An update blog for mredkj.com

The following questions are being asked in the mredkj.com survey:

Should mredkj.com have banner ads?
Will you come back to mredkj.com?
Would you pay a micropayment for content?

banner ads
In this essay I lean against having advertisements. I'm still not a big fan (especially pop ups and other intrusive ads), but Google's AdSense is a welcome kind of ad. If mredkj were to have ads, it would probably be AdSense.

come back?
Most people who arrive at mredkj.com get there from search engines to answer specific questions. I get the feeling it's usually a one-time visit.

micropayments
It's been a while since I've researched micropayments, but I was curious what people thought of it. The survey question doesn't even indicate how much the payment would be, but it doesn't matter, because mredkj has no plans to implement any pay-for-content system.

Update: Comments have been closed for this entry.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is basically the process of improving search engine results for a site. This can either be deceptive (including false keywords, link exchanges with unrelated sites, etc.) or legitimate (putting up content that's worthwhile). But even with worthwhile content, it's nice to get the word out.

I've been trying to get novusoft.com some increased traffic. (novusoft is our shareware/freeware site) As the SEO effort continues, I'll be posting my experiences here.

One way to get the word out about a software program is to submit it to download sites. Easier said than done. Here's a brief summary of what I found out.

There is a standard called PAD for filling out software information in an xml file. That way, the information can be parsed by download sites without having to manually enter it. I thought that was pretty cool, so I created a PAD file for one of the files at novusoft.

Next up, finding a download site. Two of the biggest sites are download.com and tucows.com. I registered with both of them, but to get software listed they charge a fee. Download.com (actually upload.com for submitting software) has its Listing Options easy to find, but I couldn't find the pricing for tucows unless I went all the way to step four of their Add Software process while signed in. I've already closed the window in disgust, so I don't know the prices. However, it didn't seem to be a listing fee, but rather a pay to get a better place in the review queue. And by the way, upload.com had an easy mechanism for referencing a PAD xml file, but I couldn't figure out if tucows supported it. They didn't mention PAD anywhere.

Disappointed by both of the big download sites, I may have to try the smaller players. Plenty to choose from.

It may not exactly be a denial-of-service attack, but the same IP address has repeatedly made requests for NumberFormat151.js and NumberFormat151nc.js (I'm talking hundreds of requests). The server is now responding to those requests with an HTTP code 416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but maybe somebody is using a utility to check for updates. Checking the existing files wouldn't help anyway. I don't update any of the .js files once I publish them. I always put up a new file when a new version is released.

If it keeps up, I'll have to find out what my host can do about blocking that IP.

Refer to mredkj page: numberFormat.html

This blog will serve as a companion piece to mredkj.com, which is an unfocused programmers resource. If I can get people to comment here, it might be a good way to discuss meta data about the site.