Advanced Technology of Graphene


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    Doing some research for a science fiction piece I'm working on. Reading up on graphene and fullerne. It's amazingly advanced stuff. Cutting edge of materials science. There are a lot of really smart people doing really difficult work on these things.

    And then I come across this website...

    [url="http://www.cheaptubes.com/"]http://www.cheaptubes.com/[/url]

    ... and I honestly don't know what to feel about it. The Geocities layout. Random fonts size, face and underlines. The wall-of-links. The Comic Sans logo!

    For fuck's sake-- the URL itself sells like a malware infested spam-scam dating/porn site.

    On one hand, this is a company selling unbelievably advanced and high-tech, difficult to produce materials. On the other hand, the tone of the entire website reads and sounds like they're promising discount viagara if only you'd give them your credit card number. Is there really a large enough market that a scammer can justify opening a random website to sell $20k/pound materials?

    I don't know if I should point and laugh, or phone them up and ask I can pick their brains about the practical and theoretical application Buckyballs for a couple hours.



  • Maybe you should email them. The first email address on the website is Mike@cheaptubes.com.

    Another interesting point is the mysterious menu item between Contact and Top of page. You should tell Mike about it.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    ... and I honestly don't know what to feel about it. The Geocities layout. Random fonts size, face and underlines. The wall-of-links. The Comic Sans logo!
     

    Hypothesis one: They want to emphasise that they're cheap. Keeping their prices down by not spending money on highly-paid web designers.

    Hypothesis two: One man show, who paid his nephew/niece to put together a website - said nephew/niece having only ever created pages using Geocities. Business model involves buying in bulk from other suppliers and reselling.

    Hypothesis three: Why bother stealing credit card data from ordinary punters (where an extra $400 charge stands out) when you can steal corporate credit card numbers (where an extra $5,000 credit card chage might go unnoticed for a long time).

     



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    I honestly don't know what to feel about it.
    Relief that your world has just come unshook again?



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    Hypothesis two: One man show
     

    The address looks like a house on Google Maps.  Very small bussiness?

     



  • @ShawnD said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    Hypothesis two: One man show
     

    The address looks like a house on Google Maps.  Very small bussiness?

     

    The nanotube factory in the woods that your parents warned you about when you were a kid.

     

     



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @ShawnD said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    Hypothesis two: One man show
     

    The address looks like a house on Google Maps.  Very small bussiness?

     

    The nanotube factory in the woods that your parents warned you about when you were a kid.
    If you compare it to the other houses in the picture, like the one at the left, it is noticeably larger, like maybe a small factory or warehouse. I'd say it's probably a real business. Seems like an out-of-the-way place for a high-tech business. The setting seems more appropriate for Joe's Grain and Feed or Dave's Welding, but maybe the owner just likes living in the countryside; the "buy in bulk and resell" business model can work anywhere there is an Internet connection and a post office.

     



  •  Yeah, that's a 1000sq foot building. That address matches a recycling center.. The phone doesn't.





  • @Ben L. said:

    I'll just leave this here.
    People who make nanotubes aren't necessarily good at CSS. And vice-versa.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @El_Heffe said:

    @Ben L. said:

    I'll just leave this here.
    People who make nanotubes aren't necessarily good at CSS. And vice-versa.

     

    But people who claim to be CSS3 compliant should be good a CSS. Like this guy is claiming. With the badge on his site. Claiming he's CSS3 compliant.

    Now I have serious doubts about his nanotubes. Are they actually chemically processed and manipulated graphite-- or just straw wrappers rolled by hand to be very small and tight.  "What, you don't like that no no tube? Okay fine I make you another {roll roll roll} there we're happy now!"

     

     



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @El_Heffe said:

    @Ben L. said:

    I'll just leave this here.
    People who make nanotubes aren't necessarily good at CSS. And vice-versa.

     

    But people who claim to be CSS3 compliant should be good a CSS. Like this guy is claiming. With the badge on his site. Claiming he's CSS3 compliant.

    Now I have serious doubts about his nanotubes. Are they actually chemically processed and manipulated graphite-- or just straw wrappers rolled by hand to be very small and tight.  "What, you don't like that no no tube? Okay fine I make you another {roll roll roll} there we're happy now!"

     

     

    Did you view-source that site? There is a lot of analytics, tracking and whatnot. Google Analytics (including Webmasters Tool), Tynt, Hitslink. Plus the social stuff, StumbleUpon, Digg, etc. Mike is quite the SEO/Analytics expert.

    Funny thing: while looking up Tynt I ended up on the parent company website (33Across). I could not tell why they would pick that name but they were kind enough to explain it on their website:

    @33Across said:

    The toughest crossword puzzles can be solved if you decipher a large horizontal word in the middle of the puzzle. In many difficult puzzles these are often around 32 or 33 across. 33Across unlocks the puzzle of social connections.

    This gives me the idea of starting a company called "SolveItBackward":

    @SolveItBackward S-1 said:

    Solving a puzzle is easier if you start at the end. SolveItBackward is a company that solves the maze of social connections.

    Disclaimer: I'm a marketing genius and serial fantasy entrepreneur.



  • @ShawnD said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    Hypothesis two: One man show
     

    The address looks like a house on Google Maps.  Very small bussiness?

     

     

    I don't think the market of nanotubes and graphene is big enough to support a large business.

    That's probably a one/two guys' lab, selling stuff into a ninche market. It does not need to be any larger than a normal house.

     



  • @Ronald said:

    @SolveItBackward S-1 said:

    Solving a puzzle is easier if you start at the end. SolveItBackward is a company that solves the maze of social connections.

    Disclaimer: I'm a marketing genius and serial fantasy entrepreneur.

    Now we just need someone stupid enough to market "backwards solutions". Sounds like a job for TDWTF's content creators!


  • @Lorne Kates said:

    But people who claim to be CSS3 compliant should be good a CSS. Like this guy is claiming. With the badge on his site. Claiming he's CSS3 compliant.
    There are 2 errors reported by the CSS validation page that appear to have something to do with a color setting but actually are just typos in the CSS file.  On one line he has two # instead of only one, and on another line he has a brace at the end of the line that shouldn't be there.

    The bigger WTF is what happens when you click on that color link on the CSS validation page, which supposedly will tell you about 'propdef-color'. Go ahead, try it. I dare you.



  • @ShawnD said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    Hypothesis two: One man show
    The address looks like a house on Google Maps. Very small bussiness?
    Perhaps for creating nano-tubes you only need a nano-factory...



  • @Anonymouse said:

    @ShawnD said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    Hypothesis two: One man show
    The address looks like a house on Google Maps. Very small bussiness?
    Perhaps for creating nano-tubes you only need a nano-factory...

     



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    ... and I honestly don't know what to feel about it. The Geocities layout. Random fonts size, face and underlines. The wall-of-links. The Comic Sans logo!

    In which universe have scientists ever created aethetically pleasing webpages?



  •  Nanotubes: the new asbestos.



  • @Ben L. said:

    I'll just leave this here.

    Who is this, and what did you do with the real Ben L.?



  • @Faxmachinen said:

    In which universe have scientists ever created aethetically pleasing webpages?
     

    Are you talking about individual scientists that create webpages, or scientific websites? Because the CERN blog is pretty alright.


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