Jan
21Addicted to Android – Life Changing Technology
Filed in: Mobile Marketing, Mobile Technology, Technology by admin on 01-21-12I am addicted to Samsung Mobile Galaxy S2 phone. It never occur to me that mobile technology has progressed by leaps and bounds the past few years . There are so many things that you can do with it nowadays. It is no longer just a normal phone one use to typically make or receive calls. On a personal note, for me, Android OS is indeed a life changing technology that opens up new opportunities to connect and reach out to the world.
It has become somewhat like a Swiss all in one army knife so to speak. Integrated high resolution camera, huge memory storage, high speed processor, GPS, improve wireless technology, larger screen display and other plethora of function rich enhancements turn a palm size communication gadget into super powerful mini computer.
Mobile applications are key enablers that makes it what it is of today. Apart from standard apps such as SMS, email, camera, games, radio and music, mobile social media networking and bookmarking apps such as Facebook, YouTube, StumbleUpon and tons of cool apps makes it a must bring along gadget wherever you are.
One interesting and cool feature that I really like is the fact that you can instantly upload pictures and videos that you capture from you phone to YouTube or Facebook!. You can also blog while you are on the move, say in the bus or train but please refrain from doing while you are on the wheels driving!
You can also do serious work stuffs with it too for instance, write and respond to business emails, create or edit documents such as spreadsheets and all sort of Office documents. Boy, you can even do live video conferencing with people half the world away. I wonder what else the smart phone cannot do!.
Okay, I think I am getting ahead of myself. I am really glued and stuck to Android apps. Even though the Galaxy S2 is not the best smart-phone around, nevertheless I like it because it is quite easy to use, and not restricted to stuffs like Apple where most apps need to be register and downloaded via iTune.
Last but not least, all serious Internet Marketers and online business entrepreneurs should not overlook the potential to generate lucrative income with mobile marketing. Google indicates that its daily mobile ads revenue is at least US$10million a day!
More and more consumers are making purchase and e-commerce transaction via their mobile phone so the sooner you mobilize your online business the sooner you get to reach out to billions of prospects and customers. Mobile marketing is not the future, it is now and you need to make plans to make your business websites to be mobile friendly.
PS: If you are an Android phone user and you are looking for free apps then you are in for a good treat. Recently I discovered a site that contains lots of cool Android apps. Please check Android mobile apps and do take note that you have to use your own discretion and judgement on whether to install it or not. Some of the apps are known to compromise your smart phone security so watch out for it!
Jan
14Misleading Blog Post Title – Why Am I Giving Away My Free Product
Filed in: Internet_Marketing by admin on 01-14-12Did you know that customer retention of 5% translate to something from 30% to 80% improvement in business profits? On the same token, it is said that it takes eight times as hard to convince a new prospect to buy your products versus a repeated customer. Continue reading “Misleading Blog Post Title – Why Am I Giving Away My Free Product” »
Content generation is one of your biggest investment in terms of time and efforts. Content is king so to speak so you must make every effort to update your site with regular fresh quality postings. Unfortunately the Internet technology also makes it more easier for people to steal information. Continue reading “Three Simple Tips To Deal With Content Theft” »
Jan
07How To Prevent Content Theft – Protect Your Digital Content
Filed in: Internet_Marketing by admin on 01-07-12Digital content theft is rampant in the World Wide Web. Even well established Internet marketing Gurus are using it sporadically spice up some of their websites. Google hates plagiarism but that will not stop people from going around ‘stealing’ content from others, legally so to speak.
Google can’t take action if there is no clear violation on any of their terms and conditions as advertiser or publisher using their marketing network , for instance Google Adsense or Adwords. People are getting smarter, they know apart from Mighty Google there are many other source of revenue so they are are not afraid of duplicate content. There are many affiliate products or services which you can promote without having to worry about duplicate content.
Moreover, search engines such as Bing, Yahoo or even the mighty Chinese Baidu are not known to penalize sites with duplicate contents. I have done some basic research and much to my surprise some sites that spin off syndicated contents (articles that are rewritten to avoid duplicate content detection) ranks higher than the source and originator website. Sounds crazy isn’t it?
The problem is further compounded by the fact that most sites support RSS or Atom feed. Essentially you are pushing your content to those who subscribe to your feeds and some will use autoblogging system to extract the content and publish it on their sites but leaving out the link to the source of the information. (your website page link)
SOPA
There is a bill that’s been introduced by the US government to stop online piracy act, better known as SOPA. There is controversy surrounding this law but I guess it’s another topic for discussion. Here is some information on how SOPA bill might affect you if it is passed by the Senate and takes effect.
RSS Footer WordPress Plug-in
Anyway, there are some tips that you can use to discourage others from grabbing your painstakingly manually crafted contents. The first one is by installing a WordPress plug-in called RSS Footer. There are many other similar plug-ins for instance RSS Add Footer.
Configure it to add your website address to either the beginning or the end of the article feeds. Your feed contents will include the link back to your blog so if people post your feeds to their sites they will need to work harder to develop scripts to filter off the link included in your feeds. It is possible to do that but its cumbersome so not many will not bother with it.
Disable Right Click Mouse Function
This is a more of a techie geek stuffs to prevent copy and paste habit. You will need to install some scripts or perhaps even modify your blogging software to disable the right mouse click function. I don’t quite like this approach because it can be quite annoying for some who wish to copy selected text from your articles such as links just for reference only.
Again you are in luck if you use WordPress platform for blogging. There are many free plug-ins that you can try out to prevent copy and paste functions. Here is one such, do check out WpCopyProtect. It might not work for newer WordPress versions but you may give it a try though.
In summary, there are many ways that you can go about to discourage plagiarism. None of the methods suggested are fool proof but I guess something is better than nothing. The goal of these stop gap measures are not to eradicate digital content theft (there is no way you can prevent it) but rather to make it more difficult for them to do so.
Protect one of your biggest investment, the time and effort you put into writing great unique contents for readership. Don’t let other ride on your hard work and infringe on your digital copyright materials. Do check out my previous post on tips to combat online piracy.
One of HostSo server to which this blog website account of mine resides on underwent some sort of restoration work and as a result it was down for over a day and a half. I noticed the problem only when I wanted to update my blog the day before yesterday and connection timeout persists. I wrote to the their helpdesk and I got the following response:
We apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. The server on which your account is stored is under restoration. It will take 2 to 4 hours to complete the process. Once the process is completed then your site will be online.Meanwhile your patience and co-operation is highly appreciated.
We do apologizes for all the inconvenience caused to you, The server is going for resoration ( Re-imaging ) due to primary drive failure after 2 hours. This issue may take 7 to 8 hours. Once the restoration will get finish all the services from the server will get restore fine and you should able to access the site without any problem. We are re-imaging all the data from older drive to the new drive as it is, and due to bad shape of the primary drive its taking long to copy the data over new Disk. We request you to bear with us in this situation we can understand your frustration and your business but your patience is highly appreciated.
HostSo is the first web-hosting service provider that I signed up for as far as self hosting account is concern and it is unimaginable that I actually just go ahead without doing much research about the company. My main concern during that time was then of affordability. The Elite package seems like a pretty good deal so I just go with it.
Downtime occurrences are high and sometime your sites just get blocked by the HostSo firewall for no apparent reason. When you write to them the support staff will respond with all sorts of excuses. Even though the Elite plan comes with “Unlimited Bandwidth” the funny thing is that they disabled my account a few times under pretext that my sites are consuming too much traffic bandwidth!
I checked the forum for complaints against this company and there are plenty of them. Quite a high number of unhappy and frustrated customers accounts were terminated for no obvious reasons. No warnings given whatsoever, so it seems to me that this company reputation is quite awful.
Web page loading time is very slow and to make matter worse, some adults sites are also hosted on this server. Some SEO analysis sites even reported that this blog has adult themes for which I believed were due to sharing of the same shared server.
In summary, do your homework before you purchase hosting from any web hosting service provider. Cheaper doesn’t necessary translate to better service quality. Don’t believe the numbers and information that you see on the company website. Take some time to research the company, check for complains, reviews and gather as much information as you can.
Choosing right best web hosting service provider for your online business is not trivial. You need to consider various aspects such as the amount of traffic that your site expect to generate, the type of software and the amount of processing power that the scripts will need, service of quality, downtime frequency and etc.
It’s better to be safe then to be sorry later. Do check out my previous article on essential requirements for web-hosting service provider. There’s another good article that I’ve come across on how to choose the right web-hosting service provider. All your hard work and efforts to build a successful online business may go to naught if you are not careful with whom you signed up with.
Anyway I am glad my blog is now back online. There are things that I will do, notably to back up all my files just in case something crops up again. One could never predict when HostSo.com server is going to run into problem again or when they are going to terminate customer account.
Time sure pass quickly. For some, it’s the time for personal reflection while for others it might just be just another day, another month and another year, just like past years. Success begins and ends with within you, within your mind. As I look back the years, I realized how things around us has changed. There were ups and downs in life and each one has their own stories to tell.
Some say the year of the Dragon is suppose to bring good luck but I guess it’s all in the mind. If you choose to believe in bad things or you are pessimistic then chances are that you will attract such negative aura and it might become a reality. Some called it the Law Of Attraction. Whatever the case, instead of indulging in self pity or continue to wallow in our downturn luck, why not start afresh in this new year and set new goals and plans?
I am not a fan of Hong Kong Cantonese sleek drama but one particular episode of a thriller series caught my attention. An interesting character in the drama series always uttered the catch phrase ‘How many decades one has in life?”. Interesting isn’t it if you think about it.
On the average if a person lives up to 60 years old, he has only 6 decades so from that perspectives life is short indeed. So if there is anything that you wish to achieve in life the time to start to work towards it is today, not tomorrow or the day after next. Procrastination is your biggest enemy. Sit there do nothing and you will find yourself entangle with more disorganized tasks and unnecessary worries in life.
Here’s a free motivational guide eBook. You don’t have to follow all the tips but I guess you it’s full of sound advice and I have no doubt if you start to plan your days ahead, create new goals and work towards it, you will achieve much satisfaction in life. Cheers!
Dec
29A Powerful Lightweight Free WordPress Autoblog Plugin
Filed in: Internet_Marketing by admin on 12-29-11Here’s the link to a free powerful lightweight WordPress autoblogging plugin. I have not tested it, but anyway if you are contemplating on whether to check out any autoblog software, this is a good one to start with. I know there are many other similar tools but most of them are just plain crappy 
As the saying goes, content is king and this is certainly the case with business blogging. People are attracted to blogs with fresh quality and interesting contents. The challenge though is that sometimes it is hard to keep the momentum going, to prepare articles and news for posting. It takes time and effort to create good quality contents for blogging readership.
With recent Google Panda update, there are talks and discussions that autoblogging is dead and a thing of the past. Is that truly the case? There is no doubt in my mind that manual article posting beats autoblogging anytime of the day but that does not imply you can’t or shouldn’t consider such automation .Opponents of autoblogging claimed that you risk getting your blogs penalize by mighty Google for duplicate contents.
Is Autoblogging Still Relevant?
The way I see it, pulling contents from other websites still has its use in today’s blogging world. You just need to work a little bit more smarter and use this strategy with caution. don’t treat it as a means to free you from spending time to maintain your weblog. Instead of configuring it once to pull in feeds and RSS contents from other sites to post to your blog directly, you should take some time choose which of the imported contents you wish to post at a later date and then mix it with your opinion or articles.
For instance, lets say you decided to pull in feeds content on ‘How to tame a Pitpull dog’ to post on your site. You schedule it to be published on say 5 days later. Take some time to read the content and then figure out if there are any questions that are worth asking. For instance, at the end of the imported content, you can add the statement ‘is it worth to rear a Pitbull dog anyway and what is the primary reason that you should consider one?
Citation And Reference
Contrary to what many assumed, any articles and information that you post in your site without any citation or links to relevant information from other authoritative sites or any other sources (as quotes or reference) lacks credibility. During my university days, we were taught to include citation and references to remarks or ideas that we expound in our thesis.
In the same way Google value any sites that provide rich content even if it is syndicated articles so long as you include the source of the information as well additional information of your own relevant to the topics under discussion. Well, don’t get me wrong that all your posts should have citation or links to other sites, the point I am trying to drive at is that duplicate content is fine so long as you do not infringe on copyrights and that your post add value to the readers.
You may also wonder what good does it bring if you have to manually edit the imported articles for after all the whole idea behind autoblogging is that it should free you from such tasks and that it should auto post contents indefinitely after it is setup. Well it depends on what your goals and intentions are.
Google Page Rank
If you just want to build up dozens of even hundreds of autoblogs to earn some Google Adsense income without regards for the Google page rank than by all means go ahead. If you are concern about page ranking factors than you should play by a different rule, implement some sort of hybrid posting of unique articles and imported contents.
In summary, autoblogging is still relevant today. Provide good quality contents and avoid posting of articles that may be construed as digital content theft. Do not try to spin the imported articles because the search engines are getting smarter and most are able to detect it from a mile!.
Plagiarism is rampant in the Internet. Content theft is a serious problem. It takes time and efforts to produce original unique content but all it takes is mere seconds to steal someone else unique content to put on another site. (‘Stealing’ or plagiarizing in the sense that the source of the content such as the author bylines or link to the original content is intentionally left out)
Autoblog and scraper sites are the main culprits. Such sites are configured to scan through the Internet for contents based on specific keywords and phrases. The problem is further compounded if you have RSS feeds on your site. It allows others to easily access your feeds through RSS readers.
With the number of websites increasing daily, it takes a lot of time to locate sites that plagiarize your contents. Fret not; here are two powerful tips to help you easily patrol the World Wide Web for plagiarism to prevent content theft.
Google Alert is the mighty search engine toolbox that you can turn to become your round the clock twenty four hours duty policeman to search the Internet for plagiarism. This is how you can do it.
Go the http://www.google.com/alerts and type in the search query. I would suggest you put in keywords or phrases specific to the content that you are monitoring. For instance, you can include the title of your article as the search query.
I would also suggest you set the ‘How many’ field to “Only the best results” in order to match the closest results that is similar to your search query. Once you are done with that you can sit back and wait for the alert.
Visit the sites to confirm if it is truly plagiarism or not. Sometime those Autoblogs are configured to spin the contents imported from your site. Replacing of words and phrases with other similar words still constitute violation of copy right content.
You can get more information on how to use Google Alert for content monitoring. This is a great piece of utility which no other online tools able to match. You can use this service for other purposes such as to spy on your competitors, monitor trends and etc.
When in doubt, you can use a free service called plagiarism checker at http://www.plagiarismchecker.com/ to validate the contents. So you see, Google toolbox is very useful and you should make use of it.
Another method to make it difficult for those copycats to steal your content is by embedding your homepage link into the article itself. If doing so seems kind of awkward, you can always arrange your article in such ways to deep link to other pages. Try not to include your homepage or website link at the end of the article because it is easier for those scrapers and Autoblog to filter off such signature.
Dec
225 Powerful Tips To Internet Marketing Success
Filed in: Internet_Marketing by admin on 12-22-11Over ninety five percent of online business fails within the 1st five years. It is not by luck or chance for those who make it through and thrive to become multimillionaires. Your chances of success with any online business that you choose to be in depends on having the right mindset and executing the right strategy and techniques.
Here are five powerful tips that you should consider to improve your Internet Marketing success.
Manage your online activities and keep to a schedule.
One of the main challenges pertaining to running a home-based online business is that of time management. Quite often many people admittedly including myself will spend more time surfing sites such as YouTube and etc instead of focusing on what’s important to our online business.
For instance, sometimes it took me twice as long to write an article for posting even though I knew deep down inside I could get it done much sooner. The reason is because I get distracted easily by other sites and my mind starts to wonder into other interesting websites.
You need to exercise self discipline and adhere to strict tight deadline for each specific tasks that you are doing. In other words organize your life and online activities so that you get the most important and urgent tasks done at the soonest opportunity. You need to stay the course and have schedules to prevent yourself from side tracking to other unimportant things.
Know your subject and understand how things works from inside out
You don’t need to be a master and expert in Internet technology to make money online. You can even start a successful e-commerce site even if you do not know how to build a website. That goes without saying because there are software tools available which automates pretty much everything.
A car driver may not need to know the inner working details of the engine but it is good and essential that he knows how to check the brake oil, jump start the car, change the tyre and etc. You never know when such skills will comes in handy in times of emergency.
Likewise it is important and essential for you to have basic understanding of say HTML (hyper text mark up language) and knowledge on how to upload and download a file to your site using file transfer protocol (FTP) and etc. Learn as much as you can and don’t have the wrong notion that there is absolutely no need to learn just because there are automated tools to get the job done.
Use the right tools
Use the most appropriate and suitable tools for working towards your end. That does not imply you have to use the latest tools but it helps in some way as Internet technology and marketing landscape change quickly. Some older software tools, strategies and techniques may become obsolete or not as effective down the road.
Don’t try to be a complete cheapo and rely on just free tools to get the job done. As with any other real business, you need to invest some capital to build up your online business. You should reinvest some of the profits back into your business. Invest in software tools and information that improves your productivity!
Do not reinvent the wheel.
Don’t waste your time to try to reinvent the wheel. Use the wheel instead, make it more better and powerful. For instance, you don’t need to create a super product that is out of this world. Find out a product or service that sells well and do further market research to know what’s lacking and customer wishlist. Join relevant discussion groups and forums to get to know more about customers expectations of future product enhancements.
Anticipate future needs
Try to predict the future trend with regards to your niche market and develop a unique product that will stand out and make a difference to people’s life. Do not focus on the outcome on the product in terms of dollars and cents but rather on how the product is going to improve one’s well being.
Dec
20Samsung Galaxy Note – Just How Big Is Big
Filed in: Mobile Technology, product review, Technology by admin on 12-20-11Samsung Galaxy Note is a huge smart phone by comparison with class of its kind. This company has redefine what it means to be big, that big is beautiful and elegant. Don’t take my word for it, you got to hold and feel it your palm in order experience just how large it is.
Even though it is a jumbo size king, it remain as slim as the Samsung Galaxy S2. The designer of this product is really smart indeed. By maintaining the same width and slimness as that of its predecessors, somehow you still find it quite comfortable to hold it.
The 5″3 inch high definition Super AMOLED display is as awesome as it is gorgeous; powered by Android operating system, this fella packs a powerful punch with full myriads of features and capabilities!. You can get the full details of its specification on Samsung Galaxy Note site.
 | Quite honestly speaking, I don't mind owning one of these. Even though it is quite huge by comparison with other models , I think the large screen is good for those who has trouble with eye sight particularly farsightedness. Aging people will find the large crystal clear screen a plus. Furthermore, you don't get to strain your eye too much because everything looks that much bigger. Like any other fragile products, you need to handle this huge smart phone with care. Drop it at your peril so to speak. Obviously you need to operate it using both hands. If you intend to get a cover for it then do get one which improves your grip (anti-slip) material. Given a choice between iPhone and this baby I would still give Note higher preference due to the following namely 1) the battery can be replace 2) external micro SD memory expansion, both which are lacking in iPhone. |
