sangiro

Done. Safe swoops Sangiro

Hehehe! Betsy... what the hell is that thing!? I betcha it can kill a Rottweiler.... if it get's stuck in it's throat... Safe swoops Sangiro

Removed. Safe swoops Sangiro

I don't think so. Available but turned off. One of my biggest pet peeves as well. It's untidy bandwith-gobbling functionality. Couldn't disagree more with you on this. Have that and it's turned off. Pretty useless and takes up space. Doesn't really tell you much about the thread if there's more than 1 new reply to it. Marginally useful when there's a single new reply. I'm not big on information clutter that really doesn't say much. Apply the Pareto principle. Safe swoops Sangiro

How long did you wonder? Safe swoops Sangiro

Happy Birthday Rhonda! See... now we've sent you one as well! Safe swoops Sangiro

The following scam has been reported: Click here to read more about these kind of scams. Remember: DO NOT do business with anyone who offers to send you payment for a higher amount than your selling price with the understanding that you'll send back the balance. Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be acting on behalf of a "client" or another "customer". Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be from Nigeria or West Africa If you agree to accept a check payment, then do not send anything, gear or "change" before the check cleared. And be careful, if you manage to clear a fraudulent check then you may be liable for the damages if the bank finds out later. Make sure your bank authenticates the check. If it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is.This username has been disabled. Safe swoops Sangiro

Hehehe! I updated that pic. Here's what we're giving away. Safe swoops Sangiro

Heya all, Go listen to the latest Skydive Radio show (and any of the old shows) straight from the Dropzone.com home page. Go now! Safe swoops Sangiro

Heya all, Dropzone.com and Skydive Radio just announced a partnership to stream the world's first skydiving podcast directly from the Dropzone.com home page. Read the press release and check out the Dropzone.com home page to launch the Skydive Radio player and listen to their shows. Premier Members! You can win a 30 GB Apple iPod with Video Playback! More details on how to enter here. Thank you for your continued support.

I just validated all those. Should be up.

And I appreciate that, but with all due respect, you were also one of the first to cancel. How did you derive that? Because I don't want to change a feature that you and a handful of other people don't like? Were you under the impression (again) that paying for a value add service buys you some form of leverage? What's to explain? Canceling a Premier Memberships is more likely to encourage me to look at other revenue streams... I wasn't pressured to go to this. No it doesn't. It changes it to a link where users can read more about the product that you think is flawed. I trust your post will make it very clear that you're not endorsing the product. It's really not the big deal you're trying to make this out to be. I actually think this can be a pretty cool feature with benefits to all. Some people have given some really constructive inputs and has made some great suggestions in this thread. I'm going to focus on working with them to see how I can ensure that this doesn't become a usability drag or create too much confusion, while still remaining fair to everyone involved. Safe swoops Sangiro

That's a good suggestion. Thanks.

Then don't. [sound of me clicking my heels] If you read my post above you'll see that I said I will certainly look into removing the links from inside words. That was never intented to happen and it's just plain nasty from a usability perspective. Until this discussion started you've used the word "emoticon" no more than 7 times in 4,173 posts. Till I get that sorted I'm not going to be too worried about all the time you'll have to put in to avoid creating an accidental link! I think you've managend to create a huge issue (in your mind) about something that most people scanned over and moved on to the next post. Safe swoops Sangiro

Duly noted. Though I understand that "it was not your intent" I will gladly refund your full payment if you do decide to cancel and leave your Premier Membership active untill your current term expires. I certainly have no desire to keep you "locked in" or cause you to suffer a "financial loss".

Eule, Good suggestions. Thanks guys. Matching patterns will indeed go a long way to solving the problem stated above. It doesn't solve the problem of out of context links though. While you may gain a little on context, you at the same time also provide a very simple way for anyone to get "around" the ad, which is not fair to the advertiser. Recognizing a pattern for a product like Pilot or Smart does not mean it actually refers to the product: "We've created a new Pilot Forum on our site" "Smart people will know how to solve this problem in no time" ...and on the flip side, allowing a link to be created in all cases to the exclusion of one case means people can write the word in the single exclusion, all the time, and get around it. In this case, write it in all lower case. (You do have to exclude something, otherwise the pattern recognition becomes moot) Combining it with some of bergh's suggestions is probably better. Removing it from the middle of words is a good idea. I'll follow up on that. Trying to also build context about the proximity of the word within the sentence is also a good idea. Again, just not very fool-proof. Part of the issue is recognizing the words. Another part is the fact that the words for these few products, in any form or format can actually have more than one meaning. Again, I think their are few enough of these product names around that this should not be a big issue. I'll continue to look into some of these suggestions though. Safe swoops Sangiro

JP... Ronda, That's fair. I'm taking note of your feedback. It's absolutely impossible to please everyone and if you feel strongly about this you can certainly cancel your Premier Membership. (which JP doesn't have) Unfortunately the relationship between Premier Memberships and forum keyword ads actually work exactly the other way round though.... Just like you I need to make decisions about how I pay the bills. I trust you'll continue to enjoy all the free features you're getting on Dropzone.com - as both of you certainly have been doing for a very long time. ... in the meantime, you're still not allowed to post ads to your signature lines, which is what this post was originally about. PS - I unfortunately do not have the time to monitor all the threads in the forums but I'm more than willing to chat more about this here. Safe swoops Sangiro

The following scam has been reported: Click here to read more about these kind of scams. Remember: DO NOT do business with anyone who offers to send you payment for a higher amount than your selling price with the understanding that you'll send back the balance. Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be acting on behalf of a "client" or another "customer". Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be from Nigeria or West Africa If you agree to accept a check payment, then do not send anything, gear or "change" before the check cleared. And be careful, if you manage to clear a fraudulent check then you may be liable for the damages if the bank finds out later. Make sure your bank authenticates the check. If it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is.This username has been disabled. Safe swoops Sangiro

Hey airtwardo, I've posted some comments on this in the Feedback and Suggestions forum. Those who threaten to cancel their Premier Memberships because of linked keywords, and those who have found a new cause in life to "resists" as much as they can; I'd hate to see you leave or spend too much time on much-ado-about-nothing but I would love to hear your suggestions and feedback. Read a bit more about how we will manage this product. It's a good option for advertisers and it's far less obnoxious than pop-up flash ads or huge mid-page flash blocks to users. Linked keywords are used pretty widely on the web. Nothing new here. Anyway, let's continue this discussion in the appropriate forum.

Hey Kris, Thanks for the suggestion. We actually had it like that originally. There is a flip-side to this in that a lot of users do not use capitalize when they post to forums. From the perspective of an advertiser this means that there may be a slew of conversations about their product that does not get linked to their site - and that's a problem if you're paying for that keyword. Aerodyne is one of the few companies which actually has product names (like Icon, Smart and Pilot) that's used a lot in different contexts in the forums. For most other companies this would not be an issue at all. Sabre, Xaos, Javelin, Bird-man... most simply doesn't have this problem. Based on this here are the decisions we had to make. 1) Make the product linkage case sensitive (basically just for Aerodyne and a few others) and when an advertiser buys a link, set up every possible variation of that word to try and make sure we are fair to them as well. 2) Make it non case sensitive and get some "out of context links" to the manufacturer page. #1 above is unfortunately an almost unworkable option. We tried that and I rolled it back. Aerodyne, aArodyne, aeRodyne, aerOdyne, aeroDyne, aerodYne, aerodyNe, aerodyne... and the starting again with.... AerodynE, AerodyNe.. you get the idea... It's obviously a balance between being fair to advertisers, but also try to create a user experience that's not confusing. I simply decided most product names are pretty unique and distinguishable and should not be a problem. I'll take the knock on the few that are out there that can be used out of context. It's just a call that I had to make. I'm open to further constructive suggestions though.

No they can not. You should heed your own advice and not speak of things you know very little about as if with authority. Safe swoops Sangiro

You should talk to Frenchy about avatar hijacking. Safe swoops Sangiro

Funks - I'm with Tom on this one.... Safe swoops Sangiro