Blogging is a concept that started in late 90s. It used to be a way to comment an existing webpage, an opportunity for visitors and readers to react or voice out one’s opinion on the said page. What started as a single-sentence commentary has evolved into pages of personal take on just about anything and everything under the sun. As it continues to move forward, online advertising has tapped into the blog’s potential. Here are 5 reasons why you should use blogging as an Internet marketing tool.

1.Blogging is simple. The simplest way to get your piece on the net is through blogging. No skills are necessary… an average adult can read and type, or at least click a mouse. It’s like having a virtual piece of paper and you just write your ideas, experiences, new products, and hope that the truth behind your articles comes out and entice your reader to also try your product. If you have a PC and an Internet connection (who doesn’t?) then you can blog and advertise.

2. Blogging is authentic. In this day and age where advertising saturate our lives, we question the credibility of promoters’ claims. However, in blogs, real people share their real-life experiences, unscathed by paid advertising. Reading blogs about first-hand product use is like talking to people about their first-hand experience. You definitely want to buy a tried and tested product.

3. Blogging is free. Because blogging is yet to be proven as a mainstream online advertising media, most sites see it as something to augment current marketing tools and thus offer it for free. Any opportunity for free webtime is definitely a bonus especially to businesses that are starting up. Needless to say, paid blog pages can generate more income for your seriously growing business.
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One of the latest resources from Google is the Google Page Creator.

The Google Page Creator is, as you’ve probably guessed, a web page creator that is still being tested. The Page Creator allows anyone with a Gmail account to set up their own website. Currently, one site is allowed per account with up to 100 pages on that site. Templates are used in order to generate the overall look and feel of the site and as with all good web page creators, it includes a page manager and WYSIWYG editor.
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I’ll start off with a bit of history before I dive into my review of synergy. Last summer I bought a PowerBook G4, while I like my Mac I can’t stand using the touchpad and it wasn’t practical to hook up a mouse to it. What I wanted was to place the Mac on my desk and use my PCs keyboard, mouse and monitor. Well of course the easy answer was to get a KVM switch, well thats where the easy part stopped. I was searching online for a good 4-port USB KVM that was not too expensive, this is harder then you think. Most of the KVMs I found were well over $300 (Canadian) and didn’t have many reviews or much information about them. I came close to buying one off of tigerdirect until I read a review about it and found out it had trouble when pressing more then one keyboard button at a time, well needless to say I was not impressed I like my video games too much. So I put the KVM on hold but that meant the Mac started to be neglected, it wasn’t collection dust or anything but it wasn’t being used as much as it should.

One boring Saturday evening I flipped by G4/TechTV (in Canada) and saw Call For Help TV was on, so I started watching the episode. Darren Kitchen was on from hak5, he was giving a demonstration on an open source program called Synergy. Well it got my attention right away when I saw a Mac, Windows PC and linux laptop all sitting on the counter. I wondered what the program did… Was it a IM client for all systems? Was it a new email client? What was it??? Well I won’t make you wait any longer, synergy was a program to share your keyboard & mouse of one computer with up to 4 more systems over your network, so no extra wires. Best part its Free!

First thing I thought of was using my Mac with my windows PCs keyboard and mouse, so I listened to Darren explain to Leo what the program was all about, I have to say I was impressed. This software has been around for a while now, 2003 I believe, this was the first I heard of it and I am glad I did. I ended up waking up early Sunday morning like a kid on christmas that just HAD to play with his new toy. That’s just what I did I fired up the powerbook and downloaded the program onto both machines.

The windows install is super easy just run the installer. Once you launch the server you need to tell it where the other computers are in relation to the server (windows PC). You just need to do this on the server side.

The mac was a bit different its a command line (terminal) utility, but wait someone else made a graphical interface, OS X Synergy GUI. All you need to do is unpack the synergy files & the GUI files, then launch the GUI and enter the path to your synergy client, specify the IP address of the synergy server (my windows PC) and hit “Start”.

I got the 2 computers up and running fairly easy, then I decided well maybe its time to put my old IBM thinkpad, from my college days, to good use instead of sitting on the shelf. So I downloaded centos and installed it on the laptop. No small feat with the old age of this laptop, its a 1.3 GHZ celeron with 256MB of ram and it showed its age. The install was slow but installed perfectly no need to tweak or find any drivers. Synergy was easy on centos, untarred the files and installed it. You do have to run it through the teminal, use [linux]$ synergyc -f 192.168.0.100 (of course sub in your servers IP) and thats it.

Synergy allows you to copy and paste between all the system so this is great for testing a web site in multiple OS and browsers, this is what I use the setup the most for. If you move the mouse into one of the systems and hit “Scroll Lock” it locks the keyboard and mouse into that system so if you are playing a game you can turn and not end up on another system.

The only problem I have come across is that since installing this on the mac it seems the wireless connection drops out and I have to “turn Airport off” and back on. It doesn’t happen often and its a quick fix.

There you have it, synergy is one of the most useful open source programs I have come across. Hopefully, you will find it as useful as I do.

My current “Super Geek” setup.

Technorati Tags: synergy, KVM, open sourse, microsoft windows, linux, apple, mac, centos, powerbook, IBM thinkpad, call for help, hak5, leo leporte, darren kitchen, share keyboard and mouse, geek

I was looking at it again and well the colours were scaring me so I decided I would spend a few more minutes on the design. So I give you the 15 minute design part 2 at 25 minutes total.

First Design

Second Design

If you would like to use this design just save the html page when you view it.

I stumbled upon some great resources this week. I have installed the first one on this blog you will see it when you go over a link. Nice preview eh! It uses the great service of websnapr, which generates a thumbnail preview of a site. Its pretty fast and reliable so far. The wordpress plugin was created by the fine folks at XSblog.

Firefox just keeps getting better and better. I can add to my list of great extensions with the fireftp. This little baby adds a ftp program functionality right into your web browser. Goodbye filezilla, hello fireftp!!

markupmaker this lets you instantly create the basic markup for a layout, it could be very useful for some of the repetitive code.

Using the above markupmaker I created this oh so lovely page in 15 minutes flat. The colours aren’t the best but hey it was 15 minutes and I put no thought into the site before I started coding it. I grabbed a colour combo and when to town. Enjoy.

3 great little resource that make things easier and more fun. Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: web design, html markup, ftp program, files, firefox, color combos, wordpress, plugin, stumble upon, websnapr

One of the forums I visit regularly had a post about Holiday Wish List. That got me thinking so I sat down and looked for the things I would like for this upcoming holiday season. So here we go:

Gorillapod - This is such a simple yet great idea for cameras. This lets you safely place the camera in a variety of different postions, it can wrap around poles, railings, sit on uneven surfaces. Is there anything this can’t do?

LED Belt buckle - This doesn’t look like it would be very comfortable on the waist when you sit down but hey you can tell everything one that walks by you a lovely little message. Such as: “You Suck” “Look Down” “The Brains” or you could cheer for your favorite sports team “GO SENS GO”. The possibilities are endless this this device, and I bet it would drive my dog nuts.

Tommy Gun Rubberband Gun - Having a bad day that the office? Well this little toy will fix all your problems. You get 12 shots to hit that annoying computer that keeps giving you the blue screen of death!!

8 GB USB Thumb Drive - Why? Well it holds more then my 1 GB thumb drive thats why. Do I need any more reasons then that?

No, I will not fix your computer. - Shut them up before they can even ask you to do it!

Panasonic 50″ Plasma Display - Need something for my movies, sports and my next item to look good on. Plus you can mount this on the wall and then have a millions cables hanging down from it. Old school geeks use cables.

Playstation 3 - Who doesn’t want to be drooling all over this bad boy???? Lock the doors, closes the curtains, get some diapers cause you’ll never want to leave your room once you get your hands on this. The realism that I am expecting out of this system should truly blow your mind. The xbox 360 looks awesome on HD TVs but I’m hoping the PS3 will win the battle hands down. Only time will tell.

Call of Duty 3 - Gotta have a kick ass game to play on the PS3 and the Plasma screen, and well if its anything like call of duty 2 it should be simply amazing to watch and crazy to play. Who ever said WW2 games were getting old was lying to you. Nothing old about this game. GRENADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sony Wireless 5.1 Channel DVD Dream System - What good is a gaming console, awesome game and a great display if the sound sucks. I know I said old school geeks use cables but I don’t need to trip and break a hip on a speaker wire, so I might as well go wireless. Its only 5.1 not 6.1 or 7.1 but it is plenty of sound for me plus I don’t want my crusty neighbor banging on my door anymore. I just have to remember to duck when the bullets wizz by my head.

Alienware Aurora PC - Take the stock system and max out every option. Then you will have the system I want. Can I afford that, well if I didn’t have a wedding to pay for next year, maybe but probably not.

A geek can dream and thats been the whole point of this post. I am sure I missed a TON of great gadgets but there you have it, 10 things to ask for and hey the prices range from cheap up to insanely expensive but such is life. If you are looking for something to buy me pick anything from this page and I will come pick it up at your house.

Technorati Tags: geek, wishlist, holiday, playstation, plasma TV, USB thumbdrive, camera, alienware, 5.1 surround sound, call of duty, dream car

I already had this article written up so I figured I’d start the tech section off by talking about domain names. We all know them but can’t always get the one we want.

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Imagine what life would be like for John Doe without his name. He’d rarely participate in any conversations, take part in any games, be able to start his own business or even legally marry (well, lets not go too far but you see the point!).

Who? Me?

Whoever you are and for whatever use, a domain name is going to be important to you. It is forever becoming increasingly important that people and businesses separate themselves from others – so people remember you, and in the case that they forget you can easily search for you.

Suppose a business based on a highstreet. If people have been referred to this business and need to look up your location information, where would they go? Telephone directories are quite obsolete. More and more do people turn to the internet to look up information about businesses – contact information, profile as well as online shopping services. Regardless of how “advanced” your use for a domain name may be, a domain name is going to be an essential commodity for any business.

Suppose you have no business interest in buying a domain at all. The cost of registering domains is so low that an investment in a personal internet identity is very worthwhile.

Instead of your usual, long e-mail address that came with your internet account, why not register a more personal, memorable name that you came up with? It is easy to set up e-mail with your domain name.

More importantly – business or not - you want that domain name before the other John Doe registers it instead!

Planning Ahead

The cost of registration of a domain name, or even the cost of hosting a web site is so small that not securing your internet presence should be out of the question, even if not for immediate use. A domain is yours for as long as you wish to keep it. It is important though, that if you have an idea for your internet identity, you register it before someone else does.

There are thousands of “domain squatters” – who identify business names, register them and do nothing more than sit on them. People searching for your business name or trying to find your web site may come across one of these “squatted” names and will not find information about your business, but instead will find information about another.

Technorati Tags: domain names, web hosting, domain squatters