Dialectical Reasoning

It absolutely blows my mind that the brains at Google can figure out how to become billionaires through a complicated algorithm and bid based advertising system but they can’t figure out how to differentiate an original website from a scraper site! Come on people, just run a WhoIs and cross reference which URL was registered first. Reference your cache! Reference Archive.org and the WayBackMachine!!. Do something!

The Google is a big bad company bandwagon is rolling steady, but I’m not on it. Sure, it hurts when you battle a glitch in their system (not detecting scraper sites) that is hurting you financially, but it is because of Google in the first place that I am a business owner working for myself. It’s the scraper sites and the copycats that are the big bad enemy. They’re lazy fucks capitalizing on someone else’s hard work. Owners of scraper sites are thieves and liars. Scrapers and copycats are the gypsy thieves of the Internet.

If you are battling a scraper site(s) like I am, there isn’t much you can do. A few of my sites have been scraped completely word for word and dropped out of the Google SERPS, and then came back, and were then scraped again by the same company/person/thief/gypsy and then dropped out again.

Recently, I have been in a constant battle with scrapers and php injections. Man, what a pain in the ass. I guess it comes with the territory, but I don’t like it.

Here are a few ways you can try to help your scraped blog/website by reporting it;

• Report Scraper Sites to Google
• Report Spam to Google
• Report Copyright complaints to Google

I really can’t believe that it came down to this. I am making a post on my personal blog about a new designer that I started to work with back in June of 2011 because, after I paid him, he stopped communicating with me. He didn’t return phone calls, text messages or emails. Ultimately, after four weeks of no response communication from him, I filed a complaint with PayPal (I paid him in advance for his web design work) and am making this post so that anyone doing searches for Sean Singleton will see how he treats his clients after he gets paid.

September 28, 2011 Unanswered Correspondence

Sean Singleton

Will you please give me an update on where you are with client design and/or delivery dates.

Thanks

October 3, 2011 Unanswered Correspondence

Sean Singleton

I at least some sort of response from you.

You said you would have something for me at the beginning of last week
so I emailed you when I didn’t see it. I’m not putting pressure on
you, but I need some sort of communication from you regarding where
you are with the design on this project so we can get a build out
started and I can keep the clients expectations set properly.

Thanks and please hit me up with some info.

Thanks

October 3, 2011 Unanswered Correspondence

Sean Singleton

I am relying on you to do this design and work and I pre-paid you for
it! If you’re not able to work on this project, please just let me
know and send me money via paypal so I can afford to pay someone else
to finish what you started. I now have a client that is pushing me to
get this done and you went MIA on me.

I would like to keep working with you on this but need to hear from you.

Thanks

October 10, 2011 Unanswered Correspondence

Sean

Are these emails getting to you? I’m now trying the email on your
website since I haven’t gotten a response from you in two weeks at
your gmail address.

The above correspondence with Guaranteed Freshness and Sean Singleton only represent my emails to him, not my repeated phone calls or text messages.

Look, I work with 1099 and independent contractors all the time in my business. Most of my design work is done through outsourcing in the United States and I keep 99% of my important SEO and business building tactics in office at Reardon Corporation. I understand people get too busy and drop the ball, but you should never be too busy to communicate that you are too busy. Worst case scenario, you tell someone that you bit off more than you can chew with this project and you need to divy up the hours you worked and refund the rest. But come on, the silent treatment AND keeping all the money you were paid in advance to complete the job?. That is just a weak move.

Sean Singleton, if you read this post about you and your web design business, I welcome you to communicate with me about how we can fix this situation. I have already hired another designer to take over your web design project and need to pay them with the money that I paid you to complete the project in our contract.

Guaranteed Freshness Web Design

As a Pandora One member, I get to check out the new Pandora website ahead of the pack. I gladly took a test drive today, and guess what; It looks just like the FaceBook user interface. Now, I’m not bashing on Pandora because I love what they have done for me, and everyone else that got sick of having to change their music library every time a new technology came out (CD, DVDs, iPods). Most of the music I listen to is music that I have purchased at one time or another, but have no idea where it is after lost hard drives, stolen computers and scratched CD’s.

With that little disclaimer, back to the reason for this blog post. I think all of the new social media sites out there are looking very similar to facebook. Social media is taking the logical evolution to a segmented industry. Much like nearly every business out there like advertising, plumbing and building, if you find a specialty within the big picture you can build yourself a great niche business.

The way I see it, all the business’s out there that saw the success of social media with FaceBook are now trying to create a niche in their industry. Pandora is just like them…creating their own social network on the new Pandora One website.

Have a look for yourself and tell me if it looks anything like facebook to you.

New Pandora Looks Like Facebook

Living in Puerto Rico is great. Our property is growing in, the house is close to complete and we absolutely love Rincon. The Reardon office is the most comfortable place I have ever worked. Building it from the ground up gave me the opportunity to add everything I wanted in an office.

Gecko in My Puerto Rico Office

We deal with a little more business interruption down here than we did in California. Our Internet goes down occasionally, forcing an early/late lunch hour. Sometimes our power goes out and just last week the air conditioner went out for a while. But that is really all I can complain about besides the monthly Hacienda payments.

This morning, I walked into the office with a hot cup of coffee and there was a gecko on my desk. When I sat down he cruised across my desk and hopped onto my phone. He chilled there for about an hour and then ran off…hopefully to eat more blood sucking insects.

Gecko on Office Phone

While traveling abroad in Costa Rica, I got all my stuff stolen. That in itself is a story that I will tell you in a minute, but if you found this post in a panic trying to figure out how to cancel your AT&T data plan, here is the number I found; 1-800-331-0500. This is the number to call to cancel your iPad data support with AT&T. Because I am out of the United States and I couldn’t sign in to ATT.com, I used my Skype account to call the toll free number and cancel my plan.

Story of Being Robbed in Costa Rica

This story is going to be short and sweet but I would like to say that we are very aware of the smash and grab type crimes all around Central America. We were very careful with our things, but obviously not careful enough.

We were staying on a property in Mal Pais on the Nicoya peninsula. It was a beautiful property right on the beach that had two casitas (1 room houses w/bathrooms) and s separate casita for a kitchen. On our third night on the property, we gave Sydney a shower/bath and put her to bed in a crib that was in our casita. I left the casita to grab a bowl of ice cream and go back to the room to watch a movie. I walked 20 feet away to the kitchen, scooped some ice-cream and went back to the room. In that 15 minutes, someone snuck into our casita where Sydney was sleeping and used my back back to load up all of my valuables and snuck back into the woods undetected. They stole my iPad, iPhone, MacBook Pro, Family Passports, Wallet, License, Credit Cards, Cash, Sunglasses etc.

When I walked back into the room, the key to the safe was in it and it was wide open. Much like the last time I got robbed, whoever broke in and stole all of our things, they had inside knowledge as to the layout of the room and they meticulously went from hiding spot to hiding spot to find EVERYTHING of value that we had. It wasn’t a good way to start out our trip, but it is what it is.

Next time we travel, I really need to invest in travel insurance. It’s been so long since I’ve traveled international, that I forgot insurance like this is available and could have saved me five grand.