TOP 10 TECH

This recession has been dubbed as possibly one of the worst in history, maybe even worse than the recession experienced during the Great Depression in economic terms.  Therefore it is becoming more and more common for people that previously had great credit, great jobs, great income and even a great deal of savings to suddenly find themselves on the other end of a barrage of collections calls.

With collectors getting access to not only home and work number but also cell phone numbers, the calls can seem to come at 15 minute intervals all day long.  This ironically makes it very difficult to get any work done, find a job, drum up new business or even think straight.…More

Article syndicated from Home Loan Focus.

Blast Applications BLAP Launches Tweexchange.com

PLAINVIEW, N.Y.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Blast Applications, Inc. (OTC: BLAP – News) announced today it has officially launched newly acquired and fully developed website, www.tweexchange.com.

Tweexchange.com is the fastest and easiest way to search Twitter Usernames and Internet Domain Names at the same time. Tweexchange.com also unveiled a new integration with GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain name registrar. Through the Domain Name search, users can Backorder and Register Domains using GoDaddy. If a name is taken and is currently listed for sale on Sedo.com, members can also try to purchase names through the site using the Sedo API.

This is one of the first sites to launch with this functionality, to ease and reduce the time to action to secure the right name for branding purposes. With domain name investment an established industry, consumers can conveniently secure a Twitter ID to match. Cross-referencing Twitter and GoDaddy with Tweexchange.com also enables their members, for a fee, to be notified when Twitter Usernames and Internet domain names become available from being in a suspended state. Tweexchange.com provides Blast Applications with several different revenue streams contained within one site.

Dino Luzzi, CEO of Blast said, “When you think about Blast, our newest web portal, Tweexchange truly fits the bill. This one stop shop for users to acquire and reserve user names and domain names through two of the largest providers of branding elements on the web today, Twitter and GoDaddy is truly a blast.”

About Blast Applications, Inc.

Blast Applications, Inc. (“Blast”) is a premier creator and developer of applications for iPhone^®, Twitter^® and Facebook^®, that allows users to have more fun, be more productive and make social media sites easier to use and more intuitive than before. Social media sites are growing fast all around the globe. Blast Applications has a unique opportunity to monetize the web surfer’s dedication to sites such as Twitter^® and Facebook^®, and through direct advertising programs tied to the Company’s tools and applications. For more information visit www.blastapplications.com.

Editors Note:

We have covered several different web applications, typically focused on twitter from Blast Applications over the last few weeks.  Almost all of them did not appear terribly useful, but hey the team is at least coding something and trying to make a buck.  This particular service combines the search process of looking for a twitter username and an available web domain into a one stop shop.

In reality, it is not difficult to perform either of these steps separately, but I suppose if you are trying to buy and set up a whole bunch of sites and twitter usernames for some reason (I can only think of spammy reasons why you would even contemplate this, but if you can think of something better, let me know because I’m curious!)

Regardless, this is minutely helpful, but probably not that much of a jump past the status quo.

In general, my advice is only to perform domain searches at EXTREMELY trusted primary domain selling sites, and only run those searches when you are prepared to buy.  I’ve seen too many domainers pull too many tricks snatching domains up from under prospective buyers to let my guard down when I’m serious about setting up a site, and I recommend the same practice for all my clients, friends and family.

When I tried this myself, it seemed a little buggy at the search level, things did not refresh automatically, nor even when I hit the clear button, prepare to hit the refresh button on your browser.

I can almost guarantee that if you use this tool once called Tweact.com, you probably will only use it maybe 1 or 2 other times.  Its a nice example of a gimmicky website that can help you spread a gimicky look around with upside down text.

“Tweact is a fun app that enables users to flip their text and paste it across the social web. Simply type your text and it’s instantly mirrored upside-down. You will shock your friends.”

You type in some text, and the application returns the text upside down such that you can copy it and paste it somewhere else.  You could create something of a mirror image with it, but really why?

The site is monetized with adsense ads, but that probably doesn’t yield a whole bunch of money.  Hopefully, someone got at least a B on this project and picked up some beer money in the process.

Blast Applications BLAP Launches Twuition.com

PLAINVIEW, N.Y.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Blast Applications Inc., (OTC: BLAP – News), a premier creator and developer of iPhone, Twitter and Facebook applications, announces today the official launch of www.Twuition.com.

Twuition.com is a corporate branding and advertising application which responds automatically via Twitter informing Twitter users of translations, weather reports, product pricing, locations and even the national debt by typing in the hashtag “#whatisthenationaldebt”. The tweet platform, generates an advertisement for each response sponsored by businesses for brand awareness via our Twitter profile. This advertising application gives corporations the ability to sponsor answers while building awareness to millions of twitter users, also providing them information without leaving twitter.

“Find out the weather report, shop for a product best price, find the restaurant of your choice or translate while visiting other countries, on your iPhone via Twitter, make sponsors proud of our innovative way of communications,” says Dino Luzzi, CEO of Blast Applications.

About Blast Applications, Inc.

Blast Applications, Inc. (“Blast”) is a premier creator and developer of applications for iPhone^®, Twitter^® and Facebook^®, that allows users to have more fun, be more productive and make social media sites easier to use and more intuitive than before. Blast Applications has a unique opportunity to monetize the web surfer’s dedication to social media sites. Through direct advertising programs tied to the Company’s tools and applications. For more information visit www.blastapplications.com.

Editors Note:

While some of Blast Applications other products do seem relatively useful, this one really seems to be a stretch.  If you absolutely can only access twitter for some information, this might be useful, but this same type of service didn’t really take off in the 90’s with 2 Way Pagers either, somehow I doubt it will go far here. 

That said, sometimes you have to work outside the box a little in order to make a break through. 

For all that this is not likely imho to be useful, the advertising that you can purchase through this same channel is not likely to be very robust either.

AUTOMATICALLY DELETE DIRECT MESSAGES ON TWITTER WITH OFFICAL LAUNCH OF TWEDEMPTION.COM

Save Time and Get Redemption Through Twedemption.com

PLAINVIEW, N.Y. – February 9, 2010 (OTC: BLAP – News) – If you ever leave on vacation, step away from your computer for a few days or been on Twitter for a reasonable period of time, it’s easy for your direct message inbox to get full quickly. Blast Applications, a premier creator and developer of iPhone, Twitter and Facebook applications, announces today the official launch of Twedemption.com.

With the new launch of Twedemption.com, a PHP script that allows Twitter users to mass-delete direct messages, you can participate in the latest innovation developed to enhance your Twitter experience. For a one-time fee of $5.99, you can safely and securely delete multiple or all DMs from your inbox on the go.

“If you’ve been receiving a lot of auto generated-direct messages or are building quite a following, this type of program is invaluable for Twitter users,” says Dino Luzzi, CEO of Blast Applications. “What we wanted to do with Twedemption.com was focus on a very talked about problem on Twitter and bring a bit of internet attention to it.”

Going through one-by-one to delete each DM is very time consuming; however with Twedemption.com you can delete all the messages from one Twitter id.

About Blast Applications, Inc.

Blast Applications, Inc. (“Blast”) is a premier creator and developer of applications for iPhone^®, Twitter^® and Facebook^®, that allows users to have more fun, be more productive and make social media sites easier to use and more intuitive than before. Social media sites are growing fast all around the globe. Blast Applications has a unique opportunity to monetize the web surfer’s dedication to sites such as Twitter^® and Facebook^®, and through direct advertising programs tied to the Company’s tools and applications. For more information visit www.blastapplications.com.

Editors Note:

I typically try to keep the number of new services that require my twitter login information to a minimum and after I have used one, I change my twitter password right away.

Personally, I don’t have so many DM’s that I need a mass delete option, was even aware that you had to delete them at all, but I suppose if you are a bit of a clean freak and can’t stand to look at a bunch of DM’s any more, $6 might set you free.

Let’s say you have 50 or 100 or 1000 old blog posts on one or more sites that were sponsored articles.  You were paid up front for a short time advertorial essentially.  That was years ago and those posts haven’t brought any revenue to you since. 

Plus, the FTC has changed the landscape of online marketing and now you have to go back and consider adding some new form of disclosure to an advertorial.  Lots of work for no revenue, all cost, no profit, plus if you don’t you risk who knows what from the FTC. 

QUICK TIPS (ok not so quick) to get those old articles earning money again!

There are several things you can do in conjunction with each other to get those old deep links earning you some money.

• First, realize that what ever work went into those articles in terms of copy, research, writing etc, is long sunk.
• The risk of FTC issues is as real as your geographical address if you reside in the US (If you live in Canada, the UK, the Pacific Rim, feel free to laugh at the FTC all you like.)
• Now, go over to Skimlinks.com and sign up for an account. 
• They essentially turn old deep hyperlinks going out from your site in to current working affiliate links if there is an affiliate program through their collection of multiple networks traversing the world. 
• They aggregate affiliate links through multiple networks at commission rates that are often higher than you can get individually. 
• Get your account up and going and load the javascript onto your site. 
• If someone clicks on one of your old deep links and buys something, you get a commission.  $$$
• Pretty easy for just copy/pasting some javascript in your footer!
• Skimlinks is a good option, BUT for advertorials, it will likely only convert if you had kick ass copy on a page that draws a lot of natural search results. 
• If your copy was written for 2006 and not 2010, it might not convert so well no matter how good it was. 
• If your page hasn’t drawn a new hit in 2 years, well then its really not good for much of anything, almost.
• SO, identify your articles that you want to target.  For example, I recently went through an old blog, I filtered for all articles that still had a CountTrakula.com link in it, an old PayPerPost tracking mechanism, then I further filtered for articles from 2006.  THESE WERE OLD AND TIRED! But some of those posts still have some power,
• Some have lots of incoming links
• Some generate traffic!
• So next, you need to install the Redirection plugin into your wordpress site. 
• Don’t have your blog on WordPress?
• Move your blog over to WordPress and stop fooling around. 
• Now, start redirecting those old links to either your home page or a category that is relevant for the post.
• Essentially you are salvaging those backlinks.  yes they are over 18 months old in my example, but a backlink is a backlink.
• I had a few hundred to do myself, not a job for one sitting.  So make sure you have a good audiobook to listen to or TV show to partially pay attention to, and then start copy/pasting/clicking away
• Once your redirects are set up in full or either in a batch, go back and check your redirection logs. 
• 
• Look for old posts that are logging actual redirects to your home page or categories. 
• If you have an old advertorial bringing traffic to your blog for ‘drug rehab’ and you don’t have a better destination for that traffic on your blog,
• then log into one of your affiliate programs and search for a new affiliate program that has a high conversion rate for ‘drug rehab’. 
• Get the link for the program, then go back to your site, and replace your redirection destination link with the affiliate link! 
• Now all that traffic that was coming into your blog for an advertorial and likely bouncing away, screwing up your stats, and not doing anything for you is getting pushed to a high converting affiliate program where it might actually do that Google searcher some good and
• make you a commission!  $$$
• Pay attention to your redirect stats.  If it stops bringing people in, then change that redirect to a new 301 redirect back to your home page to salvage backlinks.  This puppy is harvested!
• If for some reason you like the traffic on that particular topic, but don’t want to send it to an affiliate landing page cold, then write up a NEW blog article that covers that topic or category. 
• Then change that redirect from over to your new article.
• If you are smart, make sure the article includes an affiliate banner to something useful, or at least some chitika or adsense ads or something.  I don’t want you to starve! 
• Sometimes a Rewrite may work too…
• You will not want to rewrite every article, but every now and then your original article may be pretty damned good and still relevant.  If so, polish that puppy up, and republish it with a current date.  Remove the old sponsored/advertorial references and OWN that new article yourself.  Find some new way to mix advertising on that page for that article, especially if it is pulling in traffic! 
• Plus, if it is pulling in traffic, do something on that new re-written post to really try and lock in those readers to subscribing with you.  You already know that it is bringing people your way, do something good for them, and try and get them to come back or stick around.
• A large percentage of your old advertorial articles from years back will not be relevant, will not have traffic and will only bring you minor backlink boosts.  That’s ok, don’t sweat it, at least you removed the liability stemming from the doubt over the FTC’s poorly conceived and executed new rules. 
• For that 10% that can do something for you, well more power and a little extra revenue to you! 

Bonus – if you do leave old deep links in any old article, make sure you put a rel=”nofollow’ tag on it if you hadn’t already.  Might as well please Google while you are at it. 

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Mavenlink. All opinions are 100% mine.

For several years now I have been looking for a more efficient means of collaborating with people, working on projects with clients, managing the deliverables and changes to those projects and monitoring and collecting the remuneration.  Basically, I just want a tool that makes it easy for me to work my magic, keeps my customers happy and gets me paid without too much effort!

I found something that may fit the bill called Mavenlink

Old Broken Process

When I work as a consultant, I work on a prepaid basis.  I do this primarily to keep things simple.  It works, and the type of consulting services I provide can be completed soon after I am paid.  With more complex multi-phase projects I stagger the pre-payments for each phase.

Here’s how the process works.

1. I create an Estimate in Quickbooks Online, a service that I pay about $25 per month for, which I find cheaper than buying and maintaining a full version of Quickbooks on my computer.
2. I send out the Estimate to my Clients as a means to initiate the Review, Discussion, negotiation and Finalization of the Project plan.  Once everyone is happy with the plan,
3. I create an Invoice which becomes the Project Requirement.  I Print this as a PDF and send it to the customer for their records.
4. I then separately send a PayPal invoice for the same items, referencing the Invoice number in the PDF.  This enables my customers to pay via PayPal or Credit Card if they so choose and generally makes my life easier than waiting for a check in the mail.
5. When I receive the payment, I then go back into Quickbooks and receive the payment and clear the invoice as paid.
6. Finally I complete the project and deliver what is required to the customer.
7. I repeat this process for additional phases of a project.

Its really a bit of a pain in the butt.  It is slow, cumbersome and can sometimes take more time than the actual project!  I purposefully DO NOT charge for small services because it is not worth my time to mess with the invoicing.

I’d love it if Quickbooks had PayPal Invoice integration, but they do not.  In general Quickbooks is overkill for my business needs on many levels, but it does provide me with scalability if business grows substantially.

So today I came across a service through a referral on SocialSpark.  The Service is called Mavenlink (which caught my eye as my first blog’s name is Maven Mapper’s Information).

This service provides consultants with the capability to manage a project, pitch the proposal to a client, lock up the terms of the project agreement, track the progress and manage invoicing and payments via PayPal.

Project Platform

Its a one stop shop not just for what I use for the Estimate, Invoice, Billing and Collection but also the interface with the customer, the negotiation and the project planning (which I do separately in spread sheets and mind maps, yet another step in my old process).

Brand Enhancement and Social Marketing

Another cool aspect about this service is that as it tracks what and how you are doing, this is used to market you, your company, your results and abilities to other potential customers both through Mavenlink and LinkedIn.

Build Relationships with People that Help you Get the Project Done

Plus, as you are working through projects, if I understand the information correctly, you can also work with other consultants as projects tend to change growing and shrinking during different phases, making it easier for multiple companies, consultants, contractors etc to come together deliver a good result, break apart and reform in a different configuration to fit a different client’s needs.

Result –> Working Smarter

So that’s what I see with this service so far.  Proof is in the pudding, and maybe more importantly proof is in adapting your own work culture to any give system or tool.  I intend to try this service out.  At service rate plans of $20 and $39, I might even be able to save a little money if I drop my Quickbooks online service.  But if I could find a way to save all that time that I currently waste and dread wasting just to get projects off the ground, pitched and negotiated this service or any other that achieves my goal would be well worth this rate.

Sponsored Article Disclosure – I was provided compensation of $10 to review this site and service.  These funds are going towards my wife’s National Board Certification.  She teaches fourth grade for a title I school in North Carolina that needs the best teachers possible.  The state does not provide for this certification process.  So far we have paid over $2,500 for her boards and need an additional $1,700 to complete the next phase.  I do find this service interesting and will be trying it myself.  I am not being paid nor sponsored to actually try the service, the sponsorship simply provided for my new awareness of this service.

If you are wondering why the recent Microsoft and Facebook agreements are so relevant, consider a couple things.  Facebook membership and usage grows at leaps and bounds.  Facebook is becoming one of the primary places for people to go on the internet, and while they are there, they search for things and people.  More people and groups right now than anything else, but that might change soon.

Bing web search is now integrated into Facebook search.  Perform a search in Facebook and if there is no direct search result within Facebook itself, you will see the top 3 results from the web powered by Bing, Microsoft’s search engine.

Recently I completed a web site roll out for a client of mine via Softduit Media.  Its a graphic design site in Iowa called Design 26 (http://graphicdesign26.com ).  The site is relatively new, but rapidly moving up the search results in its niche, including the search results within Bing.

One of the bi-products of that foundational search engine optimization of the site we set up is that the site is now also on the front page results in Facebook for ‘urbandale graphic design’.

If you expand those results, they are also listed a second time in position 6.

From a cultural perspective people are not using Facebook as a search engine, very much.  However, the cultural shift that turned YouTube into one of the largest search engines on the internet behind Google, could also work in another social network like Facebook, but this time the search is powered by Microsoft.  Optimizing for Bing may have never before been so important, but it will be now.

Didn’t attend PubCon 2009?  Get the best Insights gathered up from the conference at Managing Greatness.  Even though on the surface this looks like a cliff notes version of Pub Con it is more of a linear mind map or outline of some of the key items.  (frankly I’m impressed there’s some useful stuff in here) like the reference to the Matt Cutt’s interview by GeekCast.fm. 

here’s a screen shot of the article just to give you an idea of how deep this review actually is!

Heather from the blog Beautiful British Columbia shared 5 great tips for writing a sponsored tweet that I’d like to share with everyone.  As this is a relatively brand new monetization and communication medium, I think it is safe to say that the verdict is still out on best practices.

That said, Heather has captured some of the essentials that will likely make the list.  Here’s a couple that seemed extra insightful to me:

• Pictures are worth more than words.
  • I often include a picture in my sponsored tweets to make a point. If you see a picture of my adorable doggy with his new toy, I think you are more likely to click on the link to see where I bought it.
• Keep it short ‘n sweet and easy to retweet.
  • By keeping your tweet less than 140 characters and by using common abbreviations you are more likely to be ‘retweeted’, thereby reaching an exponential number of Twitter users.

Writing a Great Sponsored Tweet

Something else to consider is that the 5 quick tips Heather offers up are relevant even if you are not sending a sponsored tweet, just a tweet.

Personally, whenever someone follows me that has recent tweets that are all quick headlines followed by a link (maybe from their blog or maybe just passing on information from other sites), I click away and don’t follow them back.

I’m not a follow snob, I just don’t need my twitter stream full of tweets with recent headlines from every blog or news source under the sun, especially when those start to get redundant.  I’m not like every one but I only use twitter to talk with people or see what people are talking about.  I don’t go to twitter to receive a ‘NarrowCast’ (as opposed to a broadcast) of a bunch of nice to know blog titles and articles. 

Note – If you read this article based on a twitter title automatically created from this new blog entry, you might think me a hypocrite.  That’s OK, I AM a hypocrite! 

But I also typically talk to people on twitter and just happen to include links from my blog articles in an automated fashion when they show up.  You will never see my twitter stream looking like a long long list of either my own or someone else’s headlines.