I thought it was pretty cool to see this http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebooks.html Cool  because the predictions have come true Just wanted to make this post to go on the record to say i predicted hehe

See my last post.

Next prediction would be that they figure out a way to make this even cheaper or even – gasp – free. And then they take  over the world lol

So opening chrome today I noticed a new section called Apps:

At first it kinda seems insignificant. Ok so what, I can play games and run apps that runs on android-based devices through my browser. So what right, we can play games and run apps from the web already but this looks to be some type of extension to chrome that is running android.

Where I thought we’d be

Over 3 years ago, I wrote a blog post about a war that would take place between Google Vs Microsoft. What the post was really about though was a shift in the way we used computers to access and use data that I believe would be happening by now. In that post, I mention a discussion I had even a couple of years prior to that blog post. A discussion which had me debating with a friend doing his thesis on a related subject. In short this is what I believed (and still believe is the direction we should be going in):

First, what is a mindmap?
From WikiPedia:

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used togenerate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.

Mindmaps are great. Have you ever been frustrated with taking notes  in a regular matter, you know like one note per line, then later you found yourself having to link 2 notes together and then make sub notes and then change the order of the notes because one of them now belongs above the other one. You started with the intention of taking clean notes but it’s now a jumbled mess of crossed-out words, bent arrows and ink fingerprints :p

For those who don’t know who John Chow is, you need to know.  The guy is my role model for monetizing a blog. In some ways, he’s my inspiration, not for starting this blog but for monetizing it the way I am. I’ve been studying what the guy does because anyone who can make 40K+ per month from spending 2 hours per day on a blog is worth studying and listening to.

Similar to John Chow, I didn’t really start this blog with the idea of turning it into a type of income (I just started this site as a test for Quansite and thought I could post some stuff I know and some personal ramblings / rants ) but after seeing how he did just that starting by a case study using his own blog to prove how it was possible to make a living blogging…

Before we look at the actual e-commerce platform, one thing you’ll absolutely need is a way of accepting money to your e-commerce site. The easiest and most popular way is PayPal. If you don’t have an account or even if you have one but it’s a personal account, you’ll need a Business account. It’s free to create, so go do that right now, just click this link to be taken directly to the proper section and come back to this email once that’s done.

Now, now that you have a way (or soon will) to accept payments, you need the e-commerce actual platform to start selling items…

I’m very excited about this one! My web development team have been working with Wordpress for the past few years but mainly for private clients. Lately we’ve decided to create plugins that would be released more publicly and not just for exclusively for single private clients anymore.

This is the first free Wordpress public plugin that we release – so I’m looking forward to the feedback – even if it means it’s bad feedback so we can improve on the next ones we release .  Check it out here.

Basically this plugin will save you time and effort by allowing you to quickly and easily insert screenshots into your blog posts / pages and also give you a cool feature of being able to give your visitors a preview of webpages (internal or external) before they click on a link!

Drop shipping is a method of retail sales that allows the retailer to sell items without having to physically hold any inventory.

The retailer has an agreement with either a manufacturer, wholesaler or distributor to have items drop-shipped directly to their clients.

Here’s a simple example transaction to illustrate how it works.

1) Bob is a retailer, he sells painting supplies. 2) Acme Painting Supplies, Inc. agrees to drop-ship items directly to Bob’s clients. 3) Bob lists some items for sale.  4) Jane buys a paintbrush from Bob for $20.00. 5) Bob, turns around and buys the paint brush from Acme Painting Supplies, Inc. for $17.00.  6) Acme Painting Supplies, Inc. ships the paintbrush directly to Jane. 7) Bob made a profit of $3 without having to buy and hold any inventory or having to ship any items.

Here’s a diagram showing visually what a transaction looks like:

If you’re like me and finding yourself having to test web apps on a regular basis or having to create multiple accounts for anything else, then you’ve certainly found yourself scratching your head as to what you’re going to do when you run out of email address to use Sure if you have your own domain name, you can create a “catch-all” mailbox that forwards anything@domain.ext   to any email you want… but that takes a bit to setup and well it’s been found to be a huge spam magnets as many spammers email anythingandeverything@domain.ext in the hope of reaching someone who will open that email. So if you’ve use catch-all mailboxes before, you know what I mean with the spam bombarding.

A while ago I came across this little tip that I have been using almost daily now so it’s really useful and a time saver for me – I hope it will be for you too.

There have been different discussions and plugin to address this topic on how to turn your Wordpress blog into a mobile-friendly site. Some only did general mobile-friendly version, some only did Iphone. Some were complex to implement. The simplest I’ve found is MobilePress. You just install the plugin as any other plugin and activate. There’s an iPhone version and a mobile version.

Features:

-Ability to specify a custom title & description when viewing the mobile versions

-Ability to have your own themes

-Ability to enable analytics and ads via Aduity which seems to be in testing stages for now, so you can’t use that feature just yet.

-Ability to view full version for those that don’t like the mobile version. I personally love this for the iPhone, i hate when i’m forced to view the mobile version and i want to view the full version because something is not available in the mobile version.

Here’s what the settings page looks like: