Archive for the “General” Category
To play Snake on top of any YouTube video
Be careful not to hit the walls! Tags: snake, youtubeZopim ChatZopim Chat (non affiliate link) is a live chat feature, much like Facebook chat, which allows users to quickly and easily connect with customer service, technical support or sales representatives directly from the website. Apart from the obvious advantage of quick, instant service, the admin section of the chat provides all sorts of other useful information and features such as chat logging and live updates about which page a user is currently viewing – making technical support and sales enquiries very easy indeed as you know exactly what the customer is looking at. Crucially live chat is a modern and informal communication method. It has none of the formality of a letter or phone call & therefore users feel instantly more relaxed & open. Metrics Much like emails or phone calls, good solid metrics must be in place when using live chat facilities:
The answers to these questions may well vary between industries but in my opinion they are very similar to a phone call. If you don’t have enough information to hand, it’s very natural to ask for details and call them back. Remember, this is about being open, informal & honest with visitors. Forging genuine relationships on their level and being as helpful as possible while still maintaining a business / sales related approach to the conversation (upselling should still always be encouraged). A chat function can instantly catapult your site into the top percentile of memorable sites simply because it’s new, useful, incredibly easy to use and as yet hasn’t been widely adopted. If you aren’t using a chat function, you certainly should be. Oh & did we mention that installing zopim chat is as easy as embedding two lines of code on each page? No complex installs or server maintenance & great prices on upgraded accounts. It also work on smartphones such as the iPhone & Blackberry via IM – stay in touch with your clients wherever you are! Issues The only issue we’ve found with Zopim is that it does seem to slow down IE6 significantly. In a perfect world no-one would still be using a browser that is almost a decade old, but we don’t live in a perfect world and there is still a small percentage of users on IE6. Our recommendation? Check your stats before implementing this if you have a high proportion of IE6 users as you don’t want to ruin their experience because they’ll simply leave your site. Summary A fantastic piece of software, the free user account should be enough for many small businesses & the small upgrade fees for larger accounts more than justifies itself as a communication line to your customers. Can be slow with IE6. Overall – 4/5 Stars Tags: chat, communication, customers, live chat, marketing, technical support, zopimI’ve recently watched & read two things that got my thinking about privacy & visibility on the internet. Erasing David The other was the book - Roadside Crosses by Jeffery Deaver Both deal with privacy and the amount of information that is accessible to anyone with a laptop and an internet connection. Albeit fictional, Roadside Crosses creates a world where someone is groomed, targeted & tortured purely from the information they post about online. We all know people who we know post far too much information online about themselves … but don’t you think we’re all guilty of this to a certain extent? Remember how weird it was to see your house & street for the first time on Google Maps / Google Earth? Well that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Google have a free tool where anyone can signup and choose to be alerted (via RSS or email) whenever a webpage, social network (Facebook, Twitter, Myspace etc.) contains a particular keyphrase. Professional internet marketers use this to monitor their brand, product or names of key individuals within the company. But unscrupulous users can just as easily use it to keep tabs on anyone they choose. I’ll use myself as an example I mention my name on the About page. From the title tags of the main domain you could guess that I’m based in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. Therefore you can also probably find my personal Facebook page, where you can see a picture of me. I have my profile set to private but imagine if you had left open to public viewing … you’d have access to my photo’s, videos, friends, siblings, parents, date of birth, hometown and age. Not to mention my wall postings which may or may not be professionally comprimising / embarrasing. So What? Well exactly, so what? Let’s remember that you’ve got Google Alerts running on me … so I post on a forum about goat herding (using my email address as the registered address for the account). You now know that I’m into farming / herding goats & from that forum I link to another blog where I posted a comment about how much I hate my job. (I use this for illustration purposes only – I love my job Remember, the post on the goat herding forum was posted under a different username, it never mentioned my real name or anything to do with my occupation or location but you found it because I’d used the same email address … which I thought was kept private, but wasn’t. From this forum post I link to a picture where you see my out in the fields with my goat and it has a picture of my car in the background. Simple, you now have my car make, model & numberplate. You can now ring the DVLA and request all sorts of information on me because by now you know my:
There are other ways to get further information such as social engineering but that’s for another day. The point of this post wasn’t to scare you off the internet, but to make you aware of how much information someone can gather about you, for free, should they wish. A rule of thumb I always use … every time you hit a key, someone, somewhere can see what you’ve written. Always assume that the information you share will be visible by everyone, forever. Tags: internet privacy, privacy, visibilityFew have heard of the company NTP yet their patented technology is used in the fundamental operation of some of the most common technologies. NTP have launched a lawsuit against Google, Apple, Microsoft, LG, HTC & Motorola for infringing on eight of their patents relating to the delivery of email to mobile devices (over wireless communication systems). NTP have come under widespread criticism for aggressively enforcing it’s patents even though they don’t practice them. I understand to a point how people can think it unfair that one individual or company can own the right to a capability … but surely that’s what patents were designed for? Therefore if you had thought of it first, you’d own the patent and you’d be just a little bit annoyed if someone was using it without your permission / without paying the license fee?? Tags: apple, google, HTC, LG, Microsoft, mobile email, Motorola, news, ntp, seo thunderJust weeks after Apple release the new iPhone 4 we get a sneak peek of the iPhone 5!  iPhone 5
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2010
 
Create Friend Lists – Hide Your Online Status on Facebook Chat from Select ContactsPosted by admin in General, Social NetworkingCreate Friends Lists -Hide Your Online Status on Facebook Chat from Select ContactsIn times gone by, you could either be online or offline with regards to Facebook chat. This was annoying because what if you wanted to speak to some people but not others? Now Facebook has an option that allows you to do just that. It’s called Friends lists. Basically you create a list, assign a friend to it & can then set your online / offline status in bulk. Lets say you have two lists: Friends & Family / Business Contacts. Want to be online to your business contacts during the day, but not available to your friends & family in case they disturb you? You can be. OK, I get it … but how!? First thing is to create the lists & assign friends to each list.
Then choose Create New List. A new box will appear where you can name the list and add friends to your newly created list. Online or Offline? You Decide Now that your lists are set up and you’ve assigned contacts to them (don’t worry if you haven’t you can drag & drop from the chat window. You are now in full control of who sees you as online or offline. Simply open the chat box at the bottom right of the page. You’ll see little sliders, green means online and grey means offline. Simply slide them to toggle whether you appear as online (green) or offline (grey) to that particular group. Any ungrouped friends will appear in the Other Contacts list.
Adam Gardner is a freelance SEO / Social Media Expert. Follow him on twitter @agseo or subscribe to this blog via RSS. Tags: facebook, friend lists, social networkingQR (Quick Response) Codes / 2D BarcodesQR Codes, or 2D barcodes aren’t new, they’ve been around for sometime (in fact they were developed by a Japanese company, Denso-Wave in 1994) buy as mobile devices & technology become more advanced and connected to the world via the internet. QR codes will only become more and more important to your marketing effort.
Why is it important for me? Well, 2D barcodes can contain any information you want: Use a map location & scan it on a mobile (eg. iPhone) Google Maps will launch and show you where to go. Use your business card information – Allow someone to scan it & your business information will automatically be added to their address book. Use your web address – Whether you choose your Facebook profile, LinkedIn account or business URL, scan a code and you will be taken directly to whatever page you choose. There are tons of other places QR codes can (and should be used) in promotional material, marketing materials, paperless registration for events, paperless tracking of students in schools etc. etc….. Use your imagination! Take this page, for example. It’s a photo of a QR code on a sign. Use your barcode reader app and scan this code (straight from your computer screen) and it should work … these are super versatily & certainly my new favourite toy! I have tried a few iPhone QR code readers and can highly recommend QRReader. It’s free and scans in real time. I also haven’t found a QR code that it couldn’t scan yet. Just search for ‘qr code’ and you’ll find it. Update: Here are some captures from QRReader app on the iphone. As you can see, none of these are particularly great in terms of clarity or alignment & yet all of them were successful scans!
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2010
Start Youtube Video at Specific TimePosted by admin in General, Search Engine OptimisationHow To: Start a Youtube Video at a Specific Start TimeHere’s how to start a youtube video automatically at a given time. This method also works with Facebook embedding! Find a video you wish to share. Copy the video URL (address) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTG3FlEv4VQ Now we have to slightly reformat the URL so that it becomes http://www.youtube.com/v/aTG3FlEv4VQ Next simply work out (in seconds) where you want the video to start. To start at 1 minute & 30 seconds, use 90 seconds & add this to the end of the new URL. &start=90 So the complete URL becomes: http://www.youtube.com/v/aTG3FlEv4VQ&start=90 Then simply copy and paste this into Facebook!
Autostarting the videoAutomatically starting a youtube video is simple! All you need is another parameter tagged onto the end of the URL … here’s the code: &autoplay=1 Where 1 is the number of times you wish the video to autoplay. So to start the above video automatically at 90 seconds the complete address would be: http://www.youtube.com/v/aTG3FlEv4VQ&start=90&autoplay=1 Enjoy!! Tags: programming, search engine optimisation, social media, youtube
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2010
Number Google Search Results – How ToPosted by admin in General, Search Engine OptimisationIndividually Number Google Search ResultsSo you know how to increase Google search results to 100. But what use is that if you only know that the site you’re looking for in three-quarters of the way down the page? This requires no additional plugins or software … we’re just creating a bookmark. Individually Number Google Search Results for Internet Explorer
To use, just search for something on Google then open the favourite menu and click the bookmark you created in Step 1. Individually Number Google Search Results for Firefox
I am not ashamed to admit that I was a very late adopter of the iPhone. I’ve always liked Apple products, their design, simplistic yet powerful UI and their marketing is simply brilliant. What I didn’t like about Apple was the people who bought their products & the way that everything was ‘cool’ just because it had an Apple logo …. this attitude may have stemmed from my private school education where everyone came in with a new phone every week … I just didn’t get it … if it worked and did what you wanted it to do, why change? That said, I now don’t know what I’d do without my iPhone …. it is the central hub of my digital life. So here are my must have iPhone apps (in no particular order) … some you’ll have heard of, others possibly not … but all of them are great (and all 100% free!) Runkeeper Link: www.runkeeper.com This app tracks your exercises via GPS (if you’re outdoors) and plots it on a map. It then sync’s it automatically with your profile on the website so you can keep track of distance & calorie burn. MyFitnessPal Link: www.myfitnesspal.com I use this in conjunction with Runkeeper, they don’t automatically sync but hey-ho we can’t have everything, can we? Plus it only takes a few seconds to transfer the data. This is both a calorie counter with a huge database of predefined foods and an exercise / weight tracker. Dropbox Link: www.dropbox.com We’ve all been out and about and get a phone call asking for a document but it’s on the laptop at home and you’ll send it when you get back (invariably forgetting to send it)…. not anymore! Dropbox at it’s most basic is a folder on your computer & whatever is in that folder is automatically synced to your online account & is therefore available on any device or computer. With the dropbox app your documents are always with available and you can view and send your documents straight from the app. Link: www.facebook.com This is probably installed on 90% of the iPhone’s out there, but I’ve actually found it makes me go on facebook on my phone less & pretty much never from my laptop. The new iPhone OS will enable multiple app running (or you can get it now by jailbreaking your iphone) so that should make things like chatting easier. Echofon (Twitter) Link: www.echofon.com I love Twitter (follow me if you like @agseo). This free app gives great control & access to all of Twitters features including sending photos, geotagging tweets & seperate @you mentions. It really baffles me what more I could want that I’d be willing to pay for in a Twitter app? GrabRadioLite Link: www.grabradioworld.com GrabRadio is a radio application for the iPhone. The lite (free) version only gives a handful of stations but it’s got BBC Radio 1 on there so that’s all I wanted it for Sky News Link: www.sky.com/news Everyone wants to catch up with the latest news at some point, don’t they? MoBank 2.0 Link: www.mobank.co.uk This great free app links to your bank account and gives you real time access to your statements, balance and accounts …. handy to see just how much money you don’t have You can also pay for things directly from the app … it’s totally secure too! WordPress Link: www.iphone.wordpress.org Just for the blogger / site admin side of things but this free app from WordPress allows you to quickly and easily edit / create blog posts & admin comments from your iPhone – basically anything you can do via a laptop can be done on the go from the app! Other notable apps I have installed: Skype Link: www.skype.com Free voice calls (only when connected via WiFi) and instant messaging. Again, falls down from the lack of multi-app running… will be great when it can be run in the background. F1 2010 App Link: http://www.formula1.com/mobile_services/live_timing.html All the geeky data you’ll need. Car positions on track, lap times, best lap, sector times, track status (flags), straight line speeds, safety cars & even air humidity and pressure readings! Just be sure to watch the race as well as your phone! Tap Tap Revenge 3 Link: www.tapulous.com/taptap Guitar hero style finger jamming for free! Download loads of free tracks (really good ones, too) and of course there is the option to purchase tracks. 2 player & online play are good too. Do you use these apps, got any must have’s yourself that I may have missed? Post a comment & let me know! Tags: essential iphone apps, free iphone apps, must have iphone applications |
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is a true documentary about a father who decides to go “underground” and avoid detection for a month. He hires a team of private investigators to track him down. I don’t want to give too much away but suffice to say it didn’t take as long as you may think!
. Both of which I highly recommend whether you buy from Amazon (above links), beg, borrow or download (steal) them.
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