Google ads WTF

mbessey

Seen on The Daily WTF:

http://www.prollenium.com/aesthetic001.html

Non-surgical facelifts? What is Google trying to tell us?

cconroy

Forget the Google ads, I'm still trying to figure out what a
foosball-playing, cleavage-exposing blonde has to do with an "online
community for software development".

dingo

'Cos that's what programmers do all day ofcourse!

R_Flowers

@cconroy said:

Forget the Google ads, I'm still trying to figure out what a
foosball-playing, cleavage-exposing blonde has to do with an "online
community for software development".

Funny you should mention it. I saw that ad, and said "I can use some o' dat!"

Cambrian House employs a concept of what it calls 'crowd sourcing.' The users provide ideas. which are vetted, ranked, and voted upon. Ideas that are good enough, they develop. Well, users develop. You can contribute code, graphics, whatever. As you do this, you earn 'royalty points' which entitle you to some financial compensation down the line. Once a product is marketable, they market it, and hopefully make some money. A little money trickles down to contributors, according to the theory. They're just getting started, and all you can do right now is contribute ideas.

And they have a little WTF for you. I signed up and contributed an idea. They have a page that will generate links so that you can paste them different places (e.g., sigs). That page reports a PHP warning:

SELECT concepts.concepts_key, concepts_audit.* FROM concepts, idea_status,concepts_audit WHERE concepts.concepts_key = NÕ®O,ÿ— and idea_status.idea_status_key = concepts.concepts_status and concepts_audit.concepts_audit_key = concepts.concepts_effective_audit_key LIMIT 1

Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/cambrianhouse/www/pres_public/my_place/my_stuff_promote.php on line 12

(I have changed some of the names just in case...needless to say, it's a case of TMI)

So I reported the bug. They got back to me and said thanks. But 2 days later... I guess it's too hard to fix, cause it's still there.

But they do have a lot of interactive Flash stuff!

R_Flowers

@dingo said:

'Cos that's what programmers do all day ofcourse!

And yes, that's the implication. They're especially enamoured of Google.

R_Flowers

Update: they now have a blog, acknowledging the bugs (w/o being specific), and thanking all those reporting (including me) by first name. Now I kinda feel almost bad for exposing their stuff here...

merreborn

@Carnildo said:

If you want a Google ads WTF, try a search for "slaves" on Google, and look at what eBay has to offer.

I didn't see anything from ebay, but there was this:

Slaves
Find, compare & buy
Compare & Buy from 1000's of Stores
www.shopping.com

@R.Flowers said:

Cambrian House employs a concept of what it
calls 'crowd sourcing.' (snip) You can contribute code, graphics,
whatever. As you do this, you earn 'royalty points' (snip)

Sooo.... how many points for the blonde?

@cconroy said:

Forget the Google ads, I'm still trying to figure out what a foosball-playing, cleavage-exposing blonde has to do with an "online community for software development".

The connection would probably be that she's the one who got that "non-surgical facelift" mentioned in the post that started this thread?

RiX0R

Slaves
Try out Hotmatch dating for sexy
fun and erotic pleasures. Join Free
www.HotMatch.com

Hmmm...

VGR

@R.Flowers said:

Funny you should mention it. I saw that ad, and said "I can use some o' dat!"

I feel left out. After that hideous giant Joel Spolsky face, I
blocked all images from that ad server, and I haven't seen any
since. Oh well.

@R.Flowers said:

Cambrian House employs a concept of what it calls 'crowd sourcing.' The
users provide ideas. which are vetted, ranked, and voted upon. Ideas
that are good enough, they develop. Well, users develop. You can
contribute code, graphics, whatever. As you do this, you earn 'royalty
points' which entitle you to some financial compensation down the line.
Once a product is marketable, they market it, and hopefully make some
money. A little money trickles down to contributors, according to the
theory. They're just getting started, and all you can do right now is
contribute ideas.

Didn't some UK-based company already try this a few years ago, only to
be flooded with terrible, non-working code from India that ultimately
diluted the entire site's value so badly it had to shut down?