Retail Software to be Served through Cloud Computing

Let's get cracking, you say? Well, here's how the giants of software makers like Microsoft are going to sell their goods in the future in order to circumnavigate the hardcore skills of present software crackers. Soon enough, after broadband internet is so commonplace and efficient as ever, software's will be no longer be sold in the retail shops but rather subscribed through the internet and served by cloud computing technology. Well, you can hardly say that this is the end to software cracking. Hackers could still find a way to gain passwords to use these applications in the cloud computing scenario. Whatever the technology, it will be undermined by hackers - always have and always will. Who needs references for this post? Well, there isn’t any because I made this up.

Cheap Web Site Traffic

Every online company knows that without traffic to their site, they go broke, quickly. There are many ways to get cheap web site traffic. One way is pay per click advertising, where you pay per click through to your site, but you do not know if the customer is going to purchase your product, so you do lose some money with that. Another way is to request links from other relevant, high traffic sites. Links to other well established sites is like personal recommendations, where you establish credibility fast, which increases the chances that they will buy your product. You must be persistent enough with some sites, though. You want to download the alexa toolbar, which gives you information about a website, such as traffic rating, ranking, contact info, site stats, related links, etc.

You can get free advertising by giving away free expert content to relevant sites itching for some new, fresh content. Web site owners are always looking for fresh content. Make sure you write a bit about the author and your web site or product. As long as it is not competing with theirs, they will not mind. You can post on these sites:

www.ezinearticles.com
www.freesticky.com
www.ideamarketers.com
www.findsticky.com

You can become an active expert in a newsgroup that is industry related. A newsgroup is an online forum where people share information and common interests. When you post, you are literally talking to your potential customers. These people do not want to be sold something; they want information from gurus, about the topic they are interested in. Make sure you have a sig file, or signature and start establishing relationships and prove your expertise. Stay with newsgroups that do not accept advertisements. This is also a great way to gather feedback from your website, straight from the horses’ mouth. You can reinvent it if you need to and fix it accordingly. When you post informative articles, people will begin to look forward to your posts, and eventually you may want to direct these people to your brand new newsletter.

Banana Money VS Gold Coins

Dig a deep secret hole in the ground if you must to bury you gold fortune in times of war. Precious metals like gold, silver and platinum are by far not the lightest of things to carry around with you everywhere you go especially in large amounts. Do something like buy gold coins and ship your gold fortune off to a bank in a stable country. This is better than having crates full of useless “banana money” as the Japanese paper currency was called in World War 2. As it happened, the Japanese imperial government wanted to make their own paper currency to be used in their occupied territories during World War 2. Apparently, their “banana money” was worthless because they had not much gold reserves to back the value of this currency. By the way, it was called “Banana money” because the image of a banana tree was printed on the money.

World Cup 2010 South Africa: Japan VS Cameroon

Can’t expect Japan’s team play to be top world standard but at least they showed that they had done their homework. Cameroon on the other hand looked like a bunch of chiseled catwalk models lost on a football field. Cameroon was not a team playing on a field but rather a bunch of individual superstars playing on a field. The game showed how team spirit, hard work, practice and perseverance can beat a bunch of out of synch superstars. Surely, the Cameroon team (if it can be called a team at all) is in South Africa for a World Cup holiday, taking a well earned break from their serious high paying jobs with top football clubs. No style, ridiculous strategy, lack of practice was the order of the day for Cameroon. What were they thinking when virtually the entire first half they seemed contempt to play in their own half? World class potential unreleased; that’s Cameroon yesterday – beyond disappointment. Not worth following up on this one.

Pros and Cons of Flash-based Sites

Flash-based sites have been a craze since the past few years, and as Macromedia compiles more and more great features into Flash, we can only predict there will be more and more flash sites around the Internet. However, Flash based sites have been disputed to be bloated and unnecessary. Where exactly do we draw the line? Here's a simple breakdown.

The good:

Interactivity

Flash's Actionscript opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactve features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for more.

A standardized site

With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser compatibility. No more woes over how a certain css code displays differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player installed.

Better expression through animation

In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in a much more efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (and hence smaller file sizes) as opposed to real "movie files" that are raster based and hence much larger in size.

The bad and the ugly:

The Flash player

People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease considerably because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. You'll also have to put in additional work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn't have the player installed.

Site optimization

If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn't be able to index your content. Hence, you will not be able to rank well in search engines and there will be less traffic heading to your site.

Loading time

Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might just lose their patience and click the Back button. The longer your Flash takes to load, the more you risk losing visitors.

The best way to go is to use Flash only when you absolutely need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. Otherwise, use a mixture of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple textual and graphical information.

An Online Newsletter

When you start an online newsletter you have the opportunity to collect opt-in email addresses to build your subscription base and establish creditability with your subscribers so that they may want to purchase products from you, a trusting source. The best part about an online newsletter is that it is free to start up. With an online newsletter you can offer your subscribers juicy daily or weekly information and they will love it. It will slowly build up their curiosity and they may purchase a monthly membership or products from you because they love receiving the information you supply.

Now, if you send them junk, the complete opposite will occur, so having an online newsletter takes work, but you can always pay someone to do it for you. So, with all this work put into it should you consider charging for subscription. That depends on what you want to accomplish. Do you want to attract visitors and entice them to your main product. Or are you only offering an online newsletter with no products. How often do you send out autoresponders and how in depth and valuable is your newsletter. Is this information easily found free somewhere else on the Internet.

Free newsletters are much easier because you can get a lot of people opt-in and you can sell them a subscription in the future. Everyone loves free stuff. Occasionally, at the end of the email you may want to offer special subscriber only promotions or notify your subscribers of new products or services. You could even offer special subscriber only bonuses with a purchase.

By the way, if you send your subscribers what begins to look like sales letters, they will opt out quicker than you can say wait! Be careful because this is your potential customer crowd and it is like gold to you.

Newest Place to Buy Gold - Vending Machines

The newest place where you can buy gold is not online but rather from a vending machine. Somebody came up with the bright idea to sell 24 karat gold coins and small bars up to ten grams via vending machines. This novelty service also allows you to have your purchased gold from the vending machine engraved with your own design. What will they think of next?

Still, you won’t be able to buy gold coins or let alone see this kind of vending machine in your office cafeteria or the shopping mall - at least not at malls that lack the Beverly Hills kind of clientele anyway. Word has it that the gold vending machine also comes with an armed security force, parameter laser armament defense system and am automatic 911 call capability. Of course, I’m only kidding with the last two.