The first PPV campaign spy tool has just hit the market. It’s call PPVSpy. That means that you can spy on the competition, see offers, landing pages, and targets. Whether you like it or not, this was bound to happen and Bevo Media is the first company to do it.
Then we can have a large debate in the comments over whether this is a godsend or the end of PPV marketing as we know it.
If you use social media at all (and I know you do), this new browser coming out called RockMelt is going to blow your face off. It’s based on the Google Chromium architecture, so it should look and feel familiar to Chrome users. I’ll definitely be giving it a try as soon as I can!
I’ve been an avid FireFox user for years. One of the main reasons I like it is the huge variety of Add-ons that are available. Google and Apple have recently added support for extensions to Chrome and Safari, respectively, but FireFox has such a massive head start on them in terms of Add-ons that it will take a while for them to catch up.
I’ve got some Add-ons that I simply can’t live without. I install them on every new computer the second I start using it. There are still thousands out there I want to check out, but these are the ones that I use religiously:
SearchStatus – Automatically displays the PageRank and Alexa ranking for every website that you go to. It can display it as a graphical bar or a text number. I like the number personally. I always like to know how much authority and link juice a site has while I am reading it, and this is the best way. My browser feels naked without it.
Echofon (formerly TwitterFox) – An awesome Twitter client for FireFox. Unlike TweetDeck, it doesn’t take up any additional resources on your computer. I love it.
Yet Another Window Resizer – This one is awesome for PPV guys. It allows you to right-click on any website and resize the browser window to any size you want. 800×600 or 750×550 is a breeze to preview your PPV landers.
LastPass – This is a password manager and auto form filler that makes life easier on the web for marketers. If you are like me, you have about 100 different logins for traffic sources, ppc networks, affiliate networks, analytics, forums, the list goes on. LastPass saves all your passwords and locks them down with a Master Password, and it syncs them between all your different browsers and computers. It also generates strong passwords for you automatically and saves them when you sign up for a new account somewhere.
Xmarks – This completes the syncing package by syncing your bookmarks across multiple computers and browsers. I used to use it for Password sync as well, but I replaced it with LastPass.
Colorzilla – Gives you an eyedropper tool that you can use to get the hexadecimal value of any color you see on the web. Comes in really handy for designing banners & creatives as well as websites.
DT Whois – Adds a button to your browser that gives you one-click access to the Whois info for any website you are viewing. You end up using it a lot more than you think.
There are others that I use every now and then, and there are loads more available that web developers use, but these are the ones that I can’t live without and my FireFox installation isn’t complete until I load them up. What are some of your favorites?
The amount of programs that are available for free these days on the internet is astounding. Software that would have cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars just a few short years ago can be had for nothing, all thanks to the Open Source movement in the tech community. Technically speaking, Open Source means that the source code for the software is freely available to be downloaded, compiled, and edited by anyone. But for non-programmer-types (me included), it means that you can use the software for free!
Here are a few of my favorite Open Source equivalents of popular software packages:
This one is probably the most popular Open Source program out there (except for FireFox of course). I haven’t bought a new version of Microsoft Office for years because of it. The newest version is practically identical to Office in functionality. As is often the case, the only real thing missing is the Templates and Wizards for making pre-formatted documents. However, these can be found online for free as well with a little extra searching.
GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It started out on Linux, but now there are Windows and Mac OS X versions as well. This will be plenty powerful to handle about 90% of your image editing and graphic design needs. For most people, they will never miss the extra bells & whistles that Photoshop has. This is perfect for installing on a laptop or second computer, if not your primary workstation.
Pidgin is another Linux convert that is available for the major platforms. It is a very lightweight and slick little IM program. It supports all of the major chat protocols, and it won’t pester you with annoying ads like the default AIM and Yahoo clients. You can sign into all of your profiles at once and chat across multiple protocols, including Facebook Chat.
This is hands-down my favorite FTP program. I’ve used paid software like WS_FTP in the past, and FileZilla blows it away in speed and reliability. And did I mention it’s free? This is a no-brainer download for anybody that works with websites at all.
If you are reading this blog, there is a good chance that you are already using Mozilla’s FireFox browser (according to my logs, over 60% of my readers use FireFox, and only 9% use Internet Explorer; way to go guys!). But you may not know that Mozilla has another excellent program called ThunderBird that is a totally free replacement for Microsoft Outlook. You do have to download an additional free plugin to get the Calendar functionality, but it is well worth the extra 30 seconds that should take. I personally like ThunderBird even better than Outlook, it is much faster.
So there you have it, a first step into the world of Open Source software. Beyond these, a simple Google search for “Open Source Software” will bring up hundreds more programs to check out. What are your favorites?
URL Shorteners have become ubiquitous in today’s social-media-crazed internet world. Marketers have even begun using services such as bit.ly to cloak their affiliate links and make them more attractive. I recently discovered a new service that is actually directed at marketers, it’s called Linkshiftr. It has a pretty cool set of tools that you can use to experiment with your links, almost like a Prosper202 lite. Here are some of the features:
You can try out Linkshiftr for free by signing up for an account here, but if you want to use the Conversion Tracking feature you will have to sign up for a Pro account for $9.99 per month. The free account has all the other features though, so it’s definitely still useful.
Has anybody else tried this out yet? What are your thoughts?
I won a free iPad at Ad-Tech San Francisco. Since then, I have been playing with it and trying to figure out where it fits into my digital toolbox. I already have an iPhone and a MacBook, so do I really need this thing? The answer is a resounding yes.
Fanboys rejoice, the iPad Pro is here
First and foremost, there is the look and feel. Yes, technically it’s just like a big iPod Touch, but in practice it is far different. You know how in Avatar they have those fully touch-controlled, transparent-monitored computers? It’s like that, only not transparent. But the sheer sensation of technological wonder you feel when surfing the web on an iPad is amazing.
The whole experience is so tactile. The web isn’t just a flat image on a screen anymore. You can touch it, drag it, zoom it, select it, copy it, and paste it, all with a couple flicks of your fingers. At first I wondered why there wasn’t a Facebook app for iPad, then I realized you can actually just use the real Facebook, not a watered-down version. And when you tap the Comment button instead of click it with a mouse, it is so much more satisfying…
The small issue of Flash support notwithstanding, the iPad can and will replace my MacBook as my travel companion. For marketers, you can easily check your stats, pause campaigns, respond to emails, and write blog posts from it (like I’m doing now, the WordPress app is killer!). The instant-on readiness and the battery life will blow away any laptop out there, bar none.
The only thing it’s not good for is doing intensive work such as creating campaigns and graphic design. As tablets become more powerful in the future, I could see them taking over that role as well. The iPhone is slated to get multitasking with the OS 4.0 update, will we see it on the iPad as well?
The bottom line is, when you are on an iPad, you don’t just surf the web, you integrate with it on a much different level. It is so natural to read a book, stream videos and movies, read comics, play games, and network in social media sites that it makes me look for excuses to get away from the computer and use it. As someone who uses the web every single day, the iPad is an amazing new way to experience it, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for tablet computing.
Since it is December and the new FTC rules for bloggers have taken effect, I have been looking for the easiest way to make everything compliant. I know that it’s probably a long shot that the FTC would ever take an interest in my blog, but better safe than sorry, since I found a pretty easy way to do it. Of course you could write your own custom disclosure like Shoemoney does, but who wants to take the 15 minutes to write it…
That’s where CMP.ly comes in. They have created a simple way to add the proper disclosure to your page, similar to the URL shorteners that you know and love. CMP.ly is totally free, and there are 5 levels of their standard disclosure, as well as a custom one that you can create if you want to sign up for an account and take the time to do it. For most people though, the standard ones will work fine. They are:
So it might not be the sexiest thing to spend an hour doing, adding these links to all your blog posts. But it’s not that much work and it’s definitely not worth it to get busted by the FTC in case some young buck in the department is trying to make a name for himself by taking down the evil affiliate bloggers that are polluting the online world for all the rest of us. (/sarcasm)
I am writing this from my iPhone. Consider that for a second. A couple of years ago, this would have seemed like a flight of fancy, but here we are in 2008 and it is happening.
It takes a little getting used to, typing with your thumbs and no tactile resistance. That being said, it grows on you, like a fungus.
That’s all the sage wisdom I can offer tonight. Thanks for stopping bye.
Hot on the heels of the press generated over Internet Explorer 8 and their possible advertisement killing browser come this: Google is officially declaring all out war on Microsoft by releasing their own open-source internet browser. It is called Google Chrome. Google has some very interesting ideas about what makes a browser tick, and you can check them out in this informative and humorous comic. You can download Google Chrome here.
I’m all for new technology, and I will definitely be downloading Google Chrome to check it out. That being said, this type of announcement from the big G also makes me wonder where the future is headed… It would seem that they are moving ever closer to becoming the company that ate the internet.
Jump back five years ago. Internet Explorer had a staggering grip on the browser game, and only tech geeks and open source junkies had ever heard of FireFox. Now, the “little Mozilla that could” is grabbing more and more share from Microsoft by the day. With this in mind, it’s not too far-fetched to believe that Google could do the same thing to Microsoft with Chrome that they did to Yahoo with PageRank back in 2002.
The problem is this: if Google controls the browser, the search environment, the advertising on the majority of networks, and even the content on the search results through properties such as Knol, then who is policing them? If they control the medium, it is not going to be good for anybody. Forget about Microsoft and Yahoo, what about your average consumer?
What if Google could decide what content you can and cannot view on the internet? This become a Net Neutrality issue very quickly when you talk about any one entity controlling the access the masses have to the net. Just ask Comcast how they feel about Net Neutrality after their brush with the FCC.
Competition breeds innovation. This is how Google became the behemoth that it is today. The question is, who will be left to compete with Google?