At the most recent Dorkbot DC, we had a wonderful, extremely informative presentation given by Alden Hart. By day, Alden is an electrical engineer and the CTO of a technical consulting firm, by night, he messes around with LEDs and microcontrollers, especially for elaborate holiday light displays he does at his home in Northern Virginia. Alden's talk was entitled "Practical Microcontroller LED Designs - lessons and gotchas from prototype to production." It was a very well-presented survey of software and hardware methods he's explored. Some of the programming was over my head, but he presented everything clearly enough that...
Friends, are you looking for an exotic pet for your family, but those sky-high pet store prices have you settling for hamsters? Then bring the kids down to Crazy Ernie's Factory Seconds Discount Pet Warehouse and select from dozens of one-of-a-kind irregular and discontinued pets, all with a 30-day guarantee! You'll find deals like this feller here — now, I don't know how they did it, but they managed to get his head on sideways. It don't bother him none; he gets around just fine, and he's yours for 70% off the pet store price! Hurry down now, and I'll...
Everything is such a futz, but it's nice when these things have happy endings. I have my thumbnail creating app up, and while it's not linked into the RSS its going to be used in, that's the easy predictable stuff, the stuff that requires no futzing, at least not for me. Here's a folder of thumbs that ImageMagick is adding to every five minutes. I'm doing it by launching the ImageMagick convert app, once for each picture. The fixed width is 100 pixels, I compute the height to be proportional. My script makes sure not to start another conversion until...
This is one of a series of posts in which I will be highlighting each member of the Search Bloggers list, with commentary on one of their posts (new or old). Look for this series to continue once or twice a week for the next couple of months. Meet Hiren Ponkia, the Search Blogger of the Day. Today I’d like to highlight a post entitled How To: Find Paid Vs Organic Conversions in Google Analytics?. I love a good “how to” article, and this one delivers with step by step easy instructions, shows an image for visual cues, and tells...
Doug Karr has a great post over at his Compendium blog called When to Fire Your Blogging Expert. The post breaks down the concept of weighing the intangible and tangible benefits of blogging. Doug talks about what a blog consultant should be discussing when they are helping with an overall communications strategy: 1. Your Business 2. How You Drive Customers 3. Measuring Results I wanted to map out a couple of things you should remember when planning your communication strategy. If you are the smart business owner, a social media strategy will be combined with your current offerings. I...
By now, you most certainly know that the iPhone firmware upgrade is out. Among the many changes and useful little features is the ability to tap the home button and return to the first screen. Completely helpful for those of us determined to fill out the nine pages we're permitted -- or restricted to, depending on your perspective -- in going from app No. 144 back to app No. 1. In the spirit of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, a musical dedication (to the tune of "My Favorite Things") to the apps I'm most thankful for. Feel free to sing...
So often testing and tweaking a product once it’s released is a nice-to-have but not a need-to-have. Tel Aviv-based startup EyeView believes it can make the refinement process easy when it comes to online product demo videos. The company shoots and optimizes product demo videos for its customers to help boost conversion rates. The company said this week that it received more than $1 million in its first round of funding led by Lightspeed-Gemini Internet Lab and another private investor. There are two components to EyeView’s service. The first is a video production company that focuses solely on making product...
We recently came across someone on Twitter who asked if parked domains that show up in Google Adwords search results can bring down your PPC click-through rate. First things first, let’s define what a parked domain is and how it’s relevant to PPC. A parked domain is defined as a site that is undeveloped and belongs to a domain name registrar or a domain name holder. Google’s Adsense program places targeted AdWords ads on parked domains that are part of the Google Network. So, whether you’re running the content network or just search, you’re ads could appear on a parked...
Founded by two early PayPal employees, Mogees is looking to be a middleman between mobile application developers and the app stores being offered by Apple, Google, and Blackberry. While it might seem like a middleman isn’t needed here, the idea is to facilitate payment options that the app stores are not yet offering – like free trials. Is this enough of a value-add to lure developers to give up a few extra percentage points in transaction costs on app sales? Maybe. On the Web, free trials have proven to be an effective way to get paid subscribers (see Typepad for...
I’ve been called a computer addict before. More than once. I have an unending need to be online doing something, regardless of how inane and pointless it may be. With Google, Wikipedia and the like, finding information has never been easier. With YouTube, StumbleUpon and others, having fun is a click away. Only problem is, I’m not always in front of my computer. It’s a frightening prospect. Thankfully, though, there are a ton of ways to find to do computer-like things when you’re not at your computer. Different places are creeping up that will help you read emails, make...
