages for Internet!

So I have been making web pages and things are going OK, for a startup. But I do note one thing: AT&T, when they get a website, hardly ever let go. I have a medical doctor who is outstanding in his field who has a website with AT&T and they're charging him a lot of money for it.

It's template-driven and limited to 5 pages!

The website I created for the Doctor has 42 pages. I charge less for the design than AT&T charges for a whole year and my web hosting fees are $10 monthly for a non-selling website! I don't know how AT&T justifies their prices.

But they won't let his URL go. They are pulling a passive-aggressive routine with him.

I do realize AT&T Yellow Pages is seeing a downturn due to the economy and I do have an appropriate amount of empathy for a company that is facing economic woes. But they're being very heavy handed here.

If you want to compare the two services, go to Dr. Fosdick's AT&T website and then go to the one I created.

Writing

I have started writing for The Examiner and many of the political musings I'm having should be found there. You can find my latest article here.

I'm still talking to people about making their websites. I've made a little headway but I am certain I need to get out more. Funny thing is I may have an actual video job coming up. With a little luck may make a little money off that. The person I've quoted is Gia Khalsa. She has a website and is currently teaching group classes on Sundays, which my wife attends.

We will see if she can front the money for a professional-looking set of DVDs. She has an issue with music for belly dancing, as she is afraid that the cost of the music would be prohibitive. She doesn't yet understand that everyone who writes music is interested in any kind of collaboration they can get. I think she'd find the licensing fees really minor -- though the costs of a lawsuit would be high.

I swear, the RIAA's actions recently have created a pattern of fear that is killing all art.

So it's the 10th of February. It would appear that Congress will pass a stimulus package. And that gives me some hope because people who are afraid to spend money might actually start spending. But I'm sure it doesn't spend enough and I'm also sure that lots of people think the same way. After all, if you didn't see a pretty massive check from the federal government coming right your way, you'd not really see the stimulus, either.

And that is the view most people have. 

I came across this chart that pretty much says it all. It was presented to Speaker Pelosi by the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

It shows a really dire recession in terms of job losses if this keeps up. On the basis of this, I see a hug indictment of the past administration and the past majority in Congress.

The green line in the chart is our current state of job loss. The blue line was Bush I in 1990 that Clinton got us out of and the red line is the 2001 recession that GW Bush got us into when he took office for his first term.

I spoke with someone today in the building trades. He told me people are absolutely not doing anything. Someone asked him to do a patch job of a leaky roof. He looked at the roof to offer an estimate and found that this roof had needed to be replaced for the last several years.

People are holding on to what cash they have. And that is a real change. But because we have been such a consumer-driven society for so long, that will cause deflation of our economy. So it's time for the government to get spending because the people cannot.

I hope everyone who has a job stays in it or is hired for something better. The reality may be different than my hopes.