For the last couple of days I was away on a business trip to Bristol, and subsequently I haven’t had the opportunity to update here. After Bristol I have to say I’m pretty happy about being back in London.
On the plus side the hotels where super in Bristol. I was surprised to see an iMac in my hotel room, it was also connected to satellite-TV which was a nice touch.
My next trip will be at Microsoft’s Reading campus for training. I’m pretty excited about this as my technology background is primarily Microsoft based. And yes I’m a MS fan-boy, the macbook was just purchased to extend my knowledge beyond the Microsoft o/s.
Other News
I was planning to participate in Pro Bloggers group writing project. Unfortunately time did not permit, however you can read the latest submissions here.
Adjix the new URL shortening service with a twist. Enables users to monetize any outbound link they create using the service. With Adjix you can earn up to $0.10 cents per unique link view, and $0.20 for each unique click-through.
How it Works
Simple really, when an ad supported Adjix link is clicked, the user is redirected to the original web page with an ad displayed at the top. A slight concern is that the page is actually displayed within a frame, which may cause problems further down the line.
Analytics
The real benefit of using Adjix to shorten your URLs is the analytics. Although quite simple, when using the service, you will be able to track who and how many users are actually clicking on your external links.
Ad-Free Version
Adjix announced an ad-free version today for people who want to track the usage of their external links without ads. The ad-free version uses standard URL redirection as you would expect from TinyURL.
Having re-discovered just how valuable Google Reader is, the application has once again become an essential part of my Internet weaponry. If you are a recovering bookmark addict like me, you will undoubtedly appreciate this post.
The Problem
Before time began I bookmarked everything I found somewhat interesting. This habit over time became so unmanageable, that I often found myself scrolling endlessly to find the site that sold the toy with the Kung Fu grip.
Enter Google Toolbar
I needed a solution fast so I researched bookmarking applications and settled upon Google Toolbar. What a lifesaver, now I could simply search my bookmarks and synchronize them across all my computers, voilà.
Google Toolbar is great, those little search boxes you can download are awesome too. I would say 50% of the sites I visit are searched for using this application.
Enter RSS & Google Reader
As time progressed my browsing habits had changed, I started moving away from bookmarking to RSS. You see I didn’t want to jump around from site to site anymore, I wanted one place to go where I could view everything all at once. I dabbled around with iGoogle but found it annoyingly slow, my Fiancee loves it though.
Finally I settled on Google Reader, I must sound like a Google fan-boy. But seriously now I subscribe to almost everything, previously I would only bookmark sites I found interesting or worthy of my attention.
With RSS, it doesn’t really matter; I have literally tons of content to browse through in the morning. If a headline captures my attention I visit that site, if it doesn’t, I move on to the next one.
Barrett Lyon Co-Founder and CTO of BitGravity talks about some of the technology behind their Video Distribution System and his time spent working as a security researcher. It’s always awe inspiring to listen to someone who talks about technology in such a profound and engaging way.
Scoble does a good job interviewing Barrett, only interrupting him when he goes off on a tangent using all sorts of security and networking acronyms. Barrett is truly passionate about his work and sadly constantly downplays his evil genius throughout the interview.
This 30 minute video would mainly appeal to the networking bods of this world, but as a techie I found the interview to be very interesting. Especially when he talks about being employed by companies to protect their infrastructure from denial of service attacks by Russian heavies.
Another likeable part of the interview is when he explains what inspired him as a kid to get involved in technology. Referencing the War Games movie poster hung up in his office.
I have to get me one of those vintage posters to hang up on my wall, only my movie would probably be Lawnmower Man or Hackers, mind you Sneakers was pretty good too.
Anyway if you’re interested in Technology and Networking in general, I suggest you go watch it.
One of my common Internet pastimes is reading up new and successful business ideas. Check out the “Free Idea Bank” there you will find #178 business ideas, most wacky but it’s an entertaining read non the less.
Secondly take a look at “Unusual Business Ideas That Work” for fully comprehensive case studies of unusual business ideas that worked.
