How I Met Your Mother S7E09..

Watch How I Met Your Mother online..

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Samsung Galaxy S2 Review

There's very little to dislike about the Samsung Galaxy S2. This smart phoneis astonishingly fast, with a gorgeous display, a good camera and all the power of the Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system. And it's somehow all crammed into a case so slim and light that it seems to break the laws of physics.

There's no doubt this is a phone that will impress the geeks in the room. But, if you're not so keen on expressing your geeky side by spending hours tweaking the seven home screens, deleting some of the app bloatware, and customising the millions of options, this phone may be more of a chore than a treat.

It's not cheap, either. Expect to pay around £500 for the SIM-free version. You can also pick it up for free on a £30-per-month contract. Clove and Vodafone provided our review samples.

If your budget doesn't stretch as far as the Galaxy S2, take a peek at the pared-down but still impressive Galaxy Ace.

Note that we've replaced our original review with this one, as Samsung has updated the Galaxy S2's software since the phone's launch. 

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IPad 3 Rumor and IPad 2 review

The iPad 2 has been out since the Spring. So now it's time tomove the rumour factory onto iPad 3.


I've gathered together details on its possiblespecifications including chips, cameras and retina displays - with a little bit of help from mysterious, unnamed people who can't possibly be identified.


How very convenient. So what's the word on the street about the next iPad?


I've put together a video wishlist of the features we'd like to see in the next iPad

iPad 3 release date

Although numerous sources such as Reuters reported that the new iPad 3 is due in the fourth quarter of 2011, the signs are it will be early in 2012.

On 1 July, Digitimes reported that Taiwanese-based component suppliers were gearing up for production of iPad 3. In October 2011 it was later reported that production would certainly start before the end of the year.

However, during August, a rumour broke that Apple was set to delay the launch of the iPad 3, due to a shortage of retina displays from its suppliers LG and Samsung - more on the display shortly.

Interestingly, on 3 November 2011, DigiTimes suggested that the Spring's new iPad would, in fact, be a revised iPad 2, with a brand new iPad design due later in 2012.

The iPad 3 UK release date is a mystery

With Apple unable to meet initial demand for iPad 2, we'd expect a staggered release date for the iPad 3 too: Apple will most likely follow the pattern it has with the previous two iPad launches and have a US release first, followed by a UK release days later.

According to the Korea Times in November 2011, the A6 processors are to be manufactured by Samsung, despite the companies' ongoing patent battles.

The iPad 3 specs include a dual-core processor...

It's possible that the iPad 3 will have a brand spanking new processor, Apple's A6 - which will surely be a quad-core ARM-based processor.Quad-core designs are imminent from all ARM partners.

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MAXIMIZING THE ONLINE WORLD FOR THE OFFLINE COMPANY

You run a nice business. Maybe you’ve been running it for years. Your business is a “tangible” one. Perhaps you operate out of a storefront or maybe you deal in personal services, like catering or landscaping. You’ve thought about going online. Heck, everybody else is doing it. you’ve already gotten your feet wet using the Internet a little to build business leads. Maybe you even have a home page. Or maybe you’ve even gotten hold of a generic template and patched together a bare-bones website, just to show everyone that you can be as cool as they are. But, truth be told, you haven’t really given the Internet a whole lot of thought. How could you? You are way too busy running your offline business to start worrying about the online world.

So when the day finally comes when you see enough of your competitors coming up with flashier and fancier websites, will you be prepared to do something yourself? And when you do something, will you have given it enough thought and preparation to do it in a way that will help your business more than hurt it? Here are some tips to help you make your online presence most effectively complement your offline business:

1. Invest in your website. Managing the site properly takes time and effort. So don’t skimp on the resources you devote to site management. If your budget allows it, hire a full-time site manager who knows what he/she is doing – or even better, develop a web team. Make sure they have a wealth of knowledge about the Web and that they understand design techniques, color theory, spacing, etc. Many companies make the mistake of assigning web management as a corollary duty to a person already busy with “higher-priority” assignments. In some larger firms, web maintenance is often relegated to junior staff members who have neither the experience nor the clout within the organization to push the site forward to its rightful prominence. Invest in your website so that it can become a good investment for you.
2. Keep your message consistent. Your website is an online reflection of your business. Therefore, it should have the same look and feel as your store, your ads, your signage, and your business vehicles. Your brand identity should be mirrored on your site in every way possible. Pay attention to thinks like colors, logos, fonts, visuals, and even the style of language you use on your site. Remember that one of the biggest advantages to having a website is that it gives you a permanent conveyor of round-the-clock publicity for your business.
3. Use social networking properly. Prominent links to social media tools such Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn are great ways to extend your reach and interact with new and diverse audiences. But you have to be sure that you do this in the right way. Always keep in mind that the primary purpose of social networking is for people to engage with other people. It is not there for people to look at sales pitches or build relationships with businesses. Instead of creating corporate accounts on these sites, you may want to encourage your employees, as individuals, to Tweet, blog, and interact socially online in a way that lets them engage with your target community. But be very careful to institute clear guidelines on acceptable behavior and what they should and should not do.
4. Don’t try to please all of the people all of the time. If you attempt to construct a site that targets everyone, then in all likelihood your site will end up appealing to no one. You should know who your target audience is and which demographic is most important to your business. And this audience should become the primary focus of your site. Make your site appealing to everyone, but make it captivating for your target audience.
5. Pay continual attention to your site and keep improving it. Your business climate is constantly changing. Therefore, your website needs to constantly change too. Neglecting the site can quickly become an embarrassment for your business. Content can become out of date. So can design and style. And we all know how fast technology changes. You take great pains to keep your business current. You need to be just as careful to keep your website up to date.

The online world can often seem like a strange beast to a businessperson accustomed to dealing with customers in a much more tangible way. But with a little investment and forethought, the beast can not only be tamed, but trained to help your business thrive. Your business is offline and that will never change. But you can add a vital online component to it. And if you go about it the right way, that online component can be maximized in a way that will also maximize your
profits.

Kenneth McCall is director of IT for storage.com In this role he builds the systems that help customers find the best self storage units for their needs, for example Through Kenneth’s and his team’s work customers can find self storage in Los Angeles and other cities. In his spare time, Kenneth likes to bike and participate in outdoor activities.

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INTERESTING STATS ABOUT APPS

Here is an interesting stats on mobile apps from free report Developer Economics 2011 by Vision Mobile.

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FLATTR – THE SOCIAL WAY TO GET PAID ONLINE

If you haven’t heard about Flattr let me tell you how it works – its business model and you decide if it makes sense. For me, I think the business model needs further tweaking.
Basically, Flattr wants users to reward i.e give money to their favorite websites or people. Favorite websites here actually refers to all internet content eg; websites, articles, images, audio files, videos, text etc. People here refers to people who are on Twitter or Flattr itself.


How it works
You signup with Flattr and add some funds to your account. How much money to add is totally up to you. Once you are done adding, you just surf the web as you normally do. However, whenever you see a Flattr button on some websites and if you like the content of the website you can “Flattr” it, it’s similar to Facebook’s Like button. But instead of just “liking” the website, here you are actually giving them some money.
How much money websites will get?
They have done it very straight forward, all your money is divided into equal portions and distributed to all the websites that you have Flattred within the month. Let’s say you have added $1.00 to your account and you have flattred 9 websites. That means at the end of the month, each website that you have flattred will get 0.10 cents. And the remaining 10% which is 0.10 cents, will go to Flattr system.


What’s the catch?


From first glance, there seems to be no catch. Especially for people who are giving money away. However the idea behind Flattr is that, the founders believe that there are some people who do donate money to websites, normally via Paypal donate button. These are mostly websites with freebies or open-source stuff. So people behind Flattr want to make this process of donating or distributing money to your favorite websites simpler – as simple as pushing the “like” or “flattr” button.


As for the bloggers, it’s just one more avenue to make money. You just have to integrate the buttons into your website and hope that someone will flattr it :)
Below is the diagram on how it works:

My suggestions to Flattr

My suggestions to Flattr


1. Very few people actually donate, and that’s a fact. I have experienced it personally before. I had done some freeware software and free website templates myself but got back very few bucks over the years. With this problem as a backdrop to Flattr’s business model, I think if it’s going to solely rely on “hope” that people will add funds to their accounts every month and diligently distribute it to all the deserving websites, then I think they are (gravely) mistaken.


2. Change the “flattr it” to something more simple and generally understandable, eg; “like it” or “love it” or just heart icon – 


3. Currently only people who are registered with Flattr are able to “like” the websites. I think they should allow anyone (even non-flattr users) to click “like” buttons. Because asking people to register is a hassle, not many people will register. Let alone they have to make a little research on Flattr itself and how it works and add funds to their account and come back to your blog again and then click on “flattr” button…. i think it’s not gonna happen.


4. Here is a suggested tweak to their business model: Let anyone click on “flattr” button. But put security measures such as you can only “flattr” the same website once a week or once a month etc. So that people won’t game the system. Regarding the funds, instead of individual funds, combine all the funds, perhaps into different categories. So for example if I have selected “blogging” as my preference in my account, my funds will be allocated for “blogging” related websites together with all the other flattr users who have selected “blogging” as their preference too. At the end, you have a huge fund for “blogging”.
So this combined funds for “blogging” will then be distributed to all the blogs that people have flattred for the given month.


5. Introduce some promotional modules to the system. Instead of just me donating to others, let me submit my blog to the system and somehow allow me to promote it to others. StumbleUpon type of promotional opportunity would be ideal. Idea is to attract both: publishers and advertisers.

Website: http://www.flattr.com

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Google Web Fonts

Google Web Fonts has a new user interface which is a lot more user friendly than before. If you haven’t seen, check it out.

Google Web Fonts is a project by Google to provide webmasters and designers with high quality, free, open source fonts for website usage. What I like the most about this is that, Google has made embedding the fonts very easy. Basically you just point to them for the CSS source, and apply the fonts to your website via standard CSS styles. You can see the example here.

Click to enlarge

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Calculating Advertising Prices

Hi there,  I've been asked this question before:

Derek

What was YOUR offer? Just so we have a rough figure to make to them so it doesn't seem absurd.  

Well, often newbies like me are in dilemma about setting the correct price for their advertisements. Sometimes, we fear that quoting a high price can result in loss of advertising deal, while quoting less will be like giving our real estate in pennies. How to overcome this situation and how to correctly calculate the prices for our ad inventory? Here are some basic guidelines that I got from several source to calculate ad prices..

Image Vs Text Ads - Normally image ads are always priced high than text ads. The CTR (click-through ratio) of image ads is much higher than text ads and hence this pricing difference..

Size Does Matter - Larger the size of the banner, higher the price is.. If your 125x125 image banner is priced at RM30/month, a 250x250 banner should be priced at 4 x 30 = RM120/month..

Placement - If the advertisement appears above the fold (area visible without the need of scrolling), it is priced much higher than those ads that appear below the fold.. If an ad is going to appear in the footer, it's price will be considerably low than that placed in the header of your blog..

Pricing Model - There are two popular pricing models for advertisements at least from what I know.. The CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model and CPA (cost per action) model. The CPM model is the preferred way to calculate ad prices and is widely accepted model throughout blogosphere.. In this model, a fixed amount is paid for every 1000 page views, simple. But how would you calculate the right price for a particular ad in this model? Here are some ways to do it..

The best way to get the correct value of an ad is to check public ad inventories and see their CPM rate. Login to your Adsense account and go to advanced reports to view the CPM rate for a particular ad.. Take at least month long data to get the clear picture, though a long-range data will give much more accurate rate. Let's suppose you get a CPM rate of RM1.20 from the report. Now according to your assessment of the purchasing power of the advertiser you can increase or decrease this rate. A low budget advertiser can be offered a rate of RM80.00 or RM0.50, while a big web site can be asked for a CPM rate of RM1.50..

Let's assume that the deal is finalized with a rate of RM1.50 CPM.. How the monthly rate will be calculated? Suppose your blog generates 5000 page views per day. This amounts to 30 x 5000 = 150000 page views per month. So, at this rate the price of the ad will be (150000 / 1000) * 1.50 = RM225/month..


But if you still unsure about this, you might want to let the advertisers to quote their price first then, from there on you can start doing the negotiations until the deal is finalize.. 


Thanks for reading.. 

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Finding the Advertisers

 

    Hi there, well it has been a few weeks since the last time I've updated my blog.. Well, luckily the exam is over and I got more time to spend on blogging.. Lately, I've been spending a lot of my time doing some research about how to obtain direct advertisers.. So this time around I'm gonna share some info that probably might brought some interest to most of us..

  I gotta be honest with you, that this is the real tough part (at least for newbies) of finding advertisers for your blog.. Well, there are many ways to do it:
 
Visit Marketplaces - I'm not sure if you realize this, but there are several popular forums and discussion boards where advertisers and publishers meet solely for the purpose of finding and negotiating advertising deals. You can visit this site to find advertisers for your blog..

- Digital Point - Buy, Sell or Trade Forum
- SitePoint Marketplace
- Webmaster World Commercial Exchange Forum 

Check Competitor's blogs - Visit popular blogs related to your blog's niche and see who is advertising on these blogs. This is a good source of creating a list of potential advertisers. Since they are already advertising on a blog related to your blog's niche, a chance of clinching a deal from these advertisers is more likely to happen..

Check public ad inventories - Some 3rd party advertising networks give public access to their inventory to account holders. Sign-up for these ad networks and browse their ad inventory. Again, filter out advertisers related to your blog's niche. Here not only you can get a list of potential advertisers but can also get a fair idea about how much they are willing to pay..

Write a blog post about it - This is one more way to attract advertisers. Write a blog post explicitly stating that your blog is now open for direct advertising..

Search engines - And last but not the least is search engines. Type in relevant keywords and visit the web sites. Check their contact page and create a list of potential advertisers..

How To Approach Potential Advertisers

Okay now, once you have the list of potential advertisers in your hand, its time to contact them inviting to advertise on your blog..

Write a mail giving your brief introduction. State your purpose of writing in brief. To speed up the process give your phone number and messenger id. Attach the media kit/rate card showcasing various advertising options available on your blog. It's somewhat similar to mobile version of your 'Advertise' page. However, this document must contain detailed pricing of every ad type. You must also quote discounted prices for long-term deals. One more convincing methodology is to give limited period read-only access to Google Analytics dashboard to verify your traffic claims for long-term deals (6 months or more). This offer increases the confidence of advertiser and the probability of negotiating a deal also increases.

But always keep this in mind, if this is your first advertising deal, be ready to be flexible enough while negotiating pricing of your ads. Remember, your first deal will open the door for more such deals.

What Else I Have Missed?

I would like to know your experiences in maintaining independent ad inventories and your approach towards grabbing such advertising deals.. Until then, I will keep on digging around and gain some more info that can benefit us all.. Thanks for reading..

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Advertise And Monetize Your Blog With TomatoCanConsulting.com..

  Well.. Recently I've been looking for sponsors to advertised in my blogs.. As you all already know, blogging is not a sure way to gain big bucks unless you are doing it right. So the right things for you to do is either signup to be a publishers for an advertising company like adsense, nuffnang, advertlets, innity and etc. But the problem with being a publishers for an advertising company is that, at some point of time, you'll always going to get shut. But that was the worst case scenario, so lets just not think about the worst for now and stay on focus on our main topic.

Okay, in order for you to have a static income, you'll gonna have to find direct advertisers for your blogs. Now, as you all can see the title, this time around I'm gonna put the spotlight on Tomato Can Consulting. But first a little info about Tomato Can Consulting:

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How To Get Advertisers For Your Blog..

One of the most secure and reliable source of income from your blog is the one that comes from your direct advertisers. And not the one that comes from AdSense, or TLA, or ReviewMe, or any other publisher program for that matter. Why?

Because..

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Am I Crazy About Cheese??

 Hello, Ladies and gentlemen! And Welcome to Life Through Pizza Hut’s Extreme Cheesy 6 Pizza. This time around, I would like to discuss with you the joy of pizza!

Now, recently I've seen this new phenomenon of Pizza Hut’s Extreme Cheesy 6 Pizza concept. It was tempting and trust me It was awesomely delicious.

The Pizza Hut’s Extreme Cheesy 6 Pizza's

Now, everyone knows that pizza is my favorite food right? Well, here is the thing..

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