125Cards.com has landed

Posted on February 6, 2008 by Davinian

125Cards.com has landed125Cards.com is about design, style and how we can improve those lovely little 125 x 125 Adverts and Cards that we so love to place (drop) on other peoples websites.

They are meant to advertise what we are selling, be it a product, service or even just ourselves. Yet, they really don’t do us justice, they are difficult to read, look gimmicky and hardy every relate to what we are trying to sell.

Remember, they should be driving traffic to your site – so come on, get serious… visit 12Cards.com, grab a free template and start designing a better Advert.

Posted in Adverts, Blogs & Blogging, Design | 1 Comment

My Powerbook G4 came home!

Posted on February 3, 2008 by Davinian

This has to be one of the weirdest things that has ever happened to me.

powerbookg4Last year I spent two months travelling around Europe in my VW Camper, I had actually planned to be away for four months, but while visiting Pisa in Italy my camper van was broken into and everything was stolen – cloths, food, books, dirty washing and my trusty PowerBook G4, all gone to some thieving ….

Anger eventual turned to frustration as all the things stolen where mealy materialistic and could be replaced, but one thing that frustrated me the most was that my laptop had all my holiday photos on, and although I could revisit the places and take more pictures, the mood and atmosphere would never be recaptured.

So I set about asking for it back, not necessarily my laptop, but the pictures that were on it. I tried a kind of laws of attraction thing, but without all the fuss of the secret (I personally don’t like that film/book). I imagined myself looking at the pictures and even showing them to my family and friends. Then…

Continue reading →

Posted in News | 5 Comments

I’m a Bloggin-Ads winner!

Posted on February 2, 2008 by Davinian

Madness is all I can say. I can’t remember the last time I won anything.

winner

Not 100% sure exactly what I have won, but I’ll let you know in full as soon as I have the details. If you wondering what this is all about and why you didn’t enter – head over to the rather excellent Bloggin-Ads to fine out.

Posted in Blogs & Blogging, News | 2 Comments

What do you do to stay focused?

Posted on January 21, 2008 by Davinian

I have come to the conclusion that I am much better at brain-storming an idea than actually turning it into reality!

For instance, I am currently trying to complete a website for a idea I had two weeks ago, I’m getting there, but find I’m getting distracted with newer ideas – I lack concentration and find it hard focusing when a new idea pops into my head – I need to be strict with myself and stop, write the idea down, then continue with the work in hand… but it’s bloody difficult!

I’ve read plenty of books and websites on time-management, better productivity, staying focused etc., everything makes sense and I know what I should be doing, but after a few days I seem to slip back into my old ways and lose interest… I need to focus and require your help…

What do you do to stay focused and ultimately be productive?

Posted in Blogs & Blogging | 10 Comments

100 Deadliest Karate Moves

Posted on January 17, 2008 by Davinian

Punch to GroinWhile 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?

Posted in Blogs & Blogging, Fun, Ideas | 1 Comment

Jumping on the Entrecard Bandwagon

Posted on January 12, 2008 by Davinian

entrecard-sample-2I’ve decided to give the latest self-promoting buzz a go – Entrecard is a weird little business card/advert sharing network that’s designed to allow like minded individuals to contact each other by leaving their 125 x 125 sized business cards on each others website.

You can also rent space (currently one day at a time) on sites displaying the Entrecard widget. You do this by using credits that you accumulate from either displaying cards on your own site, by clicks on your cards, or by dropping (leaving) your card at other sites. It sounds complicated, but it isn’t – trust me!

Credits can also be exchanged for real world goodies, but I haven’t earned enough credits yet, and the current list of goodies is very short.

Why all the fuss? Entrecard seems to be the next big thing in traffic generating ideas, and plays on the relatively new and fast becoming popular 125 x 125 sized adverts you see on such sites as ProBlogger.

The only problem I can see is that the card is actually 127 x 148 when Entrecard tags on the little “Drop yours” button and border. So it wouldn’t fit very well if you had a couple of rows of 125 x 125 adverts.

Anyway, some stats. I only signed up late last night, but my card seems to have brought in just over 50 new unique users in less than 24 hours. Whether they will return again or not remains to be seen, but the cards do seem to be working, and I guess it will boost my visits, readership and hopefully profits for a while.

Update: I’ve stopped using Entrecard and have no idea if it is really of any use these days. It kind of spiralled off into its own world and I found the content of most of the cards a little bit spammy!

Posted in Blogs & Blogging, Business & Entrepreneurship | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Ugly Squeeze Pages and Design

Posted on January 5, 2008 by Davinian

The Landing Page or Squeeze Page as it is more commonly know, is seen by some as the most important part of any opt-in email or affiliate driven website.

uglesqueezepagesA typically Squeeze Page tries to entice its “target” audience with marketing and copywriting techniques such as headlines, bullet points, teaser copy, deadlines and testimonials. All of which are generally so well researched that they can take the author days and several attempts to perfect.

But something that I just can’t fathom out, is why such a well written bit of marketing tends to have to look so aesthetically unpleasing to the eye. I have found myself on several occasion just giving up trying to read such a page as the design is so appalling.

The classic example generally has a blue or grey background with either a white of light yellow text area. The text for some god-awful reason seem to usually be Courier – can anybody tell me Why? And with alleged meaningful words and phrases picked out in a collection of insipid Red, Yellow or Blue bold text makes the whole thing unbearable.

Continue reading →

Posted in Business & Entrepreneurship, Design, Marketing | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Four Months Messing Around

Posted on December 27, 2007 by Davinian

timeFour months ago I decided I was going to seriously try my hand at making money online. Everything started off well and I did make a few hundred dollars, but then I lost enthusiasm and started to get distracted, and before I knew it, I wasn’t making anything.

Making money needs a special kind of dedication and commitment which keeps you going, even when things look bad. There is also a fine line between knowing when to keep going or when to quit a bad idea. I think I failed all of the above and as a result I have wasted a lot of my time running around after foolhardy ideas, and not dedicating myself to the things that were working.

I am now going to wipe the slate clean and give it another go. The knowledge I have learned over the last four months will be used to hopefully help me get things right. I have learned the hard way as they say, and I think it has taught me to respect the knowledge of others and that you do not necessarily need to come up with a new winning formula. In fact, the last four months have blatantly made it clear to me that there is plenty of room out there to actually copy somebody else’s really good idea and make it work for yourself. All you need to do is put your own spin on it.

So that is what I am planning to do. It’s not lazy, not stealing (especially if you pay for somebody else’s knowledge) and it is definitely not cheating. It is however, hard work and requires that special commitment — qualities I think I now have and understand!

Posted in Blogs & Blogging, Business & Entrepreneurship, News | 5 Comments

Festive Fun Everyone…

Posted on December 25, 2007 by Davinian

santaOK, so I’m not a big fan of all the fuss that seems to be made about Christmas these days. The prolonged shopping extravaganza washed all the fun out it for me years ago!

When summer is over, we seem to barely have time for All Hallows Eve and Guido Fawkes Night these days before the big bloke in the red suite is thrust down our throats 24/7.

I guess it can still be a little bit fun, meeting friends and family that we haven’t seen for a while, even some we haven’t seem since last Christmas (must make an effort to see them more!).

But it does depress me when I think just how much effort goes into it all for just one day – especially when everything has SALE slapped over it the day after!

Anyway, what every you thoughts, views or ideas – I wish you all some Festive Fun… hic!

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OS 10.5 Leopard thoughts Part 1

Posted on December 23, 2007 by Davinian

osx-leopardI updated my iMac to Leopard a few weeks back. I still have mixed views on whether it is really that much better than Tiger. It is better, ascetically pleasing to eye better being the most obvious, but is it better for work? Better for design, better for working on the web?

I’m still trying to work it out, ultimately I guess yes, but I’m finding some of the bugs a little bit annoying. Or rather I am annoyed that Apple have once again decided to beta test their products on their customers!

For instance – my Lacie hard drive no longer spins down when it is not in use – why? No idea, but it means the drive gets unnecessary hot and have to manually eject it when not in use.

Another example – iDisk seems to screw-up every time I turn on its Syncing. Not just a weird screw-up, but a “I’m going to use up all your free space” screw-up. Again I can’t seem to find a reason why?

I’m sure things will be fixed and everything will work eventually. I just hate the unnecessary fiddling we seem to have to do these days to get things working, when all we really want to do is just use it to do some work…

…what, dare I ask, happened to the notion that Computers would make our lives easier?

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments