Which of the three services do you like (you can like all three) and for what purposes are you using them?

Do you buy into what this article stated – Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded | Singularity Hub

Vote here or just leave a comment with your thoughts if you like all 3 services equally or have no real preference at this time:

Technically Speaking, how many think that the “awesome” Facebook announcement was lame? (leave a comment also if you want to answer that one!)

Related articles

• Google should just buy Twitter already. At any price. (agrawals.org)
• Google Realtime Search (wir-sprechen-online.com)
• What’s the Deal with Google+? (directcontact.ca)
• Google’s Clinton Says Google + Great Success Already (seroundtable.com)
• Google Plus for Business (insideview.ie)

This is going to be a quick and ez post about the experiences I went through looking into and researching how to create an Android or iPhone app. More than likely the first, since my site wouldn’t make it past the Apple censor nazi’s, but with Android’s growth exploding in the market, who’s to say if going iPhone first is the best way to reach total market penetration.

The nice thing I found out, and here is a tip for you Android or iPhone app developers, is that there are currently many dev’s out there who are ahead of the game. Instead of just creating the next best app, they are creating the next best place for normal people to create their Android or iPhone app! Better (biz) plan if there ever was one.

Why take job after job, and make “x amount” of money only to compete against other developers who could do it faster? Why not put out a tool and open it up for anyone with a RSS feed to create an app? Much better business, and the competition is small right now in this field. If you are a developer who has been pondering the best way to leverage the app playing field, this may be the one.

In my research, I did ping a few developers that I know and all of them said similar advice. Use the current RSS feed you have and there shouldn’t be a need to have someone write an API at this point. RSS to Android or RSS to iPhone was what I used to search. Here is what I came up with.

1. iSites

This place was already covered on Mashable and other blogs. It’s a nice place and it will create a proper app for you. It does however cost $$$ to do so. Right out of the box. If you have the traffic, and you know you can cover the costs, go this route. I’m sure they have tons of customers. For those that don’t have the traffic or just want a mobile app that they can experiment with, read on.

UPDATE3: See the comment thread between iSites support and this blogger. 1 month FREE, so this might be a viable option even for those not sure on spending the $$$.

2. Majoobi

This is where I created a really quick app for TurboWhiteTrash.

You can read about it here, and load the app here. The nice thing is for a site with not so much traffic like TWT, you can try it for free up to ~25k pageviews I believe. Is it a real app like  you see? Not really, but it does give you a mobile presence and you can gauge whether you need to go to the above company and create the proper app for release, or find a dev that can help you out.

UPDATE: From the comment left below: Actually you can install Majoobi apps on the device and it will look native, what you do is click on the “+” button in Safari (found at the bottom of the screen), click on “Add to home screen” and that will install it on the desktop. What’s cool about this is that you won’t see the Safari browser url or any other panels, the whole thing behaves as a native app :)

UPDATE 2: The fine support crew at Majoobi has sent over a couple of links on how to drop the app to an Android device. For the not so savvy, these 2 links are a must read. Now you can have a native appearing app on your Android device.

Technically Speaking, while maybe not the best solutions, unless you are a crack shot developer who can write an API or even use RSS to create a quick app for Android or iPhone – chances are you will be investigating one or both of the above solutions soon for your mobile app presence.

Related articles

• Wanna Make Money With iPhone Apps? (dailyblogtips.com)
• App Watch: Learn To Salute With New iPhone App (blogs.wsj.com)
• Johnny Walker’s iPhone App Is Sadly BYO Whisky… (gizmodo.com.au)
• World’s Biggest Gay Dating Website Launches App: Gaydar iPhone App Unveiled (prweb.com)
• Free iPhone App Wirelessly Syncs Photos to Computer (wired.com)

These are actual phrases that have been thrown my way (or overheard – OH) over the past few years working in the startup world. I’m sure the entrepreneur out there that is not considering themselves a startup will also relate. If you have other phrases or thoughts that have been sent your way because you are in a startup or you are an entrepreneur, be sure to contribute them by leaving a comment.

1. Can I pick your brain?

This has to be the #1 item stated once people know who you are and what you do. Even strangers will all of sudden go into this pick your brain mode. A variation of this question is of course, “Let me ask you something… ” or “What is your opinion of… ”

Now sometimes there is a right time to ask this question, or inquire within, but when the whole phrase is stated by someone just looking for freebie tips, that is the point where the person becomes a big turn off. That is where you get their jist of just wanting that free information and walking away from you.

This phrase if used correctly can be a great way to exchange ideas, but more often than not, it’s just an excuse for someone to get a free insider view to the track you are on. I think a better phrase would be something to the effect of “I want your thoughts on this, but in exchange, I’ll contribute my true ideas on this so we can have a meaningful discussion of this.”

2. You mean it’s not FREE?

Freemium is a model or term for the startup business that has come to the surface in the past few years. It’s a great model to use to drive customers to your product. Eventually, if you are a funded startup, you must somehow turn a profit.

Freemium if used correctly can drive a huge userbase, but the next trick is rather a wall to hurdle for some companies, is how to make a profit in order to pay back the investors, or just be sustainable. Without reaching over that hurdle, startups and entrepreneurs just end up another kill shot at the end of the day.

Having FREE products or trials is a great way to reach your end goal. The end user must understand that there will be either one or two ways the company will start to make money. They will either charge you for an enhanced service of the free product you are use to using, or if it’s a traffic based company, they will monetize with advertising – which as stated yesterday in my data post, is going to still drive oodles of money to a traffic based company.

Either way, the internet is not a free-way for startups. Free-way as in, everything can remain free forever. It’s just not something that works in the long scope of company. For a company to survive, they must eventually turn a profit. It’s really common sense, but there are end users that gripe and leave in droves sometime when a company turns on the “We need to make money to keep the lights on” switch.

3. This is important, and this is important, and we need this!

Confused a bit? If you are a startup person you know exactly what that is. That is what is commonly known as user feature creep. Without a good product manager in charge of your service offering, you can end up with serious feature creep. That means your user base loves your product, and offers so many good ideas that only a few can be implemented in order for your product to stay on track.

While those outside of the startup world are always smarter, or they think they are, inside the entrepreneur and startup world you know that only a certain number of ideas are really great. And of those great ideas, only the grand ones make the product road map. To have it any other way means that all the interesting startups that have survived since ’06 would have never gotten out of the gate to mainstream acceptance.

I personally would love to see the ideas floating Facebook, Twitter, YouTube way in the earlier days. Same goes for some of the hot startups of today such as Quora, Foursquare, and bit.ly.

Technically Speaking, nevermind on that last company – I see those ideas float in daily. I’m glad I’m not the product road map person there.

Related articles

• Why is no one talking about the difficulty of hiring for startups in India? (swaroopch.com)
• The Best Startups Are Founded By Entrepreneurs Who Built The Product Themselves (businessinsider.com)
• Why I Moved Backupify To Boston (xconomy.com)
• Top 5 Qualities to Look for in Startup Job Candidates (mashable.com)
• Who will be The World’s Smartest Start-up? (ragtag.wordpress.com)

While many people talk about data being gold, there are those that advocate the privacy of it, and there are more that want to eliminate it entirely. The reason of course is that data is an online commodity that is meant to be bought and sold, and the most valuable data is the type that is associated to you, the casual browser and reader of other people’s data.

Rather, the stories you read online, the news you consume, the sports you ingest all lead the data buyers to want more. Want more of your data to dissect and ingest to present you with the best possible user experience.

1. Advertising

Data is very important to advertising. Without the data on you, the users, there would be no other reason for ads to be online. The internet would have died years ago, and what about the technological revolution we are currently living in? Without ads, advertising, and targeting of data, there would be none of it.

Many people hate advertising, advertisers, companies that are associated with anything to do with ads. Without it, none of this would be possible. The internet as we know it would not have evolved if there was no way that the advertisers could have benefited from running ads online.

The ad game has changed and evolved at a rapid pace over the last few years into a more exchange oriented environment. Companies such as AdMeld, AdTech, and even OpenX all operate on an exchange model over the traditional old school ad server – client/end user publisher advertising model.

2. Targeting

You need data to target. Plain and simple. There are some companies that get in trouble with it as they go beyond the non-invasive type of data or non Personally Identifiable Information (PII) type, into the more invasion of your privacy type – the type that tells the above advertising people that you are looking for a new car. And not only a new car, but the specific color, model, and maybe even the local dealership you want to make that purchase at.

This type of data is of course why data has become an online commodity. Bought and sold. Traded like the stock market. Ever wonder how they came up with the term ad exchange? With the ad industry being a billion dollar a year industry, you can bet your last cookie today that they will target you.

Privacy gurus will forever fight on about this invasion, but in the end will probably lose the battle since data is such a huge commodity. Data being a billion dollar a year business that is already is, it won’t be shut down completely.

3. Startups

How many startup companies rely on it? Do I need to even go there? Without data, many startup companies wouldn’t even exist. Most would be twiddling their thumbs working for some cubicle farm. I’m mainly referring to the programmers and thinkers outside the box type of people. The founders of these companies wouldn’t be doing what they are doing if it wasn’t for the data. They may be startup founders, but without the data aspect, what would the actually start-up?

These are the people that came up with companies like Bit.ly, Compete, Lookery, Perrformable, Shareaholic, BlueKai, Exelate, etc.. These companies all rely(ied) on the data that was out there. Data that could easily be manipulated into a sale-able item. People want to buy it.

Who are these people? Well the companies in #1 and #2 above come to mind. Even newer startups that don’t have a model based on data now realize that data is the way to go. Companies such as Twitter, YouTube, and even Facebook know the value of data even though data was never their first goal.

Technically Speaking, those 3 items alone will continue to drive the data business forward. It’s big business, and business is very good for those that are known as the data brokers.

Related articles

• The battle for online privacy (bigbrotherwatch.org.uk)
• Online Behavior Tracking and Privacy: 7 Worst Case Scenarios (mashable.com)
• Online behavior tracking and privacy: 7 worst-case scenarios (cnn.com)
• Online Privacy: 7 Worst-Case Scenarios (abcnews.go.com)
• The UK needs to change its cookie policies (econsultancy.com)

Someone needs to order one of these if you have ~$100 to burn.

FEATURES

• Google Android™ Operating System
• LCD color touch-screen 7-inches
• Full Internet browsing capability
• Experience YouTube at your fingertips
• Easy access to emails
• Download and play games
• Included digital music, video player and digital picture viewer
• Digital picture frame
• e-Book reader
• Download and install custom Google Android™ Applications

SPECIFICATIONS

• CPU: ARM9(VM8505+)
• Memory – RAM: 256MB DDR
• Memory – Flash: Built-in Flash
• Display – Touch Panel: 7-inch TFT LCD
• Display: Resolution 800 X 480 Pixels
• WIFI: 802.11b/g
• Input/Output – Touch Panel: Resistive type touch panel
• Input/Output – Speaker: Built-in loud speakers
• Input/Output – SD/MMC: T-Flash card slot
• Input/Output – Network/USB: Dongle for RJ-45 network and USB connection
• Buttons/Switches: Power On/Off, Volume adjustment
• Battery: Built-in Li-Polymer battery
• Charger – Input: AC 100-240V, 0.5A
• Charger – Output: 9V, 1500MA

INCLUDED

• Tablet device with 7-inch color touch screen
• Stylus
• AC Adapter
• Network/USB dongle
• User’s manual

Technically Speaking, this reminds me of the Augen Gentouch78 that was never available at Kmart this past summer. At least Walgreens had the sense to put it online as a mail order only item.

Related articles

• Walgreens Is Selling A Maylong 7″ Android Powered Tablet For $99.99 (lockergnome.com)
• Walgreens Selling $100 Android Tablet (informationweek.com)
• Walgreen offers $99 Android-powered 7-inch tablet (geek.com)
• Walgreen’s now selling $99 Android tablet (the-digital-reader.com)
• A $99 Android tablet? This has to be too good to be true [TNW Mobile] (thenextweb.com)
• This $99 Android Tablet Is What The CrunchPad Was Supposed To Be All Along (GOOG, AAPL) (businessinsider.com)
• Walgreens Launches Cheap Tablet (sophisticatedfinance.typepad.com)

More good stuff from Shoutmeloud – 5 Best In-Text Advertising Program for Bloggers:

Shoutmeloud has covered lots of tips to make money through advertisements. It doesn’t make much difference that it is banner Ads or ln-text Ads, you just need to follow few tips and tricks to earn through advertisements. When it comes to In-text Ads, I prefer to blend it properly with blog layout in order to make it a lucrative method to earn a good amount.

Credit – Flickr

There are many options available for ln-text Ads, but I won’t suggest you to give hit and trial method for ln-text Ads. You can find few options provided by good Advertisers like Infolinks , Chitika , Bidadvertisers which I covered in my earlier post about Alternatives to Google Adsense.

Apart from above In- text advertisers, I handpicked few more ln-text Advertisers which gave good results to me and my fellow bloggers. Here is the list of 5 In-Text Advertisers for your blog:

Vibrant

Vibrant is a popular advertiser with more than 3000 partners, thus the chances of relevant advertisements automatically increase. I used Vibrant and I was pretty happy with it. Vibrant Ads are easy to blend with your blog content and increase the chances of more clicks.

Built In Text

Builtintext is another In-text advertiser which will help you to increase your CTR. It gives you 30% Ad Revenue Sharing. The best part about built in-text is that you can choose from 15 Ads format according to your blog layout. Bloggers who prefer to avoid irritating ads on their blog, Built in-text is a good option for them.

Triggit

Triggit is more than just an In-text Advertisement. Apart from In-text advertisements, it also allows you to add YouTube videos and Flickr pictures easily. It provides you the full transparency that is you can see the real time stats and reports on Triggit.

BeContext

BeContext provides you keywords targeted ads to attract your visitors and geographically target your visitors by country, city or timezone. If you are aware of Clicksor, then you will love to try out BeContext as it is one of the top services by Clicksor.

Also Read:

• A Guide by Newbie to Make Money Online for Newbie
• 5 Ways to Make Money Online

Make Money Online with Metcafe Videos

Technically Speaking, you must read more …

More good blogs found on this post here, and now the 3 Secrets to Succeeding Online with Your Business:

So how do you figure out what your highest pay-off activities are? Start by making a list of your strengths and weaknesses.

Now look at your strengths. Out of those skills, what brings you the most money in the shortest amount of time possible? What you might want to do is make a list of activities and evaluate how much money you make versus time spent, then you’ll have a better idea what bring you the biggest bang for the least amount of time.

2. They DO their highest pay-off activities. Ah, yes. It’s not enough to actually know them, you need to actually DO them. And, better yet, you should organize your day around your highest-payoff activities. That way, you know you’re spending as much time as possible on your highest pay-off activities.

3. They delegate out or delete their weaknesses. Without a doubt, the successful entrepreneurs I know spend little to no time trying to “strengthen weaknesses.” What they typically spend their time doing is strengthening their strengths and outsourcing (or just plain dumping) their weaknesses.

Why do they do that? Because they make more money when they spend most of their time doing their highest pay-off activities. And they can’t spend their time doing their highest pay-off activities if they’re busy strengthening their weakness or doing low pay-off activities. We all only have 24 hours a day, so you need to know how best to use that time so you can become the biggest success possible.

Technically Speaking, you should always read more …

Another very popular post from back in April:

Maybe it’s me, but the last time I looked 50 was not equal to 40!

	PICTURE	RANK	NAME	WEBSITE NAME	AGE	NETWORTH
		1	Mark Zuckerberg	Facebook	23	$700 Million
		2	Andrew Gower	Runescape	28	$650 Million
		3	Chad Hurley	Youtube	30	$300 Million
		4	Blake Ross and David Hyatt	Mozilla	22	$120 Million
		5	Andrew Michael	Fast Hosts	29	$110 Million
		6	Angelo Sotira	Deviant ART	26	$75 Million
		7	John Vechey	PopCap Games	28	$60 Million
		8	Alexander Levin	Image Shack	23	$56 Million
		9	Jake Nickell	Threadless	28	$50 Million
		10	Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith	Tagged	28	$45 Million
		11	Sean Belnick	Biz Chair	20	$42 Million
		12	Matt Mullenweg	WordPress	23	$40 Million
		13	Kevin Rose	Digg	30	$31 Million
		14	Aodhan Cullen	Stat Counter	24	$25 Million
		15	Markus Frind	Plenty Of Fish	29	$23 Million
		16	Robert Small	MiniClips	24	$23 Million
		17	Ryan Block	Engadget	25	$20 Million
		18	Matt Mickiewicz	Sitepoint	24	$18 Million
		19	Tom Fulp	Newgrounds	29	$15 Million
		20	Rishi Kacker and Matt Pauker	Voltage	24	$12 Million
		21	Catherine and David Cook	My Year Book	17&19	$10 Million
		22	Fredrik Neij	The Pirate Bay	28	$10 Million
		23	DAVID LEVICH	Iced Out Gear	25	$10 Million
		24	Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons	Yelp	30 & 29	$10 Million
		25	David Hauser & Siamak Taghaddos	GotvMail	24	$8 Million
		26	Rand Fishkin	SEOmoz	29	$6.5 Million
		27	Jermaine Griggs	Hear and Play	23	$5 Million
		28	Jay Westerdal	Domain Tools	29	$5 Million
		29	Ashley Qualls	What Ever Life	17	$4 Million
		30	Ben Way	Rain Makers	27	$4 Million
		31	Pete Cashmore	Mashable	30	$3.8 Million
		32	Seth Sternberg, Sandy Jen, and Elaine Wherry	Meebo	30,29 and 27	$3.5 Million
		33	Cameron Johnson	Millionaires Secrets	22	$3.2 Million
		34	Rob Benwell	Blogging to the Bank	23	$3 Million
		35	Alex Tew	Million Dollar Homepage	22	$3 Million
		36	Mario Lavandeira	Perez Hilton	29	$3 Million
		37	Lauris Liberts	Frype	25	$2 Million
		38	Neil Patel	ACS	22	$1.8 Million
		39	Zhang Rui	Mosh	28	$1.1 Million
		40	Matt Wegrzyn	Bodis	19	$1 Million

Technically Speaking, 40 is still not equal to 50!

Technically Speaking, it’s not only summer time, but also a Saturday!

Found this good article on boosting your YouTube video to viral status:

YouTube can be an absolute goldmine for tapping into viral traffic. It is the third most popular website online, consistently featured in the media for its ability to expose hidden talent (from teen hit star Justin Bieber to ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’) and create at-home businesses for people. These days, video marketing should be included in any internet marketing campaign; if done correctly, it can produce a huge viral following. In this article I am going to discuss a strategy which made two videos of mine viral within days.

I recall the first time I tried video marketing to produce traffic for a website. My client and I had filmed ten quality videos for her niche. I uploaded them to YouTube and filled them with great descriptions and keywords. Thinking this was all I needed, I then left them to sit and accumulate all that traffic. A couple of months later I checked in on their progress and to my surprise, the videos had barely been visited at all. It was as if they had been buried beneath the multifaceted wealth of content held inside YouTube. Making money for her website through YouTube had failed, but I wasn’t ready to give up just yet. We filmed another 2 videos. I then contacted two well-known and successful blogs in our niche and recommended they use the videos for an article we wrote to accompany the videos.

What I noticed in the weeks after posting the videos to the external websites was a huge leap in traffic, video search results and video results through YouTube. The videos had gone viral and we were receiving a fair amount of traffic back to our website. It has now been two years and to this day, those videos still send a flood of visitors to my client’s website.

What we can take from this story as internet marketers is that there is a lot more to generating a boost in traffic through YouTube for our internet marketing businesses. In order to succeed over YouTube in taking your new video viral you need to have established methods of distribution on external and related websites. What this does is gives the video a traffic boost early while at the same time boosting the backlinks to the video. Google and YouTube take both of these factors into account when ranking your video so the more reason you can give them to rank you higher the better.

Technically Speaking, there is always time to read more …

Maybe it’s me, but the last time I looked 50 was not equal to 40!

	PICTURE	RANK	NAME	WEBSITE NAME	AGE	NETWORTH
		1	Mark Zuckerberg	Facebook	23	$700 Million
		2	Andrew Gower	Runescape	28	$650 Million
		3	Chad Hurley	Youtube	30	$300 Million
		4	Blake Ross and David Hyatt	Mozilla	22	$120 Million
		5	Andrew Michael	Fast Hosts	29	$110 Million
		6	Angelo Sotira	Deviant ART	26	$75 Million
		7	John Vechey	PopCap Games	28	$60 Million
		8	Alexander Levin	Image Shack	23	$56 Million
		9	Jake Nickell	Threadless	28	$50 Million
		10	Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith	Tagged	28	$45 Million
		11	Sean Belnick	Biz Chair	20	$42 Million
		12	Matt Mullenweg	WordPress	23	$40 Million
		13	Kevin Rose	Digg	30	$31 Million
		14	Aodhan Cullen	Stat Counter	24	$25 Million
		15	Markus Frind	Plenty Of Fish	29	$23 Million
		16	Robert Small	MiniClips	24	$23 Million
		17	Ryan Block	Engadget	25	$20 Million
		18	Matt Mickiewicz	Sitepoint	24	$18 Million
		19	Tom Fulp	Newgrounds	29	$15 Million
		20	Rishi Kacker and Matt Pauker	Voltage	24	$12 Million
		21	Catherine and David Cook	My Year Book	17&19	$10 Million
		22	Fredrik Neij	The Pirate Bay	28	$10 Million
		23	DAVID LEVICH	Iced Out Gear	25	$10 Million
		24	Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons	Yelp	30 & 29	$10 Million
		25	David Hauser & Siamak Taghaddos	GotvMail	24	$8 Million
		26	Rand Fishkin	SEOmoz	29	$6.5 Million
		27	Jermaine Griggs	Hear and Play	23	$5 Million
		28	Jay Westerdal	Domain Tools	29	$5 Million
		29	Ashley Qualls	What Ever Life	17	$4 Million
		30	Ben Way	Rain Makers	27	$4 Million
		31	Pete Cashmore	Mashable	30	$3.8 Million
		32	Seth Sternberg, Sandy Jen, and Elaine Wherry	Meebo	30,29 and 27	$3.5 Million
		33	Cameron Johnson	Millionaires Secrets	22	$3.2 Million
		34	Rob Benwell	Blogging to the Bank	23	$3 Million
		35	Alex Tew	Million Dollar Homepage	22	$3 Million
		36	Mario Lavandeira	Perez Hilton	29	$3 Million
		37	Lauris Liberts	Frype	25	$2 Million
		38	Neil Patel	ACS	22	$1.8 Million
		39	Zhang Rui	Mosh	28	$1.1 Million
		40	Matt Wegrzyn	Bodis	19	$1 Million

Technically Speaking, 40 is still not equal to 50!

THRU YOU is a very interesting mix/mashup of YouTube videos.

Check out the first song below, and if you click on #8 which is Credits (for each song) – you can see where the original tracks/videos came from.

Technically Speaking, this is interesting, at least to me.

As we all know, Google is everywhere. There is really no big surprise by this article about Google showing up in news searches now. Not a big deal if you ask me. Soon enough, Google might morph into twitter as many reports are stating. For full disclosure, yes I wrote that.

One thing I did forget to mention in the above SiliconANGLE post is that Google, while just firing up their Google twitter yesterday, has other Google properties already on twitter. So while the “real” Google is now on twitter, Google properties has been around and have already enjoyed the benefit of twitter’s real life conversation search. There was really no need for people to point this out. It is quite obvious that twitter’s benefit’s are now coming to light.

Technically Speaking, since I wrote that above post earlier this morning, the followers of the Google account have jumped another 4,000! I wonder if these people are expecting a really cool announcement or something? Only time will tell, and what I really wonder is when twitter will have to take a piss in the cup – ie. – Twitter is on steroids – follow along and you’ll understand my sense of humor!