Information Technology and My Life

Catching Up To What's Important

2010-11-22T00:37:00.000-05:00

Recently, I was working as an overworked and underpaid developer in the downtown Orlando area. I realized that I much rather have the time to work on my own things, as well as spend more time with my family. It bothered me that I had to work 50-60 hour weeks.

Since I've freed up my schedule somewhat, I've got more time to focus on EcommerceForEveryone.com , my own start-up. I've been able to add some cool enhancements, fix a few bugs, and generally add more value to the service.

So using some of my free time wisely, I've updated to the latest version of Mac Os X, Zend Studio, Mamp Pro, and some other goodies. Cleared my mac book pro, and reformatted it into a rock solid development environment, very nice if I say so myself. I've got all of the premium tools at my disposal now.

I haven't blogged for a little while, so I though it'd be a good thing to catch up for those that actually read/follow this blog. I'm much more active on my twitter account, and I was posting a little more regularly on my PuReWebDev blog until I got lazy and stopped posting (bad habit).

Just as a follow up to my previous posting, nothing has happened to mysql as yet, I feared they'd be extinguished once Oracle bought Sun (which owned mysql at the time).

Not a whole lot of items of import to share at the moment, but I'll stop by and post some more once I've got more upgrades completed to E4E, maybe even post a few screen shots of the work.

Upgrading My Skills

2010-08-08T14:22:00.000-04:00

It's been a little while since I've posted anything new here. I've been busy working on a few different little projects, a self branded website for myself, Genesis Font. I've also been trying to make a post every now and then on my internet handle, PuReWebDev.

I've been working for an online marketing company as well, doing some SEO work and development. The development part is the part I really enjoy, even though I produce rather impressive results with the marketing. I still get to do my own affiliate retail marketing as well.

This year in general has been interesting to say the least. Lots of changes to speak of, but in regards to technology, I've been spending a lot of time focusing on jQuery, as well as standards compliant coding, xhtml and css. I'm happy to do things the right way, and it's a great feeling knowing that you've coded something properly, and makes you wonder how you've managed to do things any other way.

I've spotted some new market opportunities that I'm going to exploit later this year. Fantastic idea, no one is doing, and kind of makes you wonder why that is. I actually have to set up a server to get it all going,

Exploring eBay for Affiliate Marketing

2009-12-18T20:22:00.000-05:00

After a very rewarding and successful experience using the Amazon Associates program. I decided that I should start an additional revenue stream. I've been using Google Adsense and Amazon exclusively for my affiliate marketing projects, but I'd like to add eBay into the mix.

Many affiliate marketers have been earning a revenue from eBay, and I feel as though I've been missing my slice of the pie by not joining in on the fun. So today, I submitted an application to join the program. It was a relatively straight forward process, and I couldn't help but notice how easy they made it to join all of their international affiliate programs at once. With Amazon, you have to create a separate account for each international zone.

I'm curious as to how I might include eBay into my existing affiliate retail operations. I'm trying to increase my chances of earning, and also increase my revenue per month. I've been checking out some eBay marketing books that will hopefully help me to get the most out of the program, one of the books: How To Start Real Ebusinesses: Using Multiple Streams Of Income (Volume 1) .

Before anything, I'm going to have to be approved for the program. I submitted my website E-commerce For Everyone as my main website to use with the program. Hopefully, there isn't any issue with me using the eBay program on many different websites. Currently I'm operating over 60 different, affiliate retail websites, and if I keep doing what I'm doing (setting up a new one each week), then I feel 2010 will be a great year for me.

I'll follow up to this post if I get approved, and hopefully document the steps I'm taking on my road to success. I've been posting on my amazon associate blog over at WordPress, but since Blogger has integrated Amazon Associates, I might start to switch it up a little. I'll have to make it a point to post more in my Information Technology blog.

Oracle Finally Owns MySQL

2009-04-20T11:11:00.004-04:00

Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, who had also recently acquired MySQL not too long ago. MySQL started life as an open-source database system that was built was used freely by developers and companies around the world. Even large enterprise systems use MySQL, and this may have possed a threat to Oracle.

In a move from the "own your competition" playbook, Oracle snapped up Sun Mirosystems and thus MySQL. MySQL is the the world's most popular open source database, so the acquisition of Sun by Oracle makes the world of database administrators shake. I'm sure the world of Java and Solaris is also just been tossed up into the sky.

We all know that during acquisitions lots of promises are made, but rarely are they all kept. What I thought was interesting was that there was no mention of MySQL in the Sun Oracle Press Release. I'm sure that there will be more news to follow as soon as the dust settles.

Life with a PS3 Changes Things

2009-03-15T16:24:00.004-04:00

Wow, it's been a while since I made my last post. That's what I was thinking and I started to think about why that might be. I came to the conclusion, that since purchasing the Sony Playstation 3, the television, is now a device I can embrace once again. Seriously, the television was on it's way out the door, but then some one shed some light on the wonderful goodness of browsing the internet on your hi-def tv. It was finally, a better way forward.

When using the the PS3 with a hi-def television, you can browse the internet on your tv and watch on demand content from YouTube, Hulu, and a ton of other video and social websites. I've been calling this internet television, TV 2.0. Because the PS3 is a DLNA compatible device, I can steam, music, movies, pictures, subscibe to podcasts and more from my computer over the wireless network.

On that last note, it might be worthwhile to consider buying a new wireless n router so you can stream HD movies (while still doing all your other network intensive stuff like voip, streaming video, bittorent).

Once you step up to watching strickly internet video (or free dtv), you start to realize that you've got access to all your favorite shows (without having to pay for content subscriptions). Since getting the PS3, I've been even further enveloped in a world of hi-tech gadgetry. I live in a very network centric home, and I'll tell you what........ I like it. I like alot!

Back to my e-commerce work.

What's the blogosphere is saying about EcommerceForEveryone.com

2009-01-29T23:47:00.003-05:00

Just wanted to create a quick post and round up some of the things we're hearing about EcommerceForEveryone.com , a few independant posts:

http://www.mymoneystation.com/work-from-home/thinking-of-opening-an-amazoncom-store

http://myownbusinessdairy.blogspot.com/2009/01/ecommerceforeveryonecom-perfect-for.html

http://selfdefenceismandatory.blogspot.com/2009/01/ecommerceforeveryonecom-perfect-for.html

http://ecommerce4ubyme.blogspot.com/2009/01/welcome-to-e-commerce-for-everyone.html

http://moorthy-nokia.blogspot.com/2009/01/ecommerceforeveryone.html

http://blog.office1000.org/tags/online_business/20090128-153028-Reputation-Matters-New-Small-Biz--e-commerce-websites-from-Amazon-

http://jonam.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!BE526B7536AE8AF6!136.entry

There's been a decent amount of feedback. I hope that we can continue to improve our product with lots of cool new features.

International Amazon Associate Websites by EcommerceForEveryone.com

2009-01-25T16:58:00.003-05:00

Ok, so I've been busy working on some new development. This time, it looks like EcommerceForEveryone.com will be going international. We've recently launch some sites for Canada, France, Germany, UK and US (sorry Japan). We're still working enhance things a big, but for the mean time, they are doing ok.

I've also been inviting people to come check out Amazon Associates forum. There is discussion about all things e-commerce and Amazon.

EcommerceForEveryone.com crea TuMusicaLatino.com

2009-01-21T22:31:00.001-05:00

Un nuevo website ha sido desarrollado por EcommerceForEveryone.com para ofrecer la música latina a todos nuestros Latinos compañeros para disfrutar del mejor de la salsa, de Merengue y más.

EcommerceForEveryone.com Launches an Amazon Associates Forum

2009-01-17T17:54:00.002-05:00

EcommerceForEveryone.com , developers of Amazon Associate Websites, have created a new Amazon Associates forum. If you've been interested in learning to earn with the Amazon.com Associates program, then take an opportunity to join our new community.

Everything You'll Need To Build Your Next Computer

2009-01-07T01:21:00.003-05:00

Here are a few things you might need for building your next home or business computer. It's always better to build a custom especially if your going to be playing some video games, or editing video.

I like building my own computers, even though it seems that it's cheaper today to buy a dell then to build my own. Dells are great machines, but I wouldn't buy a Dell to play my games on.

After Holiday Shopping Sales Strong For Amazon Associates

2009-01-06T23:45:00.003-05:00

I'm very pleased with the results of my Holiday sales figures for 2008. It was a rumored that sales figures would be low, as consumers ride out the recession. Fortunately, online shopping has been one of the few growth areas that has continued to shine as large companies such as Circuit City collapse in the economic meltdown.

My sales this year actually doubled last years totals. I've had an opportunity to launch several new sites, which started doing well almost immediately.

Personally, the holidays represent an opportunity to get some things done, mainly coding. I spent some time last week to getting a control panel upgrade finished. I'm nearly done, and in a very short time, people will be blown away by the ease of use and the features that we'll offer. E-commerce For Everyone specializes in creating websites for Amazon Associates.

Still Coding Through The Holidays

2008-12-25T16:19:00.002-05:00

Today is Christmas 2008, but unlike many of my peers, I decided to go ahead and do a little work today. I spent some time creating the international versions of E-commerce For Everyone websites on one of our test domains. It was fun creating Amazon Associate websites for our French, German, Canadian and UK friends. I'm still working on the Japanese version (that one is gonna be a little tricky).

I had a revelation this week while working on the international versions of Amazon Associates. The first revelation is that it's not called Amazon Associates everywhere, it's actually called PartnerNet in Germany (that blew my mind for a minute, lol). Another revelation I had is that Babel has come a long way (your translations rock now). A third revelation is that even though it took me 20 minutes to do, I didn't need someone else who spoke Japanese to sign-up for the Japanese version of Amazon Associates.

I have to say that this month has been awesome for sales, I broke my monthly sales record too, so that is always encouraging. I'm even more excited now at the prospect of making lots of international revenue. I've primarily focused on the United States as my main source of sales, but if this recession has taught me anything, it's that I should diversify my already recession proof business. I'm excited by the prospect that internationally, there is still so much growth opportunity.

Office Depot Closing 112 Stores

2008-12-15T17:43:00.000-05:00

It's been reported that Office Depot will be closing 112 stores. Although not filing for bankruptcy, it appears to be joining the ranks of Circuit City and CompUSA. Office Depot claims that the closing of underperforming stores is in alignment with it's strategic goals.

The move will allow Office Depot to reduce expenses and continue to be competitive in a changing market. New online competitors such as StockMyOffice.com seek to grow their market share in the office supply space. Included in the store 112 store closings are 6 distribution facilities and 2,200 employees that will be added to the current high unemployment rate.

In my own opinion, Office Depot is going to have a tough time moving office chairs, desks and office supplies at an affordable price if they have to support the overhead of stores and facilities that are not profitable on their own. I'm sure the store locations were a good pick at the time, but things change from one minute to the next, and unfortunately, sometimes consolidation is a necessary evil for big companies to stay competitive.

I'm Considering Amazon Turk

2008-12-13T23:45:00.000-05:00

It's my understanding that with Amazon Turk, you can put together an on demand work force to do various tasks. I'm considering using it as a marketing method. I figured that I might pay $1 for people to do a 5 or ten minute blog post.

There are plenty of places that offer pay per post, but it could be expensive. This experiment might be the start of a lot of cool new things. Potential the ability to outsource some tasks. I'll post my findings back here.

Recession Proofing Your Wallets With Amazon Associates

2008-12-12T20:17:00.001-05:00

Want to be recession proof? Earning some extra income in these long recession days is a blessing to anyone who can get it. One of the easiest ways to earn a little extra money to pay the bills is simply to become a virtual merchant by selling products for Amazon. Earn a commission by generating sales for Amazon.

Amazon has a program called Amazon Associates. It will allow you to sell anything in their huge product catalog and earn a commission once an item ships. You might even find that the Amazon Associates program is better then your sales job. Work on your own hours, with no boss other then your own personal motivation. Work more, earn more.

Here's a very reasonable scenario of what the Amazon Associates program could do for you each month. I've attached a screen shot of my earnings for the first 11 days of the month. So far only $336.44, but that's more then enough for a car payment. With the remaining days of the month, I'll make enough to pay the electric ($150), water ($15), internet ($60), website ($30), marketing ($100), Savings ($200+ remainder of commissions). The beauty of the Amazon Associates program is that you can spend as little or as much time as you like, so while most of you won't quit your job just yet, you can work in your spare time from anywhere with internet access.

There are different ways that you can promote Amazon products like a blog or website. It's important to have a professionally designed website that is ready to attract online shoppers. Don't worry if you don't have technical or web design skills, there are lots of free scripts available and even some professional designers that make Amazon Associate e-commerce websites. E-commerce For Everyone is one of the few developers creating innovation solutions for Amazon Associates. While the recession has negatively affected many sectors of the economy, online shopping is one of the few sectors that has seen continued growth.

There is no question that in the near future online shopping will far exceed brick and mortar shopping carts. With broadband access being rolled out world wide at a break neck speed, savvy businesses will be ready to do business online in the global marketplace.

Testing Microsoft’s Writer beta

2008-12-07T22:49:00.001-05:00

This is the first blog post I create using the new Microsoft Writer beta. The application seems to be very clean, and gives the user a nice blogging platform.

I haven’t used it with all of my blogs as yet, but I think it’ll work well. The cool part about this application is that they’ve decided to add plugins. I didn’t actually have a lot to say in this post more then I wanted to check out it’s capabilities, and formatting.

The program is still in beta, but even for a beta it seems rather solid. I used a similar blogging program called Elicit, unfortunately they went out of business and took the licensing server with it, so it eventually stopped working.

Another little nicety about the new Microsoft blog tool is that it has a built in updater, so I don’t have to manually check.

Technorati Tags: microsoft,writter,blogging,tools

Review of 3:10 to Yuma

2008-12-03T16:41:00.000-05:00

3:10 to Yuma is a great western starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Crowe stars as a ruthless gangster who is wanted by the law. Bale stars as an ex-Union solder, now disabled, has been forced to become a deputy threw a series of circumstances, and is tasked to bring Crowe to the prison train leaving for Yuma at 3:10.

There is plenty of action and dialogue in the movie. You never felt bored at any point with this movie. In fact, there is lots of action and gun battles as Crowe's gang tries franticly to free their boss.

I'd recommend seeing this movie right away if you haven't seen it. My understanding is that this is a remake of an older movie.

Information Technology and Computer Related Books

2008-12-03T16:33:00.000-05:00

Home Computing	Apple	Audiobooks
Business & Culture	Certification Central	Computer Science
Databases	Digital Music	Digital Photography & Video
Games & Strategy Guides	General	General AAS
Graphic Design	Hardware	Microsoft
Mobile & Wireless Computing	Networking	Operating Systems
Programming	Project Management	Security & Encryption
Software	Web Development

Looking At A Cheap All-In-One Printer, Scanner and Fax Machine

2008-12-03T16:06:00.001-05:00

As a small start-up business, I find myself need to do the typically office administrative work like printing, making copies of documents, and every now and then sending out a fax.

I didn't want to spend too much money either, so I came across this multi-function unit. This one is the HP Deskjet F4280 All-in-One Printer, Scanner, Copier (CB656A). Looks like it prints some decent documents. I don't really need anything fancy because I'm not going to be printing any images from a digital camera or anything. The last time I went to the UPS store to print and fax some documents, it ended up costing me somewhere around the neighborhod of $30.
After realizing how much I spent on one trip to the UPS store, I realized that I could have purchased my own equipment if I made two more visits in the rest of the year. I figured already that I would need to print and fax, so I might see about getting a deal on this one. Another cool part about the device is that it can scan too, so that comes in handy for making copies of receipts or any other business documents, and then store them on a server. This particular one is less then $100, so I figure it's a good deal. You can buy one from Amazon too if you want free shipping.

Google Gmail Notifier Doesn't Recognize Google Chrome As A Browser

2008-12-01T17:39:00.001-05:00

Every once in a while internet users will notice an incompatibility within Google's programs. Today, a user discovered that Google's Gmail Notifier is not compatible with Google Chrome.

I thought this pic was worth at least one laugh. I'm sure it won't take long for Google to fix the problem, but it would be good for all of their applications to be compatible.

Google is one of the few companies that doesn't get to make an honest mistake because they seem to be under such very strong public scrutiny.
One of the first things I noticed when I started using Google Chrome was that it was a very fast browser. One of the major things that it was clearly missing was the ability to add some kind of add-on or plugin. I'm sure future versions will carry the feature. Another thing I'd like to see resolved is the ability to login to my bank. Right now only Internet Explorer and FireFox are supported.

Amazon S3 has Akamai Laying off 7% Of It's Work Force, Maybe.

2008-11-24T18:25:00.000-05:00

Seems like only yesterday (cause it was), that I was blogging about how Amazon S3 would be changing up the content delivery network market. In yesterday's post, I had the foresight to say that things in the cdn market were going to be shaked up by Amazon S3.

Today, it was announced that Akamai would be laying off 7% of it's workforce. Now, they didn't exactly say that the layoffs were related to Amazon's S3, however, I can't think of a good reason that Akamai would be down sizing it's business. Sure the economy has been affecting many companies, but Akamai's main business customers are the large companies who continue to use Akamai's cdn services regardless of what the economy is doing. That said, Akamai's business should really be recession proof.

My educated guess is that Akamai is using the economy as an opportunity to dump their employees while trying to save face. The same way many companies did during 911. I think that the reality has finally hit them, that Amazon S3, is making their over priced service irrelevant. I know, it's a bold statement, however, it's just my own educated guess (which most of the times turn out to be true).

10 Reasons Why Amazon Associates Is Better Then Your Traditional Sales Job

2008-11-23T15:16:00.000-05:00

As more people begin to use the internet as a primary way of earning a living, we've seen a rise in affiliate marketing. If you haven't heard it defined before, then affiliate marketing is an internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. In plain english, companies are willing to pay you a commission, every you generate a sale for them.

One of the more popular affiliate programs available on the internet today is the Amazon Associates program. Associates can earn great commissions for helping Amazon sell any of the millions of items in it's product catalog. Remember what the Avon Lady used to do, when she came around with her brochure to sell the latest schwag of the day. The Avon Lady would get a commission each time someone purchased an Avon product from here. Take the same concept, fast forward to present day, and replace the catalog with a website and you've got the Amazon Associates program today.

If you've ever had a job as a sales person, then you might feel right at home selling items for Amazon. Lets compare working a traditional sales job to the Amazon Associates program.

Traditional Sales Job:

You have a minimum quota you have to make just to keep your job.
You have a boss breathing down your back to get stuff done.
You've got to be at the store during certain business hours in order to make your sales.
You can only sell what is instock at your store.
You have to deal with problem customers, returns, customer service
Might have to train on a product just to be able to sell it.
Takes long to move up in the company even though you've been outperforming everyone else.
You may not feel like selling the items the store you work for offers.
Your entire market might be just a small town
So much non-sales related work, like taking inventory, loss prevention, cleaning the store, etc.

So why is an Amazon Associates sales job better:

There is no minimum amount you need to sell.
You don't have to hard sell anyone to make a purchase.
You are free to work on sales when it's the right time for you. No clocks to punch in or out of.
You are the boss, no one breathing down your neck, making sure you got the job done.
You are not limited to selling only what you have in your store, instead you have access to Amazon's million plus product catalog.
You don't need to train to sell Amazon products. You can use your existing knowledge to focus on what you can sell well. For example if you've ever worked in a hardware store like home depot, then you'll find it easier to sell tools and hardware from Amazon's hardware department, making good use of your current experience.
Amazon Associates who perform well, easily move up to the next commission tier. You don't have to worry about seniority or politics holding you back from earning more. If you produce sales, then you can enjoy higher amounts of commission per sale.
Because of Amazon's huge selection of brand name products in every sales category, it will be easy for you to find a niche market for you to focus your sales campaign on. You can sell the products that you feel comfortable with offering, and feel good about selling such a quality product.
Because Amazon is a global retailer, you are not limited in your geographic areas. You will be able to setup a website selling quality Amazon products to customers around the world. With the internet as your global marketplace, you can showcase your website to millions of online shoppers.
The Amazon Associates program is free and easy to use. Amazon handles all of the logistics as far as order processing, order fulfillment and customer service, so you can spend your efforts in the areas that really pay off like establishing your brand, and marketing your website.

As you can see, there are plenty of reasons why Amazon Associates is better then your traditional sales job. Now that we've come to this new realization, how can this work for you? The answer to that is simple, if you haven't done so already, go ahead and sign up for the Amazon Associates program. Now that you know you can make money with this program, you'll probably want to learn as much as you can. I'll list a few resources for you below.

Amazon Associates Resources:

When you are starting out with the Amazon Associates program, you'll probably continue to work at your day job, as you discover what affiliate marketing is all about, and as you start to earn some revenue. For a lucky few, you'll be able to start making the transition from just a part time associate, to a full time affiliate marketer.

Here are a few example Amazon Associate websites that are earning money on a daily basis as a result of doing some simple branding and marketing:

These websites were developed by E-commerce For Everyone, a company that specializes in the development of websites for amazon associates. These e-commerce websites are a great way to build up a good revenue stream. After taking a look at some of those websites, I'm sure it's alot easier to see how you can make money online with Amazon, and why people are ditching their traditional sales jobs to do Amazon Associate sales instead.

We're Switching To Amazon S3

2008-11-23T13:02:00.000-05:00

I've been having so much fun using Amazon S3, that I've decided to use it to host all static objects for our clients. It helps to deliver a higher performing website, it's easy to use, and makes easy work of keeping your website contents backed up.

Amazon recently announced a new web service called CloudFront, here's what they have to say about it:

Amazon CloudFront is a web service for content delivery. It integrates with other Amazon Web Services to give developers and businesses an easy way to distribute content to end users with low latency, high data transfer speeds, and no commitments.

Amazon CloudFront delivers your content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your objects are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance. Amazon CloudFront works seamlessly with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) which durably stores the original, definitive versions of your files. Like other Amazon Web Services, there are no contracts or monthly commitments for using Amazon CloudFront – you pay only for as much or as little content as you actually deliver through the service.

I think making these services available to small businesses is going to level out the playing field when it comes to delivering content using the kind of bandwidth necessary for a pleasurable site interaction. Fast load times have been a hallmark of larger websites that have been using traditional content delivery network services such as Akamai. It will interesting to see the new face of cdn's in the next five years. We might seen a significant amount of consolidation, and value added resellers similar to the existing Amazon Associates program.

Video: Collection of Your Favorite Cartoon Shows

2008-11-20T18:59:00.000-05:00

Here is a collection of all those old cartoons you loved as a kid:

Silver Hawks

Silver Hawks at Amazon

Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors

Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors at Amazon

Centurions

Centurions at Amazon

BRAVESTAR

BRAVESTAR at Amazon

Captain Power

Captain Power at Amazon

Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers

Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers at Amazon

Real Ghostbusters

Real Ghostbusters at Amazon

Inspector Gadget

Inspector Gadget at Amazon

M.A.S.K

M.A.S.K at Amazon

He Man

He Man at Amazon

Voltron

Voltron at Amazon

Thundercats

Thundercats at Amazon

Transformers

Transformers at Amazon

G.I. Joe

G.I. Joe at Amazon

She-Ra

She-Ra at Amazon

Jem

Jem at Amazon

The Snorks

The Snorks at Amazon

Gummi Bears

Gummi Bears at Amazon

The Smurfs

The Smurfs at Amazon

Fraggle Rock

Fraggle Rock at Amazon

Care Bears

Care Bears at Amazon

Rainbow Brite

Rainbow Brite at Amazon

Strawberry Shortcake

Strawberry Shortcake at Amazon

The Monchhichis

The Monchhichis at Amazon

Alvin and The Chipmunks

Alvin and The Chipmunks at Amazon

Ducktales

Ducktales at Amazon

Tale Spin

Tale Spin at Amazon

PUNKY BREWSTER

PUNKY BREWSTER at Amazon

Shirt Tales

Shirt Tales at Amazon

Scooby Doo

Scooby Doo at Amazon

Like this post? Read more about what PuReWebDev has to say.

Google Webmaster Tools Doing A Faster Crawl

2008-11-19T16:47:00.000-05:00

Want Google to crawl your site faster? One of the fastest ways to make sure Google gets to those deeper pages of content in your site faster is to go ahead and use a Google Webmaster Tools.

For one thing, that's where you'll be able to submit a Google sitemap file. If you don't know what a sitemap file is, you might have just woken up from a 10,000 year old sleep, so, as a basic refresher, a sitemap file is typically an xml based file that contains listings of your page urls, along with a timestamp of when that file was created and last modified. This way, Google not only knows the page exists, but it will know when it was created, and also how frequently its updated.

Inside of Google Webmaster Tools, you'll also be able to set the crawl rate for your website. The crawl rate is basically how slow or fast the Googlebot requests pages from your site. Typically you can set it faster, but only for 90 days at a time, which should be good enough for Google to rip through your site and grab the content for indexing. If you have several million pages of content to get indexed, you should start off with several large sitemap files. The sitemap files should not exceed 50,000 urls or 10MB, so compress your files with gzip compression if they are larger then 10MB. Link directly to pages on your site that are several clicks away from the homepage, by doing that, you foce Google to take a look at that page, and the ones it's linking to.

Another method to get the deeper pages of your site indexed, would simply be to re-arrange your link structure, similar to what Amazon did, making the category pages link to sub-categories and even deeper pages in the heirarchy.

Watching Television Online For Free

2008-11-19T15:59:00.000-05:00

Decided to do this post today, because I realize that there are many, many people still watching television, with an actual television set. Now, I know people like to cling on to old pieces of equipment like fax machines, eight-track players, and record players, but c'mon people it's 2008.

If you're like me, then you understand that a computer is useful for a whole lot more then actual work stuff, a computer is a great replacement for a television. I gave up regular television a while ago, kind of like when people started realizing that they could enjoy cd's or satellite versus radio broadcast. I stopped watching regular television, and cable television for that matter, once I realized that I could watch all of my favorite shows online, on demand (sorry Tivo), in high-def, and for free.

First you've got to start off with the right gear. For me, it's an HP laptop with built in wireless and a high-def screen and (optionally) a desktop with a 22 inch wide screen flat panel display. On my desktop, I've got a Logitech 5.1 THX surround sound system, so that the sound you get from your computer can be heard at the neighbors house, lol. Now that your audio and video are in check, you'll need to make sure you've got a broadband connection, matter of fact, if you don't have broadband, leave this page now (chump). Assuming you've got a decent connection, you can start retiring your Television, or better yet, put it up on ebay for some other fool to purchase, you won't need yours anymore.

There are several ways that you can do this, and I'll just list a few.

Use iTunes. Subscibe to various video podcasts, and download shows of all kinds. This is probably the preferred method for those on a laptop, as your connection might not always be available.
Do the same as number 1, but use a program like Miro. It's free and does the same thing iTunes does (except support mobile devices).
Go directly to the broadcast networks that are already offering your same Television programs you like. NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, CNN you get the picture. All of them have video available on their websites, that you can watch when you like, not when they schedule you to. Some have already content in HD. Another nice thing about going to the website is that you might be able to subscibe to a video podcast, or just catch up on an older episode in the online archives.
Visit sites like Hulu. Hulu is actually a collection of legal content provided by broadcast networks. If you ask me, Hulu is one of the best online video sites mainly because it puts everything together in an easy to browse fashion. They have deals with alot of the cable network providers as well, so you'll find all sorts of content on there.
Everything I've mentioned so far, is for enjoying video totally for free, however, if you live on the internation space station and are not governed by the laws here on Earth, then you might want to check out a site called Watch-Movies.net. Yes, the videos are pirated, but where else are you going to see the Quantum of Solace in divx format before the actual theatrical release, lol. Lots of great movies listed on the site, and typically what will happen is that you don't need to download the movie, as they've uploaded them to places with high bandwidth and little oversight like Google video. This means a fast download for you, and nothing to delete on your computer afterwards, and no peer-to-peer ad/spyware downloading crap.
Lastly, you could actually buy video access from various video vendors.

Another most useful set of tips that I will bestow upon you would be to make sure you are getting a good amount of usage from sites like YouTube, MetaCafe and others. I probably shouldn't have had to mention those, but I know somewhere out there in cyberspace, is a fool who's been living under a cyber-rock. I hope this little introduction to online video has been helpful. Now try not to get addicted to all this wonderful goodness, I dare you : )

Yahoo Co-Founder Jerry Yang Says My Bad Dawg

2008-11-18T16:38:00.000-05:00

Jerry Yang, co-founder and CEO of Yahoo!, is now stepping down from position of Chief Yahoo!. Seems that fumbling the sale of Yahoo to Microsoft for double the current value doesn't go unnoticed.

I'm still thinking that the time looks right for Microsoft to stop messing around and purchase Yahoo. Yahoo is a great company to be honest with you, and it's a tough situation they seem to be in. You'd think after all the great service Yahoo has given to millions of users, that they'd have a user base ready to back them up, and prevent a hostile take over from Microsoft. Doesn't appear to be the case. Why no love for Yahoo? I mean if there was a threat to Google, I'm sure a community of users would be having a fit.

Yahoo, I really like you the way you are, but if you sellout to Microsoft, it's over between us. Mr. Yang, I know it's difficult when you have a baby that you created, and it's growing and changing, but, sometimes the best thing you can do is let nature take its course. Hopefully, the company you created will be intact throughout the rest of the recession, and then hopefully your stocks will pick up and you won't look like such a mark to your larger competitors. Good luck.

Google Insight Search

2008-11-17T20:10:00.000-05:00

Was ready Andrew Chen's blog about the new Google Insight search. It's basically like a Google trends on steroids if you ask me. It gives the search related keywords to the one being searched on, but also the ability to search different time frames and geographical locations, giving the person doing the search, a great opportunity to view historical search trends. Great new tool from Google.

Some of My Rss Feeds

2008-11-17T16:50:00.000-05:00

I've got a few rss feeds I'm trying to promote and get indexed, so I figured I'll drop a little link or two to get things started:

First is my tools and hardware feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ToolsandHardware
Second is my Solar Panel Reviews feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SolarPanelReviews
Third is my Photography and Camera reviews feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DigitalCameraShopping
And last but not least is my Office Supplies feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/stockmyoffice

I've already got a few subscribers per feed. I love making use of feedburner, does a great job of getting content out there. It's also pretty slick for affiliate programs like Google adsense, and other contextual advertising programs.

Amazon Associates Show Off New Retail Trends

2008-11-15T15:32:00.000-05:00

It's been said that 2008 is definitely the year of the Affiliate, but to be more precise, it's the year of the Amazon Associate. This year, we've seen a major growth in niche retail websites that specialize in a wide range of categories from Amazon's vast product catalog.

At first glance, most visitors hardly recognize that sites such as StockMyOffice.com , EcoFriendlyShoppingOnline.com or OnlineToolsandHardware.com are all websites designed and developed specifically for use with the Amazon Associates program. The website owner pays a small fee for the hosting and development of the design, then the they spend the next few months marketing the newly branding sites. With Amazon offering anywhere from 4-15% commissions for each item sold, website owners can quickly realize what making money while they sleep feels like.

Amazon Associates can earn any thing from a few dollars to hundreds of thousands per month. Large shopping comparison engines like Yahoo! Shopping, become.com, mysimon.com, pricegrabber.com, and others are rumored to be some of the highest volume associates. The Amazon Associates program has evolved from it's modest beginnings, associates can do anything from link to products, or consume vast amounts of xml product data via the Amazon Associates E-commerce Service.

Amazon recently completed a new Site Stripe feature and cleaner redesign of the Amazon Associates Central. They have essentially made it easier to link to various products and to access reporting. Amazon's vast number of Assocaites have helped Amazon stay #1 in online retail and become the original molding from which all other retail affiliate programs are based.

It will be interesting to watch what happens to the online retail market place as the old establishment of brick and motar retailers compete directly against affiliate marketers. I believe that affiliate marketing will allow a site like marketer branded site like WeKnowPhoto.com to compete against a brick and mortar brand ritzcamera.com. It will be interesting to say the least.

My Experience With Amazon S3

2008-11-13T17:08:00.000-05:00

Well, after waiting a significant amount of time since the release of Amazon S3, I decided to dip my toe in the waters and see what it feels like. I'm happy to say that my expectations have been met. By using Amaozn S3, I was able to improve the performance of my existing infrastructure, and the visitor experience.

As a web developer and general internet guru, I spend time reading things about website performance, and other crazy notions of a better user experience. By using Amazon's S3 for all of my static content, I reduce the amount of requests Apache needs to serve on our own servers. Instead of wasting the more valuable system resources of my web server to serve images, javascript files, flash and other static content, this can now be offered to my website visitors on a world-class content delivery network, Amazon S3.

The speed improvement on the website I tested (WeKnowPhoto) was immediately noticable. Offsetting the regular Apache web requests by serving images and other static content on S3 means more capacity on my existing data center servers. Essentially more bang and less bucks to provide a much faster loading website. Speed is such a critical component to the enjoyment of a web visit. Everyone hates a slow loading website. If you're anything like me, then you can remember the days of dial up modems, and the excruitiating pain that was requesting a web page.

I'm considering moving the entire E4E platform to S3. This way, clients can enjoy the benefits of having their content on a cdn. Might be an additional option for some clients, or just a value added service, haven't come to a conclusion on that yet.

Getting Ready For Amazon S3

2008-11-12T20:54:00.000-05:00

I've been considering using's Amazon S3 for a while now. I think of the S3 service as an inexpensive content delivery network that can reduce the over all load on my servers, while improving overall site performance. My main interest is in uploading static content files like css, javascript and images.

By uploading those page objects to Amazon's S3, my web server can simply focus on rendering php pages, and not worry about serving images and other static content. I expect the modest expense to pay for itself in the additional capacity that each single server can offer. This will reduce datacenter equipment expenses, and administration time, so I'm all for it.

I like the idea that I can manage an S3 account via a plugin in my browser. I've been using Amazon's Ec2 and I manage it the same way, right from my browser.

Maybe SysteMax Will Buy Circuit City

2008-11-12T17:29:00.000-05:00

With Circuit City going the way of CompUsa, a potential exists for the remaining Circuit City assets to be snatched up by SysteMax, parent company of TigerDirect. With Circuit City closing out the majority or all of their stores, the remaining assets such as it's brand, website, and inventory, might look like an attractive purchase for companies looking to break into consumer electronics market.

I would think for a company like SysteMax, the Circuit City database of customers and the brand itself would be a very attractive aquisition. The Circuit City brand is very well established, and to be honest, has a deeper market penetration with regards to general consumer electronics then any of the other SysteMax brands. Most of the SysteMax brands are focused on the geeks, who regularly build their own computers.

In either case, Circuit City's main competitor Best Buy is sure to be happy that it will finally be dominant in it's market. Circuit City claims that it will continue to operate, however, I wouldn't be buying an extended warranty from them anytime soon, lol.

Considering Solar Panels To Reduce My Electric Bill

2008-11-11T20:36:00.000-05:00

I've been considering how I can reduce my home energy expenses. My bills aren't enormous, but I do pay about $150 a month before heating and cooling expenses. I've already put in some energy efficient light bulbs in every room, and believe it or not, we actually knocked off about $20 from our bill just by that simple switch.

Once I saved money by switching my light bulbs, it got me thinking that I should take it a step further, and possibly add solar panels, or a wind turbine. I don't know how to attach a power inverter to my electric box, so I'll need an electrician for that, but I think spending a few hundred dollars, just under a thousand, should start saving me another $30 to $50 off my electric bill. That monthly savings would mean that the solar panel would pay for itself within 2-3 years.

When you thinking of going green as saving some green, then it gives you a whole new reason to be just a little more environmentally conscious.

Investment In E-commerce Technology This Season

2008-11-09T20:38:00.000-05:00

It's good to see that the hit to our economy has not stopped investment on innovative new website technologies. Many websites are investing in the user experience in attempts to keep and get new business.

One notable site this season is babyage.com . They have steamlined their look, and included a healthy dose of ajax. I like the quick info function they made, it's an easy way to get some product information, while still browsing through the category. Target.com has been using that feature for a little while now. I did my own version of that feature a little while back on one of my older (2yrs) sites.

I hope this holiday season brings in the kind of sales that retailers are looking for. I'd be very bad for business for the holidays to be a sales bust. Times are hard right now, just ask Circuit City, lol. While I've been working hard to crank out some new features, I think that just some basic site improvements, will improve convertion rates, and really thats all any retailer could ask for. If you focus on pleasing your customer, you'll do well any time of the year.

Should Microsoft Buy Yahoo?

2008-11-09T02:34:00.000-05:00

Yahoo's stock price has dropped to well below half of the price Microsoft was going to offer for it. Microsoft claims not to be interested, but if you ask me, I think Microsoft would buy Yahoo out just for the sake of acquiring it's search engine and advertising businesses, user base, and some of it's properties.

While Yahoo is still a giant in it's own right, right about now, it's looking like a Microsoft lunch and goody basket. I don't know what the aftermath of such a purchase would be, other then I'd probably go ahead and close out my old Yahoo mail account. I'd probably close out my mybloglog account too. I don't really like using any of Microsoft's web services. It's bad enough I use their operating system on my laptop (for the wireless nic drivers that is).

I don't see Yahoo coming out of this economic recession fully intact. I think Microsoft is going to put the squeeze on the old Yahoo. Shame too, cause I really liked their commercials, lol. Yahoooooooo!

My Experience With Windows on Amazon's EC2

2008-11-09T01:31:00.000-05:00

Being a developer of websites for Amazon Associates, I've long been an advocate of Amazon Web Services. Recently, I decided to give Ec2 for Windows a try. Don't get me wrong, I use Linux web servers for all my business servers, but I had a computing task that I thought Windows on Ec2 would be well suited for.

During my normal website marketing activities, I typically will build a very large Google Site maps, XML files with 40,000 urls, and anywhere from 5-22 per site. To do this, I run a website crawling application which pulls 15 urls every 4 seconds. Now my server is a dual quad core processor, capable of serving hundreds of pages per second.

The problem:
1. Building my site maps quickly to get my new websites indexed quickly, and to let Google know some of the deeper pages of site content.
2. Making use of my server's capability.
3. Not run the crawling application on my desktop

My Solution:
1. Run multiple instances of my crawler on various Windows via Amazon Ec2.
2. Launched 5 instances, quickly and easily right from my browser.

What I discovered? The new cloud computing model is going to make another revolution in computing that I don't yet believe has been fully appreciated. I envision that companies such as Adobe may offer their applications more affordably via Amazon Ec2 amis or computer images (think Norton Ghost). This will create new sales channels for software vendors, and possibly bring more of a user base for their applications.

Home Brew Coffee versus Dunkin Donuts

2008-11-09T01:11:00.000-05:00

Let me be clear from the beginning, I'm not a coffee aficionado, but Dunkin Donuts does have some decent coffee. I know enough about coffee to know that it's great for programming my next few lines of php, and that I want it with a minimal amount of fuss.

So anyway I've been thinking about buying my own little home brew system so I can save the time and expense of running out to grab a cut, plus there's nothing better then waking up knowing that you don't have to go anywhere, but to the computer desk and kitchen.

If it wasn't for programming, I don't know what I'd be doing, cause I'm so lazy when it comes to doing any kind of labor. I hate working so much, that I even dislike preparing food, taking being a slacker to a whole other level, but that's another blog post. I was checking out this stainless steel coffee maker.I might buy it. I have one now, but haven't used it in a bit because the coffee just hasn't really tasted as great. Not sure if it's the water. Florida water sucks by the way. You've got to purchase your own water. I usually get mine in the form of some caffeinated drink anyways.

So anyways, this week after going from forever, I actually realized that Dunkin Donuts has a sandwich I like, a BLT on a poppy seed bagel. Pretty decent.

My YouTube Channel

2008-11-09T00:49:00.000-05:00

I've been enjoying YouTube for a while now. Most of the time I've been a consumer of videos, but not so long ago, I thought I'd get in on all the action and post a few videos about my favorite topics. If you'd like to check me out and some of the work I've been doing with the Amazon Associates program, please feel free to hit me up and subscibe at http://www.youtube.com/user/PuReWebDev

I mainly discuss topics like website marketing, Amazon.com , Google and web development.

New Forum For Amazon Associates

2008-11-09T00:41:00.000-05:00

I know there are a lot of Amazon Associates out there who would like to discuss the program, how to increase earnings, technical issues, new product offerings, and changes within the Amazon Associates program. In addition, I've noticed the the official amazon forum is rather useless, as it isn't moderated.

I'd like to recommend everyone who wants to learn more about the associates program, or just to hangout, please feel free to stop by our associate forum. You don't need to be a customer of ours to enjoy our forum. We're going to be moderating it, so if you post a question, you'll receive a prompt knowledgeable response.

Blogger versus Wordpress

2008-11-09T00:31:00.000-05:00

Was recently thinking this weekend, why Google didn't just purchase WordPress to use as it's default blogging platform.

WordPress seems to have more features and gadgets, which makes it more useful. Both are very clean and easy to use, but I still think WordPress is a hotter bloggin platform.

My wordpress blog is at PuReWebDev.com, check it out. I use it to do a little promotion of my e-commerce sites.

Developing Cool Applications

2008-11-08T23:47:00.000-05:00

I've been working on developing a web-based e-commerce solution for affiliate marketers to have their own e-commerce websites. The service has actually launched already with surprising amounts of success. We've put in a lot of hard work, and continue to crank out several new features on a weekly basis.

For a good amount of time, development was at a near stand still simply dealing with customer service and support issues. That quickly got old, and I realized that the problem with our development cycle was that I was on the phone helping people do simple things that a flash video should do.

I've recently taken the last month to change our business model slightly. Most businesses that I've created in the past have been phone heavy, with lots of customer hand holding. This obviously creates a scalability problem for small start-ups. Putting in the features that customers need to make changes on their own, is one of the major new directions we've decided to take.

No more phones : ) , feels good.

Considering Zend Encoder

2008-11-08T23:43:00.000-05:00

For the longest time, I've had clients that have wanted to download my application for use on their systems. Part of the reason I created a web service is so that I don't have to concern myself with platforms other then the one I run on.

I've been thinking about buying Zend Encoder to protect my application. I like the fact that it has a license system and you can protect your intellectual property, even remotely. Maybe I'll continue with my SaaS business model and forget all about this download and software distribution non-sense.

Prepairing For Holiday Sales

2008-11-08T23:32:00.000-05:00

I'm looking forward to this holiday. I'm interested in seeing what kind of sales my online stores will have this year. This holiday season, I've been spending time getting a jump on the marketing and exposure of my sites.

November sales appear to be up already. Hopefully the sales volume can be sustained even after the holidays. This years economic meltdown has really affected everyone, although I'd say that alot of online stores have been recession proof.

Some Deep Linking

2008-11-04T00:43:00.000-05:00

It's been a little while since I've done some deep linking to some of the inner pages on the various sites I work on. Deep linking is great to help improve the total number of pages that will be in the Google index.

So here are some sites currently being worked on:

1. EcoFriendlyShoppingOnline.com - Currently focuses on Solar Panels, Wind Turbines, Power Inverters, Rechargeable Batteries and eco-friendly lightbulbs.

2. WeKnowPhoto.com - Currently focuses on Digital Cameras, Film Cameras, Flashes, Lenses, Tripods, Drives and Memory.

3. AllPhoneDeals.com - Currently focuses on Cell Phones, Office Phones, Voip Phones and Cellular Accessories.

4. InsideAndOutHomeDecor.com - Currently focuses on kitchen furniture, housewares, small appliances and outdoor decor.

5. StockMyOffice.com - Currently focuses on office electronics, office and school supplies, computers and office furniture.

6. 75Direct.com - Currently focuses on skateboarding, surfing, skiing and paintballing.

7. ParadiseBeautySupply.com - Currently focuses on makeup, skincare, haircair and fragrances.

8. DvdSmartReviews.com - focuses on well... dvds.

9. Consoles-Stores.co.uk - focuses on the ps3, xbox 360 and the nintendo wii.

10. OurColony.net - focuses on pc games, sony psp and nintendo ds.

Wow, that's quite a few new sites and categories. I didn't exactly link as deeply as I would like, just basically did one link away from the homepage. Link building typically takes some time in anycase, but hopefully these new links will pass on just a touch of pr.

Always Something Better in E-commerce

2008-05-01T13:47:00.000-04:00

Well, after lots of planning and execution, E-commerce For Everyone is a success. We've been working hard helping Amazon Associates build professional retail websites. We've completed several new tools and we're already working on finishing up version 2. Here are a few of the sites that we've recently worked on:

Anyway, those are a few of the sites that we've been working on. I've worked on a several others, but those are the ones that stand out the most to me. I like their style and design. Each one of those sites will do well I'm sure.

I have a few blogs that I'm also trying to work on:

I've also started an Amazon Associates video podcast. As you can see, I've been pretty busy. I'll try to post a little more frequently though.

Building Some Buzz

2008-01-05T13:35:00.000-05:00

I just finished posting about my buzz builder contest over at my shopping and retail blog. I'm exploring new ways to market my online shopping site. Instead of the traditional ppc, i thought I'd enlist the efforts of bloggers and website owners to help spread the word.

I know a few other websites have been doing similar things, so I'm exploring buzz generated marketing. I'll post the results here when it's over.

Coding Through The Holidays

2008-01-01T12:24:00.000-05:00

The last two weeks have seen some decent days of coding. I worked on my new site editor for the e4e control panel, also I worked on the ability to shop by browsing brands, actors, directors and authors.

This gives people easy access to the favorite brands that they like. Personally, I enjoy that because I'm always looking for quality items. I bought some Dunkin Donuts coffee (stupid commercials), and it kept me on a good caffeine high while I was getting my hands dirty with some php. I must have stood up until about 4:30am the other night.

This is a new year, so I guess I should say something about it. Watch out..... I'm coming through. I guess that's all I had to say about the new year, lol. On to better things. I'm helping my step-son run his first "hello world" script, lol. That was fantastic. I bought him his first computer this Christmas. I'd been wanting to get him one earlier, but because he managed to get into trouble at home or school, it never quite seemed the right time.

He's been using computers at school and the library, and once in a while, his mom will let him use hers so he can go on myspace and other wastes of time, lol. I told him that I'd teach him to program php over the summer (teach a man to fish...).

I'm going to work on finishing up the style changer for e4e, and it will soon be ready to come out of beta.

Improving The Shopping Experience

2007-12-09T15:51:00.000-05:00

Recently OrderItOnTheWeb.com has been on a mission to improve it's overall offering by adding an e-commerce blog to keep shoppers current with the site's activities, as well as a new shopping forum to make shopping social again.

This holiday shopping season has seen a sharp rise in traffic and sales. I believe that the various efforts to improve the site quality for the visitors has made a significant impact, or at least Google has noticed.

Site traffic jumped upward tremendously after the cyber monday shopping rush strangely enough. The best part about it, is that it's non-paid traffic from the search engines. The increase in traffic has been consistent for at least the last 8 days, with hopefully many, many more to follow. I guess the big question I'm facing right now, is "will the traffic actually last".

During the last major Google update, OrderItOnTheWeb.com web from a pr3 straight to pr5 skipping 4 altogether. I've never seen that before, so it was quite shocking and obviously I was elated by the fact my site's ranking was going up. Not so much because the extra green in my toolbar, but because hopefully it will mean a better and deeper indexing of my site.

Office Electronics at OrderItOnTheWeb.com

2007-10-25T22:36:00.001-04:00

Office Electronics Categories

Office Electronics
Calculators	Copiers	Electronic Dictionaries, Thesauri & Translators
Electronic Organizers	Fax Machines	Multifunction Devices
Other Office Equipment	Presentation Products	Printers
Scanners	Scrapbooking	Telephones
eBook Readers

Technorati Tags: electronics, office, telephones, printers, fax machines, copiers, scanners

Getting Holiday Deals From Amazon.com

2007-10-07T01:13:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to let whoever wants to get the jump on their Christmas Shopping, that you can get some pretty good holiday shopping deals from OrderItOnTheWeb.com . You can typically always find good deals on that site, however, now that the holiday season is rapidly approaching, it's probably time to start thinking about saving some money on your holiday shopping. While I'm discussing the holidays, you should take a look at our holiday light show over at my Amazon Web Services blog.

E-commerce For Everyone

2007-08-23T13:02:00.000-04:00

I've just launched my new e-commerce websites service for amazon associates, it's called E-commerce For Everyone www.ecommerceforeveryone.com . I've spent the last year or so doing development work and I'm finally getting closer to being completed anyways.

The sites are looking good and the features are good for version one. I've been posting in a few forums and doing a little ppc to drive traffic to the site. I wrote an ecommerce article that went up on ezine articles the other day.

I hope that amazon associates can use the service and make good money from it. I was advising a client that they need to market the site, which is about the only thing they need to focus on outside of making sure they're site looks good.

Online Shopping Mashup

2007-04-24T23:14:00.000-04:00

After making several cool enhancements to the site, I thought I'd mention my new online shopping mashup OrderItOnTheWeb.com. It's a mix of Amazon Web Services, Yahoo! Web Services, Yahoo! Pipes and Google Maps Api. All of the data gets mixed and reorganized with a little ajax, php and some help from my good friends at mint graphics.

This site will be great for those people who want to not only order online, but find the items they are interested, in a local store near them, how cool is that. Anyway, the site is still in being developed on an ongoing basis. I'd appreciate any feedback you'd like to leave about the site, it's really help out.

If you want to follow the progress of the site, you can always check back here on my tech blog, or just go to the OrderItOnTheWeb.com Blog. I'll post more later.

Order It On The Web

2007-02-13T12:06:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to share with everyone a new site I'm working on. The title of this post says it all. I'm working on yet another Amazon Web Services e-commerce store. It's located at OrderItOnTheWeb.com . I hope it's an easy name to remember. In any case you can buy almost anything, from motor oil for your car to post it notes for your office.

I'm going for the newegg look. It's not finished as yet, but I thought I'd let people know about a new to shop online. If you have any recommendations, please make them in the form of comments to this blog post.

I've integrated the checkout process, so you don't have to actually leave the site when you are checking out. I've done that same thing on another site of mine, Live Web Shop. I'll post more about the site's progress as I actually make some.

New Office Products Site

2007-02-02T00:27:00.000-05:00

I've been working on my latest website, its called Stock My Office (www.stockmyoffice.com). It's an office supplies website. It's done in just php, using amazon web services. I still have to get quit a few things finished, but it's taking shape so far.

I'm getting some graphics worked on. Hopefully this site will attract some business users. It has everything you need to keep your office running. Any recommedations? Post a comment about it.

Other Cool Electronics

2007-01-09T23:54:00.000-05:00

Accessories & Supplies
Audio & Video
Batteries, Chargers & Power Supplies
Blank Media
Cables
Camera & Photo
Car Electronics
CD Players & Recorders
Compact Stereos
Computer Add-Ons
DJ Equipment
DVD Players
Electronic Watches
Equalizers
Flashlights
Gadgets
GPS & Navigation
Handhelds & PDAs
Home Automation & Security
Home Theater Systems
Office Electronics
Minidisc Players & Recorders
MP3 Players
Network-Ready Home Entertainment
Portable Audio & Video
Printers
Radio Scanners
Receivers & Amplifiers
Satellite Radio
Satellite Television
Shortwave & All-Hazard Radios
Speakers
TVs & HDTVs
Tuners
Telephones
Turntables & Accessories
Two-Way Radios & Accessories

Other Sites of Mine

2007-01-09T23:52:00.000-05:00

Information Technology Community

Amazon Web Services Blog

Live Web Shop

Photo :: Digital Cameras :: Night Vision :: Cameras :: All On Sale

2007-01-09T23:46:00.000-05:00

35mm Compact Cameras
3CCD Camcorders
All Accessories
All Analog Camcorders
All Camcorders
All Digital Camcorders
All Digital Cameras
All Film Cameras
All Surveillance Cameras
Analog 8mm & Hi8
Analog VHS-C
APS Cameras
Binocular Accessories
Binoculars
Black & White Cameras
Bullet Cameras
Camcorder Accessories
Camcorders: 1 Megapixel
Camcorders: 10-20x Optical Zoom
Camcorders: 2 Megapixel
Camcorders: 20x+ Optical Zoom
Camcorders: 3 Megapixel
Camcorders: 4+ Megapixel
Camcorders: Under 10x Optical Zoom
Color Cameras
Digital Camera Accessories
Digital Cameras: 2 to 2.9 Megapixels
Digital Cameras: 3 to 3.9 Megapixels
Digital Cameras: 4 to 4.9 Megapixels
Digital Cameras: 4x Optical Zoom & Up
Digital Cameras: 5 to 5.9 Megapixels
Digital Cameras: 6 Megapixels & Up
Digital Cameras: Under 3 Megapixels
Digital Cameras: Under 4x Optical Zoom
Digital DVD
Digital Frames
Digital MicroMV
Digital MiniDV
Digital SLRs
Digital Tapeless
Digital8
Dome Cameras
Film Camera Accessories
Flash Memory
Flatbed Scanners
General Camera Accessories
Hard Disk Drive
High Definition
Infrared Cameras
Instant Cameras
Large Format Projectors
Large-Format Cameras
Laser Rangefinders
Light Boxes
Loupes
Medium Format Projectors
Medium-Format Cameras
Microdrive
Microscopes
Monoculars
Multimedia Projectors
Network IP Cameras
Night Vision
Opaque Projectors
Other Digital Cameras
Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ) Cameras
Photo Printers
Printer Accessories
Professional Camcorders
Projector Accessories
Rangefinder Cameras
Riflescopes
Simulated Cameras
Single-Use Cameras
Slide & Photo Scanners
Slide Projectors
SLR Cameras
Spotting Scopes
Spy Cameras
Telescope Accessories
Telescopes
Underwater & Specialty Cameras
Video Projectors
Viewers
Weather-Resistant Cameras
Wireless Cameras

Wireless Products

2006-12-15T21:22:00.000-05:00

Wireless Phones have been getting lots of attention lately, especially the new iPhone from Apple. They are expected to be releasing it in the next month or so. I'm curious to know if it's going to be better then windows mobile phones. I enjoy mine because I can listen to music, watch movies and more, I doubt the iPhone is going to beat it on it's initial release.

Mint Grafix Blog is Live

2006-09-30T18:27:00.000-04:00

My friend Alex of Mint Grafix finally has his blog live. He's been working on it a little bit, obviously he's done some nice graphics for it. His first couple of posts are already fast becomming a resource, with links to valuable designer sites, for logos, menus, flash and more.

Definately keep an eye on this blog for more good things to come.

CNN.com - What war with Iran would look like - Sep 17, 2006

2006-09-18T00:21:00.000-04:00

[I think that the Bush administration's crap about Iran developing nuke's is a bunch of crap. North Korea already has several, and is also in it's axis of evil, but you don't you don't see any actions taking place there.]

My Day Off

2006-09-16T11:46:00.000-04:00

It's nice getting to have a day off once in a while. Today I'm spending it actually doing personal computer work, such as blogging or coding my Amazon project. Last night I returned some books to Barnes and Noble. It was burning be up that I spent $88 on two books, and the same books brand new on Amazon I could have gotten for $45 and $30 used.

Its almost not worth going out to the store anymore. Everything is so much cheaper online anyways. Plus you don't have to drive and waste your gas.

I'm going to try to be lazy for today, but that almost never works out. I'm too much of a work-a-holic.

Infinite Stupidity

2006-09-15T14:07:00.000-04:00

Today some jerk which will remain anonymous (Randy Charles Morin), tried to harass me about a blog I have. Just going on and on. I think he was upset because I told him to f-off. What a big baby. I'll have to send him a special package of baby wipes and similac.

PuReWebDev

2006-08-28T23:42:00.000-04:00

This isn't just another ajax based word processor. It's the future of webapplications as we know it.

Building My Links

2006-08-18T09:05:00.000-04:00

It's funny how on MSN, I've got tons of links showing up and only a few on Google for LiveWebShop.com . I've been using a few different websites to find decent link partners. Seems to be paying off, since I've got over a thousand in less then a few months. I hope that I can build up even more.

I want to get my pagerank up, since that will determine the amount of traffic I can expect. When I first launched the site I was getting about 500-600 visitors a day, that's dropped dramtically, and I need to get it back up. Anyways, time to go put in work.

Getting Googlized

2006-08-14T21:05:00.000-04:00

Today I went and got fully Google'd up. I'd been downloading a few of their plugins into my browser, and a few items from the Google pack, but today I dove into Google Desktop. I do like the tools. It's pretty slick and makes things alot easier for what I already do, however, I wish there was a boss or wife mode, that would quickly do away with some items. For example, by default it shows a snippet of incomming emails. This might not be a problem for many of you, but when your wife is sitting at the computer next to you, and spam emails start comming in with their lets just say exotic titles, it can lead to a very nasty "what was that" conversation.

I'm surprised there wasn't a blogger snippet to allow users to blog from their desktop. No problem, I use Elicit anyways, so I'm already blogging from my desktop, but I'm not opposed to doing it the Google way. I'm working on getting my Google certification and have had an Adwords pro account for a short time now, so while exploring I came acrossed Adwords Editor today. Very nice. Seems like they've got most of the features in place that you could ask for. Whats very nice is it's download and post ability, so that you could potential download your account metrics, work offline, and later post your changes.

I didn't know that Google desktop was going to come with a media player. It's pretty sweet, but I still prefer my Music Match Jukebox. I just came to realize that Yahoo bought this company just a little over a year ago. This surprised me, because I'd been using Music Match since about version 3.

I think another reason that inspired me to use Google Desktop is because Google actually knows how to make software. Too bad they don't have their own OS built from something like Red Hat (wipping drool from face). I've been using Gmail and few other Google Services like Adsense and Adwords, so going to Google Desktop was only natural. I'm looking forward to Google Writely, the Microsoft Word crusher. More later, gonna plug back into the Matrix now.

Starting To Learn Ajax

2006-08-03T00:25:00.000-04:00

I was checking out some this Ajax book, didn't know if it was going to have what I need. I've been getting quite a few of my books online lately. I never used to before, but since my time is getting busier and busier, it's only natural for me to start getting a few things over the web.

In anycase, I want to start to learn Ajax, since it appears to be the way things are headed these day. I think a combination of php and ajax might take me towards the almighty web 2.0 or semantic web that I keep hearing about.

Building Links

2006-08-01T01:15:00.000-04:00

I was checking out similar site to mine. I exchanged links, and ended up on link page number 65. That really sucks. I need to be on page one of those links. I guess all of those link pages help to build up some pretty decent pagerank. I'll keep working on mine.

Google's FireFox Extensions

2006-07-30T00:05:00.000-04:00

I'm really enjoying all of Google's FireFox extentions. They really make my web browser much more pleasurable. I think the best one of them is the Google Browser Sync. The last several years have been spent always trying to save my favorites and get things the same on my work and home computers. That is a challange no more. I think I'm going to buy some books so I can learn to create an extension or two myself.

I made a post on my Amazon Web Services blog earlier today. It had nothing to do the Google FireFox Extensions, but definately worth a look as always.

Weird Google Traffic Patterns

2006-07-27T22:22:00.000-04:00

Very strangly, after receiving more visitors to my site in one day, I receive the biggest traffic drop. I've been working on my new site www.livewebshop.com. Funny thing is that I haven't made any changes this week, I'd been too busy. Seems like every keyword I was well placed for, fell off the map too.

I hope this is just a fluke, because yesterday I had over 500 unique visitors from Google alone, and today 14. Not sure what the deal is, but it's certainly a cruel trick.

I guess these are the important pages I care about:

Apparel - Apparel from LiveWebShop.com
Baby Stuff - Baby Stuff from LiveWebShop.com
Beauty - Beauty Products from LiveWebShop.com
Books - Books from LiveWebShop.com
Classical Music - Listen to and purchase Classical Music
DVD - Buy dvds online
Electronics - Find electronics online.
Gourmet Foods - Enjoy Gourmet Foods, everything from Seafood & Caviar to fine cheese and Chocolates.
Personal Health Care - Get all your personal health care products online.
Jewelry - Our jewelry store combines the best of the gold and diamond districts.
Kitchen and Housewares - Everything from your favorite stores like Bed Bath n Beyond
Magazines - All your favorite magazines in one convienient place.
Music - Get your music online at the LiveWebShop.com , everything from hard to find, top 100 and more.
Office Products - Get all of your office products and supplies online. We have more products than Office Depot and Staples combined.
Outdoor Living - Do you love the great outdoors? We have everything from Lawn & Garden Tools to Patio Furniture
PC Hardware - Build your own computer using our hugh selection of pc hardware.
Photo - Are you a photographer or amature one? We have all your photography supplies online. From cameras and film to digital media supplies.
Software - Software with a smile. Downloads and boxed packages available. Large library of software utilities, games and more.
Sporting Goods - For the great outdoors man, we have all your sporting goods covered. Our online store saves you a trip to the Sports Authority.
Tools and Hardware - With top brandname tools like Craftsman, Dewalt, Stanley and more. we are your choice for tools and hardware.
Video Games - Get the latest video games, strategy guides, reviews and more at LiveWebShop.com
Wireless - Getting a cell phone hasn\'t been easier. We have better prices then your local shops and a much larger selection. We carry all providers.

Lets pray that my traffic comes back up. I'll hold a vigil tonight with some candles, and some chants, lol.

Testing Out Google Sitemaps

2006-07-14T23:28:00.000-04:00

I just created an automated method to produce Google sitemaps for LiveWebShop.com , hopefully it'll help Google learn about new pages a little easier. I'm scared that I actually have more pages in my site, then in my sitemap. I'd hate for Google to stop crawling my site in the traditional way and only rely on the sitemap.

In anycase, I'm using the method that Google has suggested on their site. I'm excited to see what if any benefit it'll give me. I just put in a new Automotive store on the site, so I want all of those product pages to get picked up as quickly as possible. I'll let you know if it worked as designed. So fax my indexing is comming along really good, got about 36,600 pages indexed so far. Only a few million more to go.

Google Checkout, Doomsday for Paypal

2006-06-29T20:06:00.000-04:00

Google has finally released their long anticipated online payment service called Google Checkout. While Google has quitely downplayed the notion that it will be competing against Pay Pal, the dust has finally settled. Once again, Google has changed the landscape of the internet and how we do things online.

I can imagine that right about now Pay Pal employees are all cashing in their stock options.

It's gonna be pretty pityful the way that Pay Pal will probably be seen as a relic of modern history in just a short matter of time. I can already see it now, Ebay using Google Checkout, lol, what a riot. While I can't predict exactly when it will happen, you can believe there will be an online battle for the rights to be king of online payment services. I'm wondering how much Pay Pal's stock will drop, and how fast.

PuReWebDev - Books - DVDs - Electronics - Pc Hardware

Remote Amazon Carts

2006-06-28T00:58:00.000-04:00

I've just developed a nice little Amazon Remote Cart plugin for ASM2. That application, while excellent didn't come with it's own shopping cart, at least the developer wasn't offering it for free. Now the many sites that don't already have true shopping cart functionality with item update and checkout features using ASM2 can easily drop in my plugin. If you want to view it in action, check out LiveWebShop.com I'll be working on it more as time passes. I think I'll see if there is more demand for it. It's not a bad little start. Version 0.1 is fresh off of my Zend ide.

If you need support or assistance getting the plugin installed, check out the technology forums on www.pureehosting.com . If any other developers want to hook up and take this further, please feel to contact me.

My Amazon Cart

2006-06-26T23:34:00.000-04:00

I finally finished putting in a shopping cart for www.livewebshop.com/ , it took me a little time to do. Problem was I was busy with work, and then I wasted time trying to use a php class someone else had created. It was much faster to just develop one myself.

Now that the cart is done, I shall see if I start getting any checkouts. I'm still surprised by the speed at which you can develop with Amazon's Web Services Api. It's beautiful.

Remote Amazon Shopping Cart

2006-06-18T13:33:00.000-04:00

I've been noticing much better usage of the aws amazon remote shopping cart. I have one on AWSWebshop.com and it's been doing it's job rather well. Just the other day I sold over $400 dollars worth of knives from the kicthen department. I thought that was pretty cool.

I always enjoy when people use things that I work on. I still have to pretty it up some though, I think the presentation might be creating more abandoned carts then I'd like. I'm gonna have to send some retard to pickup all the empty carts in the parking lot, lol. It'd be nice if Amazon had some aws podcasts.

You know what's starting to suck more and more everyday, I'm trying to reseach something online, learn something new I can do with php, and I get all this ruby on rails crap popping up everywhere. These children are out of control and must be punished. I think it's nothing but a bunch of autogenerated code for aZzh01es. But that's just my opinion : )

I've come acrossed a promissing piece of code in here, but unfortunately, I've still got questions. More questions then answers, so I'm not going to have my remote cart for LiveWebShop.com this weekend like I wanted.

I'm gonna go see if I can find a good Amazon podcast, maybe learn something new.

The Office Move

2006-06-10T15:45:00.000-04:00

This week has been very interesting, I got to setup a new TalkSwitch I was tired out of my mind after running Cat5 cable last Saturday. I'm glad the weekend is finally here, so, I can take somewhat of a break, I still have a chore to do over the weekend however, but it's only swapping out a motherboard and that's it.

Just created a new site

2006-05-29T21:02:00.000-04:00

Just added another site into my little portfolio of web real estate. It's LiveWebShop.com , It's another site built for the Amazon associates program. It uses web services as well. I like the idea of being able to

make money

while relaxing.

This new site is pretty cool because it does fairly decent job of seperating functionality from design. There is a smarty template system being used, and some very fast code. I've got to put in an add-to-cart feature and a wishlist and mailing list integration.

The new site sports a blog theme and very seo friendly enhancements, including urls and pagination with sorting capability. It's just a start honestly, but I do have to hook up the graphics a little better. I'll post more shortly.

New Servers

2006-05-28T17:45:00.000-04:00

I'll probably be in charge of setting up new servers in a datacenter near us, I've been thinking Dell servers:

Server (computing), a computer that provides services to other computers, or the software that runs on it

However, I've always enjoying my own computer systems. It's nothing to grab a few hard drives, memory, cpu's, motherboards and get crackin.

On the other hand, time is limited, keeping cost in check, vendor support, and partnerships are important. I especially like the fact that Dell is creating jobs for American workers.

Ahead of Plan: Dell Is Hiring More Workers, Adding Server Production Line at Winston-Salem Plant

on servers ," Dell explained. Simpson said building servers in the Triad "was something we certainly had thought about. As the plant ramped up, we decided it was a good idea."

I personally prefer to do business with companies that don't do all this outsourcing nonsense. If I ever have to call a company to do business with, and I hear anyone of middle eastern decent, you better believe I'm going to be spending my dollars elsewhere.

Lil Wayne Concert

2006-05-28T15:17:00.000-04:00

I went to see Lil Wayne in concert last night at the Hard Rock in Universal Orlando.

The concert was awesome. I almost never go to concerts, but to see Lil Wayne, I made an exception.

Lil' Wayne hits the road (AP via Yahoo! News)

At 23 years old, Lil' Wayne has already coined a few indelible phrases. Few artists can claim the cultural impact of "bling bling," let alone "drop it like it's hot."

Here's a collection of Lil wayne and his work.

Another Great Game

2006-05-27T20:22:00.000-04:00

I just bought the game a new game, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 3: Advanced Warfighter.

It's a pretty good game. I think the game caters to several groups, the one that just wants to blow stuff up, and the other group that wants to plan intelligently, how to blow stuff up, lol.

I'll post more about the game as I get further into it.

Search Engines Crashed My Server

2006-03-22T21:07:00.000-05:00

Today has been pretty interesting. Early in the morning my server basically over loaded until all of the services crashed, including ssh. This is crazy as hell, but I'm not kidding when I say that 800+ Yahoo web crawlers like ( lj602050.inktomisearch.com ip 72.30.132.224 ) pounded on my server until all services died : (

I had to reboot my server and I had over 140 days up. My hosting clients can attest to that. On a positive note, I think that my technology site is getting pretty popular with the search engines. I just can't wait for more traffic. This big index or deep indexing was the first time that a search engine has done a crawl of that magnitude on my site, but I guess you'd have to do that to index millions of pages = )~

It was pretty obvious to me that I'm gonna have to step up to a dual xeon server. Preferably with hyper-threading technology. That's what I use for my production work systems.

My Web Services Empire

2006-03-19T00:31:00.000-05:00

Slowly but surely my dream of fully automated recurring revenue from webservices, mainly Amazon Associates and Google Adsense are being realized. I've been setting up new projects such as my amazon web shop awswebshop.com.

The beauty is that when I'm at work, sleep, driving, shopping, my sites are driving sales and clicks. Definately, a beautiful thing. I've started getting some search engine traffic this week also, which is excellent. I've been doing some seo work to the new sites and was expecting to start seeing something soon.

On my technology site I sell a fair amount of books and dvds, so I'm hoping this newer site fully optimized from the start will kick some ass right from the gate.

The google adwords campaign I've setup has been a godsend. I'm making almost $1.30 for my amazon associates account for each $0.20 of google adwords ppc. Not on all keywords mind you, but a few of them. I'm still testing it out, but if all goes well, I could do this on a much larger scale.

I've got alot of work ahead of me if I'm going to get everything I'm trying to done. I want to add more features into my shops, that will hopefully make them more attractive. Mailinglists are also going to help out. Return visitors are always a good thing. I'll post again shortly with more non-sense.

PuReWebDev

Network Saturdays

2006-03-06T14:30:00.000-05:00

This weekend I was at a client location, setting up some nice network upgrades. Setup a new domain, new antivirus, new remote control software and some two new uninterupted power supplies. It took over eight hours and that was mainly because of all the configuration work, and running up and down to each workstation repeatedly.

When everything was said and done, the systems all had new ip addresses, new dns server, domain controller, and a damn near upgrade on everything. Needless to say I was pretty tired when I finished. I ate McDonald's for lunch, even though I'd just seen the movie Super Size Me the night before. I really didn't want to eat McDonald's after seeing that movie. I'm a computer programmer already, I don't need anything else to make me fat.

PuReWebDev

New GigaBlash Search Results

2006-02-28T01:28:00.000-05:00

One of my sites was just crawled by a GigaBlast search engine. It hasn't made the main stream and it already knows who to about the top technology keywords to, I linked to the page: GigaBlast Results for Information Technology Community

I liked the results already.

PuReWebDev

Good books for Amazon Associates

2006-02-26T17:59:00.000-05:00

I've was just taking a look around and found what looked to be a pretty decent book on Amazon Hacks

I haven't read the whole thing myself, but just the topics covered:

How to use Amazon.com as a Web surfer, Web site publisher, and software developer. Detailed coverage goes to advanced product search techniques, managing the characteristics associated with your Amazon login, selling through Amazon Auctions and zShops, and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) API for Perl, PHP, and Python.

I figured that between this one and this other book I saw, I'd be in pretty decent shape.

Amazon Aws and Modrewrite

2006-02-26T17:01:00.000-05:00

While search on google blogs, came acrossed this blog post:

Amazon AWS

The even offer an API to hook directly into their database of products. Commercial and open source software allows to build websites around the Amazon.com AWS API. The main problem with these sites is usually that they show dynamic URLs.

Which is a reason that you might want to use mod_rewrite.

Anyways, I've been working hard on my new little Amazon Web Shop. It's comming around pretty good. I love the fact that I can offer pretty much everything amazon offers. My next step is going to be working on a wish list I think.

Building An Amazon Web Shop with Amazon Web Services

2006-02-16T22:48:00.000-05:00

After spending a long time planning and 2 days of actual execution I've created my new Amazon Web Shop. It's at www.awswebshop.com or www.amazonwebshop.com if that's easier for you to remember. The site uses amazon web service technology to deliver fresh product content directly from Amazon's massive product database.

I'm going to be building in a price comparison tool, wishlist, and date reminder for Birthdays and anniversaries. I think it's pretty cool working with PHP, MySQL, XML. At the same time I've been working to make the shop search engine friendly. I'll write more shortly.

PuReWebDev

Being The Problem Solver

2006-01-27T10:55:00.000-05:00

Lots of people don't realize that when you are an information technology professional, nearly your entire day consists of problem solving. People come to you to look for answers, and they need them quick. It's important to be connected, so that people can access information as quickly as possible. This is one of the reasons I've got a PDA phone. Can you say putty in my pocket, LOL.

When I was a student, I thought that being a systems administrator would be glamorous. I always looked up to them for being super smart, and always knowing what to do. As a systems administrator myself, I come to realize that my job is far from glamorous. Many times it requires comming in on your day off, staying late, tons and tons of reading, and a heart dedicated to doing this kind of work.

Information technology professionals can enjoy the fact that your job today is not your job tomorrow. What I mean by that, is that technology changes so quickly on a day to day basis that the things you are working on today are going to be tomorrow's ancient history. So it is exciting to get to work on new things, which means that you shouldn't live and die by one routine. For my, it's a learning cycle. I learn the hot technology, support it, implement it, and move on to the next big thing when it gets outdated.

For me, there isn't anything like computers. It's such a hugh industry, with so much to do, that I can't see how anyone would get bored. Don't ask my girlfriend though if computers are boring. She'd probably tell you yes, and then go play Enemy Territory on her PC for hours, LOL.

Part of being a problem solver is having lots of good communication skills. Many times the people you are supporting are in remote locations, even in other countries. It's important to be a good listener. Listening is going to save you time, and save your company money. You've got to sweat the details, if you don't you'll miss that one important thing that the user did just before the system crashed.

Just as listening is important, the ability to give instruction to other people is also important. If you think that you are going to be a sys admin and stay in a dark room with just a PC, then you've got another thing comming. I'm still trying to find that job, and I've been doing this since '97. You are going to have to give instruction and guidance to end users (yuck). If you are like me, then maintaining your patience when the end user doubles his search box as an address bar is going to be your main challenge.

Chances are, you'll be working side by side with managers and company executives. This has lots of positive and negative things associated. One positive is that you work directly with the people that can make things happen, purchases, strategies, policies. A negative effect is probably having to be highly available, very quick on your toes, and being responsible for not just yourself, but probably for all the computer systems that the staff uses. Trust me, you don't want to have a department sitting on it's hands because the network went down. Your boss probably won't like that very much, considering all the money that still needs to be paid to employees that can't work.

Hopefully this post here will give you some insight into the day to day of a problem solver aka systems administrator. If you are into computer technology, please check out my information technology community.

My Productive Work Day

2006-01-17T22:04:00.000-05:00

Today has been a great day. I got a lot of the small things that I wanted to do, out of the way. I fixed a few cron jobs, changed to a new backup schedule, deleted some old accounts, moved some code, and a few other small little things that I kept procrastinating about.

I also found the time to help a few new clients get started. All in all, it's been a pretty rewarding day. I was also surprised to see I was doing well in all my pay per click campaigns. I manage Adwords for several clients, and also run Google Adsense on my sites too. It's lots of work, but also lots of fun. With the adsense running on my network of sites, it's nice to see the clicks comming through.

A quick top command reassures me that I'm still a pretty decent administrator

22:18:32 up 87 days, 9:40, 1 user, load average: 0.61, 0.72, 0.77

The last time one of my Linux servers was rebooted was when a datacenter tech mistakenly rebooted my server when his monitoring software malfunctioned and thought my box went down. It still pisses me off because I already had almost 300 days of uptime. I still love my datacenter, fastservers.net because they do have my back incase something were to go wrong. Now, that tech did feel embarrassed after he'd rebooted my server, but he does have my respect because he was cool enough to upgrade my Def Con service level. That was very nice of him.

Damn, as if my day wasn't already great, a new Fire Fox entension upgrade fixed my flash support. Now I'm grinning, lol. I guess I should finish this blog post before something bad does happen. The time.... it's always working against me.

My New RSS Network

2006-01-10T01:47:00.000-05:00

I've been working on my rss news network. Just launched three new sites in one month. Four if I count this blog. I've been coding a news aggregation system. I'd like to build up a few more sites. Hopefully I can add lots of cool features. Right now I've just got the basics in place, but shortly there will be tons of easily browsable content.

If anyone is interested in checking it out, I did the following three new sites. Adsense News Adsense-News.com is all about organizing news, guides and information about google adsense. I know there's lot of google adsense resource sites out there, but this is one more. I really think that Adsense has been a breakthru program that truly changes the economic balance for the small time webmaster like myself. Google adsense is a great program, which is the reason I created my next site Yahoo Publisher Network News yahooypnnews.com - It wouldn't be fair if I just made a site for adsense, when YPN is also an excellent program. Yahoo YPN is a relatively new program, and therefore there isn't lots of places to get decent information about it (problem solved). I figured that I'd probably be one of the very first sites dedicated to Yahoo Publisher Network. In the future, when this blog post is logged by a million rss aggregators and makes it's way to you, you can look it up for me and let me know if I was really the first.

Lastly I created the rss clearinghouse rssclearinghouse.com . The rss clearinghouse is about bringing everyone's news to one central location, where if I find the time, everything could be organized and easily searchable. I intend to create features such as feed mix, and custom feeds from multiple locations. It's pretty sweet being able to have that much uncensored news all in one shot. Very refreshing. If you have any recommendations, I'd definately invite you to post a reply.

RssClearingHouse.com > Rss Feeds

2005-12-27T22:22:00.000-05:00

Rss feeds are a great technology for moving data. Moving data via xml technology is a great way to syndicate your website content. If you have a blog, a podcast or any kind of website, you can benefit from the use of rss feeds.

Rss is the internet equivelent of a satellite dish that a major broadcast network can use to get it's content out to the world. Using XML technology, your content such as text, photos, audio and other media can travel via rss, from a feeder to an aggregator or feed parser.

Done with Christmas at Last

2005-12-26T12:21:00.000-05:00

This year was pretty good, made lots of money and had a great time doing it This year coming is going to be about taking my skills to the next level.

I've got a second site to do the rss feeds for, but it won't be to the same extent. It'll be for my job, not for personal use. Ill post more on that later.

Rss site

2005-12-26T03:00:00.000-05:00

Rssclearinghouse.com is my new rss site.

My New RSS Site

2005-12-26T02:00:00.000-05:00

I've just started a new Rss feed, blog and podcast directory. I'm still working on it. Got to make it user friendly and well search engine optimized as well.

I've been looking for a personal project to call my own. I've already got the Information Technology Community site but I wanted to do something a little larger. The rss feeds are great because they are pretty much aggregate on their own, and I just need to focus on usability, security and adding value. It'll be tough and fun.

PuReWebDev

Welcome To PuReWebDev's Blog

2004-10-31T11:33:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone and welcome to my Blog. I've decided to make public an electronic journal of my day to day activities. I go by the name PuRe and PuReWebDev. I've been involved with Information Technology since 1997. I started my career off by doing technical support in an IBM call center. It was a great place for me to learn, and be exposed to different technologies.

In the years since, I've been involved in a variety of projects for different companies. I hope I'm able to share with you things I've learned, and experiences that might some day help you. I also happen to run an Information Technology Community. I hope to see you there.

--PuRe