Leaning with Intent

Archive for the ‘Web’ Category

Working on your blog is not always easy, so it is important to work on it in an efficient way. This will ensure that it will take you less time to write an article, and that the quality of the article will be higher. There are a couple of things that you can do to improve blog productivity:

• Have a list of URLs that you can visit for ideas of topics to write about. Every writer needs some inspiration. Who knows, you might get inspired and write your best article after finding some interesting topic to write about.
• Research the topic you are interested in more carefully. You may want to search for related posts about it on other blogs. Write only about topics you have knowledge about. Posts that contain a lot of useful information and reflect the knowledge of the writer are going to become popular.
• Use the best browsers. For example, your browser should allow tabbing. No doubt that Firefox and Opera are currently one the best browsers, but even IE has some useful features, although probably not as many.
• Store ideas for articles that you will want to write about in the future. There is nothing worse than running out of ideas.

Remember, whatever you do, make sure you enjoy it as your readers will be able to feel your enthusiasm or lack thereof.

The problem with working in an office is that you might not always be busy. And when a worker is not busy, he might be tempted to start looking for something to do, like surfing the Web, or writing emails. There are many people who just surf the Internet for fun during work, or use their email for other purposes then strictly work. According to the study conducted by AMA (American Management Association) among three hundred companies US companies more than a quarter of employees were fired because of misusing email, and every third worker has been let go for not using the Internet properly at work. Whereas accessing pornographic sites during working hours was the main reason for being fired for misusing the Internet, simply surfing the Web was the reason one third of the employees lost their employment. Office workers are also being downsized for the misuses of emails, mostly because of the inappropriate language used in correspondence. Twenty five percent of bosses said that they fired their staff because of excessive personal use of email.

I think that it is quite apparent that a worker should not access pornographic websites, or other sites considered to be offensive. When it comes to emails avoiding using vulgar language is another thing that employees should remember about. Workers should also realize that in order to have everything under control many companies monitor their Internet connections, and as a matter of fact, it has been said that 66% of companies monitor their Internet connections. In many cases companies do not even have to notify employees that their activity at the computer is monitored. Every employee should remember that and try to represent their company in the best way possible. Employees should also try to use their time effectively because they are usually paid on a per hour basis. Of course, employees also deserve privacy to some degree, so monitoring Internet connections may not be the best way to motivate employees to work more efficiently.

We often like to read news in order to stay informed about the most important events. Generally, we simply want to know what is going on in the world. Where are many ways we can have access to news, such as through a newspaper, magazine, TV, or even the Internet. Actually, reading news on the Internet is very popular these days. Not only you can read news online, but you can personalize it, so that you will stay informed about the things you really care about. To get started visit news.google.com and click “Personalize this page”. You can delete sections, increase or decrease the number of stories shown in each section, or even add different categories. This is a great way to read news, as you will feel that the news site is really optimized for you to have the best experience.

Internet Explorer enables you to add search providers and even switch them easily. This feature is especially useful, if you want to search for a specific item, for example a book, through your favorite search engine. The good thing is that you do not have to be limited to one search engine, as it is natural to have at least few search engines, which you might want to use. It is also a good idea to set one of your search engines as a starting page. This way, every time you open your browser, your favorite search engine will appear and you are ready to use it. To get started you should locate the Instant Search Box at the top right. It should have the name of the selected search engine written inside the box. Next, click on the arrow to the right of the magnifying glass and choose “Find More Providers”. Now you can add search providers and select the one you had in mind. From now on, you can change the search provider whenever you wish without any problems. Google is probably a good choice when it comes to search engines, but there are also other overlooked search engines.

Even if you have a small niche blog, you can have the ability to influence your niche. Influencing others is one of the things that each person wants to do. We want others to respect us, and know that what we said or did, influenced their way of thinking about many different things. Naturally, if you want to influence other blogs, their authors, as well as other readers, you have to put some work into it. Here are some of my thoughts about how you can influence other people by having a blog of your own:

Apart from the points that I gave, try to get involved whenever there is something interesting happening. This includes forums, top lists, and other places.

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.

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.

All of us value our privacy, but the Internet made it rather difficult to hide confidential information. Did you know that based on your browser history it is possible to estimate your gender? That is because each website you visit has a specific male-female ratio, thus knowing that ratio and the browsing history, you can say with high probability what gender an Internet surfer is. You can check if the script will guess what your gender you are by visiting this link:

http://www.mikeonads.com/2008/07/13/using-your-browser-url-history-estimate-gender/

This is a very fun script, but keep in mind that the results will be the most accurate if you do not share your computer with anyone. I also recommend accessing the script with Firefox, unless you are really patient.

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.