Too Busy Being Geeky to Actually Design this site.
Shape Writer Keyboard
If you have a Google Android powered smart phone, go out and download the software based “Shapewriter” Keyboard Application.
It’s a different way to type on your phone. Instead of pecking out your message, simply slide your finger around the keyboard screen and draw out your word.
After I got used to it, I noticed a definite increase in my texting speed.
Nice application.
It’s easy to get discouraged if you are selling a product and not getting results. Often, all that’s really necessary is a little patience and perseverance.
It’s well known that it takes several communications with a prospect before they are ready to buy, but most sales people don’t realize it takes even more than they think. It’s a common error to stop marketing to a prospect too soon. Many times the marketing message is stopped just short of getting the prospects attention.
I read the following list years ago when reading some of Jay Conrad Levinson’s gorilla marketing books. Jay has published dozen’s of marketing books and his influence in the marketing field is world renown.
I often use this list to help sales people understand the thought process of a potential customer when they are looking at a marketing message.
This list was originally published in Thomas Smith’s guide Successful Advertising. I believe it’s message is just as useful and thought provoking today as it was when it was originally published in 1885.
1. The first time a man looks at an advertisement, he does not see it.
2. The second time, he does not notice it.
3. The third time, he is conscious of its existence.
4. The fourth time, he faintly remembers having seen it before.
5. The fifth time, he reads it.
6. The sixth time, he turns up his nose at it.
7. The seventh time, he reads it through and says, ‘Oh brother!’
8. The eighth time, he says, ‘Here’s that confounded thing again!’
9. The ninth time, he wonders if it amounts to anything.
10. The tenth time, he asks his neighbor if he has tried it.
11. The eleventh time, he wonders how the advertiser makes it pay.
12. The twelfth time, he thinks it must be a good thing.
13. The thirteenth time, he thinks perhaps it might be worth something.
14. The fourteenth time, he remembers wanting such a thing a long time.
15. The fifteenth time, he is tantalized because he cannot afford to buy it.
16. The sixteenth time, he thinks he will buy it some day.
17. The seventeenth time, he makes a memorandum to buy it.
18. The eighteenth time, he swears at his poverty.
19. The nineteenth time, he counts his money carefully.
20. The twentieth time he sees the ad, he buys what it is offering.
A few days ago I received an email from my brother and business partner simply titled “look.”
The only think in the body was a link:
After reading the article, I discovered a very interesting a simple solution to the problem I’ve always had with affiliate marketing. I’ve dabbled with a few affiliate programs, but I’ve always found it too time consuming and difficult to track and manage very many of them. I’ve got quite a bit going on in life, and really don’t have the extra time to dedicate to maintaining a bunch of affiliate programs.
Enter Viglink. If it does what it promises it will eliminate the hassle of maintaining your affiliate programs. For a cut of the profit, they take care of it for you. All that you need to do is drop a few lines of javascript into your website(s) and Viglink will monetize any links you post. No more messing around with the affiliates yourself.
Backing from companies like Google’s Affiliate Network, Linkshare, and Commission Junction prove that this is obviously one to watch.
I’ve just set up the code (a very simple process) and now it’s just time to wait and see what happens.
It’s simple, you can’t transfer profiles from one account to another in Google Analytics.
I’ve been waiting for them to implement the ability to do this for ages, still no dice.
I know there are many folks out there like me who started several different accounts when Google Analytics first started up, now it’s impossible to merge all of the accounts together or break them into separate accounts, which you might want to do for individual clients.
Google Analytics developers, hear my cry! Please add the ability to transfer profiles between accounts!
I decided to start using Picasa. The implementation of their name tag feature got me interested, and next thing you know, I have almost 25,000 photos and videos being indexed in Picasa 3.
I went ahead and started syncing some photos with Picasa Web Albums. I burned up the FREE 1GB that Google gives you free pretty quickly, so I went ahead and dropped $50.00 to upgrade to 200GB of storage. I’m supposed to be getting a free 4 GB wifi Eye-Fi SD card in the mail from the signup too.
There are several things I really like about Picasa. I’ve used Flickr and SmugMug pretty extensively in the past. Picasa is the only photo sharing utility that combines a local photo organizer (Picasa 3) with a online web album (Picasa Web Albums). I really like being able to organize locally with Picasa and sync with the web albums to share and backup my photos.
The facial recognition / name tagging is a fantastic feature. It becomes addictive going through photos and labeling people.
I love the tie to GMAIL and the GMAIL contacts that syncs your face tags with your GMAIL contacts.
The inclusion of video in Picasa is great, especially since I picked up the new Kodak Zi8. I love that Picasa allows videos up to 1GB.
Here’s a couple of things that Google Picasa is definitely missing, and I hope to see them add soon:
I want to be able to search ALL of my photos by the meta information. Both Flickr and Smug Mug make it easy to find EVERY picture taken on a specific date regardless of what albums the photos are broken into.
I only have a small portion of my photo uploaded to Picasa Web Albums so far, and the number of albums I’m creating is growing at an alarming rate. I can only imagine the mess I’ll have in 10 years. Picasa needs to allow the ability to nest albums. I would love to create an album labeled 2009, and then nest albums under it for any special occasions. Again, this is a feature I was used to in SmugMug.
I want better photo sharing tools. I like the fact that Picasa web albums uses the gmail contacts and groups to manage sharing, but i would like to select multiple albums at a time to set the sharing on. It takes an inordinate amount of time to set sharing on albums one at a time. Also, I would like to be able to set sharing without sending an email to the person I am sharing with. Emailing everytime a make a sharing change seems very spammy.
I want to be able to use Picasa on my own domain name, the same way I use Google Apps. Let me direct my friends and family to a subdomain like photos.techytechygeekygeeky.com.
All in all, I am really enjoying Picasa. I am waiting for Google’s development to catch up with my desires. I’m sure I will find other ‘missing’ features as I dig in deeper, but overall it is a very nice way to sort and share photos and videos.