Mike Cohen

Making money with freeware

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David Watanabe came up with a great idea to make money on the new free version of NewsFire: include three paid-for feeds that the user cannot unsubscribe from. Site owners can bid for a spot as one of these feeds, bringing Watanabe revenue while offering a great product for free.

Recently there was an uproar when David added affiliate links to Inquisitor, his Safari search plugin. It was actually a good move, since it allows him to distribute his software for free, while still making money from it. Everyone wins – we all get a good product and David gets paid for his effort. Most people don’t pay for shareware, so this sponsored model is a good alternative for many developers. I’m sure many people would rather use ad-supported software with full functionality instead of limited demo versions.

It’s nothing new. Eudora used his same model many years ago. You could use it in one of three modes: a sponsored mode with full functionality although it displayed ads; a lite version that didn’t show ads but eliminated functionality; and a paid version that had full functionality with no ads. Twitterrific is doing the same thing now. It’s fully functional but displays unobtrusive ads, although you can pay to eliminate those ads.

Fighting comment spam

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I’ve implemented Donncha O Caoimh‘s steps to fight comment spam here. Two of the plugins, Comment Referrers and Delink Comment Author add links to the comment moderation email I receive that show the referrer, which helps identify spammers, and remove links from the comment.

Lucia’s Linky Love makes this blog less attractive to spammers by adding ‘nofollow’ to their links, while rewarding regular commenters by making their comments ‘dofollow’.

links for 2008-02-28

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Actual vs. Perceived threats

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Tartley.com, which I’ve never heard of until now, has posted this chart (originally by Susanna Hertrich) illustrating our disconnect between actual dangers and what we fear.

Note the actual danger of a terrorist attack vs. what the media is trying to make us fear. We have a much greater chance of being injured or killed in a traffic accident, yet there’s never any public concern and the effort spent on improving traffic safety is a fraction of what we spend on ineffective security theater meant to feed our unrealistic fear of terrorists.

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The pompous windbag has died

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William F. Buckley, Jr. died today. Dylan Matthews says:

He was an important figure, no doubt, but he wasn’t a good man, he wasn’t a sensible or fair opponent, and it’d be a shame if he’s remembered as such.

Despite his charming image, Buckley was a nasty racist who supported segregation & apartheid and defended Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts. He brought conservatism to the mainstream, laying the groundwork for Bush and his ilk. Hopefully his ideas will die with him.

New tagline

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I’ve changed the tagline for MacMegasite to “Mac Community News”, which reflects the focus as a community driven site better than the old one, “News for mac geeks”.

Power Outage

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My neighborhood wasn’t affected at all by the power outage that affected much of south Florida. My power blinked for less than a second, just enough to trip my UPS and knock my DSL modem offline.

Obama on Israel

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This is why I like Obama:

“I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, then you’re anti-Israel, and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel,” leading Democratic presidential contender Illinois Senator Barack Obama said Sunday.
“If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we’re not going to make progress,” he said.
He also criticized the notion that anyone who asks tough questions about advancing the peace process or tries to secure Israel by anyway other than “just crushing the opposition” is being “soft or anti-Israel.”

It’s like he took Gershom Gorenberg’s piece in The American Prospect from a month or so ago and transformed it into a sound bite. It’s so true, so refreshing to hear from a major Democratic presidential candidate, and something that Hillary Clinton would never utter to save her life. If you want an example of why Obama would be the first president to pursue an actually progressive foreign policy since, I don’t know, FDR, then just read those quotes. (via Dylan Matthews)