Merry Christmas (a day late) and Happy New Year (five days early).
I’m on vacation and will not be posting to bizhack for a week or so.
(Unless I am hit by some burning inspiration that cannot stay inside.)
Tags: hiatus, vacation, bizhack, john koetsier

No, this site has not been hacked, and no, I have not decided to change my sexual orientation. Rather, this is a cautionary tale on the foolish choosing of domain names.
There exists, unfortunately, a company called Pen Island. Said company wished, unfortunately, to have an eponymous domain name: penisland.com. Said domain name, unfortunately, is […]

Nicolas Koenig recently posted ModernCaptcha, a comment spam protection technology inspired by Seth Godin that is far easier to use than most captchas.
On the one hand, this is great because captchas suck. Hard. They’re difficult to read, annoying, slow down the user experience, and make people feel stupid when they can’t get them right.
In […]

Missing windows (1)

Originally uploaded by johnkoetsier.

Working at home today … we’re getting all the windows in our house replaced.
The installers follow a sort of factory assembly-line model: first they take all the old windows out; then they put all the new windows in.
Which means, of […]

I’ve been working through a lot of product identification and differentiation lately, and this Seth Godin post really hit home: the story always matters.
The most important point:

“A commodity is only a commodity if you treat it like one.”

So: are we going to treat our products as commodities, or will they be the pages we write […]

Blogging software: $0
Hosting account: $20/month
Half-decent Technorati rating: $very expensive (in time!)
Spammers spamming anti-spam posts: priceless

(Make sure the page you’re linking to works.)

Tags: adwords, google, ads, john koetsier

Here are a few things that have caught my eye lately. Usually these types of articles hang around in Safari tabs for days until I stick ‘em up on del.icio.us. Maybe I’ll start just blogging them, link-blog-style, from now on …

How to have an overnight internet success story

While any compelling Internet service can benefit from […]

OK, I am Judge Glenda Hatchett, am black, female, a lawyer, a judge, and would love to come speak at your next corporate function for $35K.
Please send me all your inquiries and requests for help. After all, everyone else does.
Ahhh … the “wisdom” of masses …
Tags: judge glenda hatchett, john koetsier, […]

Well it’s the morning after and I have to decide if I can still live with myself.
Yesterday, of course, I dipped my toes in the (murky?) waters of paid reviews with Review: Search Engine Marketing Glossary. Today I see that my review has been accepted and I’ll be paid $30.
A buck a minute isn’t […]