Web Chief - exploring the world wide web

Kindle Fire contest at DragonBlogger

2011-11-29T13:22:00.000-08:00

DragonBlogger is giving away some free Kindle Fire's in a blog contest, just click here to check it out and enter!

Thanks to the sponsors:

Dragon Blogger Kindle Fire Giveaway Sponsors

These awesome sponsors made this giveaway possible and you should pay them a visit and thank them!

$5 free towards PlumDistrict

2011-11-28T19:55:00.001-08:00

PlumDistrict is a great deals website, similar to Groupon, but family/kid oriented.

Want $5 free to spend on PlumDistrict? Just signup through this link!

Using Twitter from LeapFish

2010-06-02T15:17:00.000-07:00

This post is part of a blog series on "Why I like LeapFish". It is also an entry into the LeapFish $100,000 Cash Dash contest, which you can signup for here.

In this blog post, I'll be covering the Twitter widget on LeapFish. On your own customizable LeapFish home page, you'll have a section for Twitter that you can use to stay up to date on your Twitter stream, as well as post, reply to and retweet tweets.

To do this, scroll down to the Twitter widget located on the right hand column about half way down the LeapFish home page and click on the "Sign in with Twitter" button. This will bring up a new OAuth window, which asks you for permission to allow LeapFish to access your Twitter account. Click on yes to allow LeapFish to access your Twitter account and then you will be returned to the LeapFish home page and your Twitter account will be active.

Inside the Twitter widget, you'll see options for Refresh, Home, @ Replies, Direct messages, search and other options. Underneath that you'll see a "What's Happening?" text box, where you can post Twitter updates and click the Update button to send out some tweets. There's also a "Shorten URL" tool and underneath that, you're friends stream.

It almost looks exactly like the Twitter.com homepage itself. The Twitter widget is definitely a nice feature on LeapFish and it's very handy to be able to check on your stream as well as post Twitter updates all from one personalized home page. Check it out on LeapFish.com.

Using Facebook from LeapFish

2010-06-01T20:42:00.000-07:00

This post is part of a blog series on "Why I like LeapFish". It is also an entry into the LeapFish $100,000 Cash Dash contest, which you can signup for here.

In this blog post, I'll be covering the Facebook widget on LeapFish. On your own customizable LeapFish home page, you'll have a section for Facebook that you can use to stay up to date on all of your Facebook stream information, as well as post comments and performing other actions.

But first things first, if you've just started using LeapFish, sign up for a free account and then sign in. Afterwards, scroll down the home page and on the right hand column, you'll see a section named Facebook with a Facebook connect button. Click on the Facebook connect button and then authorize LeapFish to access and update your Facebook account. Afterwards, you should be all set and your Facebook "stream" should now appear on your LeapFish home page.

You'll see all the latest updates from your Facebook friends, just as if you were on the actual Facebook.com site. There's options for "Home", "Profile", "Friends", News Feed, Events & Birthdays. You can also Refresh your Facebook stream and Logout if desired. Underneath that section, you'll see an input box for "What's on your mind?", which allows you to update your Facebook status right from the LeapFish widget.

While viewing and scrolling through your friends updates, you'll notice options for Comment and Like. So nothing ground breaking here, you get exactly what you would expect to have right on the Facebook website. You can comment on your friends updates/photos etc, or you can simply "Like" a particular update.

The Facebook widget on LeapFish is particularly useful as it allows you to keep up to date on all of your Facebook activities without actually leaving your home page.

Customizing Home Page widgets on LeapFish

2010-05-30T13:23:00.000-07:00

This post is part of a blog series on "Why I like LeapFish". It is also an entry into the LeapFish $100,000 Cash Dash contest, which you can signup for here.

To follow up on my post about the LeapFish home page from yesterday, in this post, I will be discussing the customization features of the LeapFish home page and how you can modify it to fulfill your personal tastes and needs.

As I mentioned in my last post, you'll need to sign up for a free account on LeapFish.com in order to use the customization features. Once you have your account, you can sign in and start modifying your home page to suit your own preferences.

By default, you see a bunch of news widgets, Twitter and Facebook widgets, and a popular YouTube videos widget. If for some reason you don't like any of the default widgets provides, simply hover your mouse over the top right section of the widget, find the X and click it. This will remove the widget from your personal home page.

If you'd like to add more widgets/content to your LeapFish home page, just click on the Customize Homepage button on the top right of your screen, and you will be taken to a page that shows a variety of widgets from all types of websites and services. If you like a particular widget on that page, you can simply click on the "Add This" button underneath that widget to get it added to your personal home page.

When you are on your own personalized home page looking at all of your widgets, you can also drag and drop the widgets to reorder them. This can be useful if you have a certain widget that you want to see at the very top of your homepage screen. Simply drag it to the top and it will stick.

If you'd like to view a screencast video on customizing the LeapFish home page and using widgets, take a look at my YouTube video here.

The LeapFish Home Page

2010-05-29T17:15:00.000-07:00

This post is part of a blog series on "Why I like LeapFish". It is also an entry into the LeapFish $100,000 Cash Dash contest, which you can signup for here.

In this post, I'll be talking about using LeapFish as your home page. LeapFish is not only a multi-source search engine, it is also a web portal and content aggregator. LeapFish encourages you to set your homepage to LeapFish.com, and they provide many customization options to personalize your home page just for you.

In order to customize and personalize your LeapFish home page, simply sign up for a free account and then sign in.

The default layout will provide news content from a variety of news sources, along with a widget for Twitter and Facebook. Yahoo News is found at the top by default. You can also filter the news headlines by Top news, World, Business, Sports and Technology, allowing you to get a quick glance at the News for a certain category that you are interested in.

Underneath, by default, you'll see sports news, including options for NFL, NBA, WNBA and NHL. Then you'll see celebrity news, social networking news from Mashable and Popular videos from YouTube.

All of this is customizable, you can move around content or add or remove sections (widgets) from your home page, which I will be discussing in a future blog post.

If you'd like to view a video on the LeapFish home page, check out my YouTube video here.

LeapFish shopping search

2010-05-28T14:38:00.000-07:00

This post is part of a blog series on "Why I like LeapFish". It is also an entry into the LeapFish $100,000 Cash Dash contest, which you can signup for here.

I've covered many of the other types of LeapFish services and today I'll be writing about their Shopping Search feature. From the top of LeapFish.com, click on the "Shopping" option in the top blue bar, first item from the right in the blue bar, next to "Blogs". This takes you to http://shopping.leapfish.com, their dedicated shopping search feature.

As you might expect, the LeapFish shopping search feature provides you with information and details on where to purchase a product and prices at various online websites.

In my Shopping search example video, I searched for "Logitech nano mouse" and showed how LeapFish Shopping search brought up online auction results for the product, with results from Ebay. It also shows Online Retailer results from Amazon Shopping and gives you many different product options and purchasing price points for various products.

Providing shopping results for both online auction sites as well as online retailers is a smart move. Some people might not realize how cheap some products sell for on ebay, or on the Amazon marketplace. LeapFish changes that by providing you all of those results in your shopping search and I'm sure it will help people find a good price and a good place to get their product. So if that sounds good to you, check out the "Shopping" search feature on LeapFish.com

LeapFish Blogs search

2010-05-06T18:13:00.000-07:00

I've covered many of the other types of LeapFish services and today I'll be writing about their Blog Search feature. From the top of LeapFish.com, click on the "Blogs" option in the top blue bar, second item from the right, next to "Shopping". This takes you to http://blogs.leapfish.com, their blogs search engine.

Enter your search terms in the top search bar, hit enter, or click the "Search Blogs" button.

LeapFish will return a few additional suggested search terms in the "Also Try" section near the top and then it will display a comprehensive listing of Blog results.

The LeapFish blog search results will show you relevant results, but also timely results. Perusing through the Blog Search listings, you will see that many of the results are newer, sometimes within hours of the blog posts going live online. It's almost like a "real time" search for blogs.

Searching on blogs specifically can be a great way to read about opinions, expert analysis and the latest buzz on the net.

The advent of blogs and blogging revolutionized the web by providing an easy to use, quick, publishing platform for the masses. Just about anyone can easily get online with their own blog, especially with free and simple services to use like Blogspot.com (which hosts this site) and Wordpress.com.

This "Blogosphere" as they call it, can provide a wealth of information and is many times referred to as the pulse of the internet (until Twitter came along, that is).

So give the LeapFish Blog search feature a try, you might be pleasantly surprised by the results.

LeapFish News Search

2010-05-05T14:31:00.000-07:00

This post is part of a blog series on "Why I like LeapFish". It is also an entry into the LeapFish $100,000 Cash Dash contest, which you can signup for here.

In this post, I'll be discussing the LeapFish "News search" feature. LeapFish contains search options from many different search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Topsy, YouTube) and it also contains options for specific search types. So, if you're interested in just finding information about the latest news, the last information for a given keyword or topic, you can simply click on the "News" link at the top of LeapFish.com, which takes you over to http://news.leapfish.com.

This news search feature will only return results for current/new articles and news items on the web. This can help you keep up to date with the most recent, relevant information, without worrying about getting results for pages that may contain out-dated, stale or no longer accurate information.

The news feature appears to be powered by Google News search, as the results that show up in a LeapFish news search say "via Google" underneath each result. I find this to be a good thing, as the Google News search has always worked very well for me and I've used it as a resource on many occasions.

So if you're looking for a search engine/search provider that will provide the latest, up to date news for a given term, http://news.leapfish.com is definitely worth a look.

LeapFish images search

2010-05-04T15:44:00.000-07:00

This post is part of a blog series on "Why I like LeapFish". It is also an entry into the LeapFish $100,000 Cash Dash contest, which you can signup for here.

In this post, I'll discuss the LeapFish "Images" search feature. As I've mentioned before, LeapFish is not your standard search engine. It will provide many, many types of different content in addition to plain ole web results. It has a heavy focus on multimedia results, including image results.

You search specifically for just image results using http://images.leapfish.com. It's as simple as typing in your search term(s) and hitting enter or clicking the "search images" button next to the search box.

LeapFish will then display a listing of Image Results from Google and Yahoo. The top eight images on the page will be from Google, while the bottom eight come from Yahoo. In total, sixteen images are displayed on the page after performing an Images search on LeapFish. Image width and height are cataloged under each thumbnail, allowing the user to get a quick glance at the full size of each image.

But it doesn't stop there, LeapFish has a handy pagination feature that you can use to quickly flick through new pages of image results. To access this, simply click on the little arrow icons on the top right hand side of your image result thumbnails.

Another handy feature is the auto-zoom preview of larger versions of the thumbnails when you hover over each thumbnail in the image results. This allows you to get a better look at each image result without leaving the LeapFish Images search results page.

If you click on an image, a shadow box appears to launch the slideshow feature. While in slideshow mode, you can simply click the image to advance to the next, full size displayed image, or hover over the image near the top right to click the next button. You can also hover over the top left to click the previous button.

And of course, if you want to go to the original website that posted the image, you can always click on the hyperlink that appears under the thumbnail of each image.

Overall, it's a pretty slick way to provide image search results and allow a user to easily navigate through the results set.

LeapFish video search

2010-05-03T15:46:00.000-07:00

This post is part of a blog series on "Why I like LeapFish". It is also an entry into the LeapFish $100,000 Cash Dash contest, which you can signup for here.

In this blog post, I will be discussing the LeapFish video search feature, what it provides and why it is valuable.

I have also recorded and uploaded a screencast demonstration of the LeapFish video search feature, which you can view below.

The "web 2.0" world is all about user generated content. YouTube revolutionized the web by providing a service and a method that allows anyone to quickly and easily add video to the internet. With this revolution comes a flood of video content being generated by anybody with access to a video device. Video cameras have also become more and more inexpensive, compact and easier to use, contributing to the explosion of video content on the web. With all this in mind, it's important to keep video results in mind when you are searching the web. The topic that you are searching for might have a video tutorial or a step by step visual guide providing you with information that would not have been possible before the popularity of YouTube.

LeapFish realizes all this and that's why they have an emphasis on video results and a specific video search feature. In the LeapFish video search, you'll get individual video results, related video results and video channel results. Search video on the web, with LeapFish video search.

LeapFish real time search

2010-05-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

This post is part of a blog series on "Why I like LeapFish". It is also an entry into the LeapFish $100,000 Cash Dash contest, which you can signup for here.

In this post, I will be going over the Real Time search feature on LeapFish. Traditional search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc) display SERP's (Search Engine Results Page) that consist mainly of static content. Static content consists of news articles, blog posts, webpages, etc. This "static" content can often be very old or outdated, even though it ranks high in a traditional search engine for a certain keyword or set of keywords. Due to this, you will get additional value and present day context out of also searching for "real time" results in conjunction with your standard results.

So what is the real time web? It is user generated content. It's Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sources. In the video screencast below, I discuss and show a walk through of the real time search feature on LeapFish.

As you can see from the video, the LeapFish real time search results will start by providing you with results from Google News (the latest real time news), results from Digg (current user promoted content) and results coming from Twitter, Topsy, Amazon and others.

The "trending topics" section (from Twitter) will also give you a quick look at what the hottest, most popular topics are on Twitter, being discussed now, on the real time web.

Add LeapFish to Google Chrome

2010-05-01T19:18:00.000-07:00

This post is part of a blog series on "Why I like LeapFish". It is also an entry into the LeapFish $100,000 Cash Dash contest, which you can signup for here.

LeapFish is a multimedia search engine with web results powered by Google, Bing and Yahoo, all in one. Instead of doing separate searches on Google.com, Bing.com, Yahoo.com, YouTube and other sites, you can do it all from one place using LeapFish.

My preferred browser of choice is Google Chrome, so I was disappointed that the "add to browser" link option wasn't available when viewing the LeapFish website with the Chrome browser. However, even though it's not as simple as clicking a link, you can still add LeapFish search to Google Chrome.

In the embedded video below, you can view a screencast tutorial on how to add LeapFish as a search provider and the default search engine in the Google Chrome browser.

As you can see from the video above, you can add LeapFish to Google Chrome using the Google Chrome Options -> Manage button in the default search setting and then adding the URL http://www.leapfish.com/web.aspx?q=%s. I used the name "LeapFish" and the keyword "LeapFish" in my Google Chrome search entry.

I've also done video screencast tutorials on how to add leapfish to Internet Explorer as well as Firefox. So whatever your browser of choice is, you should be able to add LeapFish as a search provider one way or another.

Why I like Leapfish

2010-04-28T09:16:00.000-07:00

LeapFish is a new web portal that focuses on the new interactive web, integrating the major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo), news results, social network results and the real time web (Twitter, etc). In this post, I'll describe the search functionality of LeapFish in detail, which is why I like LeapFish.

Another nice feature of the LeapFish homepage is that you can personalize your home page using drag and drop widgets and other features.

In the below screenshot, I tested the LeapFish search functionality using the keywords "copy blu-ray"

At the very top is the LeapFish search bar. While you're typing in search terms, LeapFish will display some suggested searches in a dropdown list, which is a handy feature, similar to Google Suggest.

Underneath, you'll see an advertisement block "sponsored links" section.

Next is a "Also try" suggestion section, where LeapFish provides additional, related keyword options.

Next up is News Results. This section contains results from recently published articles on the topic and appears to be powered by Google News.

After that, we finally get to the "Web Results" section. LeapFish defaults to Google, which is nice, but it also has buttons on the right for Yahoo and Bing, which is very convenient to allow easy search results switching between the major search engines.

Beneath the Web Results section (not pictured above) will be a "Video Results" section, then a "Blog Results" section and lastly an "Image Results" section with options for both Google and Flickr.

So why do I like LeapFish? Because it's a very convenient way to get a snapshot of the entire web for a certain search term, all in one place.

Want a chance to win some of the $100,000 in cash and prizes that LeapFish is giving away? Sign up for the contest here.

The $6,000 contest

2008-12-08T12:11:00.000-08:00

The $6,000 contest

John Chow and XR.com are giving away $6,000 in a new blog contest. $5,000 will be donated to a charity of the winner's choosing and $1,000 will be awarded directly to the winner. If I win the contest, I would donate the five thousand to
St. Mary's Food Bank in Phoenix, AZ. But what would I do with the one thousand? I'm not quite sure, but I would probably use it to further my online businesses and assets.

So what is XR.com? XR.com is a new tiny URL application that provides URL shortening services. Why would you want to shorten URL's? There are many reasons. Here are a few;

The Microsoft Outlook email client breaks long hyperlinks that extend onto two lines, hindering the recipients from opening the web page that you intended to send them.

URL shortening services can be used to hide affiliate links. As some users might be put off or negatively view affiliate links, XR.com can be used to disguise the end destination.

Many messaging services have character limitations, making a URL shortening service attractive. Some of these services include text messaging, Twitter and pagers.

So let's try it out shall we? We signed into our account on XR.com and input the URL http://www.johnchow.com/6000-contest-from-john-chow-and-xrcom/ into the shortening service. XR.com was kind enough to notify us that this URL had already been shortened by someone else! There was no need to generate a new one. The preexisting short URL is http://xr.com/guk.

We also wanted to create our own unique XR.com shortened URL, so we input http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/ into the XR.com shortening service and it came up with http://xr.com/jlf.

Some of the other interesting options available to users include click through statistics for each shortened URL that you create, preview options by using the subdomain preview.xr.com, options to remove the XR top frame from redirects, make the shortened URL private and custom shortened URL's.

XR.com truly is a TINY URL service. These are some of the smallest URL's I have ever seen produced by a shortening service. If I had one suggestion for improvement for XR.com, I would suggest that they remove the XR top frame from the redirects by default, without making users go in and edit the shortened URL settings to remove it.

AGLOCO Viewbar problems

2007-06-13T08:54:00.000-07:00

AGLOCO Viewbar problems
This month, AGLOCO released the highly anticipated AGLOCO Viewbar. The Viewbar is a small toolbar program that sits at the bottom or the top of your computer screen (your choice). If you run the toolbar while you surf the web, you accumulate AGLOCO hours, which can later be "cashed in" for stock or cash. Sign up for AGLOCO today, it is free.

Installing the AGLOCO Viewbar
Installing the AGLOCO Viewbar was easy and painless. After the initial installation, I immediately noticed that the ads were missing. AGLOCO makes its' money by selling tiny advertisement space on its' toolbar and the profits are then passed on to the end-users (members).

Where are the AGLOCO Viewbar ads?
So where are those ads? According to the AGLOCO team, the ad servers were having trouble handling capacity at the launch of the Viewbar (early June). No, it's not a joke. A company whose entire business depends upon their ad servers was unable to handle their user load at launch. Give me a freakin' break AGLOCO! AGLOCO knew how many people had signed up for the service, so they knew what kind of load to expect. But NO! They screwed it up anyway. The good news for members is that AGLOCO still gave hours credits to the users who ran the Viewbar while the ads were missing in action.

AGLOCO Viewbar crash problems
The first day of running the AGLOCO Viewbar, I noticed that the program crashed and disappeared on two different occasions. Again, not a very impressive performance from the AGLOCO Viewbar. Thankfully, the Viewbar no longer crashed or hung after the first day of usage. The stability problems appear to be gone.

AGLOCO Viewbar memory usage
I took a look at the AGLOCO Viebar (ViewBar.exe) memory usage to determine what type of impact the program was having on my system resources. On my system, the Viewbar appears to run at a fairly constant memory usage around 20,800 K. This ranks the Viewbar in as the fourth most memory intensive application running on my computer behind Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype. The good news is that the CPU utilization for the Viewbar is always at 0%, so there is little to no impact on processor resources.

AGLOCO website problems
During the launch day as well as numerous other days throughout June, the AGLOCO website has been unavailable. This problem is again due to inadequate server resources, which can not handle the large volume of AGLOCO members. AGLOCO needs to add more dedicated servers to host their website and load balance them in order to maximize each servers efficiency. With enough servers (that have adequate power) placed in a load balanced pool, they should have no trouble handling all of the AGLOCO member traffic.

AGLOCO problems and conclusion
Even with all of these minor problems, the AGLOCO service is a great opportunity for everyday people to make some money on the internet. The internet advertising business is a billion dollar industry. With AGLOCO, now you can get a piece of the advertising dollars and "own the internet". Sign up for AGLOCO today, it is completely free and the service will only get better and better!

Blog contest

2007-04-26T07:35:00.000-07:00

Blog contest
JohnChow is running another blog contest, this time for a Microsoft Zune. Here is the required text link to qualify for the contest: make money on the internet.

Use a link in your comments or replies!

2007-04-09T15:36:00.000-07:00

Post comments on other blogs
Many website owners and bloggers visit their peers or other websites that are related to their own site. Posting relevant comments to articles on other sites is a great way to get some attention and give your website some exposure. Most commenting systems ask for your URL and will automatically link your name to your website, but there is another often under utilized resource that many people are missing out on.

Use a link inside your comments!
The default settings for WordPress allow one hyperlink before routing a comment to the moderation queue. Use your available hyperlink! You can do this via a signature style entry as you are accustomed to seeing on forums or by slipping it into your reply in another way. If you have an available hyperlink, why wouldn't you use it? This commenting strategy could bring in some highly targeted visitors to your website and can be very beneficial. You probably want to incorporate this in with the threaded comments trick.

Thank you,
Webchief

New Blogger Datestamp bug

2007-04-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

New Blogger Datestamp bug
The new blogger system allows you to type out a post and "Save As Draft" before publishing. This feature is very helpful as it allows you to work on upcoming, future posts, reread your posts, preview posts and fine tune posts before you set them live for the world to see. Unfortunately, if you publish one of your drafts days later, the article will retain the date stamp of the first time that you saved the post.

Just take this post for example! I started writing this post on April 6th, 2007 and saved a draft. I did not publish the post until April 7th, 2007, but it still retains a date stamp of April 6th! The new blogger system definitely has some bugs and nuances that the Blogger development team needs to work out.

Threaded Comments Trick

2007-04-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

What are Threaded Comments?
Websites like Digg.com, Slashdot.org, DailyTech.com and others use a threaded comments system to show user replies to articles and posts. These threaded comments allow "conversations" to be grouped together and allows users to reply to a specific comment that has already been made (instead of generally replying to the article). Some WordPress blogs also use threaded comments systems via the Brian's Threaded Comments plugin or another modification.

Threaded comments: Always reply to a top comment
If you are leaving comments or posting replies on a website that uses threaded comments, you can make sure that your comment gets the most exposure and stays as close to the top of the comment list as possible by following a few simple strategies. If the article already has some user comments present, always reply to a specific comment instead of using the "general" reply feature. If comments are already present on an article and you use the "general" reply, your comment will be thrown to the very bottom of the comments section. But you don't want to be at the very bottom of the list! If the first, already present comment has no direct replies to it, you should reply to that comment. This will ensure that your comment stays as high to the top of the comment list as possible, even if others reply to the top comment after you.

Threaded comments, theoretically speaking
Let's say you do not use my recommended strategy and you are the second person to reply to an article, posting a comment to the general article (and not in reply to a specific comment). You might be thinking, "Sweet! I got here quick and I am the second reply to the article, everyone will see my comment!". WRONG! If threaded comments are enabled, multiple people would be able come in later and explicitly reply to the FIRST comment on the article, bumping your comment lower and lower down the page and out of view. The higher your comment is on the website, the more likely it will be read.

Use Threaded Comments Strategy
I use strategy when replying in a threaded comments environment. This allows me to get to an article hours after it has already been published and still post a comment that will be retained near the top of the article, for many people to view. Do you also use threaded comment strategies? If so, let me know by replying to this article and leaving a comment (sorry, no threading here). Thanks!

AdSense code and New Blogger bug

2007-04-04T18:39:00.000-07:00

AdSense code and New Blogger bug
Yesterday when I was posting about the Google Toolbar for Firefox, I came across a very strange bug that occurs when you attempt to embed JavaScript AdSense code into a Blogger post. Normally, if you attempt to enter JavaScript code into a Blogger.com post, the JavaScript elements will disappear when you publish the post. However! If you try to enter Google AdSense JavaScript, even if it is for one of their referral programs such as "Get Firefox with Google Toolbar", an entirely different behavior occurs.

After pasting in my Google AdSense referrer JavaScript code for the "Get Firefox with Google Toolbar" program and hitting publish, I found the distorted Google AdSense Ads displayed above on my post. Pretty weird eh? I promptly removed the malfunctioning code as I already had three Google AdSense Ad units running on this blog and letting another one remain would violate the Google AdSense TOS (Terms Of Service). This behavior occurs on blogs that run on the "new" Blogger system. The old blogger/blogspot system is probably not affected in this manner.

Google PageRank with Google Toolbar

2007-04-04T18:13:00.000-07:00

Google PageRank with Google Toolbar
Today I finally caved in and installed the Google Toolbar for Firefox. You might be asking "Caved in? What's wrong with Google Toolbar?". Absolutely nothing. I have used the Google Toolbar a few times in the past and it is definitely an excellent browser add-on that provides tremendously useful capabilities.

Why did it so long to install Google Toolbar this time?
I have been using Firefox for quite some time now and it has a Google search built right in to the top of the browser! This is probably the #1 reason why I have not installed the Google Toolbar until now.

Display Google PageRank Information
The #1 reason why I decided to install the Google Toolbar today: PageRank information. Now that I am focusing on Search Engine Optimization, running websites and all related topics, I need to be able to identify the PageRank of a given website. A PageRank is a value that Google assigns to each website, which signifies a particular websites' importance and affects Google search results rankings. Running the Google Toolbar enables an easy display of any websites PageRank value at the top of the browser. If you are a webmaster and are learning about Search Engine Optimization and related topics, you NEED the Google Toolbar!

Click my banner at the top right of this website to download the Google Toolbar.

1and1 Web Host Review

2007-04-03T08:55:00.000-07:00

1and1 Web Hosting Review
Choosing a web host can be a daunting task for any website owner or web publisher. With hundreds of hosts to choose from (maybe even thousands), how do you narrow the field down to a reliable host that charges the least amount of money? 4 years or so ago, a new player entered into the USA web hosting arena. That company is 1and1 web hosting. 1and1 landed in North America running, with aggressive advertising campaigns in offline print magazines and with online advertising.

Three full years of free web hosting, for real?
When they first entered the North American market, they started off with a bang by offering 3 FREE YEARS of web hosting. Skeptical? I was too until I signed up and got my 3 free years of hosting. After that, I've stayed on with 1and1 due to their excellent products, pricing and server stability.

Website Availability Monitoring Results
Last year, a friend and I were hosting numerous websites on various web hosts and we decided to setup URL monitoring for all of our sites. If a site was ever unavailable or down, we would receive an email notification to let us know that there was a problem. We were monitoring sites hosted by 1and1, GoDaddy and DreamHost. The results? After about 6 months of monitoring, the 1and1 sites had the LEAST amount of monitoring alerts, followed closely by GoDaddy. DreamHost came in last place, with the greatest amount of unavailable alerts. What does this tell me? 1and1 is the most reliable.

Traffic surges
But what about traffic surges caused by social news sites such as Digg, Slashdot, Fark or others? I am happy to report that my 1and1 hosted sites have stood up very well to very large traffic surges being sent from the front page of Digg, Slashdot and others. I have only noticed one problem with my first digg frontpage hit, where a site produced a server error on some requests, but a page refresh was able to fix the issue and serve up the page. The next time my site hit the Digg front page, I saw no problems. I also had no issues when my site was linked from SlashDot.org, a tech news site that will send thousands and thousands of visitors.

Conclusion
In conclusion, I have absolutely no trouble in giving 1and1 web hosting my highest recommendation. I am currently on the cheapest plan, paying less than $3 per month and hosting approximately 10 websites. Do you want a more reliable web host with more features? If so, try out 1and1 web hosting.

Wells Fargo Customer Service is retarded

2007-04-02T10:10:00.000-07:00

Wells Fargo CD accounts opened
Last week I opened two higher interest baring Certificate of Deposit (CD) accounts over the phone with Wells Fargo. After discussing the various options with the representative, she informed me that I was "prequalified" for the CD accounts. I asked if they were going to run a credit check on me due to the new account requests and the Wells Fargo representative responded by telling me that NO, they will not run a credit check because I am prequalified.

Credit Monitoring
I have a credit monitoring service in place and the next day I received a credit alert for activity on my credit record. I logged in to the credit monitoring website and what do I see? A credit check performed by Wells Fargo.

Customer Service is often worthless
The next week I called in to complain because Wells Fargo had lied to me. I was also inquiring about a "service fee" that should not have been charged to my Savings Account, but alas it was there. The Wells Fargo customer service rep credited the Savings Account fee back to my account as a "courtesy". Afterwards, I discussed the credit check and the fact that the Wells Fargo representative had misinformed me. The rep gave me a few different options at that point.

1) She could relay the information to her Supervisor.
2) I could write a letter in to Wells Fargo with my complaint.
3) She could transfer me to a higher level rep that could discuss my complaint.

I asked her if there would be any action taken if she simply relayed the information to her Supervisor. The representative then told me that she had no idea if any action would be taken or if any follow up would be performed in this circumstance. I take this to mean that absolutely nothing would be done.

I figured I might as well give the "higher level rep" a try since I did not feel like writing in a print letter at this precise moment in time, so I asked to be transferred.

Higher level rep = lower intelligence level
I was quickly transferred to the "high level" Wells Fargo customer service representative who was alleged to be able to handle my complaint. I explained that another Wells Fargo employee had lied to me when I was opening my account, and the "high level" customer service rep apologized to me numerous times. She then explained that all customers that apply for a CD account will be credit checked, regardless of their prequalification status.

I said okay fine, I understand that you are apologizing but can you please at least have someone followup with the Wells Fargo rep that opened my account to let her know that she is providing incorrect information to customers regarding credit checks. The "high level" rep then told me that they do not have that capability at this time. I then told this rep that I am sure that Wells Fargo has the rep ID documented somewhere in the system. The "high level" rep then told me again, "We do not have that capability at this time". At this point I was starting to get very annoyed and frustrated, so I asked,

"Are you telling me that a large bank such as Wells Fargo does not keep records of the accounts that each specific employee opens or creates?".

The high level Wells Fargo representative then regurgitated the same reply, "We do not have that capability at this time". At this point I was pushed over my limit and I ended the conversation with the representative. I wonder if a traditional print letter would result in any type of action on Wells Fargo's part...

You need to think big to make it big

2007-04-01T14:49:00.000-07:00

You need to think big to make it big
I joined the AGLOCO get paid to surf service on March 5th. I realized what an amazing opportunity the service provides if a person does a little bit of work by building their member network. Due to this, I set myself a goal of building a network of 100 members in my first month of participating in the service. A large goal? Yes, but you need to think big to make it big. Make a goal, set a date and work to achieve your goal, even if it seems like it is a large feat or a daunting task.

Now that March is over, I am looking at my AGLOCO network stats and I see that I now have 57 members in my network. Did I meet my goal? No, but I am still very happy with my results. I own multiple websites that promote AGLOCO and I have also done some "manual" work by hanging up flyers in PUBLIC locations.

What is AGLOCO?
If you don't know what AGLOCO is, then you are missing out on the billion dollar internet advertising industry. AGLOCO gets the end users a piece of the internet advertising revenue. All you need to do is sign up for the free service and run a tiny toolbar at the bottom of your browser while you surf the web. You can not find a better deal than that. Sign up for AGLOCO today.

ReviewMe Problems

2007-03-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

ReviewMe Problems
ReviewMe is a service that connects publishers with product owners (advertisers). As a publisher, you can join ReviewMe and be entered into their database of available websites that a product owner can request a paid review on.

I joined ReviewMe months ago, and so far I have not received one ReviewMe request. The site that is listed in the ReviewMe publishers database is not this one, it is another blog that I own that is fairly popular and receives a lot of link-backs and traffic from around the web.

With a fairly popular blog that covers some software and consumer electronics devices, I was wondering why in the world I had not received even one ReviewMe request. Is this a ReviewMe Problem? I did some research and I found out why.

ReviewMe search missing results
I navigated to the ReviewMe website as a visitor and attempted to find my site by using the ReviewMe search engine. I used the precise keywords that are listed in my ReviewMe entries' description and tag fields, and the search result came up with absolutely nothing! The search function on ReviewMe.com is horribly broken.

ReviewMe Support
As a ReviewMe publisher, I am concerned about the broken search functionality and ReviewMe problems. If the problems continue with the search function, it means that I will have a much lower chance of receiving a ReviewMe request from an advertiser. I emailed ReviewMe support over a week ago describing the issue in detail. ReviewMe support did respond letting me know that they will look into the problem, but so far the issue has not been corrected.

Have you also noticed these ReviewMe search function problems? If so let me know by replying below.

Get linkbacks with a contest

2007-03-12T20:08:00.000-07:00

Getting link-backs to your site is a priority goal that many blog and website owners have. John Chow is running a contest right now that will probably get him and his sponsor a TON of link-backs. They're offering up a Nintendo Wii as the prize and I want one.

I'm not going to be very creative, I'm just going to use his criteria and text example so that I qualify for the contest. I did find one mistake in his example text though. In his example, he stated "root of evil", but in his contest requirements, he said you must use the anchor text "root of all evil", so I corrected his example and used it below so that I qualify.

The root of all evil, John Chow is giving away a Nintendo Wii. To enter, all you have to do is write a blog post about it. This is mine. Where’s my Wii? The contest is sponsored by 1234Pens.com. They make promotional pens.

Get Paid To Surf

2007-03-07T21:29:00.000-08:00

Get Paid To Surf the web
Wouldn't it be great if you could actually get paid to surf the web? Well if that's what you have been wishing for, your wish has finally came true!

A new service named AGLOCO has just launched, which allows users to GET PAID TO SURF the web by simply running a tiny toolbar at the bottom of the web browser.

But the really good news is that you also GET PAID when other people that you refer to the service use the toolbar to surf the web. Your commissions can really add up by referring more and more people to the service.

A few tid-bits about the service:

It is 100% free, it costs you nothing to sign up.
There is absolutely NO SPYWARE associated with the program or service.
AGLOCO has a very detailed privacy policy, they will not give out your information!
The program has a strict NO SPAM policy, with absolutely no tolerance.
The company is wholly owned by the members / program participants.

You have absolutely nothing to lose and EVERYTHING to gain by signing up now and referring other people to the service.
Sign up now before the service explodes.
Get in early and you could make a TON of money from AGLOCO. The opportunities are astounding.

I am so excited about the new service that I actually launched a new website to promote it! Check out my new website at WeGetPaidToSurf.com

If you have any questions whatsoever about the service, let me know by posting below.

Bla.st Review Visual Image Card directory for Webmasters

2007-02-22T12:04:00.000-08:00

Bla.st Review
Many webmasters submit their sites to online directories, website lists or other resources that categorize websites and provide valuable link-backs. Most of these directories are rather dull, utilizing primarily text-centric presentations and little to no graphics or visuals, especially when it comes to a listing entry within the directory.

Stand out with a visual listing!
Now you can really stand out from the crowd by using rich, visual images to promote your website at http://bla.st, a visual web card directory from Pear Software. The bla.st visual website provides absolutely FREE listings to any individual, business or organization that would like to submit a card. All you need to do is create a virtual card image for your listing, with image dimensions of 165 x 270 pixels. They even provide starter card templates for anyone to use!

Registering at bla.st
Registration is extremely easy and does not require email verification. Enter an email address (for a login ID) and a password, and you're all set to start adding cards!

Card Rankings and categories
Bla.st allows you to select up to 10 categories (tags) for each visual card that you submit. Your card will compete with other websites that have chosen the same category. Ranking is based on #1) the amount the card owner is paying per day to have his/her card listed, and #2) the age of the card. Get your card in there as soon as possible in order to improve your ranking!

Recommended?
Heck yes! With such an elegant directory presentation, visual customization options and a slew full of features, every webmaster out there should get a card up on http://bla.st. It is easier to submit an image card listing on this site than it is to submit a simple text link on many other online directories I have tried. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Web Chief - exploring the world wide web

Kindle Fire contest at DragonBlogger

Dragon Blogger Kindle Fire Giveaway Sponsors

Platinum Sponsors

Gold Sponsors

Silver Sponsors

$5 free towards PlumDistrict

Using Twitter from LeapFish

Using Facebook from LeapFish

Customizing Home Page widgets on LeapFish

The LeapFish Home Page

LeapFish shopping search

LeapFish Blogs search

LeapFish News Search

LeapFish images search

LeapFish video search

LeapFish real time search

Add LeapFish to Google Chrome

Why I like Leapfish

The $6,000 contest

AGLOCO Viewbar problems

Blog contest

Use a link in your comments or replies!

New Blogger Datestamp bug

Threaded Comments Trick

AdSense code and New Blogger bug

Google PageRank with Google Toolbar

1and1 Web Host Review

Wells Fargo Customer Service is retarded

You need to think big to make it big

ReviewMe Problems

Get linkbacks with a contest

Get Paid To Surf

Bla.st Review Visual Image Card directory for Webmasters