Progress, What Progress
Everything's Come To A Halt
Argh! I feel like I've lost all of the momentum I had at the start of the year. I don't know where I am with my project idea! Well I've been trying to think of a suitable name for the brand but it's been quite difficult. I mean I can't call it something like My Faith because that would exclude the faithless. I need something that's instantly memorable and applies to belief.
I need to go in and see Niklas on Friday. It's been too long. I've been too lazy recently and I'm worried that I've fallen behind. Balls!
The pressure's starting to get to me.
Thursday's Lecture
Chris's show and tell on Thursday was quite thought provoking. I even went out and bought some badges (albeit ones for bands I like).
But yeah. It's a pity I didn't have anything to brand at the minute. I'll obviously need to start branding my belief website soon but it still seems so far off.
Domain Name For Major Project
Obviously I need to come up with a name for the website before I register the domain. However I've been experimenting with the Dynadot API and the Overture Suggestion Tool to help progress the research a little bit.
My thinking behind this is that if I register a domain name based upon a popular keyphrase that perfectly encapsulates the subject matter of my website, then I stand to gain quite a lot of free traffic.
It might be a bit difficult to brand religionsite.com than something more inventive. Hmmmmm.
Anyway as I'm sure you know by now I'm pretty fond of domain names and I'm always on the look out for cool generic names based on future and emerging technologies (snigger).
So as a test I've read in the Google Hot Trends Atom feed, parsed each of the topics and then checked to see if the .com is available. You can access the script here. It's pretty rough at the minute and takes ages to load. It's not exactly related to IMD either, but it's something I will use to seek out generic names based on religion.
The Blog's Falling Apart
I haven't updated my Del.icio.us links or Fake Project Ideas in a few weeks. I'll need to write a piece of code that checks to see if there is any specific content for that spot this week and if not, it's then replaced with something similar. I could have made this much easier by writing all of the ideas at once but I'm not really that bright.
Aims For My Major Project
I need to establish some realistic yet ambitious goals for my major project. I'd love to create something that generates a considerable amount of money. For that to happen, I'll have to build the site upon a viable business model.
Perhaps I could charge churches for premium positioning on the website? Maybe even sell text links at the bottom of the page like the guys over at script.aculo.us?
Actually I've just realised that script.aculo.us sell text links on their website through Text Link Ads.
For $420 a month each.
Since Text Link Ads operate on a 50% revenue share basis that means they are pulling in $210 (£100) a month. For a static link. On the footer of their webpage. Wow.
Some Religion Research
I've been checking out a number of websites this week related to religion. The first is Muxlim.com, which is a Myspace clone for followers of Islam. Appearance wise it's very similar to Myspace and it doesn't really seem to offer anything out of the ordinary compared to other social networking websites.
Interesting enough, each user has an "Activity Meter" which is indicative of how long they've spent on the site. This is a cool sticky feature. I can imagine users spending more time on the website trying to ramp up their meter. Perhaps I could implement something similar in my Major Project?
Next we have Koolano, a Jewish social networking site. This seems to be more of a Jewish dating page than anything else.
Putting the registration panel on the left hand-side of the page is an excellent idea though. I wouldn't be surprised if this has led to an increase in the number first-time visitors who've subsequently registered for the service.
The site's slogan "All of us" irked me a little. It's obviously exclusive to one race. Like Muxlim.com, it exists only for people of a certain religious disposition.
And the same can be said for Xianz.com too. This segregation is really depressing to see.
Hmmm, I just found this video on God Tube and I think it's truly terrifying.
Can anyone honestly say that this kid is of a sound mind? Has he had enough experience in life to be sure that "his faith" is the correct one?
Is it enough to just believe what you're told to believe in? I mean what if his parents are wrong? What if Christianity is a lie conjured up by another religion's form of Satan, designed to trap and lead people to their form of Hell. How could that child's parents discount that idea?
I'm guessing it has to do with social conditioning. If you're born into a Christian society the chances are if you're religious minded you'll be a Christian. It makes sense because it's woven into the social fabric. It's in songs, it's in our language. It's in all of the great architecture, paintings and sculptings. It's everywhere.
If anything my Major Project was inspired by the comedian Bill Hicks's sketch on the 'Evolution of Ideas'. You can hear it below.
So yeah! The evolution of ideas! As it stands most religions are in a permanent state of hiatus. Christianity isn't progressing. Unless you consider Søren Kierkegaard and his ideas on Christian Existentialism. But even then.
People in the West are waiting on the Rapture. There is no worthwhile future other than Heaven. Or Hell if you happen to have been born on the wrong side of the street.
It's my aim to create a project that allows people to explore new future realities, on their own terms without fear.
It's Bill's speech there, condensed into a website.
