This Is Your Brain on Black Friday Shopping

Who among us hasn't come back from a shopping excursion, looked over the just-purchased haul, and wondered, What was I thinking? Often, our shopping decisions aren't the result of a completely logical thought process, but are instead affected by what we smell, hear, and touch, and what people around us are doing inside the store.

In the nearly 20 years that I've been interviewing shoppers, it's clear that most consumers like to think of themselves as rational, in-control human beings who carefully weigh costs versus benefits, compare prices, and rarely buy on impulse or come home with more than they need. It's also clear that few, if any, among us make wholly rational decisions when shopping.

Most consumers are oblivious to the fact that when you're shopping, you're the subject of a multi-pronged sensory campaign. Retailers, on the other hand, are well aware of how environmental cues—smells, sounds, colors, and more—can influence consumers' moods, desires, and willingness to spend money.

With the year's busiest shopping period at hand, it's a good time to try to understand how our senses and emotions can be manipulated inside stores, sometimes to the point that we're not thinking straight.

Scents
Smells make a direct hit to emotional centers of our brain. They have a unique ability to evoke moods and memories. It's no surprise that Bloomingdale's, Jimmy Choo, Hugo Boss, Victoria's Secret, and scores of other retailers use scents to stimulate positive and associative moods and enhance our perception of their brands and products.

Use Your Facebook Dashboard to Succeed in Realtime

Every person on Facebook has a dashboard to keep track of friends and apps. They can monitor who, and what they see. This is also possible for businesses that use Facebook. You can use your dashboard to keep track of likes, dislikes and see what people are saying about your company. This will give you an opportunity to reach out and engage with your customers.
Why Your Business Needs to be on Facebook
It’s all about location, location, location. Facebook recently announced having 1 billion users, making it one of the top places to promote your business.
By using your dashboard, you can see who is engaging with your updates and who is sharing them. You’ll see which clients are active online, who they’re connected with, and which topics and specials are of most interest to them. There’s a wealth of customer intelligence in your Facebook dashboard and insights.

Monitoring Traffic
Did you know you can see who on Facebook is going to your site and/or blog? Get some real insights on customer flow, their interest in topics and how well your website is doing in continuing the conversation you start in your social networks.
It’s also a great place to monitor conversations and have an active customer service arm that reaches into the mobile devices that most people use to access Facebook.

Tracking Engaged Users
It is possible to track every customer and see how they are engaging with their friends. Their posts become public so you will be able to see what they are saying about you and your business.
Are they talking about your business? You can greet and thank them or try to resolve issues that draw negative feedback.

Who Can Be Reached?
There are many ways you can target your message and promotions. Once you get their attention, it is time to get personal with your contacts on Facebook. You want them to see you as approachable, as a resource and as someone they could never reach through another channel.
Remember to keep delivering value so they will listen and stay engaged.
Review the posts and updates and find out:
1. What are they most interested in?
2. What are they sharing the most?
3. What do they like most about you?
4. What are their burning question and/or issues?

Thanx to Maria Elena, for this article

SEO Killers You Must Clean Up and Avoid

There’s a lot of talk lately of Google having finally killed SEO through their Panda and Penguin algorithms, which continue to ensnare more and more websites with every new update.
So is SEO Really (Finally) Dead?
When you look at some of the Google organic traffic losses that companies have faced since the very first Panda algo (aka Google Farmer) hit in February 2011, you might certainly think so.
Analytics data showing losses of over 50% of Google organic traffic is not uncommon for afflicted websites:
See Search Overview chart
And traffic that used to increase over time, suddenly took a huge dip:
See Visitors Overview chart
These patterns certainly make it look as if SEO could be dead.


But Is It Really?
In order to answer that question I went back through the multitude of lost traffic site audit reports I’ve been doing since early 2011. I looked for website problems that were consistent through many of the sites I reviewed.

Speed-Reading Techniques

Speed-Reading Techniques

Reading Myths

1. Reading is linear. I had always figured reading was
a linear process; you know, start up front and grind through to the
very end in the exact order it was printed in. Reading is no more
linear than thinking is, (or I eventually discovered, than writing; few
writers start at the beginning — indeed, they usually "write the first
part last."

2. True reading is word-for-word. I started as a kid
looking at individual letters. They didn't help much. Next I started
sounding out syllables. Finally, I could read whole words. Why stop
with words? Well, I know one reason… I had a college professor who made
us swear we had "Read every single word" of our collateral reading.
Why? He didn't make us swear we'd "read every single letter." The
answer is simple: that professor (like me) had never moved from
letters, syllables, and words, to reading phrases, sentences and
paragraphs. He assumed the only way to read thoroughly was by the
laborious method of reading one word at a time.

3. Reading is a laborious task which takes a long time. Not at all! Reading can be both fun and fast. Indeed, speed reading is like auto racing — it is far more exciting.

4. All parts of a book are of equal value. This myth
persists until you actually write your own book. Then, all at once you
realize there is "filler" material , illustrations, and even sometimes
whole chapters jammed into a book just because the publisher insisted.
Take messages for instance. Ever hear a message and wish you could put
it on fast forward over that long story illustrating a point you
already understand? Well, in reading you can fast forward.

5. Reading faster will reduce retention. Sorry. It
should be that way, shouldn't it? Those who groan slowly through a book
painstakingly sounding out every single word, maybe even moving their
lips, should get a greater reward shouldn't they? Sorry. In fact, speed
reading techniques will increase one's comprehension and retention.

Google Changes Placement of Search Options in Results Pages

No, it's not your imagination. Google's fooling with the format of its SERPs yet again, and this time the target is the list of search options on the screen. As with all format changes, Google extensively tested the new arrangement before it made the update permanent.

The search options have appeared on the left-hand side of the search results for quite some time now, and the shift to top navigation is a change that makes the traditional SERPs strongly resemble mobile results.

Top Rules for Programming

Top Rules for Programming
March 22, 2007

Presented, in no particular order, for your reading pleasure: my Top Rules for Programming. To keep this entry concise, I've only quoted a brief summary of each item. If any of these sound interesting to you, I encourage you to click through and read the original author's thoughts in more detail.

Jerry Weinberg: The 10 Commandments of Egoless Programming

    Understand and accept that you will make mistakes.
    You are not your code.
    No matter how much "karate" you know, someone else will always know more.
    Don't rewrite code without consultation.
    Treat people who know less than you with respect, deference, and patience.
    The only constant in the world is change.
    The only true authority stems from knowledge, not from position.
    Fight for what you believe, but gracefully accept defeat.
    Don't be "the guy in the room."
    Critique code instead of people -- be kind to the coder, not to the code.

Dare Obasanjo: Top 10 Signs Your Software Project is Doomed

    Trying to do too much in the first version.
    Taking a major dependency on unproven technology.
    Competing with an existing internal project that is either a cash cow or has powerful backers.
    The team is understaffed.
    "Complex problems require complex solutions".
    Schedule Chicken
    Scope Creep
    Second System Syndrome
    No Entrance Strategy.
    Tackling a problem you don't know how to solve.

Omar Shahine: Top 10 Tips for Working at Microsoft (or Anywhere Else)

    Process is no substitute for thinking.
    Get out of your office.
    Use your product (the one your customers will).
    Fix things that are broken rather than complain about them being broken. Actions speak better than your complaining.
    Make hard problem look easy. Don't make easy problems look hard.
    Use the right communication tool for the job.
    Learn to make mistakes.
    Keep things simple.
    Add value all the time.
    Use their product.

Michael McDonough: The Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School

    Talent is one-third of the success equation.
    95 percent of any creative profession is shit work.
    If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important.
    Don't over-think a problem.
    Start with what you know; then remove the unknowns.
    Don't forget your goal.
    When you throw your weight around, you usually fall off balance.
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions; or, no good deed goes unpunished.
    It all comes down to output.
    The rest of the world counts.

Andres Taylor: Top 10 Things Ten Years of Professional Software Development Has Taught Me

    Object orientation is much harder than you think.
    The difficult part of software development is communication.
    Learn to say no.
    If everything is equally important, then nothing is important.
    Don't over-think a problem.
    Dive really deep into something, but don't get hung up.
    Learn about the other parts of the software development machine.
    Your colleagues are your best teachers.
    It all comes down to working software.
    Some people are assholes.

Steve Yegge: 10 Great Books

    The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
    Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
    Design Patterns
    Concurrent Programming in Java(TM): Design Principles and Pattern (2nd Edition)
    Mastering Regular Expressions, 2nd Edition
    The Algorithm Design Manual
    The C Programming Language, Second Edition
    The Little Schemer
    Compilers
    WikiWikiWeb

You may wonder why I included a top 10 list from someone who is clearly a designer and not a programmer. I agree with Joey deVilla:

    Software development is a kissing cousin of engineering (if not an engineering discipline itself), and blends creativity with math and science. That's why I find that a lot of advice to creative types is also applicable to software developers.

Convert Files - Free EPUB to PDF converter. Free online ebook converter.

Convert Files - Free EPUB to PDF converter. Free online ebook converter.

Nice handy resource to have

Panda, Penguin, and the EMD Update – What You Need to Know

ast week was a busy one for Google. The search giant ushered in a parade of algo changes starting with the announcement of the spanking new exact match domain (EMD) update on September 28. Then, a couple of days later, Google confirmed that it rolled out a major Panda algorithm update the day before the EMD. To say the tandem updates threw webmasters for a loop would be the understatement of the century.But wait… there’s more. Head of Google webspam team Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that Google was rolling out the latest data refresh for Penguin.Is all this action coincidental or deliberate? Any guess would be speculation at this point, but many prominent webmaster news sources have already voiced their suspicions. On that note, let’s examine each update to discern what exactly went down.The EMD UpdateWhen Google announced the rollout of the new EMD Update during those last days of September, it came as little surprise to most webmasters. Google alluded to the change repeatedly as far back as 2010. Some niche site builders have ignored the threats entirely, opting instead to continue tempting fate by churning out low-quality websites en masse. These sites often hinged on exact match domains to help secure their position in the SERPs.The EMD algorithm is actually a filter through which Google sifts every website it has in its index. Now, websites with exact match domain names and low-quality content won’t cruise by Panda undetected any longer. If you are the owner of such a website, prepare yourself. The EMD algorithm will periodically refresh its data just like Panda and Penguin do now, so even if you escape the first go ’round, you may get caught in a follow-up attack down the road.There are already rumors flying around that every owner of an exact match domain website is doomed. The folks at Search Engine Land vehemently disagree. The thought is that websites with high-quality content and an eye on good user experience will remain untouched by the algo. This remains to be seen, however – we’ll find out for sure when the dust settles after all the changes over the next few weeks. According to a post on Search Engine Land about the EMD update:“Is that Google just favoring itself? I wouldn’t say so. After all, it didn’t wipe out:- Cars.com for “cars”- Usedcars.com for “used cars”- Cheaptickets.com for “cheap tickets”- Movies.com for “movies”- Skylightbooks.com for “books”Instead, EMD is more likely hitting domains like online-computer-training-schools.com, which is a made-up example but hopefully gets the point across. It’s a fairly generic name with lots of keywords in it but no real brand recognition.Domains like this are often purchased by someone hoping that just having all the words they want to be found for (“online computer training schools”) will help them rank well. It’s true that there’s a small degree of boost to sites for having search terms in their domains with Google, in general. A very small degree.”In theory, this amounts to five-page affiliate sites and websites made to host AdSense blocks getting the axe while all the rest of the higher-quality EMDs out there remain un-phased. Again, this is the theory. The real results will take a while to sort out.One fact is certain, however: Google tends to roll out updates hastily and then tweak and perfect with each refresh. If you have a high-quality site with an EMD and you were hit, don’t despair. You may have a chance to come back in the SERPs as the algorithm refines further over time.The Panda UpdateIt’s very interesting that Google rolled out the newest Panda algorithm update the day before the EMD algo, yet neglected to announce Panda until a few days after the announcement of EMD. If you follow Google’s changes, you’ll notice that Matt Cutts almost always announces updates directly before, or as they’re happening. This oversight seems like a deliberate move by G. If it is, the real question is, “Why the confusion?”Some are speculating that the overlapping updates were an attempt to confuse webmasters and SEOs whose rankings would take a nosedive. It would be hard to decipher whether the hit was because of the EMD filter or due to Panda. When it’s hard to pinpoint the cause, it’s tougher to manipulate the rankings for a second time – forcing webmasters to play by the rules instead.The Panda update is the twentieth refresh of the algorithm, and it was a big one: the change impacted roughly 2.4% of English-language search queries and it’s still baking into the index at the time of this writing. Remember, Panda deals with on-page issues such as keyword density and the overall quality of your content.The Penguin UpdatePenguin first burst on the SEO scene in late April of this year. It’s a separate algo, different from Panda in that it deals with inbound links to websites. If a website has a large number of low quality inbound links, Penguin will likely demote that site in the SERPs when the filter runs. The Penguin algorithm has only had one update so far, before the summer even began.The latest makes the third update of Penguin, and it’s a major data refresh that will affect websites spanning many different languages. Think of Penguin as a periodic filter that Google runs to catch websites with sketchy backlink profiles.The Way ForwardThere’s quite a bit to digest here. We have three events rolling out simultaneously but completely independent of one another. Obviously, checking your stats now would be an important move – you’ll want the real-time data to analyze later. However, you can’t make a definitive call about what (if anything) hit your site until a couple of weeks pass.When the dust settles, you’ll begin to see a little more clearly where your sites have relocated in the search result pages. That’s when it’s time to break out the stats and analyze site details such as your backlink profile, your content, and your domain name.Do you have an EMD with thin, mediocre content? Then the EMD update probably hit you. Don’t have an exact match domain, do have great backlinks but still felt the sting? Then it was likely Panda. Everything beautiful onsite but backlinks include some shady websites? Blame Penguin.Once you know what hit your website, you can take corrective actions to fix the errors. The downside? You’ll have to wait until the refresh of the suspected algorithm attack to see if your website will bounce back. The upside? With a little work and the right analysis, your website’s position in the SERPs can be restored.

Thnx to sitepro for this article

6 Tips for Budding Designers to Earn While Building a Portfolio

6 Tips for Budding Designers to Earn While Building a Portfolio

Design is one of the more unusual industries to work in because it’s one of the few that often involves working for free, especially for those who are just starting out in a design career. Working for free is starting to become more and more commonplace for those new to particular industries – as this article from The Guardian shows – but for designers, who actually create something, it doesn’t need to be this way. The dangers of spec work are well-known, and this post in particular does a brilliant job of explaining why it’s harmful. The premise is that a client offers money for designers to compete with each other. One designer gets paid, the other designers don’t. It’s not fair, and it’s not rewarding.
But when you’re just starting out in a career in design, you may be tempted to work for free in order to build your portfolio. You know that you can design but you need to get clients on board, you need a good portfolio to show people and, when your portfolio is on the small side, clients may ask you to work for free with the benefit being that you get to showcase the work that you do on your site.

It seems like a catch-22, you can’t get a great and varied portfolio without working, and you can’t get paid without a great and varied portfolio. You might be inclined to accept a few offers of working for free.
My advice to you is this: don’t. Working for someone for free helps that company significantly more than it helps you – they are not doing you a favour. If your goal is to put together an amazing portfolio, taking on free work for someone else is a recipe for disaster – 9 times out of 10 you’re giving up creative control as well as failing to get paid, and it’s much more likely to leave you feeling unhappy.

How Can You Earn While Building a Portfolio?

If your aim when first starting out as a designer is to have a portfolio that you’re proud of, and is truly unique to you and full of your personality and style, consider designing things for yourself. If you think of a great logo idea for a company that doesn’t exist, design it and use it for your portfolio. If you think of a creative site design for a fictional company, build it anyway and use it for your portfolio – clients want to see whether you can design things well, not whether the design is for an existing company or not. And if you’re in the mood to redesign an existing company’s logo, branding, site or app – then consider an unsolicited redesign so that you’re free to design it exactly how you want – such as how Andrew Kim redesigned Microsoft’s branding, and made a name for himself at the same time.
Of course, designing things for fictional companies won’t pay the bills. If you want to make money at the same time as building a portfolio, keep in mind that there are some designs that have been built without a client asking for it, and have later been sold for respectable amounts of money. This leads us quite neatly to the first way to earn while building a portfolio.

1. Build and Sell a Site

You might as well do it with Twitter Bootstrap and SASS

Dustin Curtis, the world-famous designer behind the Svbtle network, once made a web app that produced a visual timeline of your life, named Lifepath.me (which sadly no longer exists). It was a beautiful, intricate and cleverly crafted design that had obviously had a lot of work go into it and was something that helped to make him even more famous than he already is. Several months after launching it, he sold it for just over $10,000 (in addition to the $3880 he made from signups).
Threewords.me is a fairly simple site designed and built by coder Mark Bao that let’s people create a profile and then ask others to (anonymously) add three words to sum them up. It was a great idea – nice, clean and simple and it went massively viral. Mark later sold the site for an undisclosed figure (with rumours of that figure being six figures).
Both Lifepath and Threewords look incredible on Dustin and Mark’s portfolios – successful, beautifully designed and remarkable. They both also require the ability to code, but it’s worth keeping in mind that the coding needed is relatively basic and frameworks like Ruby on Rails are perfect for sites like these. You can find more on how to start learning Ruby here.
While this method doesn’t guarantee that you’ll make money (and if you do, it may well be for significantly less than what Dustin and Mark have earned), it does still let you build something that you’re interested in, and can be truly proud of – and even if you sell it for only a small amount, it’ll still earn you more than if you chose to work for free.

2. Create and Sell WordPress and Tumblr Themes

You can also get paid for designing and building high quality WordPress or Tumblr themes and choosing to sell them on your own site. The themes for sale on Inspect Element are a good example of this – they both look great in designer Tom Kenny’s portfolio, and they can also earn him some money too.
If you really enjoy building WordPress themes, you could even take it a step further and develop an entire series of templates that you can sell. ElegantThemes is a great example of a designer whose amazing at what he does and consistently puts out fantastic WordPress themes that his community loves. Similarly, Liam McKay has built WPBundle.com which is a collection of beautifully designed WordPress themes – the whole bundle selling for $200.
You can even create a theme that you’re proud of and sell it on a service like Themeforest, if you’re worried that you won’t be able to get enough people to see it on your own. Orman Clark of Premium Pixels recently broke the ThemeForest record by making over $47,000 in just one month from the sales of his WordPress themes. While you perhaps shouldn’t expect that sort of money any time soon, it does show that you can design the things you want to design without having to go unpaid.

3. Design and Sell Stock Icons, Fonts and Illustrations

In the same vein as creating themes and templates, there’s also a huge market out there for people that want stock icons, illustrations and beautifully designed fonts and they’re willing to pay for quality. If you think that you can do a good job, and want great designs for your portfolio as well as to sell, then you could make some extra income by creating designs to sell on sites like iStockPhoto.com and GraphicRiver (which is owned by the same people that run ThemeForest).
If you’re more interested in designing and selling fonts, there’s plenty of sites out there to help you do that too. MyFonts.com has been around for some time and is well-known for showcasing and selling really beautifully designed fonts, while the relatively new Lost Type Co-Op by Riley Cran and Tyler Galphin is an interesting Pay-What-You-Want font store that allows you, the designer, to receive 100% of the funds from each sale.

4. Start a blog and allow adverts

If you’re already out there creating designs that you’re proud of, then it makes sense to showcase them somewhere on your own blog. Blogs are great for getting your thoughts down, for letting you show off your new designs and for getting you involved in the design community, but you can also make money by running adverts too. A great way to support a blog, and make a small amount of side income, is to include a small number of relevant affiliate adverts in the sidebar, such as for your hosting company or for particular design tools that you use and would recommend to your readers.
Even if you don’t make much from advertising on your blog, it’s still a great way to get your designs out there and to start making a name for yourself.

5. Write tutorials for other sites

Many design sites are in need of great tutorials, written by people that know their craft well – and a lot of these sites are also willing to pay for them. If you’ve created a design for your portfolio that you’re really proud of, you can help out other designers by writing a tutorial on how to recreate it – a step by step guide of the techniques you used in the design. It’s a great way of showing off your design, of helping out the community, of making a name for yourself and for making a side income.
Related: The Shortest Web Design Guest Posting Guide You’ll Ever Need

6. Get help for bigger projects using Kickstarter

If you have an idea for something you’d like to build – whether it’s a physical product or an innovative new app that you think could turn a profit, but the cost of starting the project is holding you back, consider using Kickstarter. Kickstarter is changing the game by allowing people to get the cashflow they need to start creative, interesting projects by allowing anyone to be an early investor. If you’d like to be your own client, and work on an idea that you can really commit to, you no longer have to be put off by the lack of start-up cash. You can read more about how Kickstarter is changing the game in this post from Ryan Carson.

What are the benefits?

Other than getting money and a portfolio that you can be proud of, there are other benefits to designing things for yourself. The most obvious of this is that you’ll actually get to design the things that you want to design – if you think your portfolio is missing great examples of your hand-drawn style, you can add it. If you want to practice your typography, there’s no-one stopping you. You can choose what you work on, which allows you to be more creative, work on your own unique style and, ultimately, be happier.
And if you do a really good job and make something that people love, you can earn a reputation for creating outstanding work, which you can’t put a value on. Good luck – and if you’re just starting out, remember this: if you don’t want to, you never ever have to work for free.

by Alex Black

Note: Thnx to Alex Black for this Article - from  Easy Coders

10 SEO and Link Building Mistakes

Mistake 1 – Neglecting On-page Optimization:
I think more people are beginning to understand the importance of on-page optimization when it comes to ranking their web pages. With so much focus on keywords and link building though, often I see webmasters focusing too heavily on the “off page” stuff, without realizing what they do “on” their website is just as important. Proper internal linking, keyword density, LSI, image text, no follow tags, just to name a few, are also very important to search engines. There are free plugins available to help you with a lot of this stuff, so do your due diligence and implement whatever strategies need be.
Mistake 2 – Freaking Out When Rankings Plummet:
Go onto any internet marketing forum and you will see this every single time. People are literally freaking out when they see their rankings drop. Most often this is due to a thing we call the Google dance. All new websites go through what is called a “honeymoon” period where their websites rank very well at the beginning, but after a couple of weeks they settle in the search results… usually at a much lower ranking, again, this is natural.

Six Things Businesses Need to Know About Facebook's Timeline By Laura Tate

Since its inception, social media giant Facebook has seen
numerous changes to its layouts, and many useful features have
been added. The most recent of these is the "Timeline," which
was introduced in December 2011.

The Timeline arranges posts according to date, streamlining all
materials, including status messages, pictures, videos, and other
Facebook activities, showing a history of a Fan page.

By now every company that utilizes Facebook for their social
media networking has incorporated the Timeline. However, many
might have been put off by the changes and not taken a look at
all that is offered with the new features or optimized the
obvious ones.

Here are six things business owners should know about Timeline
on Facebook.

1. The Large, Space-Occupying Cover Photo
This area, located at the top of the Facebook page is the first
thing people see when visiting a page. Facebook has dedicated
851 x 315 pixels just for this space alone.

How to Promote Your Website: A Common Sense Approach

By John V -in 2012

 Social media. I hope you're sitting down for this one. Once
you have created your website, you need to tell people
about it, and the best way to do that is social media. I
know, shocking, right? Okay, it's not even a little bit
surprising, but in a world where we are crunched for time,
it is easy to overlook the simplest things.

Make sure your website is included in all of your online
profiles, and then be an active member of these communities.
If you write a new blog post, tweet about it, post a
Facebook status with a link, and don't be afraid to click
those social sharing buttons embedded next to every post.
It may feel a little gauche to like, Google+, or Digg your
own content, but there is nothing wrong with being proud of
your work. It also encourages people to do the same.

Google's Policy Changes - What Do They Mean for You?

By Karl R Rooney 2012 

In a nutshell, what do the changes mean? Basically it means that
Google will now share the data it stores for you between all
their services. They won't be sharing anything new with outside
parties; just among Google's many services. Google has been
adamant these changes are only being made to make their products
better than ever and display even more relevant content and
advertising to each personal user. On 1st March 2012 these changes

went into effect.


Alma Whitten, Google's Director of Privacy, wrote in a blog post
recently:

"As you use our products one thing will be clear: it's the same
Google experience that you're used to, with the same controls,
And because we're making these changes, over time we'll be able
to improve our products in ways that help our users get the most
from the web."

8 Easy and Simple Ways to Add Likes to Your Facebook Page By Istrati Florentina 2012

As the internet and Social Media evolve one thing is clear -
Facebook is king. Fast approaching 1,000,000,000 members (yes
that's ONE BILLION), Facebook is the site where everyone is
spending time online!

"Every successful business depends on people - Facebook is
where they are spending their time online. Either you will use
Facebook and succeed or you will not embrace Facebook and
fail."- Sean Malarkey

When you start your marketing, the first thing to do is to open
a business page. Make sure that all information you put on your
page is genuine and not defamatory. This will make potential
customers trust you.

Now, let's see what are the 8 easy and simple ways to increase
your Facebook likes.

All About YouTube Marketing By James Chapman- 2012

Promoting a business can be extremely taxing, especially
when you're just getting started. If you're into checking
out marketing blogs, you've probably come across some
information about YouTube marketing. This form of
advertising falls under the umbrella of video advertising,
which falls under the even larger umbrella of Internet
marketing. Take a look at some specifics of this business
strategy to deepen your understanding about its importance
and utilize it to help popularize your products or
services.

Why Online Video Advertising?
Video marketing is one of the leading advertising
platforms on the Internet. People of all ages and from
different backgrounds are taking advantage of this
promotional opportunity in an effort to maximize the
visibility of their business. 

how to find out if php is compiled with curl extension installed enabled

at some point, you will find out that some scripts require you to have cURL extension enabled in your web server.

well, how can you tell whether the CURL extension is enabled or compiled in your PHP?

these are the steps to take:

1. open a blank text document. i will be using notepad in windows.

2. copy and paste this code into notepad and save it as testcurl.php

<?php
## Test if cURL is working ##
## SCRIPT BY WWW.WEBUNE.COM (please do not remove)##
echo '<pre>';
var_dump(curl_version());
echo '</pre>';
?>

3. if you prefer, you can download the full script at this link:
How To Check Curl Installed In Php

How to active curl on xampp

Your xampp installation most likely already has curl support built-in. You just have to turn it on. It’s not difficult at all.  That’s not necessary for Windows versions of PHP.
Find your php.ini file (probably in xampp\apache\bin\php.ini and open it in notepad or another plain text editor
search for the line that says:
;extension=php_curl.dll
remove the semicolon from the beginning of the line.
save the file
restart apache
check a phpinfo() program to see if you now have curl support listed.
In a standard xampp build, this is all you have to do. If you installed apache and PHP in another way, you might need to move some dlls to the windows\system directory.
(libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll)
Best of luck to you.

100 Great CSS Menu Tutorials - by Kevin Muldoon

Navigation is such an important part of your website. It’s how your visitors navigate to the main areas of your site and makes it easy for them to find your good content.
CSS is of course the perfect language for designing beautiful navigation menus. It can be applied to any type of website and is very flexible. Don’t be alarmed if your own CSS skills are fairly limited as there are a lot of great tutorials out there that walk you through how to add clean and professional looking CSS menus to your website. You can either copy and paste the code into your own design or modify the menu to suit your needs.
Today we would like to show you 100 of these tutorials; 75 horizontal CSS menu tutorials and 25 vertical CSS menu tutorials.

Horizontal CSS Menu Tutorials

1. Advanced CSS Menu Trick

View Tutorial | Demo
2. Elegant Drop Menu with CSS Only

View Tutorial | Demo
3. Bulletproof CSS Sliding Doors

View Tutorial & Demo
4. Tabbed Navigation Using CSS

Web Design Trends in 2012

Posted by Jake Rocheleau on Dec 13, 2011 |

Thanx to Jake for this Amzing Post... (from Easy Coders) 

inShare791

It’s that time of year again, where we look into our crystal ball to see what will be the hot trends in web design for the upcoming year. It’s no secret that trends come and go, with some hanging around longer than they should. (Yes, splash page, I’m talking about you.) But trends are a necessity in the development and growth of our craft. Trends are born, improved upon, and often spawn other trends. So as a web designer, when you apply trends to your projects, challenge yourself to expand upon them and make them your own.
As you read this article, keep in mind that the shift in trends from one year to the next may be subtle, and you will probably recognize some of these trends already. But it’s our estimation that the concepts we mention below will grow and become even bigger in 2012.

1. Responsive Web Design

I believe eventually, we’ll all stop talking about responsive web design – not because it will go away, but because it will become what’s expected. However, I don’t think this will happen in 2012. It’s still too new of a concept, and there are many web designers that are not familiar with it at all.

The continued introduction and adoption of more an more mobile devices is what will make 2012 the year of the responsive web site. Web designers and developers will move to the use of fluid layouts instead fixed width, and media queries will find their way into many more stylesheets – allowing more sites to easily be viewed across multiple screens sizes and devices.

Beaches Wallpaper

How to Own Your Own Website (Even If You Can’t Build One) Part 1

You’ve probably put up plenty of pages and accounts on various services and blogs. But today, learn how to become a real website owner and put together an awesome feature-rich website of your own with little to no experience.
Having your own website is expected in many fields. You can host your resume and various files, or put up an online business card to make sure that you’re one of the top results when you do an ego search on Google. Whatever your reason is, you don’t have to pay hundreds (or thousands?) of dollars to have somebody else make a website for you, when you can use free software and cheap hosting to make your own in minutes. In this first part of a multi-part series, we’ll discuss how to put up a simple website and and how to start owning your own domain.

Purchasing a Domain and Hosting

To own your own website, you usually have to pay for a minimum of two things. To make your life easier, you can get both from the same company. The first thing you need is a domain name—that’s the URL that you type into your browser to find your website.

Learn to Code HTML / CSS / Javascript weekly

Here's a great site for all beginners and amateurs to learn HTML / CSS / Javascript coding

Subcribe to the Following link ....

www.codecademy.com/

and you get weekly lesson in your inbox to learn and practise online ....
a Great treat for Beginners and Web Designing coders ...

html redirect

One of the most requested items we get is "How do I make an html redirect page".
Strangely enough this is one of the easiest things to accomplish, but then anything is easy when you know how to do it!

Here's the code:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Your Page Title</title>
<meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="0;url=http://www.the-domain-you-want-to-redirect-to.com"></HEAD>
<BODY>
Optional page text here.
</BODY>
</HTML>

How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally

How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally

Have you ever accidentally deleted a photo on your camera, computer, USB drive, or anywhere else? What you might not know is that you can usually restore those pictures—even from your camera’s memory stick.
Windows tries to prevent you from making a big mistake by providing the Recycle Bin, where deleted files hang around for a while—but unfortunately it doesn’t work for external USB drives, USB flash drives, memory sticks, or mapped drives. Luckily there’s another way to recover deleted files.
Note: we originally wrote this article a year ago, but we’ve received this question so many times from readers, friends, and families that we’ve polished it up and are republishing it for everybody. So far, everybody has reported success!

Click Here to download Recuva from its original website - https://www.piriform.com/recuva

How to Search Google Like a Pro: 11 Tricks You Have to Know

Google is a powerful tool, but you’re missing out on a lot of that power if you just type words into it. Master Google and find the best results faster with these search tricks.
Whether you’re an inexperienced user or a seasoned professional, you’ll probably find at least one search operator you weren’t aware of here. Many of Google’s search operators aren’t very well-known.

Set Your Website on Fire with Red Themes, Photos, and Palettes

Set Your Website on Fire with Red Themes, Photos, and Palettes

by Costin Găman

There are some things that you wouldn’t have thought of when using red, such as symbols or effects on our mood. After all, it’s just a colour, right? Red has quite a few qualities and associations; fiery, passionate and overall dynamic are just a few descriptive words that barely scratch the surface.
Prepare to go deeper into the subject and see just how it works!

Basics

---

Like its predecessor from the previous article, red is part of the primary triad, but it is also on the opposite side in a few senses. Unlike blue, its name is much less tolerant and only a few colours have the luxury of being included in the category. The exclusiveness is present at a biological level, as well: only one of the three types of receptor cells is truly sensitive to the wavelengths characterising red. If you really think about it, just slightly tinting something red will most probably warrant a different name.

Characteristics

---

Being a warm colour, it tends to be more invasive and will make a room appear to be smaller than it actually is, but when used well and in darker forms, it can lend itself to a cozier environment.
As mentioned, red is somewhat more difficult to perceive and this is because it has the highest of wavelengths. As its wavelength increases, it also nears the edge of what is called infrared, which cannot be perceived by the naked eye.
Colour therapy suggests that exposure to red raises the blood pressure, thus having an invigorating effect. Without going too much into the subject, Eastern philosophy associates red with the adrenal glands and, by extension, with the emotions produced by increased adrenaline.

Symbolism

---

Naturally, the things associated with it vary with every culture, but there are some general symbols with which we can all agree. In no particular order, these include heat, fire, passion, courage, danger, love and energy.

photo by Martin Lougas

It is a very human colour which is why it has emotions associated to it. Demanding activities, whether mental or physical, and strong emotional responses imply increased blood flow therefore creating a very straightforward connection with red: blood.
Delving deeper into the human aspect, warmth and energy can be derived. Strangely, the general idea of flames being red has long been rooted, even though orange would be more appropriate. Perhaps it’s because it triggers much stronger feelings which are better represented by fire and we also tend to remember and associate extremes. Warmth and heat also suggest life, but from an inner perspective.
Red is a very powerful symbol for danger because of its immediate perception and adrenaline-related qualities. Stop signs and stop lights are examples of its daily uses. In part because of this, large quantities of bright red can be overbearing so it should be used sparingly.

Combinations

---

Given its overall effect, for a balanced result it’s best to either tone down a predominantly red design or use it in smaller quantities to bring more life. This mostly concerns bright shades; while darker tones can still be imposing, they are still more tolerable. It should be noted that it tends to conflict with strong cool colours and will warm up more passive colours like browns.
Its complementary is green and theoretically it should be used in a 50-50 proportion for a harmonious effect. In order to avoid a Christmas impression, their interaction should be kept at a minimum and a third colour should be introduced to keep them in check by dominating quantity-wise. Another solution is to use less bright variants.
As an attention-grabber, it works well on darker backgrounds such as dark grey, ash brown and even black. The contrast is effective even with darker or vintage tones of red. On the opposite side, it can be successfully used on white backgrounds in more minimal designs, but once again with a bit of caution.

Palettes

---

01. TOOL Remix by whoneycutt

02. Sea Serpent in Horrible Peril by sethbenson

03. Shark Attack by kristi

04. Fire Dragon and Charthouse by mark

05. Herzin by maya-kido

06. Oil Flame by rickomoreira

07. Vintage Poster by robertkubas

08. Court of the Crimson King by carle

09. Water Cherries by spongebobgirl949

10. War on Water by cgriffith

Web – WordPress themes

---

01. Slick Red (free)

02. Provocateur (premium)

03. Redminton (premium)

04. ShapeShifter (premium)

05. Titanium Folio (premium)

06. Daily Journal (premium)

07. Bold (premium)

08. CherryTruffle (premium)

09. Snapshot (free)

10. Myriad (premium)

Artwork – macro photos

---

01. Red Delight by Bozack

02. Abstract Red by StacyD

03. Shades of Red by eyedesign

04. Blood Clot by PoisonedHamster

05. An Apple II by OnMostSurfaces

06. Ladybug by wulfila

07. Leaves on fire 3 by Dieffi

08. Cherry Blossoms by heathersfeathers

09. Red by i-shadow

10. Flaming Feathers by starlightspell

Get Financial News right in your Inbox

Take it off Yahoo as an RSS feed:

http://finance.yahoo.com/rss/topstories

25 Finance APIs

By Kevin Farnham

Among the 25 finance-related APIs now listed on ProgrammableWeb, there are services from old and new companies, and large and small companies. For example, the venerable Dun and Bradstreet offers the Dun and Bradstreet Credit Check API, personal finance startup Wesabe offers an API and there’s an API from Prosper, a peer-to-peer lending service. Overall, most current business and finance APIs fall into one of two categories: APIs from SaaS-based business administration and management services, and APIs that provide financial markets data.

SaaS Business Administration APIs

A variety of new on-demand service providers offer APIs as a means to reach and integrate with their services. For example, the Blinksale API accesses their online invoicing service. The REST API provides access to your Blinksale data, letting you create invoices using a Blinksale invoice template or one of your own creation.
The FreshBooks API provides online invoicing and time tracking using your Freshbooks account. The KashFlow and NetAccounts APIs offer broader accounting capabilities, geared toward businesses in the UK and Australia, respectively.

Financial Data APIs

Looking for real-time financial market quotes or historical data? Fifteen APIs are ready to get you the data you need, when you need it. Xignite provides financial data APIs ranging from XigniteRealtime and XigniteFunds (real-time U.S. stock market quotes, and U.S. mutual fund data) to XigniteCurrencies and XigniteRates (currency and international interest rate data) to XigniteEdgar and XigniteCalendar (U.S. SEC Edgar filings and global economic calendars). The Xignite APIs feature SOAP and REST protocols, with all data returned in XML format. Once you’ve used one Xignite API, it’s relatively easy to get started with others, since all the APIs incorporate a common design structure.
StrikeIron offers a number of APIs that serve users with U.S. financial data including StrikeIron Stock Quotes Basic, StrikeIron Mutual Funds, and StrikeIron Historical Stock Quotes. The StrikeIron APIs utilize SOAP protocol and return results in XML format.

Timepost Mashup

Business and Financial APIs provide excellent opportunities for developing mashups. One example is the Timepost mashup, which applies the Blinksale and FreshBooks business APIs, along with the popular Basecamp API (from 37signals) and the Harvest time-tracking API. Integration of these APIs results in a rich time tracking and project collaboration solution for small businesses.

Using Weather Data to Change Your Website’s Appearance through PHP and CSS

Using Weather Data to Change Your Website’s Appearance through PHP and CSS

from CSS-Tricks by Guest Author

This article is co-authored by David Walsh


Inspiration for this idea came from a comment by Andreas.
Using a little magic and trickery (read: PHP and CSS), we can change the appearance of a website automatically based on the weather outside, in real time! In the example site we have created, the header graphic will change to one of four different styles based on Sunny, Rain, Snow, and Cloudy.

Step 1: Designing your weather graphics

Our example site changes header graphics as as well as an icon in the sidebar to describe the weather. For the sake of example, we only created four different weather scenarios, defaulting to sunny.

Step 2: Retrieving the weather information

Yahoo! has an API for weather information. We can tap into this very easily using an URL formatted like so:
http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=97211&u=f
The 5-digit number is your Zip Code and the “f” stands for “Fahrenheit” (change to “c” for “Celsius”). The information comes in XML format and it’s up to you how you want to parse the data. Since the only bit of information we care about is the “yweather:condition” element’s “text” attribute, We’re going to avoid creating an XML parsing object and use a short regular expression.
Once the regular expression returns the yweather element’s text, we’ll use str_replace() and strtolower to format the string into a representative CSS class.

Step 3: Turning the weather information into an CSS class

Here is the PHP code:

<?php

 /* get xml, find match */

 /* get the weather from Yahoo */
 $data = get_data("http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=97211&u=f");

 $weather_class = format_result(get_match('/<yweather:condition text="(.*)"/isU',$data));

 /* debug to see what we got back */
 //echo '<pre style="background:#fff;font-size:12px;">['; print_r($weather); echo ']</pre>';

 /* format the result */
 function format_result($input)
 {
  return strtolower(str_replace(array(' ', '(', ')'), array('-', '-', ''), $input));
 }

 /* helper:  does regex */
 function get_match($regex,$content)
 {
  preg_match($regex,$content,$matches);
  return $matches[1];
 }

 /* gets the xml data from Alexa */
 function get_data($url)
 {
  $ch = curl_init();
  $timeout = 5;
  curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$url);
  curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
  curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,$timeout);
  $xml = curl_exec($ch);
  curl_close($ch);
  return $xml;
 }

?>

Now we have a variable we can echo out that is representative of the current weather at the zip code we provided:

<div class="header header-<?php echo $weather_class; ?>">
 
</div>

Step 4: Code your CSS for each of the classes

.header {
 width: 782px; height: 150px;
 /* DEFAULTS TO SUNNY */
 background: url(images/header-sunny.png) no-repeat center center black;
 }
 .header-rain {
  background: url(images/header-rain.png) no-repeat center center black;
 }
 header-snow {
  background: url(images/header-snow.png) no-repeat center center black;
 }
 .header-sunny, .header-fair {
  background: url(images/header-sunny.png) no-repeat center center black;
 }
 .header-partly-cloudy, .header-cloudy, .header-mostly-cloudy {
  background: url(images/header-partlycloudy.png) no-repeat center center black;
}

Step 5: Extending the idea

Notice that we use the “partlycloudy” graphic for the weather conditions of “partly-cloudy”, “cloudy”, and “mostly-cloudy”. It’s up to you how specific you want to get. Here is a full list of the possible weather conditions from Yahoo!:

0   tornado
1  tropical storm
2  hurricane
3  severe thunderstorms
4  thunderstorms
5  mixed rain and snow
6  mixed rain and sleet
7  mixed snow and sleet
8  freezing drizzle
9  drizzle
10  freezing rain
11  showers
12  showers
13  snow flurries
14  light snow showers
15  blowing snow
16  snow
17  hail
18  sleet
19  dust
20  foggy
21  haze
22  smoky
23  blustery
24  windy
25  cold
26  cloudy
27  mostly cloudy (night)
28  mostly cloudy (day)
29  partly cloudy (night)
30  partly cloudy (day)
31  clear (night)
32  sunny
33  fair (night)
34  fair (day)
35  mixed rain and hail
36  hot
37  isolated thunderstorms
38  scattered thunderstorms
39  scattered thunderstorms
40  scattered showers
41  heavy snow
42  scattered snow showers
43  heavy snow
44  partly cloudy
45  thundershowers
46  snow showers
47  isolated thundershowers

For this example, you’ll notice we also used a hard-coded zip code that must be changed in the PHP in order to change where the website will be basing it’s weather appearance on. But wouldn’t it be cool if the website knew the zip code of your visitors and would change the appearance of the site based on their weather instead of your weather? That kind of coding requires services and expertise beyond the scope of this tutorial, but a quick Google search brings up some services that could probably make this happen like IP2Location.
Have fun! - and let me know if anyone actually uses this, I’d love to see what you did with it.