Preserved Topic: CALL FOR BETA TESTERS!

Heh, sorry for shouting! I've been a busy boy these last few months, working and working on my online content delivery system, trying to build a publishing system I would actually want to use, let alone sell to the world! I'm getting cclose now, very close, the beta delivery system is in place and I'm streaming content (text content, that is) to http://www.handson.nu/primal/ from my database here in sweden. If I can collect enough articles in the topic of "Internet Ramblings" I'd like to start feeding it to the rantings section of the GurusNetwork as well.

Interested? I've spoken with a few of you about these plans privately, and have rambled on and on about this in the forum for months now, but now I want folks to become users of the system and give it a whirl! What d'ya say? Got a rant, a story, how to work tutorials or how to behave on the net, something to teach or something to bitch about? Got an experience you want to share about e-commerce shopping experiences, or opinions on how e-learning should happen? Let me know, you can preregister at the main site at http://www.PrimalContent.com/ or let me know by email or post here. Interested parties, I'll hook you up with the address to the database server and assign you account names, you can create your own bios and we'll start building the very first catalog of stuff for distribution.

(Note: This is intended to be a *business*, and once we start selling these catalogs, authors in the system will be paid royalties on the amount of hits their articles get. Money is a good thing? IMHO!)

For the short terms, there is no money to be earned on this, my main concern is to not run out of money at the end of may, hah! However, all hits will be tracked and roaylties will start flowing once we sign the paying customers for these feeds, but for that, I need the *content*!

Get back to me on this, cool? Later!

Your pal, -doc-

*click*

Your email has been sent to doc@bugtown.com

[This message has been edited by kretsminky (edited 02-14-2001).]

I am thoroughly impressed Doc. I hadn't been back to the site in a long time...it's quite exciting to see what you've done.

I wish I were in a better position to contribute.

I think that's a helluva good idea, Doc. I just sent you an email on the subject and hope to hear from you soon.

Kliked and been there..

Everything seems to be O.K for me..

Cool Doc..

I signed up doc.

Let me go though all those old stacks of papers...

-mage-

count me in!

I'm in.

All signed up, Doc! Let me know what I can do.

(BTW, just noticed a typo on the sign-up confirmation page: "The roles are descibed on the left..." Just thought you'd like to know.)

yeah count me in!

i'm curently writing a Basic html tut for total beginners...like structure, syntax, layout etc. maybe you like it when i've finished?



---------------------------------
Maruman I am the princess of the universe
-----'--,--@
---------------------------------

Maruman, tutorials fit the bill just right, especially ones like you describe, that deal mostly in text, heh. I'm still constructing the mechanism for inserting pictures properly and allowing for some sort of control for how it all lays out, difficult since the stuff is intended to be shown inside many different formats, as it gets piped to different websites. Hop on over to the PrimalContent website and pre-register as a Journalist, (everyone who creates stuff is a "journalist" at this point!), I'll fix you up with a username and password.

Your pal, -doc-

PS: The new server is living at http://212.28.215.172:8300/ - Krets, WarMage, DL-44, Wes, you're all in the system with your chosen username/passwords, check it out and let me know what you think.



[This message has been edited by DocOzone (edited 02-14-2001).]

~buffing industry rant in preparation~

Very cool Doc.

DIdn't have loads of time, but I checked it out as thoroughly as I could.
Can't wait to get home from work and mess with it

Doc, I'm 28 pages into the most in-depth tutorial series that has ever been created . This tutorial series goes from intermediate HTML all the way thru uploading, marketing, and everything in between. (completely cross referenced, too) By the end, I expect it will exceed 100 pages--more like a book than a tutorial. So far, several of the pages by themselves have exceeded Notepad's 64K limit. This is really deep stuff.

I'd be interested in submitting it. However, it is currently organized within the present structure of my personal/business website.

Would this pose a problem?? Should it be more "generic" in it's format?

It also contains a lot of illustrations. Problem there???

Please advise--(told ya I'd be around!! )


Forgive me if I'm outta the loop on this whole thing----I'm not really sure what exactly you're looking for???

Doc, I'm in. Getting journalists paid, eh? Hell, I'd trade that for content!

Pat Richard
Web weenie
http://www.gurusnetwork.com
ICQ 23113317

OK Doc, I just read a bunch stuff over there, you're looking for content? And that content need not be in the realm of "development"?

Thought I'd give ya an FYI. You may find it helpful info ??

Over at f**ckedcompany.com there was a discussion on the recent buy-out of Deja.com. There were a surprising # of people who were dismayed that searching capability had been limited to 1999. They scrapped the old stuff. Seems many people had gone there to research all sorts of stuff in the archives and a lot of them EXPRESSED A WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR THE PRIVELEDGE!!!

That what you're looking to do???

(To comletely change topics)
Pugzly---I checked out your pop window script. Best I've ever seen!! Seroiusly good work!!! Only thing, I'd rename it "Pugzly Pop"...kinda catchy, and no-one will forget it or who wrote it!!

Yep, people are going to become willing to pay for comment - I've said it before, I'll say it again, and I'll *keep* saying it. the way I'm approching this is not as a "super portal", with all sorts of good stuff you get from *my* site, but as the back-end provider for *other* portals who want to have the most killer content for their users. How they make their own money is not my problem, nor should it be yours as creators. The concept, which no one has yet disagreed with, is that having lots of repeat visitors to your site, be it e-commerce or information portal, is one of the first steps towards making money. (No guarantee, but you need the traffic first!) By working as the back-end provider for all these sites, we step away from the dangerous "19 out of 20 fail" category, and instead sell to everybody, albeit at a smaller margin. (Less risk, more volume, should balance out.) So, I follow f*ckedcompany.com very closely, I'm becoming an expert on dot-com failures, they've been my primary research subject for the last 12 months now! (FWIW, I left my nice cushy job at marchFIRST to start this company, on a wish and a prayer. Smart move on my part, it seems!

hedda, the piece you've described actually fits into the system quite well. One of the ways we're marektting this system right now is as an out-surced publishing tool for companies that can't afford one of their own, but want to publish on the net. (We have the system built mostly, but we don't have enough content yet to market it too heavily. We *do* have this great system, built on Java, that we can twist into all sorts of things, so, for the short term, we sell what we got!) We're keeping this in mind as we layout the catalog system, so that a client could set up a "Collection" with a description - the collection is the name of their website, and the description of that is the content of the front page, dig? The links under that are the "Catalogs" or chapters, these function as the primary links. Inside these are the articles themselves, which could be seen as the sections of the chapters. We're planning on allowing the distribution clients to set up their own directories and sub-directories, with their own content inside, or content leased through us. Carried to its logical extreme, this is a mutli-level, multi-page website WITH ONLY ONE PAGE! I am of course going to make the same category and collection tools available to authors, so they can set up neat units, signewd and owned by them, but distributed to the world through different websites in the format of those websites! (All the content is saved in XML, with different XSLT stylesheets turning them into different things for different sites, on the fly.

So! In answer to your question, I think you could be sitting on some valuable property there, if packaged and distributed widely enough. Picture each and every section of your unit as a page view, earning royalties each time they dig further, being displayed on 100's of sites.

Ah, I remember DejaNews, which used to be the final arbiter on many of the old usenet groups, great for proving that somebody really *did* say [something that stupid], heh. certainly if I could have gotten my hands on thet deja content before they scrapped it, I could probably have turned it into something worthwhile, all you need is terrabytes of data and a hell of a computer system, not a ton of staffers (the real expense for any company.) I do know from experience just what an insane lot of data gets generated by usenet, how many gigabytes an hour, every hour, forever? Before I'd condemn them, I'd be curious to know just how big that archive was they scrapped, scary big, I'm betting. For my business idea to succeed, I need two things, VOLUME and SHELF LIFE. Since I'm looking not at the sunscription model, but at a pay-per-view model, I need content that will be viewed many times. I also need content that will still be pertinent to large crowds of people for a long time. (A review of a restaurant that's may burn down tomorrow has a short shelf life, the history of Alexander the Great may have a long shelf life. More people might want to read that review today, and less the Alexander article, but the second one will be valid longer. Which is better to have around? Somewhere in the middle, I'd think.)

Your pal, -doc-

well, finally got around to cliking through. nice clean design, doc. truly a departure from what we're all used to here, and it's quite a thrill. hope to help you out soon.

Hey, Doc!

I checked out the site and, after looking at the opportunities, thought maybe I could best serve as an editor. I've never done it professionally but I'm really swell at catching typos and organizing content. If I can help, let me know.


~Allewyn~

[This message has been edited by Allewyn (edited 02-26-2001).]

I'll check it out asap.

I'm probably not going to have the time to contribute much at the moment, but I've got a "thing" I'm writing on on my spare time. It's about how to create business value/branding for companies by using games as a communication platform.

Is this too abstract or could it be useful (if I ever get it done)?



-nimraw
If you can't convince, confuse!

Damn Doc, you left marchFirst? No wonder its stock has been crapping out lately. Lost me some money on that one!

Hah! Let's not even talk about money thrown down the marchFIRST well, I've lost nearly enough to buy a frigging house on that one! (Invested some of my own money on them, seemed like a good idea at the time.) Heh, how can you possibly explain a $6.8 billion dollar loss, or a $60 million dollar payroll each month? (By my calculations, that's about how much they have left!) Ah, it was hard, I had to give up my 5000 stock options valued at $41/share, that sure hurt! ;-) OK, they're down and bleeding, I'll stop kicking the unconcious body for a while, sitting ducks, fish in a barrel, etc etc... Too sad.

I'm thinking that whatever content I manage to cull from you guys is going to be able to be made into a saleable unit, if I have to create new categories for it, that will be cool too. Advice and future oriented internet discussion is the gist of the category right now, and branding and marketting strategies fits that bill pretty well, methinks. So far I've talked about pay-per-view internet and my life with streaming cams, hard to tell what I want to rant on next. Picture this, we could provide the meat for bunches of portals hoping to profit off of people like us, nice turning of tables there, with good value on both sides! Just give me whatever you have, and I'll figure out how best to organize it into a unit of some sort.

Your pal, -doc-

Well, Doc, that could prove interesting for Gurus Network!

Is the content aimed at technology only, or *.*?


Pat Richard
Web weenie
http://www.gurusnetwork.com
ICQ 23113317

Doc

I assume that you'll not narrow it down to the Swedish duckpond?


I got contacted by these guys the other day. They seem to have a similar idea, only they only sell material that's already syndicalized (IDG, Bonnier, TT etc). Also I think they just operate in Sweden. http://www.contenttrade.com/

I'll see what I can find out more



-nimraw
If you can't convince, confuse!

Personally, my plan is to get the sales *out* of sweden as soon as possible! I like sweden, 50% internet usage, very advanced, blah blah blah. But! There's only 8 million of swedes here. 50% of 8 million is not enough, I need my tiny share of 100's of millions in order to make this thing go, which means english, and global. I'm trying to sell the concept of PC as an out-sourced, managed content delivery / publishing system to a couple of swedish concerns, if I can sell that service, they can pay my salaries while we grow the database and make our big sales elsewhere.

Global, world-spanning multi-millionaire would be good. Surviving the next 6 months would be OK too.

Hmm, I'm not up on cententtrade myself, but I bet I know someone over there, or someone who knows someone. (My partner built a lot of bonniers back-end stuff, and I notice Kamera there, whose back-end stuff *I've* been way involved in. We'll poke around, drop me an email if you find anything you think I should know.)

Pugzly! Check out this url -> http://www.gurusnetwork.com/ravings/primal/

All I hve to do is move the index file in the primal directory to the ravings directory and it's happening, I'm ready for ya! I'm so totally ready to swap it in right now, I want to see it work, but since I hadn't mentioned these new cgi's to you yet, I thought I'd let you know first. I'm waiting!

Your pal, -doc-

Pugzly, concerning our long-term goals, how's this...

Our Vision
Our vision is simple, to dominate the acquisition and distribution of all digital content. If it can and will be distributed electronically for commercial purposes, we aim to handle more of it than any other source on the planet.

How's that for covering a lot of ground? I was always taught that a good vision statement should be something that is theortically possible, while being pretty much practically impossible. (We always need goals that are beyond our reach, this is why we continue striving!) For the short term, the initial thought was to start building an archive of content aimed at the travel industry, the rationale being that they are still making money online, and should be able to pay for a bettr chance of surviving. I got kind of frustrated, I don't know the travel writers, but I do know you guys! Seems to me that I don't need every niche right away, simply a bunch of discreet elements that can be packaged and resold. If I had this thing developed sooner, I would have pushed to have all of the GN tutorials packaged and delivered through this tool, then we could have grouped them all together under our umbrella but also sold them out to other outlets, paying bills and making livings in the process.

I'm going to be working on the entry to the site for our registered members once they've logged into the system - here I figure I can start listing out areas that are close to being packaged up this way for resale, and folks who can, can write things to fill those gaps. My pitch to you folks is the first really public plea for new content we've made, and I figure we have such an eclectic crew here, I'll simply wait and see what we get, and then plan accordingly, padding out the gaps.

PS: Check out the newest article by Peter Fielding! You'll be glad you did.

Your pal, -doc-

Doc -- one major annoyance: when I log into 'my primal content' the screen is too wide for my 800 (or so) wide screen. ack. didn't happen this morning when I first tried it, but it does now.

I signed up and I just wanted to wish you luck Doc.

I really think this idea of yours will work because of one thing: variety.

Since you're selling content to the entire market, you don't have to worry about filling niches or catering to a specific demographic.

Also, one of the cool things is that there is no bias towards any type of submission. If you write, someone somewhere will want to read it.

When Einstein published his papers on the theory of relativity, nobody other than theoritical physicists cared. Now, I'm able to use this computer thanks to nuclear power and Einstein's name has become synonymous with genius.

If you build it, they will come.

Maybe I'll give it a try tooo..

OK, Doc. I'm in.

I freaking love it.

Currently I'm working on a couple of small scalable business solutions (written in PHP) one is an easily modifiable storefront /shoppingcart system. But the other is a Content Management Sytem. Something like a small scale Storyserver. Easy system for small sites to update and maintain content (I don't think the market can bear those HUGE portals) .

I am daydreaming an entore content site using my presentation system pulling content from Doc's database.

Damn thing could be maintaned by 1 person.

Ah the small flexible future of the web.


Walking the Earth like Kane

It could be fun... we will see what happens with it further down the line.

-mage-

DL, that must have been me, I have all of the parameters for width and font size and stuff stored as global variables, and I think I made it bigger for me on my home machine, hah! I set it up that way becuase I'm ready to strip away the default variables and replace them with personalized variables, based on a user-by-user basis, or possibly a cookie with a browser-by-browser method. (Here you go, i just stripped 60 pixels off of the width, how was that?) It's intended for these controls to live in the MyProfile section, so that folks can make this thing into the best possible tool for their own use. If you have MSIE, I can control the height and width of the form elements quite easily, making your 'edit' screen fill the available space, if desired. (netscape is a bit more tricky, and NS6 is trickier still, dammit!)

Your pal, -doc-

PS: OK; there it is, tweaked to fit an 800x600 screen neatly. One variable affects every page throughout, I dig this server-side control stuff, woo!



[This message has been edited by DocOzone (edited 02-15-2001).]

cool Doc, much better


The more I look around, the more I love the design and the architecture of the site Doc....great stuff all around.

Doc -

I like the Gurus Network link! My question is:

Will the content be branded with the Primal Content icon at the bottom, even for paying sites? Just curious. I could understand the GN link.

Great work.

Pat Richard
Web weenie
http://www.gurusnetwork.com
ICQ 23113317

The way it's planned right now, the content, or the sidebar, or somewhere on the page, *must* have a "powered by..." link for PrimalContent. Yahoo gets Reuters feeds, and co-brands with the reuters logo, we want the same consideration, our business needs it really! We're going to set it up so it's not actually a link out of the site at all, but instead a link inside their own form, much like a bio for an author, each will be treated technically as just another article. We've talked to several firms about this, and will probably have to come up with some kind of special rate for folks who want no mention of us, but *that* will be the premium service, not the norm.

Your pal, -doc-

PS: We've actually discussed one of our means of adding value to the clients, and that is based on some negotiations we're having with the banner ad people. How can you deliver the right ads to people without violating their privacy? Why not use the meta tags for the content they're reading at that moment? If we're going to offer free or non-branded content, then we would want that banner space for ourselves! If not, we make the banner that more effective for the client, which means they can charge more, etc...



[This message has been edited by DocOzone (edited 02-16-2001).]

OK, I'm a bit confused by all this, heh, I'm a high school student anyway. =)

Let me see if I understand... people submit random content to primalcontent.com, and primal content supplies millions of client sites with this content in whatever layout they want it in, with links to more content. These sites pay primal content, primal content pays the authors.

It seems sort of weird to me, I guess. Wouldn't companies want to provide their own content? And wouldn't it be sort of mean to create the illusion to web surfers that they're visiting different pages when they're really only looking at one? And once in a while, wouldn't they get confused when they found an article that's the same as one they saw on another site? Also, how are you going to get companies to want to use this?

I dunno. It sounds sort of neat, but in a way I don't really like it. I dunno. heh =)

- Slime

I don't think its "random content." For instance, Joe has a dhtml page, so he says, hey Doc, hook me up with an article about javascript once a week, and Doc says, gee, i got just the thing you are looking for(thats you slime, since you will be submitting a javascript article every week, and doc will be paying you to do it, or royalties or something ). And voila, Slime gets money, doc gets money, joe gets a javascript article once a week, tons of hits, and funnels the rest of his cash into primal content before declaring bankruptcy, happy ending for all.

Optic burn pretty much has it there slime...

Now of course in a perfect world, a site would want to provide all of it's own content. However, as you may have noticed, many sites are actually quite lacking in quality content.

So if you've got a site focused on .....whatever..... and you need somesort of column added that will give periodic reviews..or a couple of good pieces of background litereature for something.

Rather than creating a fulltime journalist position, or a history buff to write an articel for you...you buy existing content.

Pretty sweet.

Now of course there is the issue of clients showing the same content......do you have a solution for clients who want *exclusive* use of this content Doc?

Hmm, ok. Sounds better now. But it's still sorta weird to me.

And I don't know about those JavaScript articles! I'm sorta getting tired of JavaScript, looking at Perl now. There's much less browser-compatability stuff to work out with server-side programs. =) We'll see. I have a vacation coming up, maybe I'll write something...

is there any problem with submitting something to primal content and then keeping a copy of it on your own web site?

in one communique from doc, he gave the usual spiel about normal procedures, with these as well:

quote:

---

We also have traditional publications (print, that is), who are looking for pieces to publish in their magazines, for these we will act as agent selling the articles to them on a case by case basis - acting in this role we just take our 10% off the top, with 90% going to the authors.

We have the catalogue of random feature stories, but we also expect to set up a series of weekly and monthly columns that can be sold to different outlets as well, pointed sales (as in "We want *this persons* stuff!") will be charged at a higher rate, but the expectations of steady delivery will be greater.

---

Hi Doc,

I've just finished a tut for using multiple actions on the same image in photoshop 4+. Would that be something you can use? It's for beginners.

~allewyn~

Aaaaa..okie dokie Doc. Just a quick question I want to ask..

How's the beta test going on? I'm lloking forward to cut, paste and publish my articles, I have written some. Just need to know.

The beta test is going well, although not as many folks are putting stuff in as I had hoped, "Creative types! Grr..." This is pretty much a "live beta", as I'm feeding content out as we speak, to two selected sites. I'm also interested in feeding this to other sites as well? Le3t me know if you want the same feed as the GurusNetwork gets at your site.

Allewyn, tutorial in this case could be interesting to try. So far I do not have the image uploading and storage built into the tool, so images I've been hosting remotely, or placing them in manually. One of the challenges is to make all of the articles deliverable in whatever crazy format the clients need, which means no table formatting in the text. The only HTML I'm using in their now is bold, italic, href and img, etc... (Actually, all I've done is disable the awkward tags, rather than only allowing others. All of these will be replaced with custom XML variants.)

Your pal, -doc-

Doc,
I have to rewrite the tut anyway, since it explains more than teaches, so I'll keep in mind the formatting limitations you've mentioned. Seems like a huge job to do what you envision. Like creating a whole new Web media type Less formatting with better display results sounds like a better way too. I can't wait to see how this turns out!



[This message has been edited by Allewyn (edited 02-26-2001).]

WELL, Doc.. maybe I'll give it a try.. put it on *my site*? Don't have a REAL site yet. The site is actually under heavy construction and I guess it'll be out in the middle of next year, still searching for local host. I'd like to have something or anything to read on that site.. like the GurusNetwork... that'll be interesting.... I have wrote some pieces and turn to HMTLs.

And, yeah..tutes would be great, Allewyn. I never give it a thought. I was thinking about technical and technological stuff... some really tough questions are spinning in my mind. I was also thinking about purposes.. there're a lot of WHY's...

Hmm....