Google

How the iPhone 4 re-upped the ante

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Facetime Screen

When the first iPhone came out, it changed the way the mobile phone industry was operating, all other companies scrambled to put something together that would be worthy to battle the iPhone. While some were successful (Google, maybe Nokia), other where not in my opinion (RIM/Blackberry). When I say that, I am not talking about sales, I am talking about a phone and operating system that are coherent.

Next we can all agree that the next two iPhones were just upgrades that were nothing too special other than at the time they were released (except for the 3G upgrade). So when the iPhone 4 came out, it had a new feature called Facetime. What is Facetime you ask? It is a video calling technology that Apple developed. You might think to yourself, who cares Nokia and Sony Ericsson have that that since around 2005. While that may be true, I’ve had the first Nokia phone that had a front facing camera, as well as many others, yet how many times did I use a video call in those three years? Exactly once (no joke), and I was sitting next to the person I was having the call with. We were just testing out the technology. As Felix Dennis mentions in his book How To Get Rich the key to being successful is not about having a great idea, it’s all about execution, and Apple executes second to none.

One of the really cool things about Facetime is that you don’t even need cellular reception to make a call (which makes video calls free all over the world!). Check out this video below of me giving directions to a friend while in the middle of the woods! We had no reception, yet we had wifi internet. While all other phones in the cabin (blackberries) were out of luck when it came to making phone calls, at least I could call people that have a Facetime device (at that time only the iPhone 4).

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK0DjkU-Pu4

WordPress 3.0 Released

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WordPress 3.0 has been released, and is a nice upgrade. So far I have seen that it looks better (admin page) and has a whole slew of new features. It also has retired the kubrick theme and replaced it with Twenty Ten. I really liked the presentation of the Twenty Ten theme, so I am now using it. Give me a couple of days to work out kinks, integrate adsense (I have to use ads sorry!), and add my personal touches. If you have not already upgraded to WordPress 3.0, please do so asap, all it takes it the click of one button.

Running Google Chromium OS inside Parallels 5

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So Google has released a working version of Chromium Os. It is just in the begining phases of development so there’s not much there, and it’s quite slow. Nonetheless I wanted to try it. The way posted on the chromium site, is for Linux geeks, and since I’m not great with Linux, I found there was a way around that. There is a VMware image on gdgt.com, however I am running Parallels 5. I ran a Google search, and found a site that explained step by step how to get it running on Parallels 5. Click Here to visit the tutorial.

Finally here is a picture of me running Chromium OS in Parallels 5.

Click on image for larger size
Click on image for larger size

Latest Broadcom 4321AG Vista Drivers

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A friend of mine was having connection problems with the Broadcom 4321ag wireless card in his HP DV 9000. It would always cut out and could never connect. I found that searching google always yielded older drivers than the ones already installed. So I searched the HP website and found the latest version 5. 30.20.0 Dated August 6th 2009. For now it is working much better. I threw this post together quickly because Google didn’t have a solution, and well now it might!

Update: I have now linked this to the Revision history page, which should always display the latest version as the one I posted is clearly out of date!

You can download the drivers at this page

Infolinks in-text advertising Review

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So I have been using infolinks for one month and one day. The way I found out about this in-text advertising website was actually from my google adsense ads. I found an ad that said get paid better than adsense. So I copied the code into my address bar and figured out the website without clicking on the link (Clicking on your own ads is Against Google TOS). I signed up and was approved within a day or two. It was also easy to incorporate into my wordpress blog using HeHeHunter’s Infolinks WordPress Plugin. So far so good. For the first couple of days I made on average a little more than google adsense. However lately after my rework of my website I have found that I am making more from adsense.

I have a couple of thoughts on how infolinks could improve their ads, which in return will increase revenue for all infolinks publishers. First of all since google adsense is the most commonly known online advertising platform, it is also the most blocked ads (adblock, etc). So with that said users on my site get to see infolinks more than adsense. Which means adsense is earning me more money relatively speaking. What I believe is behind this is the generic look to their ads. Which makes me feel that it’s useless to click on these ads (see picture below). Most of the time that I have encountered infolinks ads they point to info.com which I think should be improved. Scratch that out, now its starting to be very different and various different ads are showing yay! With that said I can not complain much for a company that is paying me. I hope this review helps you if you are deciding to use infolinks in conjunction with adsense(Which is not against Google TOS), and helps infolinks figure out how to improve their ads, both to increase their own revenue as well as publishers. PS. I have not made enough money from infolinks to receive payments yet. Finally you can easily contact infolinks if you have questions or comments, as they have been prompt with me.

This is what I think is too generic about infolinks
This is what I think is too generic about infolinks

Google pays me…

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While browsing the interwebs today, I came across this ad that said google pays me $137 an hour. That’s great I’m really happy for the guy, but on the right side it says a monthly income of $5,000 dollars? Wouldn’t you at least do the math before posting one of those get rich quick ads? Google doesn’t pay per hour and even if that is his average there is around 720 hours in a month, so basically this is a fail! The funny part is that later on, I found another ad by him that said $150 an hour. So I guess his strategy is throw out random numbers and hope it works. I found this too funny so I had to post.

Google pays him 137 an hour WOW!

I thought they payed him $137

Seo Tips for WordPress

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So in the last couple of weeks, I took the decision to improve my site drastically. By doing so I have started to attract more visitors to my blog and increase traffic, Google Adsense revenue, and most important the quality of my posts.

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