A Very Cool Search Engine Site!

Well, I wasn’t too impressed with Cuil or the other new-fangled kinds of search engines with big image doo-dads and the like. I do tend to prefer the good old-fashioned text links for search results.

With that said, WOW!

I happened across this new search engine– SearchMe. It’s another visual search engine (it shows screenshots of the websites), so it’s a tad graphic heavy. But it’s really nice, and I found it more accurate than anything else I’ve seen out there yet.
Here’s a screenshot of a search I did for “New York traveler.” My travel blogs showed up right away, as they should.

I also found some very cool other New York travel sites, too.

I like SearchMe. It’s fun. Will it replace the regular text link search engine? I’m not sure. Old habits are hard to change. But this idea may catch on, as long as a visual search engine is fast, accurate, and gives good results. This is one to watch.

Use the ‘Net to Find Great Stuff

I am REALLY becoming quite the online shopper. I am just NUTS about it! I buy almost everything online now. I still get groceries and personal items at my local stores, but I am leaning more and more toward getting that stuff from the Internet, too. Take watches. All my kids have and use watches regularly. Which means I have to buy new watches for somebody, sometime!

The Internet is a magnificent choice for finding great deals. Take, for example, the Kenmar watches. website. This is a superb site for finding the perfect watch– they have a searchable database, and stock one of the largest varities of watches on the Internet. The site is extremely organized– search my search engine, by name brand, by style, by price, by popularity, and even by color! And if that doesn’t help you enough, there’s an easy Live Chat function available by the Kenmar Watches customer service reps. Kenmar Watches takes customer satisfaction very seriously- they have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. It’s a nice site, with a huge selection, including the popular Orient watches and more. Local stores just don’t cut it anymore with stuff like this. We’re lucky if we find a salesperson, let alone a sale or being able to see the entire selection so easily.

So if you’re looking for something special- check the Internet. And if you’re looking for a huge selection of affordable watches with great service- check out Kenmar Watches.com.

Load Time Almost Complete

ROFL!!

more animals

I am totally, totally hooked on this website. What took me so long to discover it? I’d heard other bloggers talk about it for the longest time before I went to take a peek. ROFL! When I am in a discouraged mood or feeling low, I sometimes go here. Nothing like an hour-long belly laugh to chase the frowns away. LOL!

Internet Advertising is Hot

Internet advertising is HOT. Advertising is hot, actually, despite a slowing economy. If anything, advertising increases during a slow economy, because hesitant consumers need a little more coaching (tempting) to get out there and shop, shop, shop. This is a great time to have an online presence and to be an advertiser. Deals are everywhere. However, customer service and quality companies are not. This is where it pays to do a little homework. This is where Acrux Ads can help.

Acrux Ads is a company devoted– nay, thrilled– to help get the word out about products and services, and also to connect sellers and buyers of ads. Here’s the scoop with Acrux Ads:

• It’s free to register!
• Their commission rate is incredibly low– keep 95% of your revenue sold on your site.
• Keep 80% of your revenus sold on their site.
• Manage and give away promo codes to generate traffic and interest (and income).
• Acrux Ads has a new marketplace, and buying ads is so easy, at the click of a button. You can opt to pay per view or per day.
• You can target your audience to get the best for your buck.
• You can track your campaign stats easily.

Acrux Ads will adeptly manage your advertising or publishing scheme, at low cost and with a lot to offer. It’s no secret that the Internet is becoming the next generation in buzz and product awareness. Get your product or service out there with savvy Acrux Ads.

What’s Up with Alexa??

What is going on with the Alexa rating? For, what, two weeks now, the buttons in my sidebar have stated “No Data.” Huh? The Alexa.com site seems to be up and running. Anyone know what’s up? This is a problem on all my blogs. It’s hard to tell if the actual rating system is working properly, since it takes so long for the number to alter. If anyone has any news, let me know.

In other ranking news, this blog still ranks as 0 with Google’s PageRank. It has NEVER had a rank above 0, and the blog is well over a year old. I don’t know why Google keeps hitting me with 0s across the board. They really stink.

Process Library and Scanner

Lots of virus- and trojan-creators have become quite shifty and sneaky: they are naming their malware after genuine, important software already on our computers. For example, do you have lsass.exe or Isass.exe in your process files list? It’s very difficult to see the difference between the two, but one is a virus and one is not. I used to scour my process list to check for scoundrels (in the Task Manager and also in msconfig), but these days, who knows what is what?

I have used quite a few online process libraries, some good and user-friendly, and some not. Here;s a good one: ProcessLibrary.com. There’s a searchable database AND it also has some good educational articles to help you understand your computer files a little better.

AND it has a free downloadable scanner, see here. This program will scan all your process files and tell you what’s running. Cool! Once you have a clean, trojan-free computer, you order those nice Votive candle holders online without the threat of hackers or spyware.

Tracking the Flu’s Spread

Creeepy. As much as I like demographics, this still creeps me out: Google is using web searches to track the spread of the flu. In other words, spying. On people, who use Google, for web searches. And then making it into a huge spreadsheet, in a way.

Turns out a lot of ailing Americans enter phrases like “flu symptoms” into Google and other search engines before they call their doctors.

That simple act, multiplied across millions of keyboards in homes around the country, has given rise to a new early warning system for fast-spreading flu outbreaks, called Google Flu Trends.

Tests of the new Web tool from Google.org, the company’s philanthropic unit, suggest that it may be able to detect regional outbreaks of the flu a week to 10 days before they are reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In early February, for example, the C.D.C. reported that the flu cases had recently spiked in the mid-Atlantic states. But Google says its search data show a spike in queries about flu symptoms two weeks before that report was released. Its new service at google.org/flutrends analyzes those searches as they come in, creating graphs and maps of the country that, ideally, will show where the flu is spreading.

The C.D.C. reports are slower because they rely on data collected and compiled from thousands of health care providers, labs and other sources. Some public health experts say the Google data could help accelerate the response of doctors, hospitals and public health officials to a nasty flu season, reducing the spread of the disease and, potentially, saving lives.

But does this leave room for error? I mean, what if Americans watched a television show about the flu? And then they went on the Internet and searched for more information. It’s very easy to make an assumption that people have the flu. Who can tell?

I don’t like the unreliability of these things. There are too many variables and there’s too much to lose (like freedom, if there is a quarantine) if things go wrong, which they usually do.

Still, some public health officials note that many health departments already use other approaches, like gathering data from visits to emergency rooms, to keeping daily tabs on disease trends in their communities.

“We don’t have any evidence that this is more timely than our emergency room data,” said Dr. Farzad Mostashari, assistant commissioner of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in New York City.

Hmmm.

CEIVA Advances Photo Frame Technology

My boys and I were strolling through Toys R Us yesterday (they had gift cards that were burning holes in their pockets). I dragged them away from thre Star Wars and Lego area so I could look at the electronics department (I’m a techno-geek). I saw some outstanding digitial photo frames on display. I was surprised to see how decorative and stylish they’ve become. Digital photo frames are kind of cool (I don’t have one). Most digital photo frames have some internal memory or require a memory stick (like a USB flash drive) to load photos into the photo frame memory. The photo frame displays the photos on the memory onto an LCD monitor. It’s pretty neat. But you do need to obtain a memory card in some way to transfer the photo data from your photo source to the frame itself. Sometimes you have to wait until Uncle Billy Bob is done with his camera photos in Bermuda, for him to load them onto his computer, to email them to you, for you to load them onto your USB flash drive, and load everything into your digital photo frame for display. Lots of steps.

The Ceiva Digital Photo Frame is a little different. This frame connects onto an existing phone line (or W-Fi connection). It will receive photos directly from a camera or cell phone, from anywhere in the world at any time. And there is no need to edit the photos to prevent squished images– the photo frame sets the photo up perfectly in the frame, automatically. I find this absolutely fascinating– such technology! I think all digitial photo frames are going to go this route, because it is so convenient. You essentially get Uncle Billy Bob’s snapshot of his sand castle in Bermuda at the moment he took the photo through his cell phone. The technology is AMAZING.

Ceiva has made it very easy for anyone to enjoy photos, even people who actually (*gasp*) don’t have computers!

Here’s the process:

• Choose the perfect Ceiva frame.
• Register your CEIVA frame and activate your PicturePlan® membership ($129 a year, includes service and frame).
• Send photos from your computer via email or cell phone directly to the frame.
• Receive photos from your existing phone line or Wi-Fi.

There are other ways to get your photos into the frame– the traditional USB drive, etc. See the site for more information. It’s pretty neat!

Online Home Contents Calculator

This is a very handy free tool I found at a home insurance website. It gives you the ability to get free home insurance quotes, etc, has articles about insurance policies and insurance in general, but when I was browsing the site I found a very handy home contents calculator, see here. Unfortunately, it’s in the British pound monetary format, but I know I have some UK readers who could benefit from this.

We were in the insurance business for a few years, working for a major company. I am a firm believer in insurance. I lost a house due to a house fire as a kid, and my parents never had insurance on it. We lost EVERYTHING. It was terrible. And today, our modern houses are full of much more valuable stuff with our more modern lifestyles– $1,000 computers, $1,000 video games and entertainment centers, musical instruments, expensive appliances, etc.

A regular home owner’s insurance policy usually reimburses you for damage incurred to the housing building itself, not the contents inside. You usually have to request it (some companies include it with the regular policy). Make sure you know your insurance coverage!! Very important in this day and age.

P.S. This is not a paid post, in case you were wondering. I do think insurance is important, and there are many many online resources to learn more and to get competitive quotes. Take it from my personal experience– you want to be prepared.

Australia’s Netfleet

Here’s some very interesting news for webmasters and domain name holders in Australia:

Netregistry, Australia’s leading domain name provider, has partnered… [with Netfleet] in a joint venture to expand and improve on… Netfleet domain trading site.

“We see significant growth in this area”, says Larry Bloch, CEO of Netregistry. “Currently our efforts are focused on education as much as anything - most people do not even realise that domain names are now tradeable assets so it’s a question of creating the industry as well as satisfying the demand.”

This is the first real push by a major IT company into this sector. Bringing together the existing proprietary technology of our current website with the massive customer base of the Netregistry group, we expect to cement Netfleet as the leading destination for domain name trading. source: http://www.netfleet.com.au/news.php?id=18

This is big news for the Australian Internet. Netfleet Australia is a huge company, having the largest collection of Australian domain names available for sale. Suited for both private and business enterprises, Netfleet is an extremely popular domain name registrar for .au domain names. It’s merger with Netregistry and the massive customer base of Australian businesses there has brought to light an extremely large availability of domain names as well as new features.

I took a look at some of the domain names up for sale– would you believe a domain name is selling for $1,000,000?! Wow! How I wish I’d gotten that one before anyone else, lol. The Australian domain name market is expanding and buying and selling has become easier and much more streamlined– kind of like a Wall Street of domain names. Netfleet hopes to do just that– to make the buying and selling of domain names a very lucrative and productive venture. This is a company to watch, especially as the big shift (everything from movies to news to business) toward the Internet continues.

A “No Follow” Plugin for Wordpress Blogs

“No follow” has become the new html tag– a code phrase that tells search engines (the Google search engine, at least) to ignore the link. This is supposedly meant to reduce the passage of PageRank juice and improve the Search Engine Optimization of your website and the Internet in general. I use it from time to time, when I don’t want my blog to be associated with another for some reason. But this html tag is relatively new. It’s being used more as a tweak.

Most blogs are set up to be “no follow” by default. Some blogs change this default setting with a plugin. You may see a blog’s comment area that says “I Follow” or “Comment Luv” or something like it. There’s a popular Wordpress plugin called No Follow Free that customizes your links on your blog (mainly your comments) and makes all your comments “follow.” Which means that you pass on PageRank (if you have it) or search engine authority to anyone who leaves their website link in your comments. It’s a nice plugn and I used it for a while, but stopped using it because 1) I got a lot of spam comments, and 2) it was buggy with the theme I’d chosen (this was a year ago). I know a lot of people use it and it works well.

There’s also a new plugin I recently read about. I just may use this one. It’s called NoFollow Links in Posts.

Nofollow Links in Posts plugin enables you to add the “nofollow” attribute into links in a post within a specified category.

This plugin is useful if you are doing sponsored posts. You can set the plugin to add rel=”nofollow” into links in posts older than “X” days.

Currently, the plugin only works with Wordpress 2.5+ (works up to Wordpress 2.7). There are no plans yet in making this plugin compatible with prior versions of Wordpress.

It looks very good, especially if you want to batch-customize archived posts. I have not tried it, but I know people who have with success. Another good plugin to keep in mind!

Got Less Spam?

Have you seen a decrease in spam email these days?

Spam Plummets as Gang Leaves Net

Two US internet service providers have pulled the plug on the firm McColo following an investigation by the Washington Post newspaper.

Anti-spam firm Ironport has seen junk mail levels drop by 70% since McColo was taken offline on 11 November.

But, it warned, it will be a temporary respite from the menace of spam.

“It is an unprecedented drop but will be a temporary outage as the networks move from North America to places where there is less scrutiny,” said Jason Steer, a spokesman for Ironport.

I have to admit: I hadn’t noticed, not until I really looked. Yes, I have seen a lot less spam– for certain things, anyway. I don’t see as much pharmaceutical spam, but I still see a lot of “credit loans” and “cruise winnings,” and even an occasional “Ferrari parts” or “credit reports” stuff. I’ve seen a vast increase in phishing emails. But, yes, I have seen a decrease in spam.

I’m not too heartened by the news that the spam decrease is temporary. :-p

The Library of Congress Archives

I think, for some inexplicable reason, that the Library of Congress online archives are much underutilized and underrated. Even I rarely use the site. But I think I will use it from now on.

The Library of Congress online archives is a huge database of texts, articles, photos, lithographs– think of anything that can be in the largest library in the world, and then think of it as online. That’s the LOC database. A lot of the photos and articles are extremely old (and thus, historical!), and few have copyrights on them. So it’s usually free to use the images (but you should always make sure, just in case). I will probably use them for finding photos for my blogs, as I like to include them now where possible. (And iStock is just way too expensive). I have a home improvement blog and I like to have photos of bathroom fixtures when I am discussing bathrooms… to use travel photos when I discuss travel, etc…

My childen use the LOA for resources, for school. It’s a massive reference resource. I highly recommend it. The LOA could use some cleanup– it’s not very user-friendly and I would like it if they allowed thumbnails in their searches, but still, it’s free to use, and it MASSIVE. See the links below for the websites. Be sure to get a cup of coffee of tea before browsing– there’s a TON to see. Enjoy!

Library of Congress
Library of Congress Digital Collection
Print and Photographs Reading Room
Prints & Photographs Digital Collection.

Store Your Stuff Online For Free

I had an idea when thinking about making backups of my data– store it online, for free! Just create a Gmail account and email yourself your files. Don’t go sending any whopper files or anything, but you could easily send documents and stuff like that.

You see, I make weekly backups of my blogs xml files. I save the xml files on my computer, but what if my computer were to fail? I would lose all those backups. I could copy them to a flash drive or a CD, but like I said– I make weekly backups, and I have eight blogs! That’s a lot of work. I wonder if I would really backup as regularly if I had to do all that work…

So I thought: Why not email it to myself? Gmail gives you a ton of storage– what is it now, 2 GB? That’s a lot! So I’m going to be emailing my xml files and other files to myself, for Google to store on their servers. And it’s all for free.

Here’s a little caution, though– I don’t recommend that you store sensitive data online like that, such as passwords or medical or financial statements. The chances of your email being hacked ot stolen is pretty slim, but there is a possibility. And email can be opened and read along the way to the server. So it’s still a very good idea to store your sensitive data on a hard copy, like CDs or even print outs.

Debt Help Online

Toooooo much debt. Ouch! I am not alone in this. Most Americans, and most people in Western developed nations, have a large amount of consumer debt. This is in part because our governments and banking systems encourage debt, due to a skewered view of national wealth. It is believed that debt equals wealth, because debt supposedly equals worth. If you have debt, you have credit. If you have credit, it comes from the banks who have a high opinion of your financial wealth and worth.

However, over time and with inflation, everyone is in debt, has no savings, and owes money to the banks. This idea of debt equaling wealth is a very short-sided and unrealistic view of economics.

Nonetheless, we all find ourselves in this mess, so what are we going to do?

The Internet provides a lot of information. Of course, information can only take us so far; we must discipline ourselves to cut spending and increase income and savings. Yet a little information can go a long way. There are many, many websites and organizations that can help you understand the system, help you realize how you got into debt, and help you get out of debt and avoid bankruptcy. One such site is ClearDebt. They are a company in the UK, and have an excellent program called IVA, “individual voluntary agreements.” These are suitable for people who need to negotiate their debts with their creditors and make a payment plan. This can be a last scenario for people on the brink of bankruptcy.

ClearDebt does other things. They can help:

• Slash your debt
• Freeze the interest rates
• Stop the creditors from harrassing you
• Give free advice about debt management

ClearDebt does not give loans and they do not charge you for their advice. The website has lots of information; if you are needful of some advice and information about managing your debt, help is only a click away. Ah, the beauty of the Internet! Get help and let’s stop this vicious cycle! And let’s hope the governments stop it, too!

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