James Avery’s blog

March 31, 2009

Sorry for the downtime

I’m sorry that my blog was out of action this afternoon — this had nothing to do with any kind of legal threat from Adfero (note that voice recognition calls them added zero, I think that sums up pretty well too!), I just encountered technical glitch trying to upgrade the WordPress template.

Why is it with computing that something which works perfectly well on one site cannot then get repeated on a virtually identical site the following day? As always, the devil is in the details — it turns out that tiny little differences in the WordPress configuration file can result in the whole blog not working, and all you get to show for it is a blank screen — no error messages telling you where you have gone wrong, and nothing from WordPress themselves saying how to fix the problem.

Fortunately, I managed to pull myself away from my computer and take a break, rather than repeatedly going round and round in circles, which is so easy to do when faced with an eye explained coding problem like this. Back with a full stomach and a clear mind, the logical thing to do is to search out a few forums, but sometimes the obvious search term (WordPress reinstall) isn’t enough detail to get the answer. When I searched again for ‘ WordPress reinstall blank screen’, I came across a very useful post entitled solution to the WordPress blank screen of death, and this explained how the writer had experienced a similar problem I had, but he had wasted a whole day trying to fix it.

I realise as well that this WordPress upgrade means my blog should now appear back on the UK affiliates forum, so I guess that means I should try to make most of my posts relevant to affiliate marketing.

This is the first time that I’ve been blogging regularly since the end of 2007, a period when I went through a lot of, well let’s just call it personal turbulence — I now have a separate blog called Mind Pilot which looks at those issues. Of course, Flightmapping.com still has its own blog (Flightblogging.com), and this has really started to pick up over the last few weeks, so even though this covers topics from the point of view of the traveller rather than as a direct revenue earner (of course we add affiliate links where we can), I hope there are a lot of useful tips there for affiliates who are out and about, especially as independent minded travellers are exactly the kind of people Flightmapping has always been aimed at.

In order to try and keep this blog more on topic for affiliate marketing purposes, I’m also planning on launching a new blog shortly, which will be called Bling My City. This takes the concept of Web 2.0 to city development and asks how urban infrastructure can and should respond to the demands of the Internet age. This is where I will park most of my political rants, as I think it is fair to say that most politicians and city fathers are well behind the game when it comes to working out what citizens and consumers really want. This blog won’t be a strictly affiliate blog as such, but I hope it will make interesting reading.

March 30, 2009

Adfero = Do Fear!

Filed under: Blogging — Tags: , , , , , , — admin @ 10:51 pm

Well, I’ve had my supper and calmed down a bit, down some work, and gone back online.

It looks like Adfero are experts at snuffing out anyone who doesn’t like them.

This hasn’t just happened on A4U - where Sean Hofer, Adfero’s online spokesperson admits that they asked other blogs to remove posts which ‘weren’t substantiated’ - a similar thing happened on another business forum, except that in this instance, the administrator publicly said that he had got a ‘take down’ notice from Adfero.

Does it surprise me that Adfero, who’s slogan is supposed to be ‘bringer of news’ is an anagram of ‘Do Fear’? Perhaps their slogan should really be ‘bringer of sues’.

 Note - I should point out that the above comments refer to Adfero Ltd, and the Adfero DirectNews product. It does not relate to Adfero Group, a Washington DC based media agency.

Adfero DirectNews are incompetent - and if I can’t say it on A4U I’ll say it here

I really don’t like companies which go round with a big wooden stick and try to clear up what others say about them on the internet. There has been a thread running on the A4U forum for quite a while about a certain Adfero - “bringer of news”. I could go on and on about the troubles I had with them, but it is feeding time, so I will keep this brief, make sure people know it is out there, and publish any more that is needed later.

The key discussion boils down to Adfero’s claim that:

“DirectNews does provide unique content – we are very aware of the dangers of providing duplicate content to a website and ensure everything we do is unique.”

In our case, this was about 50% right - when the story was unique, it was because the incompetence was on such a grand scale that no-one else could match it. I repeat again (well, as said on A4U about 3 weeks ago, but since mysteriously disappeared), according to Adfero, the Costa Del Sol was in Morocco, and Granada was a spice island walled city in the Caribbean - these are the facts of the so-called news they provided to us.

The rest of the time, the stories were often directly taken from other press releases - any news company will do this to some extent, but there should always be some editing involved, but not in the case of Adfero - again, specifically, I refer to the story they gave us about new BA flights to Algiers, which matched the BA press release we got verbatim.

Adfero then say that they got other blog posters to take down their comments because stories were “unsubstantiated” - I can certainly feel the fresh blow of their censor’s axe coming down tough on anyone who doesn’t like them.

Well, this will not do - an internet company providing news in the 21st century should be able to take a bit of negative commentary on the chin, and should not have to threaten other blogs and forums which say things they don’t like.

Adfero, when you read this tomorrow, please take note that this blog is the personal opinion of James Avery, and relates to the former contract between yourselves and Flightmapping Ltd. The opinions are my own, but if you take issue, you can email ja @ jamesavery .co.uk.

Note - I should point out that the above comments refer to Adfero Ltd, and the Adfero DirectNews product. It does not relate to Adfero Group, a Washington DC based media agency.

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