I went out to breakfast with my wife this morning and I discussed the AdSense issues with the sites.

Noble Inc

The background to this discussion is some musing both out-loud and through library withdrawals about turning Noble Ape into a non-profit corporation. Forming a corporation to handle the costs associated with Noble Ape seems to make some sense. The additional cost in the US, aside from domain names and webhosting is the price of copyright registration. Open source is about maintaining intellectual property. Irrespective of whether the software is distributed with source or not, it is still controlled intellectual property. Without registered copyright in the US, all this seems moot.

Forming a corporation for the business of Noble Ape is modeled on Bruce Damer's work with Biota.org. I'm still not clear about the logistics of Bruce's creation of Biota.org as a non-profit organisation, but it seemed to have initial benefits, particularly with regards to corporate donations. Whilst I am not really focused on corporate donations for Noble Ape, it makes sense as a community project that has international outreach. The savings on hardware, a means of writing off donations and the sense that Noble Ape is not designed as a profit enterprise but something with much broader outreach and impact, seem to be themes that are running through my reading on the subject.

Creating a corporate formula for some or all of the work done through Noble Ape is quite challenging. In the past, in my IEEE article about eighteen months ago, I wrote somewhat critically about the challenge open source was facing in terms of individuals versus corporations. Here is my resolution, however.

Up until now, I have given gifts and donations to people who have assisted with Noble Ape as a means of saying thanks. After about eighteen months of contributions to Noble Ape, I sent Mridul P a gift package containing a lot of Noble Ape artifacts including some orc miniatures and soon after I gave him a two year subscription to Game Developer magazine and a two year membership to the IGDA (which was connected at the time). In the early history of Noble Ape, particularly following AFC funding, I provided a number of paid jobs for people connected with the development or people who had contributed their time in a diversity of ways.

My plans with the also involve - with the current model - me giving money from my own pocket as prizes for the contest. In terms of general costs, Noble Ape is a relatively cheap and forgiving hobby. Relatively cheap if you write off the cost of broadband. Cheap-ish, if you include broadband.

My development of the Simulation doesn't come on new equipment either. All the equipment used for the Simulation is either substantially reduced price or donated equipment. All circa 3-7 years old. So getting newer equipment and equipment repair is not necessary, but it would be nice.

The major downside in forming a corporation for Noble Ape, is the additional cost and nonsense associated with creating such an enterprise. Perhaps merely to confirm that it was a waste of time, money and energy that could have been invested back in the Simulation. This is my current thought with AdSense.

So the musing continues. Good afternoon.

Mo Releases...

The interesting bi-product of AdSense is the incentive to do more software releases to get folks back to the site.

There is a critical number of software releases per cycle however. I am averaging about a release every other week currently. When I get down to a release every five days, you do saturate the possible downloaders. Also the Simulation release cycle is getting to the point where you rarely get new discovery users. The downloaders are typically all previous version users. Whilst this breeds loyalty, it produces relatively stagnant download numbers.

When I was talking about this with Brian Wiles, I noted that the Simulation wasn't internet telephony or really anything that could be considered in the least bit sexy for potential advertisers. But we'll have to wait and see.

In this spirit, I released the Noble Ape Simulation 0.675 today.

http://www.nobleape.com/sim/

This one features the full life-cycle including birth and genetic inheritance. Pretty sharp.

Non Sense

Following a release of Noble Warfare, I got a single click through netting $0.03. So following roughly 800 ad impressions, $0.03. At this rate, I'm going to pull AdSense at the end of the month. My sense is for 3c per day for some content disruption, is about $11 per year. I can make that selling a book on eBay with no content disruption.

The ads switched on formally around 5pm yesterday. So the 3c figure is for about half a day. Even so, at this rate, I wouldn't make a $50 payment minimum in a single year.

My major gripe is the ads are typically inappropriate for the content. I've seen perfume ads on Noble Warfare and the front of the Noble Ape site is packed with music and recording studio information. The Simulation page seems to be getting simulation ads but the development pages get a good share of programming related information. I suspect this content would be better served on the Simulation page. All this seems moot with so little actual click-through traffic.

By the time I finished this Log entry the AdSense total had risen to the wealthy $0.18 from a single additional click. At this rate I am 5,000 page impressions away from a whole dollar and the possibility of $65 per year. Just over half my target.

Good afternoon.

Now, Just To Add Sense...

Following some heady discussions with Brian Wiles over the past couple of months, I have decided to sign up to Google's AdSense on both the Noble Ape site and this site too. My feeling is that this is something I can test and remove without too much headache if it proves to take over too much of the content or become too cumbersome. But with domain renewals and hosting fees mounting on the horizon, it would be nice if the websites paid for themselves. I estimate the general costs around USD120 per year per site.

As someone who puts a wide variety of content online, I feel strangely protective of the folks that use/peruse my sites. Having said this, if there are means for improving user experience that AdSense can identify, so much the better. This latter point is non-trivial. I had a long discussion with Brian Wiles on this. It seemed to identify content and site tuning to improve Google searchs for actual content, as opposed to accidental searches. If you are pumping between 1,000 and 3,500 words of content online per week, as I seem to do, getting folks who want to find information about the things you are writing on seems to make a lot of sense.

Having installed the embedded AdSense code, I found the search feature too which is particularly useful.

Such an experiment will only be useful if I get a metric of what damage a month's worth of this nonsense does. I'm someone who has been very anti-internet advertising in the past. I don't know what margin will show this to be a continuing feature of my sites. One thing is for sure, I'll write about it here.

Genetics for Metaphorical Monkeys

I was up until midnight last night playing with the Noble Ape genetics code. It is amazing the subtle elements the genetics code can contain. Not that it does in the current release, but I'm hoping 0.675 will have the new-improved genetics code. In fact, it has to as the genetics is the only major feature in 0.675.

Good afternoon.

Conventional Wisdom

Since my brush with linguistic stardom, I have been thinking about language a bit more thoroughly. My number of typographical errors in email has increased dramatically, but I seem to be thinking about language more.

One thing I have noted is that the use of the term 'Geneva Conventions' which appears to be used politically in the US by those that feel that the US is justified in its treatment of prisoners in Gitmo. Referring to them as conventions seems to imply that they are conventional wisdom ideas rather than a specific event - the Geneva Convention. In fact, there were four Conventions. But they were actual events.

The way the term Geneva Conventions is applied seems to rely on it being something of conventional wisdom rather than actual events too. The meaning of those that use the plural form seems to be fuzzy - to the point where it appears unclear if the author knows. Does the author intend to use them as reference to conventional wisdom or the actual event?

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20050621-085512-7817r.htm
http://decision08.blogspot.com/2005/06/hitchens-on-gitmo-geneva-and-amnesty.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/11/terror/main655191.shtml

I couldn't find a non-US site that used the term Geneva Conventions in the same usage as provided above.

My personal favourite per HFCSFacts, is;

http://www.genevaconventions.org/

Good morning.