Posted on Feb 06, 2010 - 10:30am by John P. in Videos - 5 Replies
Um. Wow. I don’t want to give anything away here before you watch the video, but suffice it to say that what comes out of the hole that these Canadians cut in the ice to go fishing is large… and surprising!
As a Texan, I simply can’t relate to this. I believe I would literally die of a heart attack if I were thrust into this situation.
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Posted on Feb 05, 2010 - 2:33am by John P. in 10 Best, Tutorials, Wordpress - 6 Replies
Ok. You’re a blogger. You want to earn money from your website (don’t we all). I realize there are a lot of folks trying to tell you how to make money with Google AdSense (even though most don’t make jack squat), and even though I certainly make a lot more than average from Google AdSense, I actually spent a lot of time researching and testing Google AdSense alternatives in order to see if we could do a little better than simply putting Google ads on our sites.
Below you will find the best Google Adsense alternatives I could find, complete with a little description and a link to the provider, in the hopes of helping you put a little more cash in your pocket.
If you have any first hand experience with these please drop a comment below and let us all know. Especially if you can share some light on actually getting paid by these advertising providers. How long it takes, how much you made, and what your general impression of working with them would be most valuable! Also, please help me spread the word on this particular post since I know it’s something a lot of people are looking for.
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Posted on Feb 02, 2010 - 11:04pm by John P. in 10 Best, Videos - 7 Replies
I’m all for protecting the kids from seeing things they really shouldn’t be seeing, so I understand and agree with certain things not being shown on public television. But I also recognize that sometimes NOT getting shown on TV can actually be a huge benefit!
First of all, when marketers are free from the normal constraints of advertising sometimes they can come up with really “attractive” ads. And the ten banned commercials below are great examples of advertisements which obviously received excellent Return On Investment based on the sheer number of online views each one received. Indeed, these are the most popular of all banned commercials.
I don’t know about you, but I’d be happy to have one of my ads viewed as many times as the worst performing on this list…
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Posted on Feb 01, 2010 - 1:11am by John P. in Videos - 2 Replies
This is a speech that Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, gave at Stanford University in 2005 for the graduation commencement. (Thanks to Elie for sharing it with me.) In it, Steve recounts three personal stories in which he advocates following your heart and doing what you love.
Personally, I found his speech to be touching and motivational, so I wanted to share it with you guys. Of course, if you haven’t seen it, you also need to check out the World’s Most Inspiring Story – Dick and Rick Hoyt.
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Posted on Jan 30, 2010 - 1:50am by John P. in Food - 2 Replies
A few of you may have had the opportunity to sample my Avgolemono soup, possibly after I posted the recipe about 3 years ago. But now I’ve put together a video demonstrating exactly how to make it. You can get the full details as well as a whole bunch of other recipes over on a new site that Cali Lewis, my wife Holly, and I are launching called – MyRecip.es!
You can follow us on Twitter (@MyRecip_es) for notifications when we post something new, or… if you know us personally and you would like a place to put your own recipes you can come talk to one of us and we’ll make room for you to put your recipes up with ours.
The logic behind the site is that we wanted a single repository where we could put up our favorite stuff so we can access it from anywhere, on any device, and easily share with friends and family. As a result we’ve created a very simple system and you can access each person’s recipes with a single pretty link. For example:
Now, here is my famous Avgolemono Soup video. Bon appetite!
Posted on Jan 29, 2010 - 3:50am by John P. in Tutorials, Wealth Nation - 6 Replies
Although we’re constantly improving and updating the method of recording Wealth Nation, I spent the day going through and setting up a new configuration of our recording studio for the podcast, and I figured I would document explicit instructions on exactly how you can duplicate the setup we use.
Keep in mind that I am NOT an expert at this type of thing, so don’t bother asking me questions about variations of different setups. I won’t have the answers. However, if you care to do exactly what we have done, you will hopefully have the same experience but without the steep learning curve it took me.
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Posted on Jan 26, 2010 - 3:38pm by John P. in Tutorials, Wordpress, Work - 7 Replies
Social media is an all-encompassing term used to describe any of several online channels that utilize the technology to facilitate social interaction through written, visual, or audible communication. Examples of different types of Social Media sites include:
The use of social media as a marketing and promotional tool and strategy is becoming more and more popular with businesses because it can be an extremely effective way to promote products and services to a targeted audience. Websites can function as a static billboard to promote products, services, or ideas – but social media opens up a dynamic dialogue with your audience, allowing for interaction and personal connection.
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Posted on Jan 17, 2010 - 11:42am by John P. in Wordpress - 6 Replies
Matthew “Spamboy” McGarity shows us how to preform a local installation of wordpress. This allows a user to have an installation of wordpress on a USB drive, portable hard drive or just their local machine. With this local install, a user now has a complete Wordpress development environment separate from his or her live Wordpress site.
Thanks to Dave Curlee for filming and editing this, as well as incorporating the sign language interpreters into this video, and the other videos from WordCamp Dallas 2009. You can also follow Dave on Twitter or Spamboy on Twitter.
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Posted on Jan 15, 2010 - 10:35am by John P. in 10 Best, Videos - 3 Replies
We all know that construction workers are crazy. I mean come on. You can’t stand outside in the sun all day wearing a hardhat, boots, gloves and overalls without frying your brain just a little bit! And now, we have real evidence caught on video that these guys are out of control!
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Posted on Jan 14, 2010 - 2:00am by John P. in Thoughts, Wordpress - 6 Replies
Folks, I’m going to be delivering a lecture to kick off the Optimization Summit in my home town of Dallas, TX on March 23, 2010. What the heck is an Optimization Summit you might ask? Well, its all about Optimizing your online, marketing, social media, and emerging media strategies. And with the exception of myself, there is an all star lineup running these workshops!
Posted on Jan 13, 2010 - 12:37pm by John P. in Thoughts - 8 Replies
AcciTweeting is what happens when you meant to send an SMS to someone, but instead you send a public Tweet. Like for example, I follow my wife @Hollypoz on Twitter. I also get SMS notifications when she tweets. Sometimes I want to send a quick SMS to her, but the last thing from her in my phone actually came from Twitter!
Do you see where this is going?
So, I respond to Twitter as if I was SMSing her, and Voila! The world has my private SMS! :-) Ever happened to you?
PS – AcciTweeting is a spin off of AcciDialing. That is when you already called someone, but you somehow accidentally call them back and don’t know it, and then they have to listen to whatever you are doing while saying, “Hello? Hello!!!” Aaron Phillips taught me that one. He loved to accidial me.
Posted on Jan 13, 2010 - 10:15am by John P. in Photography, Tutorials - 11 Replies
You know what? We’re going to start off this little discussion with an analogy to try and make things a little easier. I want you to think of your camera as if it was a third eye – because at the end of the day, that’s really all it is. Just a little man-made mechanical facsimile…
Unless you are endowed with some super-human abilities, your eye needs light to see things. And your eye has a lens (that clear part on the front) through which the light passes and is absorbed by a little area on the back of your eyeball that senses the different colors of light. Well, guess what? That is exactly how a camera works! Light comes in through the glass and is sensed by the “sensor” inside the camera.
Now, if you bought a cheap little pocket camera your third eye has a relatively small, dirty lens (cheap glass), and a tiny little sensor. If you bought a big camera, you’ve got a high quality, extremely clear lens and a large sensor. But either way, the more light you allow to enter the sensor, the sharper your photos are going to turn out and the smaller the file sizes will actually be!
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