Davinian

100 Deadliest Karate Moves

While running some key-word/niche searches I accidentally ran a search for .pdf - no name, just [dot] PDF as in an Adobe PDF document.

The list that came back was interesting as it appears to show an all to sorry story of what the internet is most commonly used for…

Out of the list of 100 or so results I looked at - that’s the search results I looked at, not the actual PDFs the following subjects and titles appeared the most:

• Sex as in Playboy Magazines, Massage Secrets, How to get beautiful women and the Karma Sutra.
• Conspiracy this, that and the other, 50 things you’re not supposed to know, Secret Societies, Free energy and who killed Elvis, Kennedy etc…
• Health and Fitness, Body building Secrets, Lose weight fast, be Big and Strong, 101 workouts and my favourite, 100 Deadliest Karate Moves (looks like a great book!!!)

Some of the more sensible topics were: Learning a language, to cook or play a musical interment - i.e. speak Japanese, play the Piano and Cooking with Jamie Oliver for some weird reason?

Then followed the usual Windows this, that and the other for Dummies, How to crack this, that and the other application, network or firewall, and even more dummy guides for dummies!

There were some interesting results, but apart from the cooking and learning a new skill, most of them were for topics that generally give the internet a bad name. Why?

Still each to their own I guess - we do live in a free world after all… don’t we?

A Something and Nothing Day!

It has been one of those days for me today, I tried to write this morning, but kept finding myself being distracted by other things. When it happens it is damn hard to break out of it. If I catch myself free-falling early enough I can usually do something about it, but today wasn’t one of those times, so I decided to take a break and headed out of the house for the day.

On reflection it was probably the best thing I could have done, as I got thinking about Tumbled (my free Wordpress theme), and I think I should try and make it more Tumbleblog-like with separate styling for each category - links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video being the obvious ones - what do you think? Should I make it more, dare I say it… Web 2.0 ish?

Back from Wales (noisy on the Home Front?)

Well, I’m back! Miss me? Don’t answer that… It was fantastic weather in Wales (see above). And the break from the computer gave me some much needed time to think about some projects I have had in the back of my mind since I went travelling in Europe earlier this year. I also finished one book and started another that I had been carrying around for several weeks - so a good rest and catch up.

Right, notes, research and more notes… and strong coffee!!!

Bla.st Cards - Free Adverts for everybody

I’ve been playing around with Bla.st cards for a few months now, well longer that that really - and have found it can bring in some extra traffic.

What is Bla.st? Put simply it’s an alternative form of online advertising that anybody can use. You can promote almost anything and pay as little (only pay if you want to) or as much as you like. The more you do pay means the higher up the page your advert(s) will go and the more likely it is to appear on other peoples websites, yes, they have a publishers program in the form of a widget (great for Wordpress sites) which doubles as a kind of referral program where you can earn credits for your own cards as well as 50% of the sale on any paid ads taken out by the referral.

Bla.st is extremely easy to use and has the added bonus of being free, and with hundreds of categories to choose from, you can target your advert to a specific market. If there isn’t already a category for the market you want, you can create one, but this means you will probably be the only advert in that category for a while, which could be good or bad depending on the way you look at it!

Traffic from my ads haven’t been that fantastic so far, but I have noticed that as Bla.st has grown, there has been an increase in visitors, so I am optimistic it will continue to be a valuable source of extra traffic over time.

Summary: If you are looking for an alternative way to advertise your product then I think Bla.st is a good idea, it’s not the only free option, but it does allow you to design and redesign your own ads as many times as you like, and if you place cards on your own website, you could earn credits to promote your own cards to the top slot, and maybe a few extra dollars along the way!

The Power of Colour

It’s amazing how a simple change in colour makes your site look so different.

Not sure if you have visited before, but I had a rather depressing grey gradation for a background. After a little bit of research in colour psychology, I discovered that green is one of the most pleasing colours on the eye and can even improve vision.

It’s also a calming and refreshing colour, one reason why you feel so good when outside. Dark green (note the background) is considered masculine, conservative, and implies wealth!

There are plenty of websites on Colour Psychology, a few I’ve looked at are: infoplease colo(u)r, designcrux Colo(u)r Psychology and Colour Affects.

A question for readers - what colour if any do you most like and do you think it is important from a design and ultimately a sale point of view to take colour into consideration when designing the look of your product?

NOTE: You may have noticed that the background colour is no-longer green! this is because I changed the theme (again) on the 14th August 2007 — Orange is the new black you know!