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June 30, 2006

Friday Just For Fun Site - Easy Fake Cover of Magazine Generator

Filed under: Friday Fun — Jim @ 9:40 am

Here’s something for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)

You don’t even have to be at an amusement park, you can choose which magazine, then you can upload the photo that you want on the cover . You can add text to the title that you want on the cover then click generate and you’ll be on Rolling Stones’s (or some other popular magazine’s) cover!

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Have a great weekend

June 29, 2006

Is Networking a Career Must or Overrated?

Filed under: Web Information — Jim @ 8:25 am

As a practical matter no new business can survive on word of mouth alone and paid advertising can be a huge drain on your budget.

Networking can be any businesses salvation and attending networking events can be very affordable. It can be frustrating though, I contacted a couple of business networking groups about joining and they didn’t even bother to return my e-mails. I did join a group here in the Pittsburgh area called PAPEN (Pennsylvania Professional Employment Network). Their main goal is just to help people network to find or improve their jobs and their LIFETIME membership fee is only $10.00. I have met some great people and I recommend them highly.

I have heard and read many complaints that networking is just a waste of time and it can be if you go into it with the wrong mindset. How many times have you run into someone at a networking event trying for a world record in passing out business cards in the least amount of time or being so busy talking about themselves that they don’t hear anything anyone else has to say? I have seen them and heard them and usually I try to stay as far away from them as possible.

I have found that when I go into one of these events with a mindset of what can I offer to this person or group to help them, I get the most out of it. If people can spot a phony from a mile away, then the opposite is also true. A person who is looked upon as a facilitator, someone who can help get things done for you is far more likely to get your recommendation and help. Of course not everyone will want to help you, but sometimes help comes from the most unexpected places.

Christine F. Della Monaca a Staff Writer for Monster.com talks about networking from many different viewpoints.

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June 28, 2006

css-galleries

Filed under: Web Design and Promotion — Jim @ 9:56 am

CSS and web design galleries are great. But there are so damn many of them. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one site to visit, and one feed to subscribe to. Here’s a site that does that, it’s well worht a try.

CSS Galleries makes your life easier by aggregating the major design showcases into one simple RSS feed. They index the following galleries:
CSS Beauty, CSS Bloom, CSS Demo, CSS Drive, CSS Elite, CSS Import, CSS Mania, CSS Remix, CSS Smooth Operator, CSS Vault, CSSelite, Daily Slurp, InspirationKing, Liquid Designs, Piepmatzel, ScreenSpire, Stylegala, tom.ma, Unmatched Style, W3CSites, WebCreme, Webdesign Archive

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June 27, 2006

“Ugly” Sites That Work Well

Filed under: Web Design and Promotion — Jim @ 9:37 am

Being a web designer I have long thought about what I consider “ugly” sites that do very, very well with traffic. Sites like Craigslist, MySpace, and even Google. None of these are beautiful, but all are at the top of the web traffic wise.

I have always believed that function is the main goal of a site. It should be easy to navigate. It should provide good quality, usable information and make it easy for visitors to do what you promise them that you will do for them. All of the sites above are great examples of that.

Does that mean that the designed “look” of a site are not important? My argument is that all other things being equal a good looking site will do better, but function should always be first.

Joshua Porter writes an interesting article on all sides of the subject called “The MySpace problem”.

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June 26, 2006

Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system

Filed under: Security, Web Information — Jim @ 7:29 am

With all of the news lately of the government (and others) spying on everyone it looks like the people are fighting back. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not, but you had to know it would come to this.

Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications that use the TCP protocol. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features.

Tor aims to defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers called onion routers, protecting you from websites that build profiles of your interests, local eavesdroppers that read your data or learn what sites you visit, and even the onion routers themselves.

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June 24, 2006

Does The Age of Links To You Matter?

Filed under: Web Information — Jim @ 10:30 am

It is pretty much undisputed that inbound links to your site are a major benefit your search ranking.

One of the questions that I have been asked is how do Search Engines look at the age of inbound links to your site? My own feelings about this is that, yes it matters. New links probably won’t help you as much as ones that have been there for a while. Links that come and go very quickly may even hurt your standing.

Here’s a good discussion about whether that matters or not from HighRankings.com

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June 23, 2006

Snipshot: Edit pictures online

Filed under: Friday Fun — Jim @ 7:43 am

Another great online tool that if nothing else is just fun to play with.

Features include: Edit images up to 5000×5000 pixels, Import from anywhere, crop, rotate, resize, and unlimited undo and redo. Try it out!

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Another Plaything To Get You Through a Friday

This is a very cool flash animation that’s not really a tool, but great fun to play with none the less. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)

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June 22, 2006

Creating a Membership System with PHP and MySQL

Filed under: Web Information — Jim @ 12:26 pm

Thorough tutorial on using PHP and MySQL to create a user based login system
for your website that will show you how to do the following:

  • Collect information about the user during signup and store that information
    into MySQL
  • Generate a random password and encrypt it into the database
  • Validate the user’s email address before they can login
  • Create a login system for the user to validate his/her information against
    the database
  • Create a lost password recovery tool
  • Basic Form handling with PHP
  • Some PHP Session basics
  • Use the Mail function to send the user an email
  • And Much more!

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June 21, 2006

25 ways to Add Quality Content to Your Web Site

Filed under: Web Information — Jim @ 10:01 am

Getting visitors to your site is important, but if they only come for a few seconds and leave it’s not much help. Your goal for your site should not just be getting traffic to your site, but to keep your visitors there as long as possible and then keep them coming back for more.

When it comes to getting your site seen by as many people as possible and then keeping them there content is king. You need good quality relevant content. How can you do that, where do you start?

Robin Nobles conducts live SEO workshops in locations across North America. She has written a very good article about how to add good relevant content to your site.

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June 20, 2006

What is Organic Search Engine Optimization?

Filed under: Web Information — Jim @ 11:49 am

Organic SEO is a simple technique that anyone can do to improve their rankings in the search engines. The search engines will reward you by sending you traffic and when it comes to business on the Internet traffic is everything.

Titus Hoskins has written an article that explains very well what it’s all about.

Explained simply, it’s where all your linking structures originate from the content up - in other words, you let all your content created for your sites, blogs and articles do your link building for you.

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