Archive for the ‘articles-general’ Category

Google’s version of … (everything)

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

Google is not just about search. It can be used as a calculator, currency converter, translator, clock, dictionary, unit converter, and weather forecaster.  You can even find movie time, sports scores, track packages, and even flight arrivals.

Google’s core business is in search engine marketing with is Google AdWords and it internet advertisements with Google AdSense.  And to aid web developers in this area, Google has provided tools such as Google Analytics, Google Keyword Tool, and Google Webmaster Tools.

But even more than all those, Google in fact has its tentacles into almost all areas of our lives.

Here is a list of Google’s version of — well, just about everything …

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Three Ways to Find Creative Commons Photos

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

If you simply do an image search using a search engine and grab a photo to use for you blog or website, you are most likely violating copyright laws.  That is because all photos are copyrighted by default, unless they are licensed otherwise.  One such license is the Creative Commons license.  For photos that are marked with the Creative Commons license, you can use the photo as long as you abide by the conditions stipulated on the license.  And there are various forms of the Creative Commons license with various stipulations.  Most licenses will have the “Attribution” stipulation.  That means that at the location where you are using the photo, you have to put a photo credits line next to the photo.

So how do we go about finding these Creative Commons photos?  Here are three ways …

1.  Creative Commons on Flickr

a.  Click Explore on the front page of Flickr.com

b. Click “Creative Commons” link at the bottom of the page.

c. You now see a page with photos grouped by the type of Creative Commons licenses.  In each group, you will find a link that says “See more”.  Click that link and you will get a search box enabling you to search Flickr for photos of that license type.

2. Google Image Search by license type.

a. Go to Google Image Search.

b. Click the “Advanced Image Search” link.

c. In the Usage Rights selection, you can filter your search results by the license type that you are interested in. Here is more information about the Usage Right filter.

3. Search EveryStockPhoto.com

a. Go to EveryStockPhoto.com.  It is a search engine for free photos.

b. Search for photos

c. Click to the photo details page and then click the “License” tab to see what license is attached to that photo.  Most of the finds are from Flickr or Stock Exchange.

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Articles Comparing WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal are open-source content management systems.  That means that they enable an administrator to log into the website “back end” to add new post, articles, or pages.  Although WordPress is more suited for blogging, it can be used for development of regular non-blog site.

So now the question is which one to use?  Here are some articles to help you answer that question.

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Blogging is Hard Work

Monday, January 11th, 2010

So you’ve decided to start a blog. If it is personal interest, that is great.

There are some people who want to start a blog in hope of monetizing it. And that means the blog has to get traffic and lots of it. The believe that in the old motto “if you build it, they will come.” Many are disappointed to find that this is not true.

The truth is that there is no shortcut to getting traffic. Getting good traffic that is stable and consistent requires a lot of hard work.

In order to get traffic, you need to be found when people do searches using their search engines (in most cases Google). In order to be found by Google, you have to have good amounts of quality backlinks. Backlinks are links on other websites that links to your.

Now getting good backlinks is no easy matter. It requires you to write quality content so that people are naturally (or organically) linking to you. And it requires a lots of content to increase that chance a someone will find one of your content relevant to what you are talking about.

Examples

For example, Christoper Ross says “I write a half dozen posts a week that get published but about another two dozen get started and never finished. Writing for my blog is a 20 hour a week job.”

A “hubber” on HubPages wrote the article “How To Build A Website That Makes $100+ Per Month“, in which he concludes “making money online takes a lot of work. It is very possible and you can definitely do it – you just need to make that commitment to do what it takes. There are no free lunches and there are no easy ways out.”

Another HubPages article “Making Money Online – The Reality” says “making money online is hard work, and in the early days, it’s likely to require even longer hours than you currently work in your regular job. … And you have a big learning curve in front of you!”

Others have reflected that same sentiment saying, “earning money online takes just as much effort as a real job, sometimes more.” [ref]

How To Build A Website That Makes $100+ Per Month

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