Pedro B

So… Today is my birthday and that is in no way a secret nowadays.  Used to be I could keep my trap shut about it and not get any “Happy Birthday’s” except from my brothers and sisters.  That is until I went ahead and threw privacy out the door by getting into deep relationships with Google and Facebook.  (shhh… don’t tell them about each other…)

I woke up this morning with the same idea of ignoring my birthday just like I try to ignore every birthday.  You know that thing where you try to pretend like it’s just any other day?  Yeah that’s me.  I have to go to work just the same and that place has around 100 employees that work under me, all looking at me for guidance or looking at me to mess up.  I know there are more than a few of them that would go all out if they knew it was my birthday.  They would do the party thing with cake and balloons and stuff and all would be well.  The problem for me is that all of them would participate, even the ones that dislike me or the ones that I would have to fire the next day for stealing underwear or something stupid.  So it is smarter for me to not let them know about my birthday (even though some of them know, they just keep it on the DL because I ask them to.)

So I woke up this morning doing my damnedest to remind myself that it is just another day, off to work with me.  I got up early so I decided to log on to ye old internet and WTF why does google have presents and cupcakes and crap on the homescreen?  The Google homepage always has some crap dedication to some nonsense holiday so I go hover over with my mouse and WTF!  Google is telling me Happy Birthday!

Takes me a few seconds to realize that I was logged in to Google and so of course they know when my birthday is.  It’s still kinda unnerving though when you think about it.  Is there anything Google doesn’t know about me?  It’s bad enough that anybody can just Google search my name and find out some of the domain names I own or which websites I have written content for but now big G knows my birthday and flaunts that at me?  The nerve.

I guess as long as they aren’t publishing my birthday to the masses (and really, who in the masses cares) I guess I am just overreacting.

Then I go check my Facebook page cause once every three days or so I get a message or “wall post” and I don’t want to miss any of those!  Again I had forgot about the birthday thing and there are like 10 Happy Birthday posts on my page.  Sweet, activity.  There are many Happy Birthday blessings from old classmates, cousins, aunts, friends, the whole lot of ‘em.  Now that to me is pretty powerful.  Facebook makes things pretty easy to connect, congratulate, whatever.  This makes this birthday much more interesting and I have to admit, I’ve been checking Facebook all day for ‘new’ birthday wishes.

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Lots of folks giving well wishes, people that otherwise I would not have heard from.  Others might see these happy b-days as empty or less significant than a phone call but I like it.  It’s cool that there is a service like Facebook that offers a quick way to see who has a birthday and be able to wish them a happy birthday without much effort.

UPDATE: Say it ain’t so Chael…

After the last two UFC cards I don’t know how any MMA fan can miss the next card. These have been the absolute BEST that I’ve seen. The crowning jewel of these cards was Chael Sonnen challenging Anderson Silva for his middle weight championship belt.

I have told several people that it was one of the top five UFC fights I have ever seen and really I could argue that it was the #1 fight I’ve ever seen. Nobody has ever promoted a fight the way that Chael Sonnen did. Dude talked the talk before the fight was even signed. He had been bashing Anderson Silva for months saying he was going to put Anderson on his back and pound a hole in his face.  Then he went into the cage against Silva and did just that.

I gotta say I am not a fan of trash talking but Sonnen definitely backed his stuff up and gave an awesome performance, in and out of the cage. I gained a ton of respect for him during the fight and his interview the next day just solidified him as one of my favorite MMA fighters.

This is a two part interview and if you are an MMA fan at all it is worth the 25 minutes or so to watch it.

Talk about a class act. Awesome interview, Chael is humble in defeat and still manages to be as arrogant and sure of himself as he was before the fight. I want to be Chael Sonnen when I grow up.

So I’ve been wanting to upgrade from the Blackberry Storm for awhile now.  The Storm has been an awesome phone but there are so many better smartphones out there now that it feels obsolete sometimes.

I want an iPhone because it is probably the best phone out there (my opinion) but I refuse to deal with At&t.  All the rumors about the iPhone 4 coming to Verizon made me put off buying a new phone until I was sure that was not going to happen.

The obvious next choice for someone looking for a great smartphone with plenty of apps would be android based.  My problems with Android based phones are as follows:

1. Google made it and thus can track your every move.
2. Android devices have been known to have terrible battery life and nobody will accept responsibility for it.
3. All of the updates and inability to get those new software updates on a phone that is only a few months old.

First of all I use a lot of Google powered products every day (gmail, google docs, chrome) but I don’t trust what they do with the data Google gathers from my usage.  As long as users are aware that what they do online is being hoarded by Google then we can minimize the damage.  But that’s another topic altogether…

I went ahead and bought an Android smartphone because they are packed with all the features I want, I can tether my Android smartphone to my laptop, and they are much more customizable then a lot of the smartphones out there.

Out of the box the HTC Evo is an awesome phone.  Already loaded with great apps by default, like Facebook, Maps, Voice navigation and it comes with an awesome camera.  The major problem with this is that they are all turned on and running right out of the box!  There should be a setup process that lets a user decide which apps and connections (4g, 3g, email sync, GPS, Wi-fi, bluetooth!) to allow when the phone is first turned on.  This would have saved my battery the first day.

I got mine in the evening, messed around with it, then put it on the charger.  The next day I get up and go to work only to watch my battery life drain away with practically ZERO usage on my part.  I work ten hour days minimum so having a phone that lasts all day is a must for me.

I did research different solutions online but a lot of it is crap.  The main thing the Evo needs for decent battery life is to have some of those connections turned off.  I don’t need GPS to be running at all hours, I don’t use bluetooth most of the time, so those were the first connections that got shut off.  I’m not typically around Wi-Fi networks either so I turned that off but I don’t think that made a huge difference.  I also went in to the apps (settings > Accounts and Sync) and disabled most of the social networks from syncing at all hours.  These changes alone have taken the battery life from around 8 hours to maybe 24 hours.  I can live with that for now while I learn what else I can do to save battery life.

I used to go 2-3 days on my Storm without the need for juice but I couldn’t do half the things this HTC Evo does so all in all I am pretty happy with this phone.  Maybe in 2012 Apple will get away from AT&T.  In the meantime the Evo is a good smartphone that I’m still learning how to get the most of.

These last few days I’ve been going through and updating my sites (maintenance stuff) and I decided to throw this site in to.  Mainly I’ve been updating to WordPress 3.0 but I’ve also been moving some of my sites to separate hosting accounts.

As far as this blog goes I guess I need to figure out what I want to do with it.  It’s been sitting idle for more than a few months and obviously has no direction but I figure that’s ok.  This internet thing isn’t going anywhere and if it does end up serving a purpose at some point, then more power to it.  And if it doesn’t, meh.

Anyway I’ve gone with the twenty-ten theme for it for now because it’s there.  I actually like the simplicity of it and it’s pretty easy to customize.  I’m using it on more than a few of my new niche sites to just because it is really simple and looks much more cleaner than the old Kubrick default theme that WordPress was using before.  I’ll work on the header.

More to come.  I plan on doing a small review on my new HTC Evo smartphone tomorrow morning!

I hit Amazon pretty often every day looking for new ideas for building niche sites.  I was freakin SHOCKED today when I went to Amazon’s main page and saw the following screen (click on the pic to see the full size):

I went ahead and blotted out the inappropriate stuff.  I guess Amazon doesn’t bother to screen what “other customers are looking at right now” results.

I’ve been staying up on the Keyword Academy for the last few months and these guys are pros.  I very much enjoy thier posts and their “call to action” style of writing.  A lot of the MMO blogs I read are geared towards getting you to sign up to something through an affiliate link of theirs for something or other.  I absolutely LOVE how Mark and Court work towards getting their readers to do something.  They don’t just tell you to go do something, they tell you how to go do something.

Go to The Keyword Academy and sign up for their Keyword Crash Course.  There is nothing they will email you that will not help you in your online marketing endeavors.

As for me I’ve taken many of their techniques and used them to find keywords that have heavy search volume but not much competition.  I’ve used these keywords to drive more focused traffic to my websites through organic search results and it has been easy.  Using the methods Court and Mark describe I have more than enough keywords to chase after.  I actually have a list of keywords that have heavy search volume and little competition that are just waiting for me to have the time to focus on them.

If you are looking for ways to increase your presence in organic search results, sign up for The Keyword Academy.  No affiliate links here, go do it for your benefit and make some money.  It’s there for the taking!

Mark from The Niche Store Builder is holding a contest to give away a nicely built niche store built on the Build a Niche Store system and I want it!  Mark planned this niche site out using the Number 1 Way to Make Money Online guide that the creators of the BANS system wrote.  I bought the guide when it came out and have been busy using some of their techniques on all of my sites, new and old.

Anyone can enter to win and it really is a breeze to do.  Check out the Niche Store Site Contest and sign up for the contest!

I haven’t posted here for awhile but I have stayed busy.  Lot’s of stuff going on with the EPN network and BANS and I plan on posting some of my experiences here soon.

Anyways I have been enjoying Mark and Court’s Keyword Academy, which I will also post about soon.  I’ve been using their techniques for the last few months and have been very successful with what they teach.  Today I found a long-tail keyword that averages 10,000 searches a month (exact phrase) but has close to zero competition!  I plan on sharing some of the stuff I have learned along with screenshots of increased traffic for my sites thanks to the techniques Mark and Court teach.

See you soon!

Facebook is finally going to allow everyone to have their own username!  In a few days, Facebook will let anyone register thier own username so that you can direct your friends to your Facebook profile with a simple URL.

According to Facebook’s page on usernames:

Starting on Friday, June 12th, at 11:01pm, you’ll be able to choose a username for your Facebook account to easily direct friends, family, and coworkers to your profile.

If you want your desired Facebook username, better be online 11:01 June 12th!

Google had a presentation for a room full of geeks a few days ago.  They introduced Google Wave, a work in progress by the makers of Google Maps.  Wave is being described as “What email would look like if it were invented today.”  I just sat through the presentation and was blown away by all the features of Wave.

It’s a fairly long presentation.  Basically Wave works to make everything you do to communicate and collaborate real time.  The interface looks like Gmail but it’s not just about messages, it lets you create tons of content in an easy way that is able to be edited and added to by any one that is involved in that “Wave.”  Want to reply to a particular part of a Wave?  You can add content to a Wave anywhere you wish, like a comment.  And all of this is done in a browser in real time.  You can also add a new person to a Wave at any point and they would see that wave in it’s entirety.  If this new person wants to see the Wave from when it first started there is a playback button that shows the Wave from the original content up to that point.

Google Wave

Google Wave is supposed to be released to the masses sometime later this year.  There is an open API for developers that will allow Wave to be extended in tons of different ways.  Google has big plans with this and looks like it’s trying to incorporate everything you do on the web into one place.  Let’s hope Google is still the good guy.