Leaning with Intent

Archive for the ‘Web’ Category

It seems that there is a very large group of Internet users who are downloading music without paying for it. They are not only downloading a few mp3 files, but around half of them are claiming that they are actually copying whole hard drives full of music. On average, it is reported that people download approximately 50 tracks without paying for them. Is there any way to force people to pay for music? It is hard to say, but I am quite sure that the best way to do it is to offer the consumers what they want. Why not give them access to the whole library of music for, let us say, 10 dollars per month, or allow them to download 50 tracks per month for some reasonable fee? There are many ways to do so. In the United States the legal system becomes more hostile against those who download music that is copyrighted. In fact, it becomes more and more difficult for people in the US to download any music at all, as they might be afraid of the consequences. If this is the case, they are left with the option of purchasing music, which they might not be able to afford. Why not offer them a more reasonable price? Why not sell music at a lower price? This solution that would allow people to buy more CDs at a reasonable price and would probably reduce music piracy.

Benefiting from various technological advancements can give a lot of satisfaction. However, what we need to remember is that being obsessed with some aspects of technology is not always good. I am talking about excessive email checking. It is quite possible that in the future there will be meetings of people called “email checkers anonymous”. Let us discuss our this topic for a while. First of all, there are people who are addicted to checking email so often that it ruins their personal life and well-being. Very often the problem is that instead of spending quality time with their family, people often work too much. However, in case of excessively checking emails, you are not even going to get paid by anybody. One might say that it does not take that much time to read emails. However, you have to remember, that checking email is often associated with not only reading the message, but also responding or taking other actions. There is also no point checking email if you know that it might contain a message about some potentials problems at work, which you cannot solve until next Monday anyway. If you are tempted to check your email too often, talk to somebody about it. Ask this person to help you in some way.

Would you like to hear some email tips? You have probably seen BCC before many times, and were wondering what this abbreviation stands for. By using BCC, you can send your email to many people without them knowing who the other recipients are. Whereas CC stands for Carbon Copy, BCC is a abbreviation for Blind Carbon Copy. As using CC enables other people to see who else received a message, there are many advantages of using BCC over CC:

Overall, Blind Carbon Copy ensures privacy of your recipients, so in many situations this will be the biggest advantage of using it.

Today I would like to write some words regarding the drop shipping technique on eBay. Let me tell those not familiar with the subject that drop shipping is a technique in which the seller does not keep goods in stock, but instead transfers customer orders to wholesalers who ship the goods to the customer. Anyway, after researching drop shipping, I found that there are many scammers out there, or at least people that are using ethically questionable tactics. For example, there is a review site that rates drop shippers and the website is actually owned by the company that is rated as the best drop shipper. Of course, there are also some legitimate drop shippers. From what I have researched the easiest way to get a list of real drop shippers that would be interested in selling their items to a small owned business is to use the services of companies like WorldWideBrands. I would also want to list a few drop shippers that seem to have good reputation. The reason I want to do this is that while WorldWideBrands may be the easiest way to obtain a list of drop shippers, they charge around $250 for their services. So here is a list of drop shippers where you do not pay any account set-up fees:

moteng.com – More than 20,000 Sport & Camping & Name brand items
Wynit.com – More than 5000 name brand electronics
WholesaleDiscoveries.com – 1000′s of General Merchandise Items
Jewelrysprite.com – More than 5000 pieces Fine Jewelry
Petra.com – Electronic Accessories
TrademarkPoker.com – Poker Wholesaler/Dropshipper

Please note that usually legitimate drop shippers require the customer to provide a Federal Tax ID.

If you like writing and taking part in discussions, you can earn some money by posting on forums. Some time ago I was visiting MyLot in order to check out the discussion forums and to post on them. There is a variety of subjects on which you can express your opinion. For the first post I have written there, I got paid 2 cents, whereas the person that referred me to the website earned 1 cent. The length of your posts is going to affect the amount of money you are going to be paid per post. You have to understand that you are not going to earn a fortune there, but this is an opportunity for people who are eager to discuss different topics with others, while getting paid a bit. I often visit many different types forums where people discuss various topics. In many of them, the authors of posts write very long messages, as they have plenty to share with others. The truth is that they are not going to be paid for it. If they like to write so much, would it not be a good idea for them to go to MyLot where they can do what they like and additionally get paid for it? Being rewarded for what they are doing would surely motivate them.

Duplicate content is something that every serious webmaster is trying to avoid. Basically, duplicate content means that some specific content, like an article, exists in a few locations on the Internet. Search engines often penalize websites for having duplicate content, as usually duplicate content provides a smaller value for Internet users. On the other hand, original content is something considered to be very valuable.

However, it seems that detecting duplicate content not always works as well as it should. From time to time, bloggers report that articles on their site has been marked as duplicate content, because scraper websites have copied those articles to their own domains. If the duplicate content filter was working correctly, then the scraper sites would be marked as sites with duplicate content, not the opposite. Generally speaking, scrapper sites are automated websites that pull content from other websites using web scraping. Most of those sites are made solely for Google AdSense. It is important to understand that many of them violate copyright law, as they do not even give credit to the original author. The webmasters of such sites do not put any work into writing articles, yet they might be listed quite high in search engine results.

Some speculate that many search engines fail to realize on which site the content was posted in the first place. The websites that copy/paste content from other sites, which are indexed earlier, might be actually treated as legit sites. While it is alarming, let us hope that the major search engines will work on those content filters, as we do not want our content copied/pasted to other websites. I hope that this article reminded all of us that original content is something we should strive for, and that copying copy/pasting content from other websites should be avoided at all cost.

Most bloggers want to post new articles on their blog on a regular basis. Did a few days already pass since your last post, and you feel obliged to write something new? Do not worry, as there are a lot of things to write about, and all you have to do is stay focused. Here is some advice that may help you:

A lot of bloggers might be interested in trying to earn some money online. There is nothing wrong with that, however, it is important to avoid scams. In this article I am going to write how specifically you can check if a particular website is a scam. Great tools for this are forums that are created for this sole purpose. The website that I use the most is scam.com. This forum has almost two dozen different scam categories like: Internet scams, work from home scams, auction scams, and even religious scams. I was not reading about scams from each category; however, I understand quite well what this site has to offer.

Anyway the best way to use this forum is to take advantage out of the search box. I will give an example of Doba which is an online dropshipper. Simply write Doba in the search box. In this case, this particular query returned a few dozen results. After reading a few posts you will see that although Doba is not completely a scam, and might not be categorized as a scam by some people, the prices are so high that you will not make any profit by selling on eBay, even though Doba encourages it. I would still categorize this company as a scam, since they are selling products that are suppose to make you money, but of course they will not. This is just an example of what you can learn by checking whether a specific company is a scam.

I hope this information will make you better equipped to recognize scams. Feel free to search Google for similar websites, as there are a lot more places where people are discussing specific online businesses. There are many scams on the Internet, but we do not have to be helpless.

Most shows available on the Internet were usually hosted illegally. This is changing now, and an example of this trend is Hulu. Hulu is one of the best ways to watch any of your favorite TV shows that you might have missed. It is indeed very convenient. No one wants to miss their favorite TV shows, and waiting for a rerun is not always as convenient as it might sound to some people. At this point you might be wondering about the price of watching the shows. I am pleased to tell you that the site is free to use. The quality of videos is also excellent and even allows full screen. It appears that Hulu makes profit by integrating ads in their streaming videos. This allows them to host TV shows and movies from NBC, FOX, and other networks and studios. While currently it is only offered to users in United States, I am sure that more sites like this will be created, which will be aimed at an international audience. All I have to say is that I hope that even more websites like this will be created. I think that sites of this type will become very popular in the upcoming years, because Internet users are going to appreciate them.

AutoComplete is a quite useful tool in Firefox that allows your browser to remember what you enter in forms. For example, you may want Firefox to remember your personal details such as name, address and email, so that you do not have to type it each time. This can save you a lot of time, especially if you fill out various forms on a daily basis. This feature is great and I use it a lot, but there are also some potential problems. One of them is when you misspell some important information such as email. Next time when you will try to enter your email, Firefox will suggest this misspelled email. That is why when you make such a mistake it is important to erase the saved form data. You can do that by going to Tools -> Options -> Privacy and clicking Clear Now. Just make sure you indicate what you want to clear. Of course, if you had any other information stored, it will also be deleted. That is why you should only use this feature when you are absolutely certain you want to do it. You should be especially careful if you have been using Firefox for many months, and possibly have a lot of personal details stored. Once you press Clear Now, all of them will be lost. Anyway, I believe that AutoComplete is a very useful feature, and I recommend that you take advantage out of it.