LeapFish video search

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

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 This "static" content can often be very old or outdated, even though it ranks high in a traditional search engine for a certain keyword or set of keywords.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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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!