Megan Mahoney Horse Training and Riding Instruction

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Wayne

Megan Mahoney TrainingOver the weekend I built and launched a site for my friend, Megan Mahoney.  Megan does horse training and provides riding instruction to children and adults, and while she enjoys her work, especially being able to work with children and animals every day, she also wanted to take that big step and have a website created to help draw in more clients and give her business more opportunity for success.

We spent about 7 hours together on Sunday and discussed what Megan wanted to achieve with her new site.  Of course, more visibility was top of the list.  Megan’s competitors have web sites, so she realized that to remain competitive, she needs to have a presence on the Internet as well.

Megan also wanted a site that was simple for visitors to navigate and consume, nothing terribly complex or busy would do.

She didn’t want to spend a whole lot of money either, so I told her that I would help her get everything for as cheap as I could muster, but without the end result looking cheap.  I recommended WordPress as it’s malleable, easy to maintain, and would be easy for Megan to manage her own content, saving her money by not requiring a web developer for minor changes in the future.

We started by discussing potential domain names and finally decided that MeganMahoneyTraining.com was perfect for her needs, so I had her navigate over to GoDaddy to buy a domain name, and then point it over to my web host, where I told her I would use my own hosting account for her so that she could save the cost on hosting.  What are friends for after all?

She paid about $15 for the domain name per year, plus she added privacy so that crawlers can’t get her personal information.  The domain name was low cost enough that she decided to purchase the rights to the domain name for 3 years.  Not a bad decision as that saved her a few more bucks as there was a discount for adding years to the order.

With the domain name routed to my hosting, we could then begin to establish her website.  I decided to use WordPress as it’s incredibly flexible, and I’m able to wrangle it to do pretty much anything I need it to do with relative ease.  About 5 minutes later, we had it up and running, and were adding some content into the system and organizing the layout.

Megan had brought a bunch of pictures that were scanned and made into graphics to fill in some of the pages, as well as to create a nice looking header banner to top the site off.  Using the new Twenty-Ten WordPress template made all this effort a real breeze.

After going back and forth a little with the text, we finally reached the end of what I call the first phase of web development, getting something out there that provides visitors (existing customers and potential customers) a way to learn more about her services, provides a way to reach out to Megan, and a way for people interested in her business to keep up with what she’s doing.

The site looks great, does exactly what she needs it to do, and by using WordPress, the site is ready for more content, more changes, more improvements…basically, it’s ready to live on the Internet and become the home base of Internet operations for Megan Mahoney Training.  Here’s what Megan had to say about the whole process of developing the site, and the site itself:

As a novice computer user I was reluctant to use the internet for advertising. Times are changing and in order to advance my business and keep clients connected, having a website is the obvious choice.

Wayne was so patient and kind, explaning the tech side of everything. He worked so long, making the site exactly how I wanted. Luckily his experience helped with design and programming.  If not for Wayne, I would not have such an incredible site.  And he saved me hundreds of dollars!! I could not be happier!

Wayne’s competitive pricing and personal attention sets him above the rest.

Thanks Megan, it was a pleasure being able to guide you through the development process.

By the way, there’s just something special about the Twenty-Ten WordPress template that people really like.  I know I enjoy my version of it here on my site, but I’ll tell ya, Megan isn’t the first client and friend of mine to express that the default template after installing WordPress was “perfect” for them.

Congratulations Megan on establishing your first web site!  It was a pleasure working with you, and I look forward to helping you grow your business’ Internet presence.  Go check out her new site, and perhaps if you’re in the Southern California area, maybe contact her for some horse riding lessons!

Posted in Portfolio | Tagged , , , , | 15 Comments

What do you say we make apple juice and fax it to each other?

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Wayne

This is just hilarious…found and subsequently stolen from ColdForged over at ColdForged.org. Enjoy your Friday everyone!

Posted in Amusing | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Make money by referring new hosting customers to DreamHost

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Wayne

DreamHost website hostingDreamHost has announced that anyone can now refer new customers to DreamHost and make some money.  How much money?  Exactly $97 per successful sign-up.  That’s a pretty good return for your linking efforts if you ask me, and well worth signing up with them as an affiliate.

That’s why I’m writing this today.  Every now and then you find a deal that is just too good not to pass up.  Just think about it, $97 is enough to cover your hosting for a number of months.  If you are an existing customer of DreamHost, you could set this up to get your hosting for free, and still pocket a few dollars by referring just one person per month.  I call that pretty cool, and worthy of shooting for.

Refer customers to DreamHostBut that’s the thing, you don’t need to be an existing customer anymore.  They have changed things so that anyone can now promote DreamHost website hosting and still grab that $97 per sign-up.  I say it’s about time, and hurray, and many other things like that!

To top it off, once someone signs up, if they sign anyone up, you’ll make an additional $5 per sign-up.  Sounds like a pyramid scheme doesn’t it?  Well, this time, it’s a pyramid scheme I can promote and still feel good about myself.  DreamHost is, after all, a really good web host, one that I highly recommend to all my clients.

Get Started Now!

You can sign up really easy by completing this form.  They also have a ton of graphical elements that you can use to help your promotions, so check it out, and may you reap great rewards for yourself!

Posted in Make Money | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

The problem with aggregating your blog posts to social networks

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Wayne

If you’re like me, and let’s be honest, who is, but if you happen to have a little bit of my traits, you might find social networks to be a great place to play.  A place to connect with complete strangers and maybe a friend you might have in real life.  A place that might provide some tools to aggregate your post to.

I enjoy automating to see what can be done.  To see what I can do, and when it strikes me, to see where there are holes in a system.  But if you’re a blogger, there’s a problem with aggregating your posts to these networks.

Mr. Herzog commented on my 140 characters isn’t enough to express how I feel post something that really made me think. Then, it made me visit a few sites where my posts are aggregated to.

Ari said:
If you don’t visit your Twitter account but keep it inactive, what about people who mention you in tweets? What if I sent you a tweet but never heard back? What does that say about you? At least, you should edit your Twitter bio to tell people where to contact you.
Ari Herzog@Online Media Strategies´s last blog ..Should Digital Sabbaticals Be Planned to End

Well, after reading that, I decided to take a little trip over to Google Buzz where I have been playing last.  I aggregate my posts over to Buzz as well, and what do you know, it generated a few comments.  In fact, I found a few of my more recent posts were generating a little conversation with others there.

I had no clue!  Not until I visited there and saw that one of my posts had a number of comments on it.

So even in light of a little automation and aggregation, that doesn’t halt the need to continue to participate in little ways on these social sites.

The only thing I would argue with Ari about on this is that each social service is different, and for me, Twitter is much different than Buzz.  Twitter is like what David said in his comment on my post, “a 140 character billboard”.

Buzz is designed to create in-depth conversation around a particular subject, or whatever the post is communicating, so to me, that means that Buzz is more important to check regularly than Twitter would be.

There are a number of people that I’ve met on both services, and others too, that I enjoy speaking with from time to time.  I might not always get a chance to hang out and play around with these services like I once had time to do, but I should remember that the connections I’ve made on these services are just as real as the connections I make in real life.  Albeit, not as formal perhaps, or as tangible as real life connections, but connections just the same.

As a blogger, I can’t forget to check these sites somewhat regularly, so I can at least afford the people that decided to follow me when I was quite active, the respect they deserve by replying and returning a comment when they comment on my posts on these social services.

It just seems like the right thing to do.  Thanks Ari for making that point, it was quite timely.  :)

Posted in Social Networking | Tagged , , , , , | 23 Comments

Spammers are dolts. -OR- How to build links like an idiot.

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Wayne

Perhaps the most irritating part of being a blogger is the spam you encounter. Toss anything up on the Internet, and spammers will find you and look for ways to exploit your site for their own benefit. It’s what they do, and what makes them trolls.

They’re complete dolts though, and I hope they read this post.  If I had a chance, I’d say the exact same right to their faces.

“You’re DOLTS!”

Just take a look in your spam file and read some of the crap they bounce around.  Here are a few of the ones that make me cringe when I see them.

Forex News commented:
You made good points there. would make certain they are on the actual topic and discovered most people may agree together with blog.

This dolt couldn’t put a coherent statement together if you paid him. I call him a “him” since in my mind, girls aren’t this idiotic.

Here’s yet another from Mr Forex News:

You’re an extremely smart person!

Yes, I know. And you’re a complete dolt.

Here’s another one (you know I could do this all day…)

Boyd Baraby @ Chicago Computer Repair commented:
So many computer parts and accessories… I think this is the main thing that scare people from using them.

This dolt owns a locality focused AdSense site apparently, and the thing that gets me is that this user posted this comment, not once, but twice, right in a row.  The first post he left a comment on could have passed as a legit comment.  The context felt right, and his grammar is somewhat good.  But, he couldn’t leave well enough alone and got greedy.

Stupid POS spammer.

Now, you might think that this post is going to cause me undue stress and perhaps a little retaliation from the spammers, but it won’t.  They don’t even read your blog or mine.  Just like my Twitter stream automation, they too are automated.  So it makes no sense to even entertain one bit of their crap, nor does it make any difference if you call them out on the carpet.

The best thing to do is to establish your Akismet plugin and just allow it to do it’s thing.  It does pretty well to catch most spam.  Every now and then, just hop in your spam file and bulk delete everything.  You don’t want your spam file growing large enough to cause your site to slow down.

In fact, that’s a good point right there.  For those of you who have ventured into the “Let’s see what WordPress can do” arena by setting up an untold number of sites, any spam those sites are getting are building up, and might eventually bring down your site.  If left unchecked of course.

I doubt it will effect the public interfaces, but when you try to access the spam file, if there are hundreds of thousands of records in there, you might be in for a bit of trouble.  Best thing to do is to make sure you check the “Automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month.” checkbox on the Akismet admin screen in WordPress.

The only reason I can see that this persists is because of, wait for it….automation.  These spammers set some process up to run whenever and do whatever, and just let it run.  That’s the thing about automation.  Done correctly, it will run until your account is shut down, or the apocalypse, whichever comes first.  So, the big question I have for everyone is, am I a Twitter spammer?

I say no, since it’s completely up to you to follow me or not.  I’m not intruding or forcing anyone to read my tweets, since Twitter is a public site.  You might say that my site is a public site too, so no difference right?

Wrong.  A blog is an apple to Twitter’s oranges.

I just wanted to get this off my chest, I’m sure you can probably relate to my frustration at the moment.  If you blog, I’m sure of it.

Posted in Link Building | Tagged , , , , , | 16 Comments

140 characters isn’t enough to express how I feel

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Wayne

I need more than 140 characters to make my points on any subject.  Feeling limited to just 140 characters can stymie your thoughts, interrupt the thought processes, since you have to redesign any lengthy thought to under that 140 character limitation.

And that’s exactly how I feel about Twitter and their 140 character limit…a limitation.

I understand why they did it, I think.  The service was only meant to provide a short, quick message, and perhaps a link to some image or site if you can squeeze it in there.  Maybe you could even add in a #hashtag for organizational sake, if you can do it within 140 characters.

I don’t agree with 140 characters and really don’t use Twitter that much, except for the processes I’ve left laying about that still use Twitter.  My Twitter stream is completely on auto-pilot now.  I don’t visit there anymore except the rare occasion that I need to do something there.  You might ask “Why would you automate your Twitter stream?”.

A few reasons actually, the first being because I can.  As a web developer, I’m constantly trying new things and adding “skill points” to my toolbox, as it were.  Automating Twitter was something that I saw as a valuable skill to have, especially when you stop to consider how big Twitter has become over the past few years.  Many corporations have adopted Twitter and included it as part of their marketing initiatives, so it makes sense that I should know and understand something that they’ll be using, and will surely want to automate in some manner.

The second reason is because 140 characters isn’t enough to express how I feel.  I enjoy casual conversation, a spirited debate and even fiery arguments, but trying to feel satisfied within 140 characters is darn near impossible.

Yet another reason I left behind an automated stream on Twitter is because I found that there are just too many self-interested people out there trying to sell me this, or show me something that doesn’t appeal to me.  There’s too much crap.

Yeah, crap.  It’s a promotional vehicle for way too many people, and that might be its downfall one day.  Of course, it all depends on who you follow, but even the control you try to place on who you follow can become muddled over time, as I’ve found.

To be fair, I never really placed much emphasis on who I follow.  I’ll follow anyone on there as long as your not an annoying Twitter user.  Of course, I’m not there to accept your friend request.

Oh wait, that’s automated too.  :)

Posted in Social Networking | Tagged , | 15 Comments

Why do I tend to be so negative?

Posted on August 2, 2010 by Wayne

I’ve noticed that since I started involving myself with the Internet, and by “involving” I mean being part of some community and associating with people on a regular basis online, that I’ve been becoming more and more negative in my old age.

Is it the constant barrage of negativity in the news of the world?

Is it the flood of information that is always crossing my eyes?

Is it because I feel too much for the world, and when I see what people are doing to the world that the feelings that well up in me permeate outward towards others in kind?

Can one become too connected with diversity that they ultimately feel lost in their own identity?

Perhaps I’m just in need of a vacation.  What I can’t stand however are those that are so positively up-beat that it could make you puke.  I DON’T want to be that person one bit, but I also don’t want to open the newspaper and think that the world is just going to shit all the time either.

The problem is that I’ve been told all my life to allow myself the right to express my feelings.  But what if those feelings are viewed negatively by others, and starts a little shit-fest on some social network?  So much for everything I’ve learned from others about embracing my feelings and learning to share them…that doesn’t seem to apply to online life one bit.

Since you’ve been online, do you find that you’re just as negative about the world?  If so, have you tried to battle those feelings, or just allow them to flow?

Posted in Random Thoughts | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

I’m not wasting my time blogging anymore, I’m going to micro-blog instead

Posted on August 2, 2010 by Wayne

I’m trying to make blogging more worth my time. After blogging for a little over two years now, I can look back and see what the results of my efforts are. I learned quite a bit, and still am. However, what matters most to me and my family isn’t happening. That, my friends, is making more money.

Sure, I’m making some money, but it isn’t the job replacement that I was hoping for. Instead it’s only a nice supplement to my existing income. Believe me, I’m not balking!  However, if I’m to retire one day, I need to get my income up.

I had hopes (and to be honest a complete lack of direction) when I started that I could make this into something very worthwhile. Worth the time and effort it takes to write a well-rounded, informative post.

Some might find it really easy to kick out post after post and not really look for anything in return.  That’s how I felt during my first few years, but now, if I’m going to spend my nights and weekends writing, it’s going to have to pay off.  When I have resources enough to write for fun, then perhaps then I will.

In fact, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at how the John Chow’s of the world work their blogs.  It seems that every week John is announcing some great this or that with an affiliate link.  Usually its a product that another John Chow has put together that teaches you how to be another John Chow.

I don’t know about you, but I would grow very tired of this process, even if it made me money.  To top that off, it doesn’t seem genuine to me.  After all, it doesn’t take much to hit Clickbank, find a product and write a quick little email to all your subscribers about how fantastic the product is, and how you can benefit from it.  It’s easy for the most part, but it just doesn’t feel genuine.  Especially when you’re networked with a million other John Chow’s and they each have a product to promote.  It sure helps when you have a following that will stroke you a bit regardless of what you put out there.

But back to me and my blog here.  I’m obviously struggling to write a decent, lengthy and detailed post like I used to, but I find that I’m more apt to do updates and what-not if I’m micro-blogging, which usually happens outside of my blog on services like Twitter or Buzz.

I’m going to bring my activities from there, here.  The thing about services like those is that if you’re a blogger like myself, they’re great places to promote your writing or whatever you might be slinging from your blog, site or company.  However, what happens after time is that all those tweets or buzz items end up helping the social service more than they help your own site.  Sure, you might get a following there, but what is it that you’re really doing?

You’re giving your content away for free.  Your original thoughts and ideas, feelings and emotions are worth something, and to some extent you should be compensated for the time and effort.

Oh wait, it’s all about fun and connecting with new and interesting people, right?  Sure, I guess on the surface that’s exactly what it might be.  But under all the nice marketing and hype, you have a company that wants you to continue pumping content into their system.  That keeps them alive and making money.

Meanwhile, back here at my blog, things are stagnant.  Things have dried up, but these other services are benefiting from my time spent on them.

Not any more though.  This blog will now become my micro-blogging tool.  I’ll slowly change it around to meet my new direction and you’ll see the end results if you continue to follow the crap I throw out there.

Besides, the big ones provide API’s that help you automate your postings there, so if I post here, it will be made available there.  So, why am I using these services as a primary output device, when they should be a secondary device that feeds off of my blog.

It just seems to make sense to me.  What do you think?

Posted in Blogging Help & Tips | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

David Gilmour to play one show during the Roger Waters 2010 The Wall tour

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Wayne

This is absolutely exciting news. Roger Waters announced on his Facebook page that after the recent gig that Roger and David did, David offered to do a single show during the upcoming The Wall tour.

This is promising news for Floydians like myself.

According to Waters, Gilmour told him, “If you do ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’ for The Hoping Foundation gig, I’ll come and do ‘C. Numb’ on one of your Wall shows.” Waters’ response: “How fucking cool! I was blown away.”

Really fucking cool!

Posted in Amusing | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Increasing the PageRank of your photography website

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Wayne

I’m quite aware that I have several photography types that read my sporadic drivel, and this video speaks perfectly to the issue of getting your images indexed and ranking well in Google. At least, that’s the intended consequence of gaining PageRank, which is more to the point of what Matt is addressing.

Good chuckle at the end there as well…

“Not really tricks, techniques”! We can all feel good about ourselves again, tooling your sites to help you rank better in big G isn’t dirty.

I’ll add that from experience, I find a good sprinkling of your keywords in the title, page description, heading 1, heading 2 and 3 if it makes sense, and use the alt property on the img tag. In fact, I’d say it might work out really well if you use a blogging system like WordPress. You could make the tags that you apply to each post correspond with the content for that alt property. Making the process of adding new images as simple as:

  1. Log in, create new post
  2. Add title, apply tags, assign category
  3. Post

What you do in step 2 means everything, and any way to decrease the time spent there, the better.  So taking advantage of existing work you’ve done by thinking of the tags as an extension of your selected keywords for the post/image, you could apply a list of keywords elsewhere within the entire html, like say in the meta tags for “keywords” (which really aren’t all that important, depends on who you ask).  I always try to include meta keywords though, to be thorough.

As well, the WordPress Codex contains all the information you need to include the tags into the ALT property of the image tag as well.  You can dump those tags onto the page and use them in a variety of ways.

Applying good tags to your image posts, and even non images posts, and used in ways described in the video, and with a little tag ingenuity on the resulting html page, will help save you time, and help to increase your PageRank.

Of course, if you need any help you can always ask for my assistance. I’m more than happy to help when I’m able.

If you liked the video, thank Google, and catch more of Matt on the Google Webmaster Central Channel on YouTube.

Posted in Tech Talk | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Exercising your blog and being consistent for long term health

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Wayne

Call this post something that I need to constantly remind myself about, or moreover, something that I want to keep in the forefront of my own mind for some time.

Applying a little bit of effort in everything you do can get you results that you want.  It doesn’t matter if your trying to lose weight, or keep an active blog going.  Imagine trying to lose weight without trying, it doesn’t work.  You need to apply yourself and put in a good amount of effort and be consistent before you begin to reap any weight loss benefits.

The same can be said about blogging, although with blogging the effort is even less than if you were trying to lose weight, but the same principles apply, with one major difference.  When you exert the effort to write a well written post, the post will live on and continue to garner traffic, readers and perhaps non-spammy comments.  Albeit the latter is perhaps not as likely, at least, not from what I’ve seen on my own blog.

With weight loss, you work out one day, but need to continue working out consistently before you begin to see the results of your efforts.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Come on Wayne, this is obvious shit your spewing here, give us something that will help us!”.

Alright friends, if you really want to know why I’m writing this now, and why it’s important to you as a blogger or website owner, read on.

We all know that Google visits our sites every now and then, and Google might pick up a new post that you’ve written and include it in the index.  Remember, not every post you write is going to be indexed.  Google doesn’t index everything, just what it feels is worthy of being included.

More than likely, when you write a post and publish it, your site will begin to ping other services and let them know about your new content.  You might even take some time to visit a few social services and put your link out there even more.

When you do this consistently on a regular basis, that constant flow of new content will help your blog a lot.  I think of it like a heart, really.  As long as it’s pumping out new content, your blog will be alive with traffic.  Stop posting for a good amount of time and you’ll see that your traffic will drop.  Sometimes not so much, sometimes significantly.  It really just depends on too many factors, so each blog will be treated differently when the pumping out of new content begins to dwindle.

You probably already know that this same principle applies to losing weight.  When you stop exercising, your internal engine might keep going for a bit and you’ll continue to lose weight, but that engine will slowly begin to turn itself around to the point where you’ll begin to gain weight.

On a personal side, if you’ve been reading my blog for any time recently, you might have recognized that my own consistency has dropped through the floor.  I’m not going to make any excuses here, but I recognize that I haven’t been consistent with my posts this year.  However from my own lack of effort and consistency I’ve noticed that my traffic will drop about 100 visits a day and level off.  If I post on a regular basis, my traffic will rise up about 100 visits per day.

The rise and fall could probably be attributed to readers like yourself not getting any new items in your feed reader or email.  When I post, a number of you might come visit and leave a comment, causing my traffic to rise.  When I don’t post for a number of days, that traffic doesn’t visit, and I’m left with regular search traffic that visits some of my more popular posts.

When my own effort and consistency fail me though, what am I missing out on?  Anything?

Sure, new visitors, new subscribers, new potential friends and partners.  I might even lose existing subscribers.  All of this is negative progress, just like if you stop exercising.

Being consistent and applying the effort to write new material will make your blog feel and look alive, and that’s going to be recognized by your visitors.  It’s easy to tell when a blog or blog author is falling apart or not really interested in their own blog anymore.  The posts begin to turn from quality information to bit of this and that perhaps.  Really, it can manifest itself in so many different ways, but I’d suspect that each one is recognizable to some degree by your readers.

Exercising is not only good for your body, it’s good for your blog as well.

Posted in Blogging Help & Tips | Tagged , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Pink Floyd founding members Gilmour, Waters reunite for benefit

Posted on July 14, 2010 by Wayne

David Gilmour and Roger Waters shared a stage in England for a 4 song set during a benefit concert for the Hoping Foundation benefit in Oxfordshire, England, which raised money for young Palestinian refugees.  I found this story here.

The Saturday night set marks the first time Waters and Gilmour have shared the stage since Pink Floyd’s reunion performance at 2005′s Live 8 in London. The duo’s Hoping Foundation performance helped raise £350,000. At the benefit, Gilmour and Waters — who swapped his bass for an acoustic guitar — were joined by keyboardists Harry Waters and Jonjo Grisdale, drummer Andy Newmark, guitarist Chester Kamen and bassist Guy Pratt, who ironically replaced Waters in the Gilmour-led, Division Bell-era Pink Floyd.

Hey now, if these guys simply announced that they were going to do a show, they might have raised even more money!  That’s why social media is so darn wonderful!

David Gilmour and Roger WatersThe fact that they have played together might indicate to fans that there is the chance of a reunion tour, or perhaps David riding along on Roger’s upcoming The Wall tour, but fans will be disappointed in hearing that David has absolutely no aspirations to do any such thing.  Pink Floyd, to him, is something of the past that is gone forever.

Personally, I believe that David is more in tune with charity events as of late that help others.  I imagine that years of touring and playing the same old songs just doesn’t appeal to him anymore.  I can respect that.  After all, it must really wear a person out and perhaps stymie any good creativeness after so many years.

But who am I?  Just another fan that only wants to see them all together again and playing. A true reunion just isn’t possible with the passing of keyboardist Rick Wright in 2008, but I think that could be covered well enough.  No, it wouldn’t be the same, but it would still be a great show.

The Wall tour is coming up, and I just learned that I’ll be seated in section 1 at the MGM Grand show in Vegas baby!  See you at the show Rog!

Posted in Amusing | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Caption This: Kid with blow up doll

Posted on July 8, 2010 by Wayne

Kid with a blow up doll

It certainly looks as though he’s about to say something, what could it be?

Posted in Amusing | Tagged , , | 17 Comments

5 key trends for 2010

Posted on July 6, 2010 by Wayne

Richard MacManus over at ReadWriteWeb.com posted an article that goes into 5 key trends for 2010.  Personally, I’m interested in what’s trending on the horizon as it gives me an idea of whether or not what I’m working on today will be of even more value in the future.  Trends can reveal much about the current state of the world, and when used properly, can catapult a web site.

Sometimes being first, or close to first is all a good idea needs to flourish.

Richard points out:

  1. Mobile computing – this is probably going to continue growing for some time.  Expect more accidents and people walking into poles as they are transfixed by the glowing box that left the office and living room and now resides in your sweaty palms.
  2. Real-time web – Now that the online social scene is perhaps entering it’s teen years, we should begin to see more and more unique and creative uses of this data that is being freely generated day in and day out by bored teens and the unemployed.
  3. Internet of things - Does the fridge need milk?  It’ll be telling you soon enough.  If anything, I want to know who’s draining the coffee and not making another pot.  Perhaps the coffee machine will do that when appliances are wired up to the net.
  4. Augmented reality – Don’t like the real world?  The fake one is continuing to grow, perhaps the grass is more purple there?
  5. Structured data – Ah, the semantic web.  How things relate to each other, and to individuals.  Someday soon we’ll be able to grab a feed, a phone number, and make a date with that cute blogger you’ve been stalking.

To be serious for a second, as bloggers, it makes sense to keep an eye on the future direction of things.  After all, you’re part of it, whether you like it or not.

I will say this though: he who controls the data, controls the universe.  We need to watch the data and who’s controlling it.  Not paying attention will cause us more harm than good.

Can you see anything becoming important or more than relevant in the coming years that isn’t listed above?

Posted in Tech Talk | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments

10 proven weight loss tips you can start today

Posted on July 2, 2010 by Wayne

I sat behind the computer for years.  Literally, years.  18 hour days many times, and never getting any exercise what-so-ever.  A few months ago I began working out in earnest.  I’ve done this before, I once has aspirations to become a body-builder, but it seems that programming took over and became the dominant force in my life.

I didn’t like waking up one morning and seeing my fat belly.  I grew tired of watching it slowly slink over my belt line, so I started working out again.  The goal is a six pack, and I won’t stop until I get it.

In two months time I’ve lost 20 pounds and I’m starting to see muscle definition everywhere on my body.  I’ve proven to myself that I can do it, and you can too if you’re so inclined.  You just need to make the decision and run with it, stay focused, be persistent and not allow yourself to be taken off track by anything, or anyone.  It’s your body, own it.

Follow these tips and you WILL lose weight, guaranteed.

  1. Cardio exercises daily – Well, perhaps not daily, I do take a day off here and there, but mostly I raise my heart rate for 30 minutes Monday through Friday, and sometimes if I have time I’ll add Saturday and Sunday.  30 minutes is not a lot of time when you think about it, and it does get really easy after a few weeks.  However, when it gets easy, you need to increase the intensity, or the tension to continue getting the same results.
  2. Make one meal a salad – Having a salad for lunch or dinner can help reduce your caloric intake dramatically.  Just watch the dressing.  Choosing a low or non-fat salad dressing can make all the difference.
  3. Drink lots of water – Water is pretty much the only thing I drink these days, aside from the mandatory glass of milk when the meal calls for it (because sometimes milk is just too tasty to pass up).  Water will help flush your system of toxins and bad stuff.
  4. Quit high-sugar drinks – Sodas and many other drinks just fill you with empty calories.  It was hard for me to quit my Dr. Pepper addiction, but it happened with some strong will, thankfully.
  5. Tone your muscles – Along with the cardio, you need to find time to tone and strengthen your muscles.  I take Wednesdays to do just that with the exercise video I love.  By focusing your attention on your muscles and getting them toned and in shape, you’ll help your body burn more fat during your cardio sessions, and even when you’re not exercising!  Just what I love, losing weight while I sleep.
  6. Listen to your body – Sometimes you need to rest, sometimes you need to push through the pain.  I don’t mess around when my joints start aching, I’ll rest and wait for them to feel well enough to ensure I don’t cause more damage.  However, it’s my muscles complaining, I’ll work through the pain.  If the pain doesn’t go away, I’ll stop and rest.  Normally, I find that the muscle pain goes away once I start using those muscles in a workout.  Point here, learn to recognize what your body is trying to tell you.
  7. Eat to stop hunger – Eating what’s left on your plate is not a good thing, regardless of how many people might be starving in China.  Our mothers were completely wrong.  Eating until your not hungry anymore is better than filling up and bloating yourself with unnecessary food.
  8. Cut sugars – I was a sugar addict, bad.  Once I started monitoring what I consumed each day, I noticed several things I could do to cut out the sugar, and that’s helped me lose even more weight.
  9. Monitor your results – Doing all these things is nice, but you also need to continue motivating yourself.  Monitoring your weight on a weekly basis will show if you are improving or not, and when you find you are improving, it feels really good and will help you press forward.  Don’t be dismayed though when you find you didn’t lose weight or even gained weight.  Take a look back in the week, I bet you can figure out what you did wrong.  A great tool to help you monitor your results is FitDay.
  10. Envision what you want your body to look like – This is perhaps the biggest motivator for myself, and might be for you too.  While exercising, I create a mental picture of what I’ll look like in a few months by continuing these good habits.  I find that doing so helps focus my attention and keeps me on track, whereas not doing so I find I’ll slip and go for chocolate and sugars.

If you follow these tips, I guarantee that you’ll shed fat and lose weight.  I’m doing it right now, I’ve proven these tips to myself and others.

I no longer sit behind the keyboard for 18 hours straight.  I’m getting in shape, and feeling terrific about it.  I hope you are able feel the same way about yourself too.  Life is too short not to be good to yourself.

Posted in Fitness | Tagged , , , | 18 Comments

Ensure you can recover from disaster – Backing up WordPress files and databases

Posted on June 30, 2010 by Wayne

What would happen to your site if an attack was waged upon it, and you ultimately lost everything?  Aside from the anger you might experience, or the dreadful thought of being violated in such a way, could you recover easily from such an attack?

If you have not taken the time to consider how you might recover if you lost everything, perhaps you should right now.  Not taking the time to make sure you can recover your instance of WordPress will only leave you crying the day that you need to, but can’t. Follow these items to ensure you can restore your database and/or files that comprise your WordPress blog.

The following two plugins will help make sure that you are backing up everything you need to recover should disaster strike.

Backups and Recovering from disaster

Making sure you can recover from the potential “oops” that can happen, as well as being able to quickly recover from any type of attack is perhaps the most important first step you can take, and before implementing changes that effect your blog, or anything else for that matter.  Having a backup will one day save your ass, trust me.

With that said, how can you effectively and efficiently backup your WordPress site? Pretty easily with these few plugins I’ve found.

WP Backup – The WordPress Backup plugin performs regular backups of your upload (images) current theme, and plugin directories. Backup files are available for download and optionally emailed to a specified email address. You can adjust the interval between backups and the email address to which the backups are sent.

However, if your blog is rather large and filled with years of posts, don’t expect the email portion to work unless you can send large files through.  At least, the resultant .zip file might be too large to fit through email servers. You’ll have to grab your backups off the server directly if this is the case.

You can visit the site with the link above, or simply type “WordPress Backup” in your admin panel for a plugin search.

WP Database Manager – The WordPress Database Manager provides some great functionality for working with the back-end WordPress database. Performing actions against it is a snap, and like the WP Backup plugin, it too will backup, zip and email your database to you at regular intervals.

One of the great things about the WP Database Manager is that you can also take that backup and restore it, effectively giving you the ability to recover from disaster easily, and quickly.

That’s all you need!

You have the files being backed up, you have the database being backed up?  What’s left to do?

Make sure you collect the backups off the server.

The last part of an effective backup routine is making sure that the backups are safe and that you can get to them when you need to.  If disaster strikes, you might lose a bit of data due to the timing of the backups and when disaster actually strikes, but, it won’t be as much of a heartbreak if you didn’t have those backups.

Cover your ass, make sure you do this if you’re serious about keeping your blog going.

Posted in Blogging Help & Tips | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

5 important skills that aren’t taught in schools, but should be

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Wayne

I remember going to school when I was younger and I couldn’t wait to reach the 12th grade, graduate, and begin my life.  I did what I had to.  I woke early every school day, made my way to class on foot, and then on my bike later on when I was allowed to ride a bike to school.

I’d listen to the teachers drone on and on about this and that, never having a clue that when it was all over, I still wouldn’t know enough to live my life the way I wanted to.  My educational indoctrination to American life was good, but far from being complete.

Here are 10 more things that I wished I would have learned while in school, but had to learn either through hard-knocks, or by investing even more of my time.

  1. Money management – Seems that schooling on this particular subject was light, at best.  Saving money, spending money, budgeting, investing, and the importance of saving for retirement were all lightly touched on, but it felt more like “here are these items, understand?  Good, let’s move on…”.  What has happened because of this lack of education is I’ve had to learn everything about this subject myself, and I’ll share with you that it wasn’t the cheapest education I’ve done for myself.  I’ve lost money, earned money, but in the end, I’m still not any better off than when I was graduating.  Granted, I’ve been able to acquire debt, assets and all that, but getting to this point was really, really expensive.
  2. Critical thinking – Advertisers are liars by their very nature.  At least, they know how to spin an idea or topic around so that it sounds like you have to have the product.  Children are very impressionable, and marketers know this.  Why do you think McDonald’s gives toys away with their happy meals?  Kids know they’ll get a toy, so they’ll be apt to want McDonald’s over other burger joints.  If children are told repeatedly to recognize enticement in advertising and to be more critical about what they read, see and hear, perhaps those get rich quick schemes wouldn’t be as profitable as they are today.
  3. Social skills – Something I really didn’t have growing up, and still don’t to some degree.  I was always quiet and introverted with spurts of extroversion that seemed to display itself at the most inopportune moments.  Perhaps I missed a course somewhere, but nothing really prepared me for mingling, being social and so forth.  I’ve certainly taken my lumps with my social skills, and what’s funny (perhaps not so funny) is that I realize as I grow older that my social skills aren’t improving any really.  I’m becoming more and more “set in my ways”.  Perhaps this underlines the importance of developing good social skills in our children during the K-12 process.
  4. Sales – Sales is a skill that’s developed over time, knowing how to sell is becoming more and more important, not only to salesmen, but everyone.  Knowing the “art” of selling is perhaps a better way to put this.  Personally, I can’t stand selling something, I don’t hype it up, I don’t care to relate the benefits and why this or that is the most important thing in the universe, and why you have to buy it right now.  I don’t get it really, either you want it or you don’t.  I’m not going to pressure-sell anything, and this is my biggest fault I can see in my life.
  5. Goal setting – I learned how to set goals for myself and how to go about achieving them at my first employers company.  I was sent to a Franklin/Covey seminar that completely changed my life.  I can barely go a day without reviewing all my goals and plans for the day, the week, the month and next month.  Doing this has helped me stay focused on what’s important.  Finding out what is important to you and your life, and how to achieve your goals is perhaps the most important skill any one person could work on.  Being unable to achieve your goals by will and leaving them open to kismet won’t help an individual achieve the greater part of happiness.

I’ve struggled to find any more educational topics that children and teens should be learning in schools.  However, I will add that another important topic is activism.  Certainly not taught in schools that I’m aware of, but imagine it.  If there was a course on activism that teaches kids the proper way to petition the government and enact change in our society, I believe we’d be heading in the right direction.

What I see today is more like drones being kicked out of the mold and not told to think, but instead follow what everyone else is doing and you’ll be alright and a success.

I don’t define success as having followed what everyone else has done already.

Posted in Random Thoughts | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

The ebb and flow of Google search traffic

Posted on June 24, 2010 by Wayne

One thing I’ve come to learn about search traffic is that it’s here today, gone tomorrow, and then it comes back again for no apparent reason. The ebb and flow of Google search traffic continues on in this manner as if some change made by Google triggers your site to rank higher for particular keywords then suddenly one day all of that added traffic is gone.

Will it return?  Is this the end of the free search traffic flow?

Who knows!  Google doesn’t let on to what happens behind their closed doors of course, so everyone can only speculate.  At least, the very important stuff that any one of us could use to exploit Google is certainly locked up tight.  Anyone that says they cracked the secret or claims that they know exactly what to do is liar.

So we deal with the ebb and flow of Google search traffic like everyone else.  We ponder what exactly might be happening behind the Google Curtain to cause this up and down cycle.  We test and try this and that, and then gauge the results.  From that we take what we think works good and test once again.  If you’re interested in ranking higher than you are today, this is what you need to be doing instead of spending your money on any Internet Marketing gurus package that’s up for sale to everyone and their mothers.

In fear of having a spotlight put on me as I really don’t want any extraordinary attention placed upon myself by Google et al, I’m going to share a little something I learned from David at Cybercoder.  I was reading his latest post about earning passive income online (an excellent read btw, and a great way to make a living, you need to read this post!) when I recalled a conversation that I had with him one time.  He mentioned that Google cycles.  One day you’re on top of the world and the next it’s flat seas with no wind.  This image shows exactly that I’m talking about.

Google Search AnalyticsIt’s because Google is cycling, churning, changing ever so slightly each and every day.

David’s guess is as good as mine as to what exactly is going on, to some extent, but I tend to agree with him.  Google, in the early stages for a new site, seems to do a little playing around with the site.  After a new site is indexed, you might see a sudden spike in traffic that might last about a day or two, sometimes longer.  But sure as shit loves a shingle, it’s going to drop eventually.

All this is of course assuming that not a lot of linking is going on.  If you’re linking and doing the traffic generating hustle among the many social sites out there, and your site takes off, expect a bunch of traffic and ignore everything I’m saying here, because it doesn’t apply to you as much as it does with sites that generate smaller amounts of traffic that aren’t actively linking with other sites.

I’m of the opinion that Google is gauging the site in some manner.  Perhaps Google is getting a feel and flavor of the site and how the traffic Google is currently sending to it is responding to the site.  If Google sees that there are a ton of bounces immediately after sending traffic, you might get a “low grade” and thus get less traffic overall.  If Google sees a ton of pageviews afterwards, Google might think that the site is of a certain quality and give it a “higher grade”.

This whole “grade” thing, I made it up.  There’s no indication other that pagerank that Google assigns any other type of grading to a site.  I’m using it as a euphemism for a site that Google approves of or disapproves of.

Google is constantly refining it’s search and indexing algorithms, sometimes multiple times a day, but in most cases, I believe that they need to allow some things to run for a while to get a good measure of whatever results they might be looking for.  That might explain why we see an increase or decrease in traffic in cycles like we do.

The ebb and flow of search traffic from Google is more pronounced for smaller sites. Larger sites are drowning in various types of traffic and won’t see a pronounced ebb and flow as much.

Have you experienced anything like this?  Share your story below.

Posted in Traffic | Tagged , , , | 14 Comments

Jeffrey Lant is a scam and spam artist

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Wayne

Jeffrey Lant, scammer and spammerIf you’ve ever had the displeasure of finding yourself on Jeffrey Lant’s WorldProfit.com web site, don’t give them an email address that you want to keep spam free.

Not only is the entire business model Jeffrey Lant is promoting a scam, give them your email address and within a month or so, you’ll start receiving emails from plenty of unknown domains that you’ve probably never visited!

As well, his emails aren’t Can-Spam compliant either, which means he should get his hands smacked with a nice ruler. Actually, I’m not being completely honest either. The emails are nothing but images, and if you don’t allow the images to be seen, you’ll never see the unsubscribe link.

Another item I have issue with is that the email address comes from degreeNows *at* usasavertodayinc *dot* com, a site I have never been to, nor will I ever. It’s another one of the many Jeffrey Lant scam sites.

Jeffrey Lant is a scammer and a spammer.  Stay well away from him and his businesses!

Need proof?  Just google “Jeffrey Lant scam” and it should become quite clear.  Garry Conn did an excellent post that covers everything you need to know about this character.  Even the comments are a great read.

What Lant is basically doing is dirty marketing that borders on a pyramid scheme, but apparently the scheme is muddled enough that this guy touts a Better Business Bureau logo.  Even the BBB is suspect to allowing crap through their gates.  Here’s a good read on that topic.

Stay away from this character.  He will do nothing for you except relieve you of your money. Unfortunately, it appears that he prey’s upon the less-enlightened among us. Those that are searching for financial help and believe they can achieve it via one of Jeffrey Lant’s online businesses.

The sad part of this is that the only thing they’ll get are empty promises and broken dreams.

The only reason I know so much about this guy is primarily due to Garry Conn’s article. But after reading it, I did my own investigation into this guy. I created emails specifically for accessing his site where I was then subjected to an embarrassing display of pressure tactics and humiliation to sway me to swipe my credit card.

It’s a sad fact of reality that there are those out there that can seemingly sleep well at night knowing they’re ripping people off day in and day out. Be smart and be safe. Most of all, don’t allow people to pressure you into buying like Jeffrey Lant does.

Posted in Make Money | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

Spring cleaning before summer starts

Posted on June 21, 2010 by Wayne

I’ve upgraded to WordPress 3.0 and so far the blog is looking good, if not completely different. I decided that I like the new default theme that comes with WordPress 3.0 so much that I’ll just use it for my own theme for the time being.  It just feels like a good time to do some spring cleaning before the summer starts.

Actually, I found problems with the Arras theme I was using previously. I didn’t bother exploring the issue much, but the layout decided to skew a bit. I didn’t need much prodding to just ditch the whole theme and start fresh. The old one wore on me a bit. Each post required an associated image. I had a stock of them sitting aside for general purpose, but for the most part, that felt like too much of a setup just to get a post out the door. I was already struggling with mental blockage and didn’t really need the additional weight of have-to-do’s like finding an image. Sometimes, you don’t need or want one.

So this is the new theme.  I’ve already added in the AdSense and such.  What little comes through I don’t necessarily want to stop, right?

I’ve also noticed things acting a little slow.  I think I’ve overloaded on plugins a bit, so had to scale back what I use.  Perhaps part of that was the theme itself, time will tell if that’s the case.

So, a new theme.  A few less plugins.

The overall theme with me these days is reducing the complexity of life’s daily chores and duties, responsibilities and focus on what matters most.

Me.

You should do the same for yourself too.  When was the last time you did something good for yourself? What was it?

Getting your own house in order allows you to help others out with their house.  There is still time to do some spring cleaning before the summer starts.

Posted in Blogging Help & Tips | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments