| LED Digest 2308: Eyeballs and Eardrums |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Registration from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. December 14, 2006 Issue no. 2308 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== <Moderator Comment> ~ Looking for a Programmer ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Online Marketing for Classical Musicians ==-- ~ Phil Bowyer "Things are rapidly changing in the record industry..." ~ James Miller "...I have a friend, who has developed a booking system for classical musicians..." ~ Adam Audette "So how about a social networking site for classical musicians?" ~ David Yancey "...there is something of a boomlet underway for serious music..." --== The Email Crisis ==-- ~ James Kalassery "On most of our sites, our email addresses are displayed as images..." ~ Nancy Cardinali "...these solutions are at least one step up from mailto." ~ Richard Graham "It used to be good practice to have your URL(s) in your signature file." --== Website Accessibility ==-- ~ John Barendrecht "...Internet Explorer 7 allows you to zoom the page." ~ Al Toman "...1% of the 40 billion indexed web pages are valid, web-compliant web pages..." ========== NEW =================================== <Moderator Comment> Greetings LEDer, I'm looking for a programmer that's familiar with Zen Cart. I have a client that needs some help customizing his cart software, but all my contacts are too busy to take on new work (good for them!). If you can help please let me know. Also, I put a comment up on the site asking for feedback about the Featured Posts there. I'd love to get your feedback on that post: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1401/172/ Just to be clear - it's not really pertinent to the list - it's more about the site. So if that doesn't matter to you, skip it. Hope it's a productive week, Adam ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Phil Bowyer Subject: Marketing music > I have always been puzzled by why the big companies don't > seem to make more use of all the possibilities (marketing-wise) > that the Internet offers for promoting (classical) musicians. > So, why isn't this being done? Or is it? - Luis Diez, LED Digest 2307 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1399/55/ It is being done. I have been working on this for over a year, and launched my company back in July. I focus mainly with unsigned bands / artists in all genres. My company has several layers to it, which include profile pages with songs for bands (like a myspace), a radio station (internet based) and a magazine that tracks news from the music and related industry. I interview artists on the radio, and even do concert reviews, and every month we feature an artist. Things are rapidly changing in the record industry, and that "record contract" doesn't mean so much any more. Rob Halford of Judas Priest recently created his own label, and purchased the rights to all of his solo stuff. He now sells it off his own website and thru iTunes. Metallica is also selling music off thier website. The "big guys" are starting to follow the little guys. It takes a lot of work, time , and a love for music. But's it's a great time! Phil Bowyer Phibble Entertainment, Director of Operations & Show Host http://www.phibble.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: James Miller Subject: Marketing music Not really a reply for the site. But I have a friend, who has developed a booking system for classical musicians. Perhaps Luis and him need to be put in contact. James Miller Daisy Analysis: www.daisy.co.uk -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Adam Audette Subject: Marketing classical music Luis, I think you've tapped into future market ideas with this kind of thinking. Already we're hearing rumours out there from the marketing crowd that the future is in more niche- and topic- specific social media. For instance, Deals.com and others like it got a bit of coverage on this blog: http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles...dealscom.html So how about a social networking site for classical musicians? This could be fabulous. Incorporate a Digg-style voting system for individual artists, content, music, etc. There is huge potential in getting niche with these kinds of sites. The more focused these are the better. Here's a URL to try: virtuosoc.com or virtuosocial.com. Both are available and are spins on "virtuoso" and "social." Oh - here's an even better one - socialoso.com. Okay, now I've ruined it for you - let's see how long those domains last! I went ahead and registered socialoso.com to protect it for you - contact me if you'd like the domain and I'll transfer it to you for what I paid. The best advice I can give you is to go forward with your idea. Don't let anyone else dissuade you. Get started! If you do, no doubt the business model will change as your ideas evolve and adapt. You'll come up with ideas you never could have without a starting point. I love posting to the LED :-) Adam Audette -------- new post - same topic -------- From: David Yancey Subject: Marketing music Luis Diez poses the question why online marketing isn't being applied to the niche market of classical music. In spite of the lack of serious music exposure in American education, there is something of a boomlet underway for serious music, thanks primarily to upstart CD labels bringing down the price for a vast list of compositions, and thanks to a few popular and attractive "cross-over" artists. So the interest is there, clearly. More significantly IMO, it has been well proven that people who listen to classical stations and who prefer "good" music tend to be way up there as premium consumers. They also tend to be much better educated than the norm, and relatively articulate about their preferences. I have long assumed this intellectual independence would carry over to other lifestyle and artistic interests, as it clearly does in upscale travel, for example. It's a mystery to me why smart premium-niche marketers don't tap into this interest and parlay it back into their particular goods and services. As far as the larger market goes, however, sorry, Luis, but I'm not persuaded that serious music can compete for eyeballs (or eardrums) in sites and communities like MySpace, much less Youtube. People under 35 or so in the mass-consumer market countries have pretty much written off serious music as being hopelessly un-cool. Even so-called "cross-over" classical musicians face tremendous obstacles in getting through the phenomenal amount of mindless hip-hop, country, rock and other Britnified pap. Anything "smart" has now been tainted by pop culture as being of interest only to girls who cannot get a date, nerds and old people. So, while the web most certainly *can* be used to reach the serious music audience, it won't be via the conventional, dumb-downed mass-user sites. Similarly, interactively-driven "viral" marketing can surely be effective, but not along the lines used commonly by mass-appeal sites aimed at hormone-saturated young men: good music doesn't involve violence and women-hating, nor does it lend itself to a level of entertainment that these guys would want to see. Why bother with serious music lovers, then? Well, we think Luis is spot on in the key idea: globally, there are millions and millions of educated people who love serious music, and who *also* love quality consumption, quality entertainment, and premium services. For the first time, the web offers us a low-cast channel to reach them. The trick is *how*. We don't sell music; our niche is witty shirts and accessories for smart people. We are well along in developing special interest "micro-brands", such as our hot new "Appeteasers" for foodies. We have 3-4 more special (premium) interest microbrands on tap. Then, as we geared up for the holiday season, and realizing that serious music lovers also tend to live well, we concluded that we might be able to efficiently reach their gourmet tummies through their musical tastes. We recently were able to register the domain "JustDuet.com" -- the new brand will appear around Spring of next year, and bring (what some would agree is much needed) humor to a niche that is all too commonly perceived is seriously unfunny. How does this relate to Luis's question? Well, for starters we will introduce a specifically targeted affiliate network, one aimed at the many smaller sites who serve serious music lovers. We see a special-interest blog on the horizon, and lots of related content that definitely will engage these educated folks, but that today simply doesn't show up anywhere in a mass-audience web portal, or even newspapers, or any other easy-to-find way. We even see humorous short videos coming, some of which could well appeal to a large audience of people who might give serious music a try, even if they would not be caught dead in a concert hall full of smart people who are all sober. We'll adapt what we know about "online", in short, and try to aggregate this premium audience niche both for introducing our own goods and, especially, for the benefit of our web partners. We also recognize that a very large part of being involved with serious music is *offline*, however. So a substantial part of our effort after the initial stages will be aimed at working with local choral and amateur musical societies, schools, semi-professional musicians, and local orchestras. If our effort succeeds, we expect to become a natural venue for introducing new artists and groups. Maybe we'll someday sell tickets, who can say? David Yancey PS: Let me add my best wishes to all LEDers for a prosperous 2007! http://www.tootoographic.com -- Home of "Appeteasers", "Add Girl and Stir", "Texas Lost 'Em", and other Styles with Smiles -------- new post - new topic -------- From: James Kalassery Subject: Email > Do you have a nice code that us morons could use > to take the place of "mailto:' that is more secure? - Peter D'Aprix, LED Digest 2304 If you are using PHP, this is relatively simple. On most of our sites, our email addresses are displayed as images, so that they cannot be harvested by bots. In a few of our sites, these images are hyperlinked (to another php file), and when the links are clicked, the email client will open up. You can see it working here: http://rotary-district3200.org/email_sample1.php The code in this file is very simple, which could be incorporated anywhere in the page: ------------------------ <?php echo "<a xhref=email_sample2.php><img xsrc=wmemail.gif border=no></a>"; ?> And the code in the 2nd file is still simpler: <?php header("Location: mailto:name@ example.com"); ?> ------------------------ The bots will never get access to this second file, where the hard-coded email id is 100% safe. Therefore, we do not get any spam messages to these email ids. Of course, our catchall mailboxes are disabled. I believe if this could be done this way in PHP, this could be done in other languages like ASP, javascript, etc., as well. But, in plain HTML, this is not workable. Regards, James Kalassery jkalassery at knowbe dot com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Nancy Cardinali Subject: Email Peter, I'm no great whiz kid and I'm most definitely NOT a programmer, but I have run across several alternatives... and I probably heard of them from this list! 1) Use a form (like the one here: www.flyinpenguin.com/contact.html - go ahead and steal the code. You'll need the entire form, changing input fields as you see fit, and get the www.flyinpenguin.com/template.txt too) I recently posted here about this URL being used to send out junk. I don't know if the form has been hijacked. All I know is I get bounced email with something at flyinpenguin.com as the return address. Also, many have stated here that forms are not fool proof. 2) If you want the mailto looking link, you can use this service: http://www.automaticlabs.com/products/enkoderform (Looking at it just now, I see it encodes the form as well... hummm) It 'scrambles' the email address - supposedly the harvesters can't read this scramble. Of course, only a matter of time 'til they can! 3) That ole RSS thingy Joe Hallbrook mentioned... maybe you'll have to get on that one yourself, Joe! (LED #2301 & 2302) I'm sure many others more savvy than I have better answers, but these solutions are at least one step up from mailto. Good luck. Nancy Cardinali -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Richard Graham Subject: Getting round spam filters It used to be good practice to have your URL(s) in your signature file. These days I'm finding emails put into spam folders with even just one URL in them. Hence I've cut them from my emails. I've also set up a few other accounts so, for example, when customers have a gmail address I reply using my gmail account. This seems to help emails get through. John Barendrecht wrote: > Everyone is talking about Web 2.0, when > what we really need Email 2.0. Yes, yes, yes! Please, please, please! be genki, Richard Graham http://www.genkijapan.net -------- new post - new topic --------- From: John Barendrecht Subject: Accessibility > In order to reach the minimum standards - tested against > the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) - websites > needed to provide adequate text descriptions for graphical > content so that visually impaired people could 'read' pictures. > 93% of the websites failed to meet those guidelines. - Quoted by GJ Berg, LED Digest 2302 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1391/55/ I noticed the websites they quoted as excellent, did not have alt text for spacers. Running the sites through an online "accessibility checker" did fail. James Miller (2305) commented on text size. James, like you, I'm getting older. I have a 27 inch, 16 x 9 monitor. The cost is down to $649, and about $1,000 for a 37 inch 16 x 9. One other thing you may want to do is download Internet Explorer 7. It allows you to zoom the page. It will increase text size, menus, pictures -- everything. From 125% to 400% and custom sizes. On a large 16 x 9 monitor, you don't even have to scroll left/right, especially on those 800 x 600 designs. Webpersons may want to check their sites in IE7. Microsoft went from quirks to standard rendering and some CSS doesn't work properly. You can increase the font size in your email reader. You don't have to read LED in that tiny text size that our moderator chose. (Just kidding, Adam; text size is adequate for me). For the shampoo, those cute wallet-size magnifiers with LED light are great, especially since you're probably not wearing your glasses in the shower. But who has their wallet in shower? Best regards, John Barendrecht http://www.centralhome.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Al Toman Subject: Accessibility > When I run out of my shampoo, I then have to decipher > which of hers are shampoo. Several times, I've tried to > wash my hair in conditioner ... - James Miller, LED Digest 2305 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1395/55/ Laughing me behind off ... Well James, at least there's 2 GUYS in this world walking around with well-conditioned hair~! Been there. Done that! > A further 73% failed to make the grade > because of their reliance on JavaScript [Quoted from the BBC article on accessibility] We have to be careful, here. Firstly, many of the "accessibility" validators are in beta, are subjective, or are not sufficiently designed to handle accurate testing. Javascript is a W3C compliant script and most likely the most-widely used client-side script across the W.W.W. (HTML is a markup language). I use javascript to drive pure css dropdowns (examples at http://studio9.webterra3.com). If javascript is turned off and viewed in text-only browsers (css turned off) the content degrades nicely and is readable. However, the presence of this "javascript" fails (warning advisory) in some accessible validators. There is absolutely no reason why a text reader cannot work its way through javascript. It's time to speak to text reader 'gineers, hey eYe Be Em? Javascript is part of the W.W.W. backbone. The main reason, I would think, folk turn javascript off is because of security issues, of sorts, regardless whether they're real or imagined. > ... provide adequate text descriptions > for graphical content... If you own or webmaster a BUSINESS web site and you're not alt attributing your images, you deserve to be run over by a Segway and beaten with a white cane (I've got the tire marks and welts to prove it, too) ~! A short demonstration appears on http://studio9.ws/scripts/alt.html > Ninety eight percent did not follow > industry web standards My testing facility shows less than 1% of the 40 billion indexed web pages are valid, web-compliant web pages that follow good design practices. In reading Adam's archive, I read some disappointing comments from a rather well known web page optimizer. Tsk. Tsk. Al Toman studio9.ws ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Happy birthday, Mom (Nanny) - love Adam, Sally, and Lilly :-) |
