TechnoCloud

Although I’ve long had access to one, I’ve borrowed a Wii for a long overdue extended trial of the console and am working my way through the various Wii Sports games that came with it.

After initially being underwhelmed by the graphics and simplicity of the gaming, I’ve started to be pulled in by the points accumulation system and its ability to get even the most cynical members of the family playing instantly through its intuitive gameplay.

Baseball (Rounders surely, ed?) has been a particular favourite leading to the universal question from those who have played of ‘where’s the cricket?’

Given the size of the cricket diaspora and the suitability of the Wii Remote as an extended cricket bat, I expected a quick search to reveal the game.

However, Wii Cricket is not yet in existance leading to several internet campaigns to push the likes of EA Sports to develop it. Its development has been hindered by the lack of cricket played in key markets, such as North America and Japan, but it looks like the decision is about to be reversed if comments by EA Sports’ President Peter Moore are anything to go by:

We continue to look at Cricket, you will see us talk about a little bit more about the Indian market for Cricket. We continue to watch the 20/20 format and seeing where that is going, but the National Test game is still the preeminent way people want to play the game. We have not done a game in a couple of years I think.

To add to the campaign, if Wii Cricket does come along, then one household at least will be purchasing a shiny new Wii to play it…

Now the buzz about Google’s launch of their Chrome browser has finally calmed down, I wanted to post some thoughts on the browser.

The good

First up, there is much to like - some of the highlights:

- How to get more people to read your product documentation. Write it as a comic
- It’s fast and uses less memory than my other browsers
- No one tab to rule them all. If one tab crashes, the others live on
- Wonderfully clean, simple design
- The homepage display of recently visited sites and resources

The bad

- It’s blocked by my system administrator at work, hardly unique within the corporate firewall. I can still use it via VM, but obviously it’s a major drawback as I like to have a consistent browser experience at work and at play
- Concern for Firefox in the browser wars. Hopefully the wonderful Firefox community will help keep the product innovating and ahead
- No home button, surely a browser staple? You can activate this, but many won’t see this. Some might see this as a ‘good’

The too early

- No extensions
- Delicious. With much of my brain’s storage outsourced to delicious, I need a delicious extension to function. It’s on the roadmap according to Google and there is a workaround using bookmarklets, but it falls short of the Firefox extension that is so integrated into my workflow when researching.

As explained in the previous post, I was considering moving back from a hosted version of Wordpress to the free version. This blog is not-for-profit (ad trial is a technology test) and I’ve had more hassle resolving hosting issues, than benefits with the flexibility hosting your own blog brings.

There is surprisingly little information on how to move back from hosted to free Wordpress on Google, so hopefully this will provide some guidance for those of us who are less technical.

Having gone through the process, ads on Wordpress.com were just too obtrusive to continue, but hopefully the experience will serve others well considering the same path.

Pros summary

- It’s free
- Wordpress’ reliable hosting to manage traffic spikes (thorn in my side on a cheap hosting deal)
- Many of the more popular widgets are still available (many aren’t…)
- Widgets are easier to setup on certain themes. Just use the edit box and drag and drop.
- Less hassle, just focus on the content

Cons summary

- You can’t include advertising. In fact, Wordpress reserve the right to include ads on your own content. After switching back and then changing PCs and IP addresses I was able to see what the adds look like. Although Wordpress claim they are infrequent, they were horribly obtrusive Google Adwords both at the top and the bottom of the article. Given part of my reason for moving back was having no need for advertising apart from a nice-to-have ad trial, this was unacceptable.
- Reduced number of extensions for those of us who like to test. The default stats in particular are basic.
- Reduced number of themes
- Reduced control of code
- Wordpress have the final say over your blog

Moving back to Wordpress.com summary

- Register with Wordpress.com (if you didn’t originally)
- Check that you have a recent version of the Wordpress software. Older versions do not include an ‘export’ option under manage. Instructions on this are here. Make sure you backup properly!
- Follow the instructions at ‘Manage’; ‘Export’
- Log into Wordpress.com and follow instructions at ‘Manage’; ‘Import’.
- Go to ‘Upgrades’; ‘Domains’. Either purchase your domain or follow instructions to map it to Wordpress.
- One common problem is confusion over how you purchase credits for the domain mapping. That’s because you can’t purchase credits, UNTIL you’ve mapped your domain. You are then prompted to purchase the 10 credits. Could be explained much more clearly. I was presented with the option to purchase the credits almost immediately after mapping my domain.
- Wait for the domain to propagate.
- The only problem was that I had to re-upload images.

Summary

On balance, the Wordpress advertising was just not acceptable for me - for others the lack of hosting charge may outweight this. I would have considered paying a modest opt-out charge for avoiding ads on my blog, but Wordpress have yet to make this available. At least the whole experience has got me to upgrade to the latest and much improved version of Wordpress with working trackbacks and search…

Disclaimer: this is my personal experience and may not work for you. Do your research and always backup.

After several hosting hiccups in the last few months, I have been considering moving back to the free version of Wordpress available at Wordpress.com.

(The hosting service will remain nameless for now as they have been responsive in fixing the problems, if only they’d prevent them happening…).

As you’ll see on the sidebar, I have been carrying out an advertising experiment first using Pubmatic and now just with Google Adsense which means that for the first time this blog features a strip of (hopefully discreet) ads. I’d like to keep the experiment going on the free Wordpress.com service, but reading the Wordpress.com FAQs it seems that Google Adsense/Adwords are not permitted.

That’s not entirely true, as those using the VIP service are allowed to include ads. They do of course pay $500/month for the privilege and only if they are deemed famous enough to be accepted into the VIP club. Wordpress themselves do also occassionally use their own Google Adsense on your blog.

My advice would be to those looking to make money via Wordpress blogging is to build up your audience using the free Wordpress blog, while forking out the c.$15 a year for the domain and $10 a year for the domain mapping service. Once your blog reaches sufficient scale to justify using an Adsense or equivalent service, then upgrade to a hosting package. The cheaper hosting packages do run the risk of going down should your blog get Slashdotted or Dugg, so it pays to do your research into your bandwidth allocations.