What is RockMelt and why should you care? It’s a web browser and it has the potential to make your life easier. One of, if not the most challenging issues facing a self-marketer today is finding-the-time-to-get-it-all-done. I mean seriously.
Rockmelt, based on Google’s Chromium architecture, is a slick web browser that allows you to research, share, stay in touch with your readers, get inspired, chat with friends, and more—all at the same time. Add chewing bubble gum to that and you just might take over the word.
Here’s what it can do for you:
Provide a totally customizable and slick browser that is based on Google’s Chromium (so, it’s fast)
Import and organize all your bookmarks, so you can move over seamlessly
Deliver instant news from the feeds of your choice (say Twitter, Facebook, HufPo, MSNBC, industry blogs, etc.)
Reveal Facebook notifications at the top of your browser (so you’ll never miss an important message or opportunity).
Social Reading apps that kick ass
One-click sharing
Chat with friends (from any window).
It could also distract you, so be sure to set boundaries and only follow those leads that will help further your marketing efforts. It’s too easy to get caught up in the increasingly distracting world of the Internet. If needed, you can easily turn off your notifications and browse uninterrupted, because alone time is so often under-rated.
It’s official – Google+ has been opened up to public beta. Go on, go setup your account – you can read this anytime. Login to your Google account, then in the upper left corner click +YourName and it will walk you through the setup process. I was kind of giddy about the process—I’m pretty excited about Google+, it’s just so darn easy to use—it makes sense. The question is, will Google+ outstrip Facebook in popularity?
I’ll be posting as I explore and learn the G+ system. Feel free to share your thoughts with me and join me on Google+ too!
So far, the number one positive feedback I’m hearing is that G+ has excellent privacy features.
My favorite feature is the search functionality. It’s kind of like Twitter meets Facebook in the way that you can do a search for a specific keyword and you’ll get results for anyone who has posted publicly on that topic; then, you can create a Circle using that keyword name and add those interesting Plussers to your Circle. (Users are called Plussers by the way—no longer a “Twit,” now that’s a Plus).
Getting Started:
1. Set up your profile: you can share as little or as much as you feel comfortable sharing. (more…)
Recently Twitter has been adding more features to their core platform. It used to be that in order to share an image you had to use a third party service like twitpic, yfrog, or mobypicture. Now you can share photos inline with the Twitter interface. Similarly, Twitter also announced their own link shortener called t.co. Allegedly more secure and definitely shorter than bit.ly or tinyurl.com. Is it better? Who knows at this point I still like bit.ly for their clean interface and ability to track clicks. But I’m sure going to try it. You should too and tell me what you prefer and why in the comments below.
Holy cow, did Google just add some crazy functionality to Analytics called the Multi-Channel Funnel! In the past if you were running a campaign and had a conversion – the last item clicked was the only one to get any credit. Not the case anymore. Now Analytics can track the entire chain of events that lead up to the sale. I’ll let this handy video explain.
Are you able to accept credit cards payments anywhere, anytime? If not, you need Square, a fabulous little tool that will change your selling power. Here’s the the best part: It’s Free.
As an author and speaker, I know how important it is to be able to sell your books and products at the back of the room—or even out of the back of your car (since we authors always have copies of our book with us). Square is a simple little device that plugs into the headphone jack of most smart phones (check to see if your phone is supported). The account is free, the device is free. You pay as you go, and the money deposits right into your account. Here’s how it works: (more…)
Google is recently conducting an experiment with a new program they are calling +1. It’s similar to Facebook’s Like button, but it appears right there in the search engine and allows you to give that page your vote of approval (a nice way to remember which sites you liked in a previous visit), plus it shows you who else in your network of friends has approved that page.
Here’s how it works: First, login to your Google account and do a search for Google +1 – you will be directed to a page that allows you to sign up “Try it Now.” You then have to activate your account, which gives Google permission to access your profile information and share your +1 recommendations with people within your network.
“http” versus “https” – So what’s the difference (and should you care)?
HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. The S stands for “Secure.”
If the URL of a website or web page begins with http:// then the website you are viewing is communicating with your browser via an ‘unsecured language. What this means is that the information you view and or send (in a form for example) is not protected and can be viewed by others—technically this means someone can eavesdrop on your computer’s conversation with the website.
Clearly, it is not a good idea to share your credit card information with just anyone, so be sure that the form or commerce cart you are using is on a secure server. How can you tell?
The URL of a secure website will begin with https:// (the S is what you are looking for). This tells you that the website is secure and no one can eavesdrop.
Be aware, remember to look to see if the URL address begins with httpS before entering sensitive information like a credit card number, social security number, or any personal information that you do not want to share.
Q: I have a WordPress website, but it’s old and needs a new look, do I have to start over?
A: This is the beauty of WordPress sites, we can give your site a facelift at any time and you won’t lose any content. Here’s how it works: Your site has a theme with style sheets that dictates how the site looks, we can create and apply a new theme and new style sheets so your site is brand new to your audience, but has the same content and works the same for you. We can also turn a regular html site into a WordPress site. With WordPress, getting a new look is much like redecorating your house. We can recover the furniture and hang new curtains, or we can totally refurbish with new floors, baseboards, a fresh coat of paint and new furniture—but, we never have to rebuild the house.
WP-DB-Backup: This plug-in is a must have for all WordPress users! It gives you the ability to backup your database content (meaning your blog posts and page content). You can automate this backup to occur as frequently as you think is necessary. We typically recommend setting it to backup weekly. You can also choose to download this file to your computer.
FYI: This does not backup your images or your theme, for this reason, it’s a good idea to have a full site backup, which does include your theme, images and all other content that gets stored on your server (we recommend that you backup your physical site at least monthly, unless you have not made any changes in that time period), this is done from your C-Panel or through an FTP client.
Revision Control: This little plug-in allows you to control how many revisions get stored to your database. I for one tend to noodle with a post over and over until I finally feel it’s ready to go live and then I still end up making edits—this means that I can often have up to 20 different versions of one post. This is cool because you can revert to an older version at any time. But what is not cool is that all these versions take up valuable space and can slow down your site’s load time. Revision Control allows you to set the number of stored revisions for both posts and pages, so for example: you could set it to save only the last 5 post versions, and 10 page versions.
WP Super Cache: Speaking of load time. This plug-in can help speed up your site’s load time. It basically caches your site’s content and then pulls up each page as html so your server doesn’t have to work so hard to load php code and images every time someone views a page in your site.
FYI: If you are making changes to your site and yet you keep seeing the old version. Don’t panic—it could be that your page has been cached and is pulling up the old data. To make sure those changes were really made, you might need to clear the cache. You can access Super Cache from your Dashboard, under Settings, from there, click “Delete Cache,” about half way down the page.
I like WordPress Version 3.1, not because it works so much better (most things you won’t even notice because they run under the hood, if you will), but because I can now access my Dashboard from the front-end of my site (as long as I am logged in). So, let’s say for example you are viewing your website’s home page (what your readers see), you will have edit capabilities to this page, and the ability to add a new post or page, and manage comments from tabs now located in the upper left side of your screen. Cool. Not to mention the fact that keeping your WordPress site updated will protect you from potential hackers. And that’s really cool!
The coolest new feature is the internal linking capability. Let’s say you are writing a post in your blog and you would like to link to an older post where you reference the same subject; before 3.1 you would have had to remember when you posted it, what it was called, and find that link (time consuming and maybe not worth your effort).
With WordPress 3.1 you can now highlight the keywords you want to use as your link and click the (more…)
In the last six months we have experienced a wave of hackers getting into our custom WordPress author websites. The problem is that hackers have realized how popular WordPress sites are (internationally); as a result, many of them focus on finding weaknesses and hacking into thousands (gosh maybe millions) of sites. Less work—more payout. The good news is that we are more diligent in our efforts to make you aware of the importance of keeping your site updated. Why? Because while the bad programmers are working to get in, the good WordPress programmers are working to keep them out. The bad news is that updating your site can cause errors due to conflicts with custom php code and plug-ins. Stay with me.
You can very easily click the Please Update Now link from your WordPress Dashboard. And it will update, but what can also happen is that your blog can quit working, your theme can get wiped out, your plug-ins could stop working, and your blog could be rendered useless. It could also work seamlessly. So, how do you know what yours will do? Well, you don’t. Each site is unique to this equation. That is why it is so important to back up your website and your database content.
At Monkey C Media we do a complete backup of your site so we are ready for any hiccups, and after each update we do a physical check to ensure that everything works properly.
At the risk of boring you to pieces, here’s an example: (more…)
Readers here will already know that Google has been furiously scanning books for some time now. An interesting use of all that information is the new Google Ngram Viewer. It allows you to compare and contrast keywords and phrases across the history of the written word (within the selected corpus). It’s simple – add the words, adjust the dates and the data is displayed in a chart.
Take a look at this video and tell me you can’t use this. Tall Tweets is a service that creates multiple tweets out of long posts. But don’t overuse it you’ll alienate some followers.
As the battle heats up in the e-reader war there is great opportunity, for the consumer. For the content provider things are a bit more difficult. Every device seems to have it’s own proprietary software — rendering (at best) a few other formats useless.
So what format should you use? At this point there is no one best answer, just strategic compromises. For instance, the Kindle has huge market penetration and a fantastic marketplace but only renders black and white. So children’s books will be a bit lack luster. The iPad renders color but some users complain about reading on a backlit screen and certain formats require additional software. Android Handhelds are portable, render in color but don’t read the popular MobiPocket format. Barnes and Noble Nook only reads three of the thirteen formats available but they have distribution in their favor.
So you’ve written a book which means you already know who your audience is. Now figure out what devices they’re likely using and build to them. Create a couple formats and let your fans decide how to fulfill their needs.
