philsmy.com

Author: phil

  • YYZ and air Canada – reinforcing my negative feelings

    It’s rare, even for my very cynical self, to have so many negative things to say in such a short period of time about an airport and airline. I am writing this in terminal 1 of toronto’s pearson airport. Not from the lounge. More on that in a minute. Now, I fly a lot. In…

  • BannersBroker… verdict: scam

    Well, it’s not an accusation I level lightly, but, I have no option but to conclude that BannersBroker is in fact a scam. To summarize my experience with this ‘ground breaking revolution in internet advertising’: I did the OPPOSITE of what most people are doing with BannersBroker. I didn’t sign up for an ad/pub combo,…

  • BannersBroker – Another 10 days of silence

    Well, just to keep things up to date I thought I’d mention that another week has gone by and still no response from BannersBroker. We’ve had their ‘ads’ on LotteryCanada.com for over a month now. In that time LC has had over 1.1 million page views, half a million visitors, etc etc. BannersBroker still refuse…

  • BannersBroker – publisher reports still not forthcoming

    A month ago we started running ads from the ‘new internet sensation’ BannersBroker on LotteryCanada.com. At the time I was a little concerned and disappointed that unlike every other ad network BannersBroker offers NO statistics (real time or otherwise) on their site. So – I live-chatted with their technical support person on August 16th who…

  • BannersBroker – forgot to mention

    In my last post I complained about the poor service that BannersBroker provides what should be its most valued assets – its publisher network. But I forgot to mention that most of the time this is the ‘exciting’ ad we are displaying on our site: BannersBroker claim to have 100,000 people pumping out ads. And…

  • BannersBroker – a very poor publishing network

    Recently I’ve heard a lot of buzz about something called BannersBroker. It is supposed to be a ‘revolutionary’ change in how advertising works on the internet. Their focus is on getting people to sponsor adspace that they sell. They then give you a slice of the money. Whether that works or not I can’t say,…

  • Toygaroo… the final chapter is numbered 7

    Sadly today Toygaroo announced that it was closing down. It has been an interesting and exciting ride for me. And I worked with some great people. But, not every business works. What seems good on paper doesn’t always pan out. Over the past 20 months I’ve received some great feedback from people who love the…

  • Betting it all on Red… is Apple the investment of a lifetime?

    For those of you who don’t follow the stock market you may not know that in the last 6 months Apple’s share price has gone from $380 to £610. That is 60%. If you (or I) had invested more just 6 months ago you’d be doing pretty well. For every 10k you’d have 16k now.…

  • Professional Darwinism

    One problem people of my personality type have is this love of starting things and an inability to finish them. Start new projects, blogs, businesses… anything. I am very guilty of this, as a quick google will confirm. But recently there have been a lot of upheavels in my life and this has brought this…

  • I stink: Why I failed at NaNoWriMo – and why I am ok with that

    I tried, or I think I did. But I failed. NaNoWriMo has come and gone and I got 1/4 of the way to the finish line – which by anyone’s measuring is pretty dismal! The problem was this – 1/4 of the way into November I went to the place where a chunk of my…