peteboyd

Inside Webmaster Tools is “Fetch” tool. It allows you to submit any page to Google. You can then also have Google index the page. When you fetch a time stamp is recorded and a full HTML copy of the page too.

I am not sure if Google uses this to prove which is the original copy. Most website owners don’t know this exists. So it’s hard to use it as proof of the original, because the original creator may not even use the tool.

However, if everyone started to submit key articles, then it theoretically could compare the two fetches and decide which is earlier. It could be automated too with sitemap uploads as you post content.

Moreover, you could then use this as evidence in a DMCA take down that your copy is the earliest. Anyways, there are ways to prove earliest content.

This is why I stopped practicing law and started my own web design company where I could set my own schedule. We strive to work 35 hour weeks and usually come in around 35 to 40 per week. Burnout will happen at higher numbers.

I believe it was because they were going to be flying through a war zone and did not want the US and Pan Am insignia on the planes. Of course, it actually helped them when they flew into the Dutch port as the Dutch flighters saw the US flag and backed off.

We just had a clients website copied (a law firm no less). We filed a DMCA notice and the site was down within a day. It's a very powerful tool if your work has been copied, so long as the infringing site is in the US (our owned by a US hosting company).

I did not know this existed until recently, but you and the article poster probably have a very good claim for diminished value and loss of use. Basically non use of your high-end car for many months.

I recently created a short online quiz for a law firm in Florida that checks to see if you have a claim. It was a completely new area of law that I did not even know about. It does email your contact info at the end - in case you want to be contacted.

Anyways if anyone is interested it is at http://www.diminishedvalue.law/quiz/ and is based on Florida law.

I am not trying to hype the firm. There are other firms that do the same thing. I just happen to know about this one.

Keep in mind it was NOT an all or nothing proposition for using the Shuttle. We launched satellites while the shuttle was running using Titan, Atlas, and Delta rockets. I would imagine if it was more cost efficient to use those rockets, they would have done so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Titan_launches and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V

We are definitely peak NFL for several reasons: 1. Head trauma. People watching now actively know about it and it turns some people off. Those who don't care about players getting injured, then gripe the game is being changed. So the NFL is caught in the middle of losing fans for putting out a rather barbaric sport of causing head trauma against those who think they are making the game worse. 2. Stadiums. Owners simply were greedy and pushed to far. This turned off various fans and groups. 3. Kids. A lot of parents don't want their kids playing. So that will have an impact not on the player pool, but those who will watch and live the sport later. 4. Time. Games are way to long. It's 3+ hours for 10 minutes of action. Seriously, Comcast edits all games and you can watch them a few days later. They take 8 to 10 minutes to watch all plays. You lose the anticipation, but still too many timeouts and stoppages. 5. Watching patterns. Many people, escpecially those under 30, don't watch tv for 3 hours in a row. They are doing multiple things. They want bite size content. NFL simply does not fit into that currently, unless you have the red zone package. That is the only way I can watch football now, unless my home team is playing (Dolphins). Even for the I watch flip back and forth and do other things. 6. Costs. It is ridiculously priced to go to a real game. Parking is $25 to $40. Tickets are $100 each for decent seats. Food is 4x what is actually costs. Just crazy. Plus I don't have a full day to kill, to drive, park, wait, and watch the game. Easier to turn on at home. Unless it's a big game or playoffs, live NFL is not worth it at all.

2015 and 2015 they suspended having blackouts. The NFL will re-evaluate the rule after going through the season. The blackout policy was instituted in the early 1970s when NFL teams relied primarily on ticket sales to generate revenue. The rule stated that if a game wasn't sold out 72 hours prior to kickoff, they would be blacked out in the local TV markets. It sucked. If your favorite team was bad that year, you ended up being blacked out as no one attended the game. Sure I was a fan of the Dolphins, but I am not going to spend $100+ to watch a 1-16 or 6-10 team some years. I would watch at home in the background.

Let's say driverless cars happen in the next five to ten years. I see two scenarios happening - neither do I need uber. First scenario is my local car at my house becomes driverless. I can simply call my car to pick me up from anywhere. It can return home and wait (or go and pick up others as it's own on demand taxi). I now don't need uber at all - even though I use them now. So that is not a good scenario.

Second scenario is I am traveling and need a car/taxi as my local car is at home. If so, why would not other people in that city simply allow for their cars to pick me up while they are not in use. Every driverless car is now a taxi.

Basically all that is needed is an app and some service where owners subscribe and let their cars be used as a taxi. Perhaps uber controls the app and service as the dominant leader. But I bet there will be a lot of competition in that area with car rental companies, manufacturers, local cab companies, individuals and uber all competing.

I suppose the third scenario is that many people do not own a car in the future and we just subscribe to a car service. Perhaps in that area uber is the choice. But perhaps the manuacturers roll their own service too that you subscribe for a time share of a car.

We always have had a surplus of logos. When we design for a company, perhaps 3 to 5 decent ideas are sketched. Of course only one makes the final cut per client. We own any preliminary work, so we can offer these for use later. We would just change the name, revise slightly and change the color. Bam...new logo.

What we did finally was revise the ones we like (25 to 50 initially) and include them for free as part of a new web design project. A lot of clients have bad logos that can ruin a design. So it helps our designs and clients brands.

Clients could also purchase at a low flat rate if they liked one without a website. This has worked well too.

Using "terrorism" as a threat is simply the new "communism" arguments from the 1950s-1980s. It's just that this new era has no foreseeable end in site.

There has been, and always will be, some type of terrorists. So its a perfect opportunity to use this threat (whether real in some cases and not in some cases) to get something approved that you could not normally.

At least with the end of of the USSR, most of the old Cold War communism scare tactics went away. Unfortunately, I don't really foresee and end in the use of terrorism threats to get funding for some new technology or bill to erode more rights.

Yes, I definitely consider the time of the applicant. I would hate to miss a good person by making it tough to apply.

I am thinking it should be five minutes or less to apply to our job. 30 to 45 minutes seems like A LOT. I am not sure I would even take that amount of time to apply for a job. I would rather introduce myself personally via email or social networks to the employer than spend that time.

One point is that Indeed.com and other job boards make it too easy to apply. I believe, that within a few clicks and someone can apply to a posting, so often the person may not have read the ad fully.

This is turning more and more into a blog post. I should run the stats on our last posting of craiglist vs. indeed and showcase the data.

Oddly enough, I think our final choice came from indeed. But out of the eight actual interviews, I know the other seven came from craigslist posting (or blog post). Of the other indeed candidates, I remember going on a roll of saying "nope" to about 10 to 15 in a row because they did not meet our needs (no experience, etc). Probably need to add a filter in the job posting.

Actually, oddly enough, I did not think about that. Thanks for the tip. We have changed the email address from time to time, when one gets picked up by spam.

We do like the subject line to be a pass/fail test though - especially on jobs that require attention to detail (i.e. bookkeeping or junior developers who are on support/punch lists).

The instructions are pretty clear and if someone cannot follow step one, they are probably not going to be able to follow our internal checklists.

Good point. I think we were going to keep it super simple.

Name, Email, Question 1 - Cover Letter, Question 2 - Some question pertaining the job, and PDF attachment (only PDFs - we hate getting Word docs and other file attachments)

This way we could automate our subject line, track the emails, and the two questions would hopefully weed out some lower end applications.

We may need a CAPTCHA too, to keep out spam.

[Edited for commas as the list did not format correctly]

Every resume just comes into Outlook as a single email and then sorted into a folder based on the subject (hence our need to follow directions). A bit old-school, but it works.

So we would need to reply individually to every single email (i.e. hit reply and cut-paste). 50 emails would probably be 15 minutes of work, but I would rather not waste that time.

The main point is that some of the resumes we get are completely off topic. I wish I could showcase some examples, but alas that would probably get us into trouble. Why should we waste the time in responding to auto posters, people who just attach a resume with no cover letter, or misspell subject lines?

I think our new system would solve all of this, just need time to code it this summer.

We are hiring right now for a new bookkeeper, actually they start Monday, so we just finalized the hiring.

We regularly post ads for designers, developers and content writers too. Probably every other month I am reviewing resumes, so I have a bit of experience in responding to applicants.

Typically any given job posting gets around 50 to 100 resumes depending on the category. It takes time to read through everything. We use a mix of Craiglist, Indeed, various job boards, LinkedIn and our own website postings. It has worked well for awhile now.

Due to the nature of various job boards, some responses are often automated by clicking a few buttons so it is too easy to apply. With that you get candidates off topic (i.e. wrong skill set) and not putting in any effort (i.e. skipping a cover letter that we want to read). Other times, the cover letter and resume are comically sad in mistakes and grammar, so they do not warrant full attention.

Our biggest gripe is that at least 50% of the applicants never follow our instructions on how to apply correctly. We put very specific steps on how to apply and want it followed (i.e. subject line, cover letter, links to portfolio, PDF resume).

My take on this is if the applicant is not going to take the time to respond correctly, then we are not going to take the time to respond back. Sounds harsh, but kicking out 50 canned replies is tedious work for those who are wasting our time to review. Perhaps we could automate it somehow with scanning emails addresses in the "no" folder and sending out a batch bcc, but it is still extra work.

However, before everyone jumps on us. We do respond to every applicant we interview (phone or in-person). Often we respond with a personal note that helps them out and lets them know where they stand. Sometimes we even try them out on freelance projects in the future.

For every applicant that correctly fills out our application process, or at least made an effort, then we also reach out to them with a more automated message via email. I consider that the least we can do, but we do keep in short and sweet.

Finally, in the future, I am going to probably put our entire application process on our website. This will automate a lot of what we do and require the applicant to fill out set fields that we need answered. Then we could send batch emails back to everyone as needed.

This is one area where health care insurance costs are pretty affordable. We are a web design company in the sunny state of Florida, so these are our rates based on 10 to 20 employees.

From my understanding the larger you are, the cheaper the rates. Since the article /comments asked for typical rates, here is where we are at to compare. Not sure how many employees 42floors.com has, but $2,500 per year would probably be around 5 to 10 employees if they were all male.

STD/LTD Group Policies - Our rates are typically $21 to $60 per male employee and $71 to $150 per female employee per month. So it could add about $250 to $1,800 per employee depending on their salary and gender.

Maternity Leave - The good news is that this covers maternity leave of 3 months for our lady employees. This is a nice benefit to offer. It also explains the higher rates based on gender.

Health Care Coverage - Most group health insurance policies are super high in monthly premiums ($200 to $600 per month for individuals and $1,000 to $1,500 for family coverage). We cover this in full right now for individuals. But it is a huge ongoing cost, especially as everyone gets older and starts families. STD/LTD policies are very cheap by comparison (obviously geared towards a different life event).

Other options - It would probably be cheaper if you just bought long-term, if the concern is catastrophic coverage. But we cover short term too and that increases the rates.

The video game industry has the same issue. Initial bloat screens. A lot.

Skyrim for instance, it takes anywhere from 30 seconds to load the initial screen, which is just the logo of Bethesda. You know what is on the initial screen. A button for me to click that says Start. Once I click that button, then I have to hit Continue for it to load the last save point. Then another 30 seconds to 1 minute to load my game/map point.

So basically, two actions and over a minute later, I am finally in the game. A much easier thing would be to just load my last save/map point. I can turn on the console, and know to come back in a minute. Just have it paused until I am ready to play. If I wanted to say restart the entire game, I could go into the menu system from there.

I find this the case on almost all games. FIFA, Madden, Bad Company, Call of Duty. Just start the game I played last. If I regularly play online, go and find me a server automatically. Auto load my game, unless I hold down the start button or some other button that would then default to the menu.

I don't care that Bethesda or EA made my game, I just want to play.

Merge the article for the purposes of comments, but allow references to each unique article cited. Perhaps an indent under the main story with related stories and just one comment section.

Either that or leave it alone. Most of the airbnb stories are semi unique takes on the same stories.

Yeah, it's tough when a few make up a large percent of the business. You definitely have to drop everything to help them. I think our top 50 clients make up 25% of the business. Top 100 about 50% and the other 400 the rest. So we are less beholden to one large client as maintenance, hosting, SEO, PPC, and redesigns help balance all the new projects that we would need to sign.

Number of customers is critical. When web design studios only have a few customers and one makes up a large percentage of revenue (ex: 10% or more), then you are definitely at the clients whim.

However, if an agency has a lot of customers, each with only a percent or less of total revenue, then its a much more stable platform. You can decline representation of certain clients and they do not effect the total revenue.

Of course, a product line might be better. All customers under one pricing model, customization is limited, and it scales easier. Good stuff.

For the vanishing issue, I tell clients that:

a) Look at our portfolio and call our existing clients, b) that we do most of our work in the first few weeks of the campaign so it is only fair to pay that high of an amount, and c) I don't want to have to pause the campaign to wait for a check, it just ruins the flow.

I have not really changed our contract in 10 years. It used to just be me and now we have 13 full-time, a few part-time and a few freelancers. So I know it can work and expand the business.

I really think that 50% is needed to start. It helps weed out clients that are hoping to get funds, or get free ideas, once the project gets going. It shows both sides are serious in committing their time and effort.

If you want, I can send you a sample contract. It is US law based, but the ideas are the same for your law. Just fill out one of our contact forms with your email and I can hit you back with the PDF.

I find it better to set up expectations up-front. It is really hard to argue with a client, then go and be "creative." So if you can completely avoid the issue in the first place by having a workflow process, detailed deliverables, what to expect chart or graphic, it makes life easier. Money should not really have to be brought up, if everything is done right from the outset.

Dealing with clients is all about setting expectations. I really view our contracts as just the expectations codified and hopefully never read again. The key is what the clients actually expect you to deliver. If we ever have to turn to the contract language, we have already lost something in translation.

I won’t go over all the articles points; I think it is well written. I am a bit envious that they have a product to transition too. However, I will point out two ways to help small agencies deal with clients. Specifically on how to take payments and whether to accept certain clients. Both of these areas will help alleviate stress in running the business.

1. Not getting paid. To fix this issue simply demand more up front. We start projects at 75% due. Have done this for 10 years now. Larger contracts, over $15,000, we will start with a 50%, 25%, 25% split. We have never started a project for less than 50% of the entire.

The key is that you never work on collection model. Never send an invoice for work completed. You always are working from your funds you have, so you are never at a loss.

Sure some clients balk at the higher up-front costs, but do you want those clients? Stick to your guns. If a client likes you and your portfolio, they probably will sign even if it means a bit more upfront costs.

2. Owning your time. We get our fair share of "interesting" clients, but have found a way to weed them out in the sales process. This way we only work with clients that we like and want to help. Key tips that it will be a "interesting" project and you may want to pass:

- Wanting to change our standard contract. Our contract is a short 1-page that is really fair to both sides. The more they change the harder the project will be, always. Stick to your contract. - The client needs to start, now, now, now. Basically someone internally has dropped a ball in scheduling and now it is your problem. Charge more to help them or pass on the project. - Disorganized email chains and hectic meetings. The client won't suddenly become organized during the project, which means you are now their organizer. Have fun with that project if you accept, but charge more for project management.

Anyways, I think going the product route is great for web agencies. But you can make a successful agency model work and have fun, we have for 10 years now.