All posts by The Artist

Blogging

TWO Stars Only?!?

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Last night, I had a nightmare. If you are a blog for pay blogger, you would know that your livelihood is at the hands of you sponsors. They could vote you up or they could vote you down. Anyway, I wasn’t really worried about it since I know that I can’t please everyone and I try to be as honest as I can in my reviews so it would ruffle a few feathers, surely.

The other day, I was being flagged by an advertiser for daring to take his campaign for being based outside of North America. Well, the thing is, he did not state in his description so who would know? Definitely, IF I have such instructions in the campaign description, I would not have taken it. Why would I waste time writing something up and giving link juice knowing full well that I would not be compensated for my efforts? If I had known that beforehand and still do it then I must be insane.

Anyway, soon after, the advertiser again opened up his campaign and this time, he also did not state that he only wants North American bloggers and I have been assured by the marketplace that I could take up this campaign and so I did.

However, that night, I had a nightmare that this advertiser gave me such a low rating that pulled down my overall score to a grand total of TWO! I startled awoke straightaway but thank God it was only a dream. Do you know what impact it will have on a blogger to have such a low rating?

You see, being a blog for pay blogger is so not easy. you are pressured to come up with quality posts within a short period of time and you have to do this consistently. There is no margin for error *sigh*

Computing & Internet

Home Improvement Ideas

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Just now, while I was surfing the internet, I came across the website of a company named Anglian Home and remembered that I was supposed t look for information for my friend regarding UPVC windows that he plans to install in his home. He is in the midst of a major home improvement project and he does not have access to the internet so I agreed to check out some information for him.

Anglian Home has been in business for more than thirty years and they have a lot of home improvement products and ideas. I browsed through the site and I really love the idea of a conservatory in the garden. I saw some pictures that are available on the website and I think that should I own a home in the near future, this is a “must have” for me. It would be great and I believe this hasn’t caught on by homeowners here so I would be one of the first to have it and I can show off!

Meanwhile, I have already gotten the information for my friend through the website of Anglian Home. Hopes he appreciate my “hard work”!

Blogging

Stay Tuned To External Flux

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I chanced upon this $15 giveaway contest held by Leigh of External Flux so I thought I would give it a shot. Eh, if I win, I am going to write less 1 X $15 post, 1.5 X $10 posts, 2 X $7.50 posts or 3 X $5 posts hahahah!

Firstly, I really like the color scheme of the blog. I have a blog with the black background Blogger template as well but the color for blog title, post titles and dates and everything is white so I think Leigh did some wonderful customization to make things stand out really well with the purple and pink. It’s time to change my blog template!

Reading the “About” section where Leigh is so many things and more, all at once or at some point of her life, I kept thinking, “Where does she have the time?” External Flux is all about the changes that Leigh is trying to create. Does that mean a change from the life that she has led all these while? We shall see as Leigh reveals more on her blog! Stay tuned to External Flux!

General

Have You Heard Of Colloidal Silver Yet?

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Well have you? Colloidal silver has been rather popular this past month. I think I first heard of it about six months ago, or perhaps longer. I was told and from what I read from the internet, colloidal silver seems to be the “cure all” drink. I do not know how true this is because I have not tested it on ALL illnesses except for minor cough and cold. It worked because colloidal silver is like a natural anti-biotic that could drive away any germs and bugs and keep our immune system up.

I read up and gained much information from the website of Purest Colloids, Inc. and believe that we should make colloidal silver as part of our daily supplement. I am always falling ill with one thing or another and could certainly get some external help. I prefer colloidal silver anytime over western medication. EEEwwww

If you are not comfortable about drinking colloidal silver, you should read up on this and do your own research. There is no harm in getting further information before putting something into your body!

Computing & Internet

Lower Traffic During Ramadan

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I am not sure if it is coincidence but since the start of Bulan Ramadan, internet traffic to my friend’s ultra high website has taken a dip. I am linking it to Muslims spending less time on the internet than they normally would but I am uncertain if my deduction is accurate.

I asked my friend to keep an eye on his traffic stats to see if there is a surge in traffic in the week hours of the morning after the Muslims have broken fast but he has yet to note a significant change.

One thing to note is that my friend’s site is local and most of his traffic is from within the country and the majority of the people here are Muslims and celebrating Ramadan.

Let’s see if his traffic will pick up after Hari Raya.

Computing & Internet

Ask Joe About Everything & Anything

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As you know, I surf the internet a lot; too much for my own good actually, but I have a curious mind and I hop from one site to another reading and getting information on anything and everything. You should see my list of bookmarks. It is so long because I find so many sites that are interesting enough to want a second visit or not.

One of the sites that I got to know of recently, is at http://askjoeabout.com. If you ask me, I swear this is a blog what with its Word Press theme, but apparently, it is not because Ask Joe About has a separate sub-domain that leads to a blog but there is no blog content there except for a link out to an online shoe store. It is also the same case for the link to Friends and Terms. The only tabs that work are Home and Contact. I would like to Ask Joe About this.

I don’t know who Joe is because there is no “About” page but apparently, Joe welcomes questions from us and he is said to know EVERYTHING. I am not sure what field he specializes in and how accurate his answers to our questions will be. Joe’s “blog” does not have a specific theme judging from the long list of categories.

This blog was established in May, 2007 but there are only three months’ worth of content and the odd thing that I noticed is that Joe writes and publishes numerous articles ON THE SAME DAY which, although I do not think is impossible because I write more than thirty posts every day, reading through the posts for this review, I have a feeling that all the articles were copied from somewhere else. I know that there are sites that offer free blog content and this looks like one of the users. I should probably fire up Google or CopyScape to check for duplicate content but I’ll not go to such lengths. And if these were really written by Joe then I apologize for jumping to the wrong conclusion.

However, the impression that I got from Ask Joe About is that he is only interested in selling shoes. Now, after reading my review, Joe would probably give me a low rating. Well, I will just stick to giving an honest review.

*** This is a sponsored post ***

Computing & Internet

Blog Dino

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While checking my traffic stats tracker, I came across someone coming from a site called Blog Dino. That got me curious, especially anything that has the name DINO to it since that is the name of one of my beloved dogs.

So off I went to check this out and it actually is a search engine for blogs and news sites. This is certainly different from my default search engine Google because there is a tag cloud below the search bar.

In my opinion, people who have lots of free time on their hands and without a specific site to read and just surfing aimlessly on the internet can find this really useful.

As an example, as you can see on the screenshot, SEX is one of the keywords. If you do not know yet, the larger the size of the font, the more times it has been mentioned,. As an experiment, I clicked on SEX and I was brought to a search page with relevant results from blog posts and news sites. However, on this page, there is also another larger tag cloud, with all sorts of keywords that are linked to the word SEX. So I clicked on PORN and the same thing goes on with a large tag cloud with keywords linking to PORN.

I did not actually have time to read how accurate the search results are rendered but it is like a game to jump from an article to another related one. Too bad I do not have time to explore more.