The internet population already know how to mobilize… they are SOPA trained. It is easy to slip something past novices who are timid.

The internet is now full of battle veterans confident in their ability to use the skills they have learned and the power of their voice to take on governments.

The guy from the European Parliament assigned to investigate ACTA quit in disgust.

Any MEP who votes for the act will be widely publicised, thus harming their chance of re-election and will no doubt subject them to extreme financial scrutiny.

It is likely I will get a few comments accusing me of being a supporter of piracy.

Certainly the act in some ways will affect me as a content publisher on this blog.
It affects me as the product manager of a multimedia publishing platform, uQast.com – our aim there is to help rights owners who create content make money from their own content
I worked in the software and computer games industry for 15 years before devoting myself to online endeavours.

So if anything I should be for ACTA, not against it.

Ultimately I haven’t read it… and that is the primary issue today… secrecy. The act has been signed which may affect the rights of my generation, and that of our children.

Save your bullets – wait until you can see the whites of their eyes. The complete document will leak even if not intentionally published, and then will be time for serious comment.. and action.

More on Techmeme of course

Here is a link to the original 720p mp4

Some of the points raised in the video

1. We need to avoid a cartel of top sites with limited access, especially with Ggoogle and Facebook currently buying ads from each other in the free market.
2. Identity is important and both Twitter & Facebook fail to provide a method of bi-directional ownership – the “Don’t Be Evil” bookmarklet fails by linking Mark Zuckerberg’s Google+ to a Quora topic page about him… not his actual profile (if he has one) – it is possible for Google to do fairly well with some cases, e.g. if I have authorship with my blog, and I have bi-directional links between my blog and Twitter, that might count
3. Google+ profile owners shoud get a choice of which links might be used
4. If you want to give Google hints, you really should fill out your profile better

A few of the links from the video

The evil don’t be evil bookmarklet
John Batelle’s post
Danny’s post

Experiment for yourself, but also understand that Google’s results are personalized and regional. E.g. I fully expect to have competition in the UK SERPs for the first twitter listing for Andy Beard, as there are at least 2 Andy Beards I know of there, and at least 2 others in the US.
Identity is a big part of Web 3.0 and both Facebook and Twitter currently fail in the ability to accurately verify a chain for most people.

The intent of the bookmarklet is to focus on the “user”

I want users to be directed to the profiles and services I vouch for
I want users to go to links that have been verified with a robust identity as being mine

Full coverage on Techmeme

I use Skype for team communication for uQast, direct customer support & 1-on-1 training, large group chats with my SEO friends from the SEO Dojo, and to keep in contact with friends & family.

With uQast we are also moving towards using a Skype based virtual PBX and Live Chat for a large proportion of our pre-sales communication.

Officially announced, what had previously been confirmed that Microsoft is buying Skype for $8.5B – significantly more than the valuation when Ebay sold a large chunk to investors whilst releasing its grip in preparation for a possible IPO.

So I thought I would take this opportunity to mention directions I would like to see Microsoft take the platform in the future, rather than speculate on how they will ever make a return on their investment.

Open Platform

Microsoft – please make Skype more open – other IM clients talk to each other – actually… do the same with Live Messenger as well.

Support XMPP / Jabber – forge open standards for other forms of communication

This page of clients that support XMPP actually asks “See Something Missing?”

Sure do… Live Messenger & Skype.

If you chat over XMPP feel free to nag people in some way to “upgrade” to a more secure or flexible client… if that is the case.

Some of the things we want to do with Skype we currently can’t because custom development costs would be to prohibitive, so many of our staff may end up using Google Talk or another XMPP supporting client, and client records may end up fragmented.

Screen Sharing – One To Many

I know that the big push has been for video chat to support more users, but adhoc screen sharing to multiple users on an audio conference is much more useful.

That being said I am not saying that is something I want to pay for – for large pre-arranged webinars you can use a dedicated service.

Conversation History & Search

Skype search is terrible – a conversation between Joe Bloggs and Andy Beard is different to a conversation between Andy Beard & Joe Bloggs, and you can only search within a single conversation history at a time.

I typically have updates in 10-20 conversations every day, across 2 Skype accounts and finding a reference someone made in one of them, even if you remember who made the reference is like finding a needle in a haystack.

There also needs to be significant improvement in the way historical conversations can be migrated between multiple desktops and mobile devices – some current conversations do get populated over time, but it is a very hit and miss affair. I want to be able to access 6 or 7 years of history which took place on multiple PCs.

Online Business Integration

This can come in a number of ways

• Click to Call
• Live Support
• CRM Integration

I can certainly see Microsoft buying an outfit like Invox or IfByPhone in the near future

If small business owners have to get in the habit of having Skype always on, because that is the direction their leads come from, there is without doubt a way to monetize that with advanced features, and Skype Out will also become more prevalent.

System Hog

On my windows laptop I used to deliberately run older versions of the Skype client and switch the extras off because I found the resources it used only surpassed by Firefox among applications I needed to have “always on”.

These days I am running 2 copies of Skype side-by-side using the /secondary option you can set by the command line, and my 64 bit Windows 7 desktop system can cope with that comfortably… but that doesn’t mean the client isn’t a system hog.

Always on applications such as IM clients need to be more streamlined.

I’m Sure You Have Your Own Bugbears

These are just a few things that affect me on a daily basis – what would you like improved on Skype?

This is a presentation I did live for the current uQast founding affiliates at that time. It was presented live but I hope most of the audio is understandable.

The keyword term used in the search engine visibility example was “Body Wash”.

We still have the doors open for 2 more weeks for founding affiliates to get in at a special fixed rate before we switch to monthly subscription with our chartered launch.

There is a special offer only available to webinar attendees.

I have spent the last 5 months working with the uQast team and my official role is uQast Product Manager… the viral SEO features I spent a long time working with our development team refining the code and I am confident no one does it better… but it is only a start.

Very soon we strap on the booster rockets for rocket propelled Video SEO giving people a reason to share great content.

I am an employee/consultant with uQast, an affiliate and power user, and the video seo features are my baby – damn yes I am biased.

But there are all kinds of ways to achieve your quota including various forms of arbitrage.

I read today via the MaxCDN blog that SimpleCDN service is in deep trouble – some of their suppliers have apparently pulled the rug from under their feet leaving them with an inability to supply bandwidth to their clients because they no longer have servers to do it.

Note:  I have a sponsorship deal of this blog with MaxCDN and am one of their affiliates, but I really only worry about the affiliate program for large clients with direct referrals – if you have a large site that has high bandwidth demand or needs acceleration, drop me an email via my contact form and I can help you evaluate whether they would be a good partner.
If you check the blog post I think they have a good deal for former SimpleCDN customers or those that just need some continuity until they can recover – I hope SimpleCDN make a little money from people using the coupon code “simplecdn”

The CDN Dog Fight

SimpleCDN have apparently been using infrastructure provided by SoftLayer and Hosting Services, Inc.

That to me sounds like their 10TB and 100TB offerings.

Who in their right mind would offer 100TB of bandwidth with a single dedicated server and not expect it to be used in some way to serve media in large quantity?
They also have unmetered… of course who is going to buy unmetered unless they intend to really use the bandwidth.

Part of the 100TB terms of service state

A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is prohibited from running on our network. Special requests to run CDN services may be approved on a case by case basis. Failure to comply with this policy will result in the disabling of all hosting services.

I don’t know whether they had special permission, or how long that term has been in force.

If someone was going to rely on a hosting partner for a huge amount of bandwidth it seems to me they would check the terms of service, and make any special arrangements.

But Hosting Services Inc also run VPS.net and their own CDN services. Until recently they were Akamai partners until Akamai decided to pull the rug from under their feet, and in a quick shuffle they switched to using Level3.

• This sounds to me like SimpleCDN had a deal
• Hosting Services Inc had had enough of SimpleCDN undercutting them on CDN services using their own hosting plans and decided to terminate them at very short notice, in much the same way they themselves were terminated by Akamai. The value proposition SimpleCDN vs Akamai compared to SimpleCDN vs Level3 is significantly different, such that SimpleCDN are without doubt more of a direct competitor of VPS.net than they were previously.
• That sucks, hense MaxCDN’s offer and me being annoyed and writing something when I should be working

I haven’t had a chance to contact Hosting Services Inc or Softlayer for comment, I am meant to be working on other stuff so just need to get the news out in the hope that it helps a few friends recover from downtime before Christmas.

For whatever reason you don’t kill people’s hosting just before Christmas in this way

Some Twitter Chatter

@SimpleCDN Heard about your predicament. I'm working at MaxCDN and we may be able to help. Call me at 818-284-9829. Cheers, Samir Said (CSO)

December 11, 2010 5:48 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@sbbsam

Samir Said

Latest updates on SoftLayer illegal actions: http://admin.simplecdn.com/

December 11, 2010 5:59 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

Our engineering team can help you get up and running on CloudFront right away, and we've so far heard great things about MaxCDN.

December 11, 2010 6:00 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

@QuickWebHosting Us too, but in our case they illegally terminated our services. Hope that didn't happen to you too.

December 11, 2010 6:03 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

@AddToAny We apologize, and are working on alternative service - and we can help you move to another provider in anyway possible...

December 11, 2010 6:11 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

@AddToAny We'll post any additional updates on our feed, and via this site http://admin.simplecdn.com/ regarding SoftLayer illegal actions.

December 11, 2010 6:11 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

@EastOfAnywhere Right now we don't know for sure - SoftLayer's actions are unprecedented and are doing all we can as fast as we can.

December 11, 2010 6:28 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

@TVMeuBrasil We are doing everything we can - at this point UK2 & SoftLayer are sticking to their goal of illegally forcing SimpleCDN down.

December 11, 2010 7:20 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

@cloudharmony SoftLayer and UK2 / Hosting Services terminated our infrastructure (hundreds of servers) with no notice and no reason.

December 11, 2010 7:20 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

@sidepodcast This was an effort by both UK2 and SoftLayer to remove SimpleCDN from the market.

December 11, 2010 7:22 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

@Beaker We feel WikiLeaks pain - we pay these guys THOUSANDS, but still they terminate us for no reason with no notice. SoftLayer is bad bad

December 11, 2010 7:23 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

@jprovo They did cut SimpleCDN off without a valid reason and no notice. Sure we'll go to court, but that doesn't really help our custms now

December 11, 2010 7:25 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

SoftLayer is not responding to any of our customers or complaints at this point - please keep contacting them, but they may hang up on you.

December 11, 2010 7:27 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

@sidepodcast Obviously we have a lot to share about this - but you know how it is; waiting for the lawyer okay first, etc.

December 11, 2010 7:52 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

@sidepodcast Our goal is to minimize impact to customers, even if we have to move them to other providers. Thanks MaxCDN for helping out!!!

December 11, 2010 7:53 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

@hareemca Many customers lost everything, as our pricing and feature set is / was second to none.

December 11, 2010 7:54 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

@Beaker As soon as we can release more details we will- but the actions were definitely directed specifically at SimpleCDN - yes we pay bill

December 11, 2010 9:15 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

@SoftLayer A lot of businesses rely on SimpleCDN, at least give customers time to find a new provider before cutting them off so soon.

December 11, 2010 11:20 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Y3com

Y3.com

@eluis Believe me, we understand. We are happy that MaxCDN is offering our customers a discount - but yes our offering is / was the lowest.

December 12, 2010 1:44 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SimpleCDN

SimpleCDN

@SimpleCDN do you guys have backup of the files? Freakin out here... have 750 customers relying on SimpleCDN + no backup! who do I contact?

December 11, 2010 10:47 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@leebensondotcom

Lee

VPS.NET Twitter Statement

This is interesting – when questioned, the VPS.NET MD knows nothing about it

interesting goings on the CDN market. first @akamai pull the rug on @vpsnet, now uk2 pull the rug on @simplecdn: http://bit.ly/hVtxFH

December 11, 2010 4:00 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@sidepodcast

Sidepodcast F1

with uk2 & @vpsnet effectively being the same company, i wonder if the two incidents are related? thankfully we moved content away long ago.

December 11, 2010 4:09 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@sidepodcast

Sidepodcast F1

@sidepodcast As the M.D. of VPS.NET - I knew nothing of this...so I can assure you it's not related to VPS.NET at all. ^NN

December 11, 2010 4:29 pm via CoTweetReplyRetweetFavorite

@vpsnet

VPS.NET

I have also checked cache dates on the 100TB terms of service and have a screenshot from 8th December which contained that clause.

I have had interactions with Ditlev from VPS.net and he always seemed like an honest guy who works hard to satisfy his customers.
However… the prime benefactor of SimpleCDN.com being killed off as a competitor to a UK2 service would be the CDN services within the UK2 group… which are run by VPS.net

So How Can You Get uQast For Free?

uQast For Free

• Be patient – eventually a version will be launched with a reduced feature set. You won’t have a /yourname or /yourkeyword URL and someone may even be using yours if it is at all competitive – a bit like domain names
  I don’t own andybeard.com Youtube.com/andybeard myspace.com/andybeard skype:andybeard and probably quite a few more.
  I regret not grabbing hold of those when they were available
  The exact details of the reduced feature set are not decided or I haven’t details, plus the feature set is a moving target with continual innovation. uQast Pro users will remain on the leading edge.
• Join the uQast affiliate program – I know it is a little corny but as an affiliate all you have to do is refer one person to uQast as you get UQast Pro for free. I am not sure whether that covers some of the other bonuses such as the V.I.P launch seminar or the magazine subscription, but it is a very fair deal.
  If you have a number of SEO clients this is an easy way to rack up one or more valuable media profiles that they control with high quality multimedia presentations and lead capture. It could possibly pay for itself with affiliate referrals as well.
  This is just the affiliate program for the launch – after launch everyone who has a uQast account is a uQast affiliate.
• Domaining – in theory there is a “domaining like” opportunity for premium names, though be warned there isn’t an interface set up to handle transfers – not strickly free but potentially a way to offset the cost of a portfolio

Why & Who Should Sign Up As A Founding Affiliate?

I am going to avoid “forward looking” statements about features that are just on the drawing board or have yet to be implemented.
This is intended to be “no hype” – my own evaluation of the potential of uQast some of it based upon what I initially saw in the platform, and partially from my work with the uQast team.

• Amazon S3 For Free – with some caveats

  If you look on using Amazon S3 for hosting streaming video for your sales pages or members areas, uQast can currently provide a very useful service with no bandwidth charges ever for uQast Pro users. This is especially useful for anyone doing a product launch where the bandwidth costs can be significant.
  10,000 optins watching 400MB of video is 4000GB of data – that is probably at least $500 in fees with Amazon S3. With Kajabi that is $1880.
  What you can’t offset in this way are things like theme CSS files, javascript & images for which you might use a conventional CDN service.

• Reputation Management With Lead Capture

  It is my belief that uQast is going to become an unsurpassed platform for lead capture from syndicated media. I have written blog posts about how unhappy I am with current offerings.

  If you have clients with budget (my readership between them probably have 100,000 clients with budget) – now is the time to get in, secure their names and keywords and not have to pay $200/month which is what I have heard the uQast Pro will eventually be priced at.

  uQast will be a landing page of choice to push up to the top of the SERPs for your clients because they will be able to present great content, and capture leads directly.

  I should note this isn’t a “Leapfish” like pitch – there are no guaranteed search rankings or placement for buying a URL with a uQast Pro listing that I am aware of. Rankings internally are based on quality, and external are in the hands of Google & Bing.
  A URL might offer a small SEO benefit, but the biggest effect is for branding.

• Existing sellers

  If you are selling digital products already, this is another marketplace that you can leverage. You might make some extra sales. The product listings are based upon a patent pending algorithm which focuses on quality and reviews, not how much money you have to pay for advertising – oh and being listed is free.
  Some systems focus only on the newest products currently being promoted – the hope is that products on uQast will have significant longevity with an emphasis on quality not hype.

• Upsell System

  For those selling digital products the upsell system in uQast is extremely easy to implement and doesn’t have some of the restrictions of competing services.
  Of note is you can track the upsell process whilst maintaining session for Google Analytics.
  Up until relatively recently the popular solution for 1-click upsells was Infusionsoft – $300/month for the version with cart and affiliate program. Then there is the added cost of reliable integration and support – I have seen figures of $15k-$20k mentioned by multiple people though there are cheaper alternatives.
  I have tried other systems, but the technology wasn’t necessarily as straight forward as you might assume from the sales information, and they relied on having your own merchant account.
  Clickbank can do upsells but last I heard that was limited to existing high volume partners.

• No Merchant Account

  Some people don’t have a merchant account or would have great difficulty geting one for a number of reasons, yet a merchant account or the equivalent from Paypal is the only way to do an upsell chain effectively – all uQast sales are processed by uQast – they handle all transactions, product delivery, refunds, chargebacks (cross fingers very few) etc
  Don’t ask me how much the fees are – in testing they were set somewhere below that offered by competing market places.
  I also can’t say how long it takes to receive funds – likely initially it would be subject to the refund period – I am not going to speculate on longer term possibilities.

• Revenue & Actions

  You can’t currently include opt-in forms, micropayment and a shopping cart in many other competing offerings. Ooyala does some of it but at a price – I believe Slideshare can do lead generation on a video embed, but that uses their proprietary system which as far as I am aware doesn’t post directly to your autoresponder forms.
  Note: uQast does not currently support document embeds.
  Some of the players that support payment or lead generation “in the player” actually achieve this using javascript. Whilst it is technically possible to get that working for viral syndication, I have yet to see anyone do it and there are other complications.

• Free player

  The cost of players can add up depending on which you use. JW Player isn’t free for commercial use yet I often see “6 figure” & “7 figure” marketers using an unlicensed player. Flowplayer in theory you can use the GPL version as I believe is used with some Amazon S3 solutions – I have never seen any WordPress plugin or other solution that actually used all the features of these players in a user friendly way – some come close, but add other incompatibilities

  Note: Forward looking statement – There is a major issue with hosting your own player… trust – to get a player accepted for embedding in Facebook, Twitter, WordPress.com, Google Buzz & appearing in Google Reader the owners of those sites need to trust the code. That isn’t something that will ever happen for self hosted code for small sites.
  If your long-term media strategy is based on using your own player, no matter how well the player is coded you are guaranteed reduced virality.
  The best you can expect if you used html5 is that the html5 video would be shown, but without your custom features.

  This is a forward looking statement in that achieving trust and geting the coding right for uQast will also be a long term currently unfulfilled goal, but as an established community it is a goal that is at least achievable.

My Offer For uQast

As I have mentioned in the comments it is hard to dedicate a huge amount of time for an extended period, and I have full time obligations currently with the uQast team in various ways.
However both for work and in various communities I have experienced the immense value of being a member of private chat groups on Skype. So I am going to set up a private Skype group for all my uQast Pro referrals where they will have direct access to me, and to each other. That means there is a little bit of a self help aspect if I am not around for an extended period of time, but I generally have Skype on most of the day.
The intention isn’t as a general chat room – high signal to noise.

I expect for this founders launch that room is going to be pretty exclusive for a few months and will help people get up to speed fast. Even if it ends up one-on-one that just hopefully means it is just better signal to noise.

It is also in some ways a benefit to me to get direct feedback from customers, though my bandwidth is limited.

This won’t be a route to unannounced information or special access to features, but there are likely some methods to do things that work better than others, strategy discussions etc which would be worthwhile.
This is not intended to be a supplemental channel for support issues of various kinds, as for many of those kinds of problems I am certainly not the person to contact
It also isn’t hand holding, and would most likely suit more advanced users with some technical skill.

Here is an affiliate link again so I can track things

It is hard to place a real world value on such a group/room – one SEO membership I belong to has such a group on Skype of typically 60 people and at times that can get a little noisy as there is general chat, but the level of direct feedback from experienced people is unsurpassed. The value certainly exceeds the $30/month you might pay for that if that is the type of community you can gain a return on time invested from.

As noted in my previous post, I have been subverted/assimilated by uQast and am working for/with them full time in various ways. Thus whilst I try not to be biased I am sure in some ways I am – I am aware of future plans, whatever bugs might be lurking etc, but I am trying to portray things as neutrally as I can and avoiding any hype.

This service is in many ways the successor to FreeIQ, but retains hardly any of the old code (which was pretty good and ahead of its time) – FreeIQ & uQast were founded by Brad Fallon who also is a founder & CEO of Stompernet.
I personally look on uQast and Stompernet as different entities (and legally they are). uQast isn’t about training – it is a software-as-a-service platform that enables stuff you can’t do anywhere else.

If you are not inclined to comment publicly, and you have questions my contact form is available or you can always find me on Skype:call-andybeard .

You really don’t want your clients stuck with uQast.com/HGDFSREW/brandname or uQast.com/LJHTDRSW/keyword

I have compiled a list of the reasons I believe people should be interested in uQast (and what attracted me in the first place)
It also mentions my uQast Bonus

Just over a month ago I watched a preview presentation of a new “software as a service” application called uQast. Whilst watching the presentation I had a browser open and did a little digging around, found the development site and started poking to see what it offered.

I then dropped a friendly email to the developers who I already had extensive contact with from their current & previous ventures with some feedback. I could see a lot of promise with the site, as I had with its predecessor.

Hints were made bilaterally that some more formal feedback could be provided in some capacity, though I really wanted to avoid a drawn out negotiation period, and I could see a rough diamond that I could help polish. Just polish… not cut & shape as most of the real work in creating a massively scaleable digital delivery platform was already done.

At the time I was in the process of puting together my own tightly integrated membership site here on andybeard.eu and to play a proactive role I was going to have to at least postpone those plans for a lengthy period of time.
There was also a ton of products I wanted to promote as an affiliate, articles & commentary that really needed to be written, including formally writing about my weird Pinocchio SEO stuff in public with over 2 years of research.

Somehow things worked out and I have been busy for the last month.

What Makes uQast Different To What I Planned?

For 5 years I have had a bee in my bonnet about creating a platform that in some specific way enables both publishers to publish content and affiliates to promote it with some unique technology or “special sauce” sticking it all together and allowing me to leverage my skills & experience.

uQast isn’t it

I say that in a good way – in many ways my entrepreneurial yearning to create a specific platform, and all the preconceived feature requirements that I had built up over a period of 5 years was a double edged sword – both allowing me to come up with solutions to complex problems almost at the drop of a hat, and at the same time instilling an urge to make uQast a surrogate of what I wanted to create rather than the established mission.

So the largest barrier to overcome in my own mind and in negotiations was that uQast is something different despite whatever significant synergies exist.

uQast Is What Exactly?

uQast’s mission is to be the world leader at collecting, ordering and monetizing valuable digital media content.

You could call that the short form elevator pitch I would probably have to worry about remembering if I was talking to important people.

Digital media content is anything that can be downloaded or streamed. Video, Audio podcasts, eBooks & white papers in PDF or doc format, even software in a zip file is possible.
In theory the platform could be used for hard goods, services etc though there might be issues with delivery validation for the credit card processors that have to be carefully thought about.

There is no advertising on the site – the majority of the business model depends on users actually selling products they create.

As well as being able to use promotional content on the site itself, it is envisioned to be able to embed the content on “any website in the world” and have actions & transactions take place “in situ”.
I say “envisioned” – the player has a lot of great unique functionality but it is currently most suitable for videos, but doubles as audio.
Transactions include actually buying product, signing up to a real email list right in the video player, giving a “tip” for a free video and various sharing and embed options.

Having the content playing on “any” website is going to take a little time. A lot of time over the last few weeks has been spent on embed code improvements, and it is early days yet. The long term goal is to get the videos embeddable on Facebook & Twitter via Oembed, and even viewable in Google Reader, Buzz etc.
There are special requirements to be met and obstacles to overcome – one example is player size – whilst the 640×360 widescreen player can be resized, some of the intenal windows for shopping can’t.

There is also some special functionality I want to add that will help take things one step further and make uQast the defacto platform for video SEO, though discussions are fairly early days.

The video player is highly customizable and it is something anyone can do.

One of the big features that is hard to equate is the tip jar – I don’t know how this micropayment system for free content is going to work. Ooyala has had micropayments for a while, and recently introduced Paypal Micropayments platform.
The uQast micropayment system is their own… there are some hurdles to overcome but it is functional.
Oh, and Ooyala is extremely expensive compared to any planned uQast offering I know about.

This Is A Long Tail Play… For The Little Guys

The long tail is a big deal

In any market, there are a few big players who seem to get all the attention.
But their importance, influence and ability to positively affect consumers are dwarfed by the combined effect of all the small players.

- Brad Fallon uQast Founder

It is also about quality content and a ranking system within search results based upon quality reviews from consumers, that is resistant to gaming.

Advance Features

There are, and will continue to be added lots of advanced features with an emphasis on making them surprising easy to use.

One area I have spent a fair amount of time testing has been the upsell system.

You define a number of offsite pages which will contain your various upsell and downpage offers, and uQast provides you with the “Buy Now” and “No Thanks” buttons to place on each page.

But being able to set up an upsell chain is one thing – being able to effectively measure it is quite another.

With uQast we are most of the way there as the shopping cart is maintaining the session all the way through, and thus we can achieve quite an effective sales funnel in Google Analytics.
Ideally there are a few things which still need to be added but I know at least one shopping cart I attempted to use on a project this year where the use of javascript with iframes made it almost impossible to set up a full funnel in analytics. Lots of custom programming to the javascript that embedded the iframe that called the sales buttons was outside my budget, but without it I had to kill the project as being able to demonstrate sales data was an intrinsic part of the project.

Andy Beard Subverted & My Most Biased Review Ever

For the last month or so my “computer home” as in what has been showing predominently on the screen of various PCs has been uQast, the Jira Bug Project & Issue Tracker being used, and various test domains – also a fair chunk of very specific research.
So I have been ripping the site apart trying to make things break all that time, though not to the same intimate level of detail as the programmers working on the project.

I could just publish a list of every outstanding bug or missing feature I know about – if you have ever spent some time delving through the WordPress trac system you would know that sometimes non-security bugs take months to come to prominence, and features might take years unless you code them yourself or they become “blessed”.
But that wouldn’t be a fair evaluation compared to the months/years of work that have already been invested in the project to get it to the current stage.
Development from my perspective is pretty nimble, there is good team co-ordination and dedication to achieve the mission, and create a phenomenal useful service.

This isn’t intended to be a full review of uQast but as the launch wheels have started rolling I needed to get some words out in the ether. Most likely in the next few days I will highlight some of the additional things I personally find interesting and feel important to mention.

And I have left tons of things out that I am sure will end up being raised in the comments… and we can handle them there.

Any questions… criticisms… fire away!

The thoughts about uQast in this post are purely my own and I have liberally peppered this post with referral links mainly because I love tracking stuff, but you might enjoy the 2 tier affiliate program that pays for a year. You can sign up for the launch affiliate program here.

Translation

Microsoft is dumping these blogs anyway, and maybe gaining some other value from giving 30M users to Automattic.

This is like upgrading Windows 7 to Ubuntu (yeah yeah yeah)

Problem?

Of those 30 million live spaces blogs, I bet 15 million of them don’t comply with Automattic’s rather strict terms of service, and of course Automattic don’t support any form of advertising unless you are a V.I.P.

Over a six month period, beginning today, Windows Live Spaces users will have the option to move their blogs to WordPress.com. To make this possible, we’ve created a brand new importer for Windows Live Spaces to WordPress.com. New Windows Live users will also be offered a WordPress.com blog when they choose to create a new blog.

That phrase is a little ambiguous but try this comment by raananbarcohen

@liamdaly — redirects will work forever and you can pick any WordPress.com URL you would like, and then map it with a custom domain.

Free Unrestricted 301 Redirects – Data Portability 101

I have complained in the past quite vocally about how badly Blogger/Blogspot treat people who leave their service by sticking interstitials in the redirects… I ended up a couple of months ago removing 100 pages of historical content back to Blogspot to effectively let it rot because there was no effective way for it to be an integral part of this site.

Microsoft need to find a way to 301 redirect their existing bloggers to whereever they require, as a free service, or WordPress need to provide that service for them. WordPress haven’t done that up until now.

The only way to move from WordPress.com is to pay a $15/year service fee for domain mapping. That is on top of the fees you pay for domain registration.

In many ways the most valuable thing you create when blogging is not the content, but the links to the content. You can always improve content, merge it together, even delete an article totally, but you have the option to redirect a visitor to something more current, and there is a search engine benefit.

Microsoft & WordPress.com need to come up with a better option because I know many real bloggers on Live Spaces who actually make a living from the occasional advert or affiliate link.

The headline from Techcrunch is misleading – this isn’t outsourcing it is selling out.

Their small businesses are effectively being terminated.

I have my own thoughts on the topic of course that I have mainly left in comments.

There was me thinking the whole point was to form a syndicate

• Better deal flow
• Stronger negotiating position
• More value add with varied skills and contacts
• Dispersed risk
• A players working with A players

Who wants to invest their money (or that of their LPs) with someone who isn’t maximising the chance of success.
Success is the balance – if the deals don’t maximise the chance of success of the startup then the investment strategy fails.

This also has parallels with the disturbing trends in Internet Marketing that are also being likened to collusion.

I also understand that the more (legitimate) money someone makes selling training or services to online marketers, in theory the better they can serve their customers.

You could also look on any form of press embargo as collusion – those with access to news in advanced have commercial advantage.
Would access to news in advance influence the tone of news coverage? Who wants to shoot the goose that lays the golden eggs after all?

Does it affect reviews in some industries? If someone has written a negative review of one of your products in the past, are you more or less likely to get access to review a product in the future.

Is being given beta access as a member of the press or a blogger with the future intention of writing about it in some way collusion? In some ways I think it is.

Confidential Letter – Redacted

In the latest episode of Angelgate Michael Arrington has posted a confidential letter from Chris Sacca to some of his fellow “Super Angels” – it is 3000+ very passionate words and a very interesting read.

But one section of a highly personal nature has been redacted.

Chris Sacca email

My days have been driven by a passion that makes it impossible for me to avoid the opportunity to help. Right now, 94% of my net worth is tied up in startups and I [REMOVED BY TECHCRUNCH]. I have every shred of my money alongside my founders, often buying their same common stock. No one but an obsessive idiot would ever allocate their money that way. But, I love what I do. And I know that goes for everyone on this list.

[REMOVED BY TECHCRUNCH] hmm?

I have already seen on Quora one person ask what could possibly have been removed from that 3000 word email that could possibly be more personal, and a few comments on techcrunch have jokingly added some suggestions.

So Lets Have Some Fun With It

Complete this sentence in the comments

Right now, 94% of my net worth is tied up in startups and I [REMOVED BY TECHCRUNCH]

Thus: Right now, 94% of my net worth is tied up in startups and I wish I hadn’t invested in Crunchpad.

Here is a template if you want to do your own.

Image Source: Crunchbase

Rules

• Keep it family friendly
• Stretch the truth as much as possible
• We want dead ringers to be redacted (for whatever fictional reason)
• This is just for fun/humor

Angelgate Recap

For anyone who hasn’t been following this story for the last week here is a quick recap, but there have been 100s of posts.

• A Blogger Walks Into A Bar
• Dave McClure Gets Mad
• Dave McClure Gets Really Mad
• Ron Conway Goes Nuclear
• Ron Conway Clarifies

p.s. I have no idea if Chris has any connection with Crunchpad in the slightest, but if he did, a reference like that in the email would be a dead ringer to be redacted.

Via Techmeme

Update

For another view of the troubles in Internet marketing Dan Thies (with a new blog) is well worth a read.
p.s. Dan seems to be testing duplicate meta tags (my tests show Google take the most restrictive)

Apparently there are some new features coming, but you might be better off looking at Raven Tools or RankSense (though Ranksense seems to be going through a revamp/refocus).

So this is not about Scribe SEO, but I had to mention it because Google have this nasty habit of stamping all over other people’s trademarks. They did it with one I helped establish many moons ago, to a project I am rather fond of, Chrome 3d Engine which I helped launch when it was a very early beta.

Google Scribe

Google have just launched in their “labs” what is currently just a writing/autocompletion aid which they have called Scribe.
Google Operating System has a writeup.

Earlier today I suggested to friends that today is LDA Day, but I suppose it can be semantics day, or related content day or information retrieval day just as easily.

This is what it looks like on the Google site.

So it is quite an intelligent auto completion interface.

So far… so good

But it is also a bookmarklet that can be used with (virtually) any text area. I found it currently unusable in the WordPress editor because of all the funky javascript, but I am sure that is something that will be fixed.

Being a bookmarklet that also means that there is an API used by the bookmarklet. APIs can be used to extract data though I am sure Google will be keen to restrict that.

Whether the data could be looked on as Google suggesting words that have meaning in a particular situation, or whether they are providing some alternatives for you to provide them with the correct choice is yet to be determined. I would think that would be a little of both. Google would do something similar to what is done with recaptcha… one word they are sure about, one they need confirmation on. So with scribe you might get 5 good choices, and 5 maybes.

Can Google Scribe be used for SEO? The phrase completions suggested seem to be human – what is suggested appears to be fairly accurate, but doesn’t necessarily allow for priority in certain situaitons.
It also doesn’t currently take into account personalization or search history – if I type in “Andy B” then the first suggestion is currently Andy Beal.
That result does have a correlation with the search engine results.

I found that interesting… maybe more interesting than the SEOmoz LDA tool.

It is not the same as search suggestions.

It could turn out to be a useful tool, or the API could be used to get a “wonderwheel” type effect, or something the same but different. That is useful for keyword research.
(via Techmeme)