Rob Brown

How To Change the iTunes Icon on Mac OSX

2010-09-03T19:04:00.001-07:00

Read the full step-by-step article here: robisit.com

How To Change the iTunes Icon on Mac OSX
Posted on 03. Sep, 2010 by Rob Brown in Tech

This step-by-step guide will show you how to change your iTunes icon on a Mac computer and provide you with a number of new iTunes icons to choose from.

During an Apple product release conference in September of 2010, Steve Jobs noted that iTunes was represented by a depreciating music medium – a CD. As a result of a changing music marketplace lead in majority by Apple, the iTunes icon has changed to a familiar music note backed by a starburst gradient blue, glossy background.

If you’re one of the people that doesn’t like Apple’s new iTunes Icon, or if you would like to personalize your Mac, these instructions will show you exactly how to change the iTunes icon.
Step 1: Find a New iTunes Icon
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Epic Win iPhone App

2010-08-19T14:17:00.001-07:00

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BlackBerry BlackPad vs Apple iPad | Rob Brown

2010-08-11T08:11:00.003-07:00

RIM BlackPad Vs Apple iPad

Posted on 09. Aug, 2010 by Rob Brown in Business, Entertainment, Marketing, News

RIM is whispering rumors of their upcoming iPad competitor the BlackPad. What are the BlackPad specs? How will the BlackPad work? Is the BlackPad better then the iPad? This article reviews RIM’s BlackPad to compare it against Apple’s iPad in terms of media, messaging and where I think the real battle field is, in education.

Almost at the exact moment Apple released the iPad, people have been speculating what competing smartphone maker Research In Motion would do to match Apple’s touch screen tablet efforts. In the face of less than spectacular reviews for RIM’s new Blackberry Torch (next generation BlackBerry), detailed rumors of RIM’s tablet device have started to surface.

Blackpad Specs:

9.7″ Display

Bluetooth

WiFi

Front and Rear Facing Cameras

2 Million units in production starting September 2010

Expected to launch in November of 2010

8 Million units in production throughout 2011

Sources: Bloomberg, AppleDaily, Engadget.

BlackPad Mockup From Engadget

Blackberry 6 and the BlackPad:

Updated news of RIM’s tablet follows closely with another large announcement from RIM about the operating system that will powers all of it’s new devices. Blackberry 6 improves access to music and movies with a coverflow like interface, uses tabs similar to HTC devices, integrates contacts with social network updates, uses a better webkit based web browser, and provisions for true multi-touch screen interfaces. Below is a video demo from RIM showing these new features.

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Yankee Girl Short Film | Rob Brown

2010-08-11T08:11:00.001-07:00

Yankee Girl Short Film

Posted on 09. Aug, 2010 by Rob Brown in Best of the Web, Entertainment

This is an exceptionally well done animation short. The music is as well conceived as the story. Really, it’s a must watch.

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How To Make a Bagheera Cocktail | Rob Brown

2010-08-11T07:50:00.001-07:00

Officially served for the first time at Stella McCartney’s September Fashion show in 2009, this drink was said to have over shadowed the event itself. Often, liquor producers enlist the help of talented mixoligists and bartenders to create new and interesting drinks that help highlight and market their new products. Created by Snow Leopard Vodka to compliment their “ethical” Vodka, Snow Leopard creates small batches of Vodka in the historic Polmos Lublin distillery in Poland. In addition to creating an exceptional drink to highlight the subtle tones of their Vodka, Snow Leopard donates 15% of their profits to the Snow Leopard Trust. This charity helps to increase the awareness of endangered Snow Leopards (the animals) and help safeguard their future. I like mixing my liquor with altruistic endeavours so this works out really well.

This isn’t to say that you must use Snow Leopard Vodka. But, remember that good quality Vodka has unique characteristics that are significantly highlighted when mixed.

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2010-08-10T19:43:00.001-07:00

How to Make a Bagheera Cocktail http://ping.fm/n8kg4

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2010-08-09T13:54:00.001-07:00

Yankee Girl Short Film http://ping.fm/BRU62

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2010-08-09T06:49:00.001-07:00

RIM BlackPad Vs Apple iPad http://ping.fm/edHQy

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2010-07-25T05:37:00.001-07:00

Dexter Season 5 Preview http://ping.fm/SkG9p

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2010-07-17T06:52:00.001-07:00

If you were an animal what animal would you be and why? http://ping.fm/arIFw

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2010-07-15T12:10:00.001-07:00

My TEDx Toronto Application http://ping.fm/DzD7g

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2010-07-10T16:51:00.001-07:00

Epic Win iPhone App http://ping.fm/ap5to

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2010-07-10T16:25:00.001-07:00

Wedding Photographer Fail http://ping.fm/tK9xn

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2010-07-08T06:34:00.001-07:00

20,000 Clicks and Counting: My Top 10 Posts http://ping.fm/kRT1d

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2010-07-06T05:41:00.001-07:00

IBM Watson Takes Natural Language Search To the Next Level http://ping.fm/h7a4b

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2010-07-05T16:42:00.001-07:00

The Chef From The Muppets Shows You How to Make Popcorn http://ping.fm/Cd4YT

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2010-07-02T05:30:00.001-07:00

How To Write Effective SEO Copy http://ping.fm/J9kxJ

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2010-07-01T13:25:00.001-07:00

Some of The Nice Things People Have Said http://ping.fm/0z0S7

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2010-06-30T05:01:00.001-07:00

A Fun Game: How to Stay Awake During Meetings http://ping.fm/kVquv

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2010-06-29T03:43:00.001-07:00

Start the day with a short video staring Fluffy Mc Cloud http://ping.fm/Z1LX3

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2010-06-19T13:49:00.001-07:00

What would you do to market a television show through social networks? http://tinyurl.com/2vlhosp

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2010-06-06T05:40:00.001-07:00

Baby Gaga Music Video http://ping.fm/juTt7

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2010-05-18T05:17:00.001-07:00

The Future of Product Based eCommerce : Augmented Reality http://ping.fm/RgYWR

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2010-05-09T03:42:00.001-07:00

The Best iPad Cases http://ping.fm/Z9MEZ

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2010-04-23T06:54:00.001-07:00

Start Friday Right - 4 things to talk about this weekend and Will Ferrell's new movie http://tinyurl.com/zbcg21

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2010-04-22T07:45:00.001-07:00

Idea of the Day: Stick it to the spammers - Attract spam, get links http://tinyurl.com/2846u4a

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2010-04-20T06:28:00.001-07:00

Funny Video: Charlize Theron vs Wikus from District 9 http://ping.fm/TqHO6

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2010-04-18T17:02:00.001-07:00

Apple iTunes Ticket Store - Ticketmaster days are numbered http://ping.fm/DIy1S

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2010-04-18T11:00:00.001-07:00

Why is A-B Testing Important http://ping.fm/izkYf

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2010-04-16T07:23:00.001-07:00

Coolest House Hack Ever: LCD TV Windows (video) http://ping.fm/ftOJn

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2010-04-16T04:27:00.001-07:00

Super Productive Friday: 5 Funny New Youtube Videos http://ping.fm/PsRrz

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2010-04-14T07:33:00.001-07:00

No iPad In Canada Until May or June http://ping.fm/UEQ2B

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2010-04-11T05:31:00.001-07:00

Two Meme's Perfectly Matched: Tiger Woods vs Christian Bale http://ping.fm/aTq68

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2010-04-05T09:19:00.001-07:00

Jesse James Sandra Bullock Sex Tape http://ping.fm/eVCOm

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2010-04-05T07:44:00.001-07:00

Tour of the Gibson Guitar Factory http://ping.fm/sA5Ey

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2010-04-04T07:55:00.001-07:00

Lil Wayne Blogging From Prison http://ping.fm/zOMeL

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2010-04-02T08:24:00.001-07:00

Idea of the Day: Build Crap and Sell It http://ping.fm/UWoFp

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2010-03-29T18:31:00.001-07:00

Ricky Martin Really is Gay http://ping.fm/n8yGA

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2010-03-29T10:11:00.001-07:00

Moscow Suicide Bombing http://ping.fm/HT846

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2010-03-27T16:19:00.001-07:00

Why are you a Software Developer? http://ping.fm/t18Un

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2010-03-26T19:20:00.001-07:00

24 Canceled - Jack Bauer's Time Is Up (for real this time) http://ping.fm/tIeCw

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2010-03-26T16:15:00.001-07:00

Happy Friday! Here's something to work on this weekend: Drunk History featuring Jack Black http://tinyurl.com/ydbkyqj

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2010-03-26T07:00:00.001-07:00

Is Lady GaGa a Topless Communist? http://ping.fm/ioLdu

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2010-03-26T04:49:00.001-07:00

Adobe Photoshop CS5 http://ping.fm/9UeJF

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People Start To Pray For Google

2010-03-24T05:33:00.001-07:00

Back in February, Google said that they were going to build 1Gbps
fiber network links to homes in America. Crazy nice, right? Well
here's where it gets really crazy, yesterday cities such as Greenville
and Topeka started vying for Google's favor by trying to please the
Internet gods.

In Greenville, hundreds of people gathered in the streets to show
Google how much the residents there worship them. Armed with glow
sticks, each person assembled in groups to recreate Google's logo.

Previously, Topeka Kansas changed the name of their city to Google.
Can you imagine waking up one morning and realizing that you lived in
Google?

I love broadband as much as the next guy, and I understand that the
next revolution in communication will be based around significantly
increased network capacity, but common... it'll happen eventually,
won't it?

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2010-03-23T20:49:00.001-07:00

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How to Backup Your Hard Drive

2010-03-23T16:56:00.001-07:00

How to Backup Your Hard Drive

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U.S. Extends Unemployment Benefits

2010-03-23T16:39:00.001-07:00

U.S. Extends Unemployment Benefits

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Wondering What Happened With The Austin Plane Crash?

2010-02-18T11:56:00.001-08:00

Apparently, the pilot wanted to commit suicide.

Video and a clear summary explanation here:
http://www.mahalo.com/plane-crash-austin

More info on the pilot:
http://www.mahalo.com/joseph-andrew-stack

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Have You Seen The Crazy Videos From Shawn White at the Olympics?

2010-02-18T11:45:00.001-08:00

If you've known me for any amount of time, you know that I've spent more than my fair share of time on a Ski hill. To this day, I think that I'll end up retired filling the role as the obigatory crazy old Instructor that every hill has or as a Patrol who enjoys my mornings carving first tracks in the snow when the sun comes up.

Until that day, I live vicariously through others and this week, Shaun White didn't let me down. Check out these crazy videos from the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The IOC and NBC have been taking down videos left right and center, so check them all out here:

http://www.mahalo.com/shaun-white-olympics-2010-video

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What is AdSense Smart Pricing?

2010-02-16T08:14:00.001-08:00

Smart Pricing is Google's term for protecting itself and AdSense advertisers. In short, people who spend money to advertise with Google AdSense want as many people to click their ads as possible. Measured as a Click Through Ratio (CTR), many AdSense advertisers work hard to change the words and graphics they use in their ads to encourage people to click. Every time that a website visitor views an ad and that ad isn't clicked, the CTR decreases.

In April of 2004, Google introduced Smart Pricing to help AdSense advertisers combat poor CTR. Here is Google's news archive announcing Smart Pricing:

https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/adwords/select/news/sa_mar04.html

Google constantly monitors the productivity of AdWords ads. When your website has a high number of readers, but a low number of ad clickers, Google has two choices: Display fewer ads or decrease amount of money they pay you for displaying those ads. In my experience, Google first tries to decrease the number of targeted ads. If that doesn't work, then, they apply Smart Pricing and decrease the amount of money they pay you to display ads.

In the eyes of an advertiser, this is good. While advertisers spend a lot of time thinking about CTR, they live and die in the amount of money that an ad makes. As a result, if their CTR goes down but their overall income goes up, advertisers (and Google) are happy.

As a side note, it's important to realize that Click Through Rates do not influence the Return On Investment. Google uses CTR to measure the quality of traffic and as a foundation to the formulas used to calculate ROI results such as eCPM (Effective Cost Per Thousand).

<b>How Does Smart Pricing Happen</b>

Smart Pricing is a simple function of traffic. If your website visitors do not click on ads, Google will eventually lock your site into Smart Pricing.

Commonly, these websites find themselves locked into smart pricing when they start to gain traffic:

Forums
Article Websites
General Interest Websites
Blogs with high retention rates
Web based applications

Google starts every site out on a high paying, level playing field. As traffic (website visitors) grow, Google constantly measures the quality of that traffic. If people are clicking ads, Google leaves your ad pricing alone as you continue on your happy way. However, when a community is engaged (as with forums) or when you purchase traffic (as with general interest websites) or even when you simply have regular visitors (as with blogs and web apps), people click on fewer ads. Google sees this and applies Smart Pricing to decrease the amount of money you make per click and protect the ROI of their advertiser.

<b>How To Solve Google Smart Pricing</b>

Step 0:
Improve the CTR's that Google Advertisers receive.
You'll notice a that this is solution number 0. That's because this is a very difficult, if not impossible thing to do. This solution requires that you edit not only your content, but you need to edit the ads of the Google Ads customers and perhaps even the website of Google's customers. This isn't a real solution, but it highlights the underlying Smart Pricing problem.

Step 1: Identify Your Best Content
Use Adsense Channels to find out what pages are generating clicks. Here is more information about Google Channels: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=9868

Step 2: Remove All Google Ads From Your Site
Switch to another ad network for at least 30 days. I suggest using this opportunity to check out a variety of other ad networks or perhaps even try to broker your own private deal with advertisers. You have enough traffic for Google to care what you do, maybe you have enough for real advertisers to care too.

Step 3: Place Ads Only on Specific Pages
After you purge all of the Google Ads from your site and you wait for at least a full cycle to pass, then place Google Ads only (and this is important) only on the pages that you identified in step 1. You want people to click on those Google ads and since you know which pages they were clicking on before, you increase your chances of Google recording CTR numbers with ads only on those pages.

Step 4: Work on Your Traffic
The last thing to do is to be consciously aware of your traffic. If you have a website that targets a wide, general audience, ensure that you have enough outstanding, high quality niche content to offset global click through ratios. In short, if you have a lot of crappy pages, you're going to have a lot of crappy traffic. If you regularly buy traffic or use supplemental or purchased traffic for anything other than breaking out of a plateau, you're going to have crappy traffic. Google will again protect itself from your crappy traffic and your time will be wasted if you do not improve your sources of traffic in this continual step.

Posted via web from Rob Brown

An SEO Tip: Why video and emerging social networks are important

2010-01-13T19:15:00.001-08:00

I really enjoy the "game" of online marketing. There is an entire subculture of players and a game that extends across the entire world. That being said, I couldn't imagine relying on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a primary form of marketing. These days, I see it more as a tool than anything else.

I’m adding this tip to this in depth SEO resource: http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-seo-your-website

This year will mark the implementation of cumulative logic to determine relevance in search results. This isn't news for anyone following search engine trends. From Twitter to Facebook to almost every major source of traffic online, search engines such as Google and Bing are more and more relying on human powered patterns to figure out what a human is searching for.

With this in mind, I have noticed something that smart folks are doing on video sharing sites such as Youtube.

Here's how it works:

1)
Start with a video. As with any content, the better the quality, the more productive the traffic will be.

2)
Create a high quality, informative, video. For example, if you're working with an independent restaurant, create a high quality video that revolves around the keywords you're trying to match. If you're using this strategy in volume, low quality videos will work, they just won't be as productive.

3)
Here's the part where the rubber meets the road. First, identify all of the Tube / video sites that accept video submissions. Youtube, etc. Next, keyword every available field. Don't just stuff keywords - treat each of these fields like the title tag in html. Next, submit, submit, submit. Submit this keyworded, interesting video everywhere you can.

3)
Last, post the video on your site with relevant and connected text. Post it everywhere that is even closely related. In my restaurant example: The main page, menu page, heck even on your keyworded 404 page. Hopefully, this video will add value to your readers too - remember that video significantly improves CTR, time on site and lowers bounce rates.

Why this works:

Increasingly, search engines are combining sources to determine relevance. Relevance very clearly equals higher rankings. Since there isn't a lot of competition on video sites for a wide variety of keywords and terms, it's possible to become influential and add a tool to your SEO and marketing toolboxes.

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Simple Business = Good Business

2010-01-04T16:06:00.001-08:00

I live in a small town 45 minuets outside of Toronto. Sometimes, this works to my advantage (lower taxes, less traffic, nice folks). Other times, it doesn't (fewer services, few restaurants, expensive groceries).

What is not unusual is for me to walk into a small local store, be greeted with a smile and asked how the person can help me. Without ulterior sales training, the person just simply and honestly wants to help me.

Today, I found an example of simple, good business in an unexpected location. A new pizza place opened up and I decided to give it a try. The owner is from "the big city" and he reminded me of a "small town" simple business lesson.

Give people stuff for free and they will like you.

The new pizza guy knows he's new. He's nice, outgoing and has that "new franchisee" buzz about him. Of his own accord and out of his own budget, he's giving people stuff to make them like him.

Here's what he's doing:

1)
When a new customer phones in an oder, it is taken just like any other pizza shop.

2)
When you go in, you're greeted with a small town smile and a friendly "Hello".

Nothing new yet. You're a new customer and your order is ready - perfect.

3)
What comes next is genius. The owner opens up the pizza after taking your money and says something like "this pizza is a bit overdone" or "there aren't enough pepperoni" on this pizza. I can have a new one ready for you in 5 minuets and you can take this one at no charge. Brilliance.

4)
What my big city turned small town business person has told me with this one pseudo promotion is: He cares about his product, he is a perfectionist, he is friendly, he does what I want, he is more concerned with my happiness than the cost of his product, and best of all - he knows that people talk.

So there you have it. An insignificant new pizza shop owner that taught me a lesson about fundamental customer service. If only Facebook applied these principles or what about Ford. I'm not saying give away the farm, but DO THINGS that SHOW PEOPLE what you're made of. Pizza or not.

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Blippy - Is This the Evolution of Twitter?

2009-12-29T09:23:00.001-08:00

Twitter has a long way to go before it reaches the natural end of it's life. However, new service Blippy is prophesying that end by refining Twitter into a niche appeal service. Blippy is revolutionary because no other online service has given someone the ability to publicly track all of their purchases and the purchases of their friends in real time.

What is Blippy and how does it work?

After receiving a Blippy Invite Code, you're asked to link the accounts you have at stores such as iTunes, Amazon, Zappos, Netflix, Godaddy and others. You can also link a credit card or bank account.

Linking an account allows Blippy to monitor your purchases. Similar to tweeting, the purchases in your linked account can be viewed by your Blippy "friends" to be commented on and reviewed.

Here's why Blippy is cool:

You might be thinking to yourself, "OMG - I don't want anyone to know about my Netflix rental history"; that's what I thought too until I used Blippy. Blippy's purpose isn't to monitor all of your purchases. Rather, Blippy wants to tell your audience "look at how cool I am, I just bought this".

It's scary to think that people will know what you buy when and for how much, but this initial fear is one of the reasons that I think Blippy will succeed. The shock value is enough to get a few early adopters into the system and the community that is forming shows the value in giving Blippy and the general public a view of your purchases.

Beyond showing people what you bought, Blippy takes point from Twitter by showing your friends what you purchased. However, it gets interesting when people start to comment on your purchases and discuss them. Again, this sounds intimidating, but check this out:

See what's happening there? Some Internet noob named Jason Calacanis purchased a new camera to take the best photos possible of his new daughter. He purchased the camera, broadcasted his Amazon purchase on Blippy and opened a conversation about it. What followed was some very sound advice on lenses and even a note by some other unknown guy, Leo Laporte.

How cool is that, right? We know what someone we like purchased, where, for how much and Blippy friends got to have a conversation about it. Beyond the shock value of having instanat access to what we buy and when we buy it, Blippy will live or die in these types of conversations and interactions people like Jason and Leo have with their audiences.

Of course, this isn't without problem. Similar to Twitter, the user interface of the Blippy conversation limits the depth of what people are saying. After Leo said to Jason, "[You] should have bought the 5D. Seriously.", Jason started a question on Mahalo Answers asking how his camera was different that resulted in significantly deeper, well researched answers.

What do I think about Blippy?

I mentioned at the start that Blippy is the evolution of Twitter. In it's current state, that's exactly what I think about it. When a product or service reaches critical mass, competitors break the market leader apart into smaller services tailored for specific functions. Online, this is called "niche market product creation" and is exactly what Blippy is doing.

Blippy could have easily been marketed as a Twitter API based App service that allowed people to broadcast the details of their retail purchases to their Twitter friends. By developing their own niche microblogging social network based on purchases, they're taking a risk that could pay off. If heavy social mavens such as Laporte and Calacanis attract their friends and fans to have conversations, this could become a very interesting project. Years down the road, the obvious "end game" for Blippy goes one of two ways. Either Twitter buys them after they have ammased enough regular conversation that Blippy becomes powerful or they quickly monitize with the retail companies that they interact with. The less obvious path (and the one my money is on) is that a smaller credit card company (not Visa) will buy Bilppy for access to the data and to use as a marketing tool to differentiate their product from larger competitors.

Check out Blippy. Grab a beta invite code and sign up. My crystal ball says that we're going to start to see a lot of integrated services similar to Blippy in the near future.

Posted via web from Rob Brown

Apple Tablet Announcement

2009-12-27T07:28:00.001-08:00

Apple has reserved the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco in late January. Many people are hyothesizing that Apple will release a tablet computer.

The Apple tablet has been anticipated for almost 2 years now. With soft compeition from the now defunct CruchPad, the Apple Tablet (possibly called the iSlate) is expected to debut on January 26th at the largest Apple event since September.

I'm interested in the Apple tablet. I think that a touch tablet driven with a clean, simple operating system has the capability to be a game changing device similar to the iPod. With applications ranging from educational tools to simply advancing entertainment, an Apple tablet could become what the Apple TV always hoped to be.

More information:

http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2009/12/exclusive-apple-to-host-event-in-january/

http://seekingalpha.com/article/179709-is-the-apple-tablet-coming-january-26-2010

http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/12/23/rumorous-maximus-apple-holding-special-event-january-26/

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2009-12-22T17:14:00.001-08:00

I've just finished authoring a series of articles about debt. You know, the kind that piles up around Christmas?

Here is one of the articles that I composed titled, "How to Consolidate Debt with Bad Credit":

http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-consolidate-debt-with-bad-credit

While researching this line of articles and specifically this one that deals with bad credit, I'm reminded how serious credit it but how easy it is to fix it with good, simple habits. If you've never had to deal with bad credit or if you have good credit but are thinking about consolidating your loans to save money, this article might help you.

Let me know what you think. I would really appreciate some feedback on this.

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My Personal "Best Onlin Video of 2009"

2009-12-16T12:59:00.001-08:00

The Lonley Island has created a few outstanding videos this year.

After a long, heated debate with friends, I have concluded that my favorite video is "I'm on a Boat".

I even went so far as to write an article about it.

http://www.mahalo.com/im-on-a-boat

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The 5 Most Interesting Sites I've Seen This Week

2009-11-12T06:31:00.001-08:00

15 Free Guides That Really Teach You Useful Stuff
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/pdf-manuals-round-up/

10 Ways Small Businesses Can Harness Big Crowds
http://blog.crowdspring.com/2009/11/04/small-business-crowdsourcing/

Website Wireframes on the fly - Mockingbird
http://gomockingbird.com/

Mashable's Reader Favorite Facebook Apps
http://mashable.com/2009/11/07/top-10-facebook-apps/

Black Friday Ads - Good for U.S. folks or folks like me close to the border!
http://www.mahalo.com/black-friday-2009

A pretty good list of 10 JavaScript frameworks
http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/tools/developer-toolbox/top-10-javascript-frameworks-by-google.html

Posted via web from Rob Brown

The craziest marketing you'll see all day: Pinning promo flyers on flies at a trade show

2009-10-30T05:37:00.001-07:00

Part genius marketing, part WTF were they thinking, book publisher Eichborn ties ads on flies at the recent Frankfurt book fair. They released the flies while conference attendees were both interested and disgusted.

While I understand most of the quirky German sense of humor (flying flyers), affiliating a brand with annoying and somewhat gross house flies may not have been the best choice for brand cohesion. However, the soon to be viral aspects of this video as well as the buzz on the show floor might have just made it worth tying all of those little notes onto those flies.

Posted via web from Rob Brown

Christmas shopping has officially started - you know you're on my "nice" list if you receive a Visa Gift Card.

2009-10-29T06:50:00.001-07:00

This year, I'm forgoing small, somewhat useless "filler" Christmas presents. While I sure hope to receive sox, underwear, shaving cream, shampoo, etc, I'm turning away from giving other stocking stuffers and ohter small gifts this year.

The way I figure it, the economy is down and everyone is thinking about money. Everyone could use a little extra cash and I think that a Visa Gift Card might be the best gift to give.

Check out this description of Visa Gift Cards:

http://www.mahalo.com/visa-gift-card

Here are some reasons that I think a Visa Gift Card might be my goto gift this year: You can personalize them with your own photo, they can hold values between $20 and $500 and they can be used with iTunes, the PSN and the 360 Marketplace.

The page above does however meniton the only reason that cash might be better. Visa Gift Cards expire after a certain number of months. Still, it's tough to deny the advantages.

Posted via web from Rob Brown

The best idea I've seen for an online business in a while - Well made cooking tutorials with a monetized twist.

2009-10-27T19:39:00.001-07:00

But this isn't just a great idea because of the great cooking tutorials. It's a great idea because selling education in this way will work and this is the way to do it.

How To's are somewhat of a tradition online. I believe that How To articles are profitable online for 3 reasons:

1. They answer a question. How To Do "something"

2. They are never perfect. A great How To provides a complete set of steps to accomplish a task but leaves the reader / viewer wanting just a little bit more. Hopefully, those readers and viewers click on your ads for more information.

3. Great How To's are full of great content that was not previously available online. From How to Hack Your Roomba to How To Determine Database Cardinality, How To's add some of the best content available to the Internet.

So what's the big idea?

Rouxbe.com - it's a complete online cooking school.

Take one dash of video, add one part well written content, mix in a great segmented video player and you have the foundation to Rouxbe.com.

But wait, there is icing on this idea cake. Take a close look at they way they monetize their content. They give you a free sample to show you what great quality they have, start a lesson and give you a few free tips. But if you want to know how to finish the recipe or want full access to their curriculum, you need to pay.

There's a 7 day all-access trial, integration with TastyPlanner (a wicked awesome cookbook that I use) and enough food to make you hungry at your desk.

Rouxbe differentiates itself from popular video sources such as The Food Network and Epicurious by saying that "you won't find celebrity chefs or millions of user generated recipes at Rouxbe but you will find hundreds of close up instructional cooking videos that focus on the food and learning how to cook it."

Posted via web from Rob Brown

And here we have it... what I will be dressing up for this Halloween

2009-10-26T11:30:00.001-07:00

It doesn't get much cooler than this. And by cooler, I mean geekier. A working iPhone Halloween iPhone costume.

Watch the video:

http://bit.ly/1yAkwS

Although, it's easier to type on a blackberry... so thinking about the placement of the keyboard, maybe I'll build one of those instead ;)

Posted via web from Rob Brown

Rob's Collection of Cool Videos

2009-10-23T12:26:00.001-07:00

I'm not one to surf around video sites too much, but these 5 videos jumped out at me. Check them out.

Windows 7 Torrent Party
http://bit.ly/p6Gyo
Who isn't going to download Windows 7 before they pay $120 to fix Vista?

Moonwalk Fail
http://bit.ly/1cXwuZ
I'm sure this video isn't unique - there have to be a ton of drunk college students falling into stuff trying to drunk moonwalk.

Cell phone Orchestra
http://bit.ly/M3cob
Very cool viral ad. I want to play with this.

Left 4 Dead 2 Trailer
http://bit.ly/2DzbYk
Ahh the video game season is upon us. If not for Drakes Fortune 2, Left 4 Dead would be on my Christmas list.

Phillies Fan Humps Newscaster
http://bit.ly/1EJvzJ
This one might be NSFW depending on your boss. Doesn't NBC have field producers to avoid this sort of thing? Expect an SNL remake of this one tomorrow.

Posted via web from Rob Brown

A Little Hard Work Starts To Pay Off

2009-10-23T09:01:00.001-07:00

I'm hopeful that an increase in content creation over at Mahalo.com will result in a break through of my current earning plateau.

I've heard that some folks are earning well over $1000 per month on Mahalo by writing and updating articles. After spending a solid couple of days writing, I'm finally starting to see a breakthrough in traffic.

Here is a clip from my Google Analytics account that tracks the total number of visitors. You can see that I made a small increase a couple of days ago, but yesterday received a significant boost as a couple of my articles caught on fire thanks to the help of Mahalo.com front page exposure and Twitter tweets by Jason Calacanis and Lon Harris. They run Mahalo and thankfully, they're happy to help out Mahalo users trying to make a go of it.

Hopefully, this hard work really will pay off and I'll see a slight boost in income to get somewhere close to $1000 per month. It's a long way away but I figure if I stick with it and work at it, I can make it happen.

Posted via web from Rob Brown

Rob's Geeky Christmas List: Part One

2009-10-19T06:45:00.001-07:00

Friends, family, clients and even the barrista at Starbucks have started to ask me things like, "have you started to get ready for Christmas?". I supose it's a function of the cold air and early brick-and-mortar merchandising, but this doesn't make me feel any better about the Holiday Season approaching so quickly. Eventually, the "have you started to get ready" questions will turn into "what's on your Christmas list" and I know from experience that I had best have an answer.

Here are a few things that look Christmas List worthy:

Gorillatorch

A bright light (good for product photos) that wraps around or sticks with magnets to irregularly shaped objects.

FreeAgent DocStar

I need to improve my NAS (network attached storage) infrastructure. This dock looks pretty solid. As with any of these devices, the proof is in the pudding, so I'll likley buy this myself before Christmas in case I need to return it.

Harmony 900 Remote Control

I currently use a Harmony 880 remote to control my Home Theater seutp that is hidden under my stairs. The Harmony 900 is an upgrade. It has soft buttons and a better screen. The only reason that I'm thinking about upgrading is because I could likely sell my 880 for over half of what the upgrade currently sells for.

Grado Headphones

My well loved noise cancleing Sony headphones are starting to show their age. The sound reproduction is lacking and while they're great on a plane, they're not comfortable for extended home use. These new Grado headphones are well reviewed and resonably priced.

Air Hogs Battling Havoc Heli

I'm looking forward to the day when my Son is old enough to be blamed for my child like desire for toys. This Air Hogs Helicopter set looks wicked awesome. They fly, they fight, what isn't to love about these. So, until he grows up (or can at the very least talk), I'll need to confess that I'd love to find these under the tree to play with.

Posted via web from Rob Brown

Best of Rob's Web: The 10 Best Sites I Saw This Week

2009-10-17T08:42:00.001-07:00

http://www.plugin.com/
Some very cool articles on this blog including: "Advice from a Pro on How to Monetize Your Site", "Rising Popularity of the Unconference" and "Daydream Your Way to Greatness".

http://blogchef.net/sesame-chicken-recipe/
Mmmm... how to make Sesame Chicken. 3 things I'm attracted too: sweet, tasty and Asian.

http://www.randygage.com/artman/publish/article_178.shtml
This is one of the most truthful articles about branding that I've ever read. In short, this article explains why a brand can't be bought by advertising.

http://haineault.com/media/examples/jquery-utils/demo/ui-timepickr.html
A JQuery Time Picker. Nice user interface on this. Simple and straight forward.

http://tutorialzine.com/2009/10/jquery-twitter-ticker/
I don't think that JQuery is the best way to enable this functionality, but if you need a quick drop-in twitter feed, bingo bango, this thing does it.

http://www.brandonwalkin.com/blog/2009/08/10/managing-ui-complexity/
Managing UI Complexity. I spend a lot of time thinking about the web... and by web I mean user interface. This is is a shockingly awesome jumping point for deep thought about UI.

http://www.beautifullife.info/web-design/15-websites-offering-free-stock-photos/
Want to make money online? Like taking photos? If so, here are 15 places to make money!

http://briancray.com/2009/05/29/find-web-visitors-location-javascript-google-api/
Free (low volume) Geolocation. Here's how to find out where a website visitor is with javascript and Google's jsAPI.

http://astuteo.com/slickmap/
Sitemaps are required these days. No longer an option, a sitemap is an important part of SEO. Here's a quick and easy stylesheet (with instructions) to turn your SE friendly sitemap into a nice looking feature for human users too.

http://www.cssreflex.com/2009/07/13-magnificent-free-wordpress-portfolio-themes.html
I just finished writing an article about How to Create a Career Portfolio. I found this collection of 13 free wordpress themes. They look great and would work well for anyone maintaining a portfolio - and everyone should these days.

Posted via web from Rob Brown

How Do Advertisments Affect a Recently Launched Website?

2009-10-15T05:15:00.001-07:00

Many new websites struggle with the decision to include advertisments. The underlying concept that they struggle with is trust. Will people trust your new social media startup if it is monetized?

It seems odd that huge sites such as Google and Twitter don't display traditional banner advertising. Why don't these sites display ads?

The Answers:

1)
Will people trust your new social media startup if it is monetized?
Maybe - it depends on your site, your product, and importantly, your users. The bane of many new (and even old) online companies is that they think they "know" their users. They don't. The best that a CEO, developer, etc can hope for is to have a short glimpse at their users.

For this reason, it is important to use tools like Google's Website Optimizer to preform split testing. In short, tools like these will allow you to integrate ads into your website and show those changes to a small portion of your traffic. This allows you to carefully measure, analyze and maybe even survey how people react to these changes.

Every website is different and every combination of users is different. This is part of the reason why community building is so important. Specific to your advertising concerns, knowing that every website is different and that every combination of users is different, you should understand that only through careful testing and analysis can you determine what people will think of advertising and how they will react to it.

2)
Why don't sites like Google and Twitter display ads?

For different reasons, there is an obvious lack of advertisements on Google, Twitter and a few other popular websites.

First off, Google does have ads... and they have lots of them. Their main page (google.com) only displays text link ads for Google's other products. They change these ads regularly (expect a Google Wave mention soon) but they only use their powerful index page to advertise their products and services. This is an effective method of self promotion and early on, allowed Google to differentiate itself from Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc.

On the search engine result pages, Google displays large blocks of ads that people buy from them. They do accept banner and text ads but only as part of their AdSense program. Sometimes, folks say things like, "there aren't _any_ ads on Google" and that's just not right. Google is made up almost entirely of ads.

Twitter is a creative and interesting company. I say creative because right now, they're trying hard to define how their company implements advertising. Biz Stone commented that Twitter simply doesn't like banner advertising. They have this luxury because they are very well funded. A less vested company would have likely displayed banner ads long ago.

Beyond money, I think that Twitter is trying to redefine how advertising and monetization work. Twitter is one of the first websites to be wildly popular in both traditional and mobile spaces of the Internet. Since they have the luxury of money, it makes sense that they would carefully take their time to pioneer new and interesting ways to display ads. Remember that Google didn't become crazy rich until AdSense and AdWords were released.

3)
Some sources and more information.

This blog asked the question, "Do Advertisements Affect Traffic?"
http://traffikd.com/making-money/do-advertisements-affect-traffic/

This webmaster wondered if placing ads on his site would effect not only his traffic, but the users perception of his site:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/webmaster/3984558.htm

Communityspark ran an article about this back in 2007. It is still relevant today:
http://www.communityspark.com/advertising-choices-affect-your-sites-credibility/

AdAge mentions why measuring only clicks isn't the only metric that you should measure when preforming tests such as split A/B:
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=134787

4)
Conclusion

It might not be a bad idea to ask for the help of a front end designer with real experience in conversion marketing and lead generation
Split A/B testing and care monitoring is very important.
Don't rely on simple metrics such as clicks to determine user acceptance. Develop a combination of elements such as signups, downloads, navigation clicks, and ad clicks
Online, people _expect_ to see ads so if you can "do it classy", your users won't think disparagingly of your startup. In all likelyhood, your traffic will not be negativley affected as long as the ads are appropriate and well implemented.

Posted via web from Rob Brown

5 Interesting Articles From eHow That Describe How How To Make Money:

2009-10-14T03:56:00.001-07:00

eHow is an online leader in the "How To" article space. Not only do they have outstanding articles teaching you "how to do just about everything", they have embraced a crowdsourced method of content creation. In short, you write step-by-step articles for eHow and they share the ad revenue with you.

Here are 5 articles that I found interesting. Each one describes what it takes to make money by writing eHow articles.

How to Get Good Ratings and Page Views on eHow:
http://www.ehow.com/articles_3157-working-from-home.html

How to Make $100 Your Third eHow Month:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4904107_make-third-ehow-month.html

How to Earn Residual Income Online with eHow:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5146087_earn-residual-income-online-ehow.html

How to Calculate How Much Money Your eHow Article Will Make:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2284717_much-money-ehow-article-will.html

How to Make Money Writing Your Highest Earning eHow Article:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5057931_make-highest-earning-ehow-article.html

Posted via web from Rob Brown

What are some ways to become and stay highly productive?

2009-10-13T07:28:00.001-07:00

Motivation is an incredibly hard thing to quantify and conjure when needed. The problem is that motivation is different for everyone at different times.

Personally, here are the things that I find help:

1)
I lead a simple personal life. I have a nice family, a small house and friends I care about. Most of the time, my personal life is reliably nice and I strive to maintain that consistency.

2)
For the most part, I know myself. I know what I need to be happy.From a less personal perspective, these things contribute to my productivity:

3)
I need to control the space I'm in. It sounds odd, but I am most productive when I can control things like the lighting, the temperature, noise, and the people who enter my space.

4)
I have natural light lamps. Even in the summer where I live, natural light is sometimes hard to come by and using a couple of these lamps to deliniate between high and low productivity times really helps me.

Many natural light products are marketed to people who have been diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.). These lights however, have been proven to adjust moods and solve sleep problems for everyone.

This desktop, natural panel light from Amazon is portable and easy to position for comfortable, healthy light.

As a bonus, I find that using this light to combat Jetlag when I return home from a trip significantly reduces the amount of time I feel out of sync!

5)
There is a natural rhythm to productivity and listening to yourself to know when those times are is very important. No one is productive from 9 until 5pm. Being aware of the queues you feel and acting on them dramatically increases productivity.

6)
Music and ambient noise can queue productivity. Personally I am usually the most productive between 6am and 11pm. I play energetic music that I like and "bust out the work" to get things done.

Other times of the day, I'll play low key music and contrast it with bits of high energy music from the morning when the waves of productivity come in.

CONCLUSION
You can't be told to be productive. You need to listen to yourself and learn how to use the queues that inject productivity into your day.

Using things such as music, environment, lighting, etc can help when combined with a clear and quiet mental state

Posted via web from Rob Brown

How Much Should A Small Business Website Cost?

2009-10-12T07:22:00.001-07:00

It's Canadian Thanksgiving and as a result of returning home, may people find themselves answering two pressing quesitons. First, the infamous "will you fix my computer" question. With an easy "sure, no problem" and a half hour or so of backtracking or re-imaging, the problem is solved.

The second question however is new and slightly more interesting. "How Much Should A Small Business Website Cost?"

Professional designers typically charge between $500 and $3000 to design a new page layout. This is a very wide range but the following information might help you narrow down your own individual price range.

SOME GENERALITIES THAT YOU LIKELY KNOW:
A business website is an extension of your entire marketing plan. Websites have the unique advantage of being able to generate income; no other form of marketing can directly impact sales.

With these 2 facts in mind, it is important to design a clear, stylish, and above all else effective 24x7 online storefront for your business. At first glance, many inexperienced people will consider a "storefront" overkill for the first website that a small business creates. While I'm not necessarily suggesting full ready-to-go ecommerce functionality, I am suggesting that you take the look and feel of your store (or your brand) and convey the same feeling and information online. Every successful website follows this basic rule.

CREATING IT YOURSELF:
Unless your business is making websites, don't do it yourself. Websites take a lot of time to create and only someone who has a lot of experience can create a website that is polished and professional. You're good at whatever your business is - focus on that and focus on relaying the information that potential customers need.

It sounds like you're on the right path. If you have the skills to render some HTML (etc) then asking a pro for a nice design will work well.

GENERAL COSTS:
Basic websites (simple brochure) sites cost from $500 to $3000.
This cost would give you the basic design, a couple of blank pages to use as a template for additional content, graphics, coloring, consultation, etc.
The range in price will be based on experience. People with extensive portfolios can charge more since their work is proven.

PROJECT PLANNING:
There are a couple of different places that you can get design help. However, all of these sources will fail without a very clear outline of what you want. Compose a "RFQ" (Request for Quotation); this document should contain a full written description of what you want along with some hand sketched block illustrations outlining what you're thinking. While it is important to carefully outline what will make your project successful, allow the designer to be creative and think on his/her own.

SOURCES OF LABOUR:
1)
Review these gallery websites:
http://www.google.ca/search?q=CSS+Gallery&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Form a solid list of designers that you like. E-mail them your RFQ and ask them to return a quote.

2)
Submit your RFQ to web based freelance sites like these:
http://www.rentacoder.com/
http://www.getafreelancer.com/
http://www.elance.com/
http://www.guru.com/
http://www.scriptlance.com/

By finding a web designer using the first method, you'll receive a higher quality product, but you'll pay more. By finding a web designer using the second method, you'll pay less, consume more of your time, and receive lower quality work.

3)
Crowdsourcing works sometimes. For an upfront posting fee, people will submit designs and try to "win" the project at http://99designs.com/

Posted via web from Rob Brown

How Do I Get Internet Traffic?

2009-10-11T03:45:00.001-07:00

A few folks have asked me where Internet Traffic (users / readers / eyeballs) come from.

Here's a list in no particular order:

1) Directories
Directories are website listings. The trick is to find a directory which receives huge volumes of traffic itself. Start by applying for listings in Yahoo, DMOZ and Looksmart. While these may not be the best directories, it's a start. Getting listed isn’t easy but once achieved you will see a significant lift in your website traffic. Look at other directories but make sure they have a good traffic rating (use Alexa).

2) Reciprocal Links
This is the oldest form of web traffic and is still one of the most effective. Simply having your website listed on other websites and listing websites on your own is a great way to receive traffic. By swapping links, webmasters hope that people will click on their link in other websites thereby generating website traffic. It also is highly rated by search engines. The only trick here is to ensure that you're links are all relevant and active.

3) Article Writing.
Write an article on any topic which interests you, optimize it for keywords and be sure to include your website URL in the bio line at the bottom of the article. Then submit it to blogs, ezines, directories on the web. This will generate website traffic and create backlinks to your site, which in turn helps with search engine rankings.

4) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Make sure your website is search engine friendly. Ensure all the meta and alt tags are completed, optimize the text for your chosen keywords, ensure there is an H1 header, update your robots.txt, update your google sitemap. Punch your website in here to simulate how a Search Engine will see your page http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/spider-simulator/

5) Blogs
Blogs are a lot of work and if you're not prepared to put in the time required to regularly create compelling written content than skip this step. If you are going to updtate a blog with compelling content ensure your blog is hosted on your site, that it links to your important pages and that you ping each time your blog is updated. A regularly updated blog will attract readers which in turn builds website traffic.

6) Social Networks, Forums & Blog Comments
Becoming a member of online communities such as forms and blogs will encourage high quality traffic. Leaving your URL in forums will generate website traffic in two ways. First, people who read your post are likely to click the link to checkout your site. Secondly search engines will generally accept the link a counting towards your link popularity. The "nofollow" search engine command is usually employed by siteowners to distract from blatent spamming. Become an active good member of online communities and this will work well.

7) Viral Advertising
If you have a message and you tell 10 people and they each tell 10 people and so on, by the time the message goes through 10 levels it has been passed on to a million people. This is a comon tactic on sites such as Youtube. Many progressive online busienss owners know that creating interesting content that can be easily shared is an important part of success.

8) Traffic Exchanges
Traffic that is productive on one site may not be productive on another. If you can identify this traffic and re-route it either on your own site or to another (in exchange for some of theirs), you'll be further ahead. Google does this - if you preform a Google search from the U.K., the first page of results will usually be U.K. related. Ad Networks also commonly do this - if their algorithm says that they don't have any relevant ads to serve, they'll retrieve one from their "partner" ad networks to display instead.

9) Classifies Ads
Do a search for “classified ads” and you will find many sites, which accept classified advertisements. Make sure you place your ad in a site complimentary to your product. Generally sites at the top of Google/Yahoo searches will perform better than those lower down. Just remember not to be spammy and ensure that the words you use sound (and are) legit.

10) Purchased Traffic & Pay Per Click Advertising
Programs like Google's Adwords will deliver pre-qualified targeted website traffic to your site. There are also a plethora of different ways to buy traffic from various different sources. On some online industries (adult for example), purchasing traffic can be the best, easiest way to increase revenue. However, many online businesses have found that purchasing traffic doesn't work. Often there is a surge is traffic, but not a surge in sales. Between hosting costs, resource consumption, etc buying traffic can easily cost you more than the upfront fee if not done with care.

Posted via web from Rob Brown

How to Format a Hard Drive

2009-10-10T06:33:00.000-07:00

This is the most common question that I was asked when I worked in a computer repair shop. It's the curse of windows and the simple solution to almost every software problem.

Here is exactly how to format your hard drive:

How to Format a Hard Drive

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Interesting Links

2009-10-10T06:02:00.001-07:00

Week 42: A collection of the 10 most interesting links Rob has discovered this week

http://photoshopgirl.com/category/retouching/
A collection of 6 important photo retouching techniques.

http://www.seobook.com/optimizing-bing
Optimizing pages for Bing. Why and how.

http://www.vestadigital.com/173/section.aspx/77/post/google-uses-bounce-rates-to-determine-relevancy
Who woulda thunk it? Google uses bounce rates to determine Relevancy

http://tastymealsathome.com/category/west/tasty-stuffed-mushrooms/
Tasty stuffed mushrooms

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Optimize_Your_Surround_Sound_System
A good guide about how to optimize your audio setup

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/how-to-be-a-person-who-isnt-a-failure/Content?oid=2243013
At first glance, this article doesn't look catchy or interesting. Give it a chance, it's light, funny and entertaining.

http://dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html
The words you use in a conversion statement are as important as the conversion itself. Here's what to say.

http://spaceforaname.com/galleryview
Nice, tight JQuery gallery plugin.

http://livevalidation.com/examples
I don't think it's perfect, but a nice implementation of live validation.

http://www.divinecaroline.com/33615/81970-only-corn-cob-make
Buy some corn. Cook it with this recipe. Ignore your inner voice saying that milk and corn don't mix.

Posted via web from robbrown's posterous