The Random Blogger

I can’t remember how I stumbled across this website, but I’m glad I did.

Allen Jesson bills himself as a poet and philosopher, and he publishes what he calls The 77 Secrets, which is a series of daily emails with various secrets on how to be happy, healthy, wealthy and wise.

So far, I’m 28 secrets into the series, and they do cover a variety of subjects.

The emails are relatively short, well-written, and as he says on his website, even if you only implement one or two of the secrets, your life will be better for it.

The 77 Secrets are 100% free, he doesn’t bug you to buy tons of other stuff (unlike some people), and you’ll learn something new and useful every day (for 77 days, anyway).

So, subscribe to The 77 Secrets now - you definitely won’t regret it.

My laptop, which is between one and two years old, is starting to behave in some very strange and undesirable ways.

For example, things lock up (applications or all of Windows), I get the occasional BSOD, CHKDSK starts but will never finish, etc.

And relatively recently, I’ve been having problesm with Windows Explorer, which I use a lot - usually two instances are running at any one time.

One main problem is that the first time I try to run it after a reboot, it locks up most of Windows, and my only solution is to use the Task Manager to kill the explorer.exe process, which I know is risky, and then to use the Run command to open the application again.

In most cases, this works fine - but not always, which then leads to yet another reboot.

And these past few days, it’s been going unresponsive for no apparent reason at random times.

As I need this application to do a lot of what I do, I decided enough was enough and went on the hunt for a good replacement for Windows Explorer (and preferably one that was free).

A quick search on Google instantly turned up a couple of contenders, so I downloaded both and tried them out.

The first was Explorer++, created by David Erceg, and the second was Q-Dir, created by Nenad Hrg.

So, what were the relative pros and cons of each of them?

The good news is that both are free, and both can be run as portable apps.

Explorer++ supports multiples tabs, which is a nice feature, and I particularly liked the Bookmarks toolbar for fast access to folders used regularly. (One of my all-time favourite applications is Folder Guide, which integrates nicely with Windows XP Pro, so I wanted to replicate this funcationality if possible.)

However, my biggest issues with Explorer++ were the strange way it sorts and/or groups folder contents, and it also seems to be very slow.

Q-Dir, on the hand, is very fast indeed, and instead of supporting multiple tabs, it does offer multiple panes, anywhere from one to four of them, which makes drag and dropping of files really fast and easy.

The help information on both apps is somewhat sparse, and at first, the thing I didn’t like about Q-Dir was the fact I couldn’t work out how to use the Quick Links feature (which is this app’s Folder Guide type functionality), but once I tracked that down, it met all of my requirements, and this is the one I think I’ll be sticking with.

So, if you’re looking for a good, free Windows Explorer alternative, my vote goes for Q-Dir.

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO as it’s commonly known for short, is all about getting your website ranked highly on the search engines - if you can get your site listed on the first page of the search engine results, or preferably even in first place, then you can get a lot of free traffic to your site.

But the more you read about SEO, especially if you visit the many forums that discuss this subject, the more you’ll come to realise that opinions are, at best, divided - and that’s putting it mildly.

There are many so-called SEO “experts” who would have you believe that they have cracked the Google code and know how to get your site to the top of the rankings, but let’s be honest - the only people who know the exact criteria are Google themselves (and probably a handful of employees at that).

Most of what you’ll read sounds like fact, but is often unfounded opinion, frequently passed from one person to the next, with nothing to substantiate their beliefs.

One man, however, is different, and that man is Jonathan Leger.

Jonathan has done, and continues to do, a lot of testing with regard to SEO, and when he says something works or doesn’t work, you can pretty much take it as read that he has done the research to back up his claims.

So, who better to write the definitive book about SEO?

However, don’t be scared - this book, Geek-Free SEO, is not only very short (just 38 pages, and that includes the usual stuff like the cover page, copyright notification, table of contents and author bio pages), but also very direct - there’s no fluff, just solid examples of how to go about getting your site ranked.

Even if you’ve never heard the term SEO before, Geek-Free SEO will set you off on the right track in no time at all.

Oh, and did I mention that Geek-Free SEO is also free?

To get your free copy, all you need to do is right-click on either the image of the book cover, above, or the words “Geek-Free SEO“, and select the Save Target As … (or Save Link As…), and you’ll be able to download your copy of this vital book within a few seconds.

(And even if you do know something about SEO, I still recommend you read it, as you’ll probably learn something new.)

For all but the most die-hard programming propeller-heads, the term “regular expression” is liable to bring out a cold sweat.

True, they’re incredibly powerful …

… but they’re also incredibly hard to get your head around.

So, what is a regular expression (aka regex or regexp)?

Well, in a nutshell (a Wikipedia nutshell, to be precise), they (more…)

I’ve been involved in various aspects of Internet marketing since 2004, at a guess, and I’ve seen many so-called “gurus” come and go.

I’ve subscribed, at one time or another, to most of their lists, and for reasons I’ll explain here, I’ve also unsubscribed from most of them.

You see, to me, it seems that most of these people might originally come out with something useful and/or good (although many don’t), but after that, and they’ve nothing else to offer, they all bombard you with the same emails promoting the latest “big thing”, just to try to make some affiliate commissions and get to the top of the league tables.

To me, if you’ve one thing to say, and you’ve said it, then that’s it. I really don’t want to receive dozens of emails all promoting the same product launch.

This is even more true when you realise that the stuff that has always worked will always work - without the need for loopholes and fads and fancy scripts, etc.

So after all this time, and after wading through (and mainly deleting) what must be thousands of emails, who do I still listen to?

Sadly, not very many of them.

But there is one person who is genuinely different (well, there are a few, but I may have to write about them some other time) …

… and his name is Paul Myers.

What makes Paul different?

Well:

1. He doesn’t send you a load of junk mail (aka spam) promoting stuff that he clearly hasn’t tested for himself.
2. He doesn’t send you one or more emails every single day, clogging up your inbox.
3. When he does email you, what he says is well-written, unique content that’s useful, educational, often humorous, and that offers a perspective that nobody else seems to offer.
4. When he does promote his own products, of which he has quite a few, then you can guarantee that they will be reasonably-priced (I think the most I’ve paid for anything is probably $27), and yet they offer much more value than most everything else I’ve bought (including the really expensive stuff too).

In fact, I positively look forward to receiving Paul’s emails - to the point that I wish he would write more frequently (although I accept that if he did that, the quality may not be sustainable, not that I feel that this would be a real problem for him).

So, do yourself a favour, head on over to TalkBiz News, and sign up for his newsletter.

Not only will you be glad you did, but you’ll also receive a free copy of his highly-acclaimed book, “Need To Know“.

While working on one of our many websites a day or two ago, I found a really cool image magnification effect that I’d not seen before.

Eager to track it down, my first port of call was my favourite site for this type of script, Dynamic Drive, and lo and behold, I found it instantly.

It’s called jQuery Image Magnify v1.1, and it’s dead easy to install (and it works on IE, Firefox and Opera).

Give it a try - you’ll love it!

It’s time for another freebie for you!

If you run any blogs, then you’ll know that keeping them up-to-date with fresh and unique content (as Google especially prefers this to what they call duplicate content) can be a real challenge.

Yes, it’s nice to write your own articles, put your thoughts out there for the world to read (and criticise, maybe), and whatever else you want or need to tell people about, but we don’t always have time to do that as often as we’d like.

Well, that’s where today’s free report comes in - it shows you a quick and easy way to add unique content to your blog in a truly set-it-and-forget-it way.

And the best part about this is … it’s 100% free!

So, download your free report by right-clicking on the ebook cover and selecting the Save Target As…(or Save Link As…) to save it to your computer, and enjoy fresh content as often as you want.

There are thousands of people looking to break free from the humdrum 9 - 5 job every single day, and yet when they start looking online for ways to do this, there is so much information available that it’s overwhelming.

I’ve been in the Internet Marketing business for about five years now, in various guises, and I know that it’s getting harder, not easier, to find good information that you can trust and that actually works.

Let me just list a few of the many ways you can earn money online:

• Run an ecommerce site
• Affiliate marketing
• AdSense
• Create and sell your own information products
• MLM (aka Network Marketing)

Now, the problem with almost all of these is that you need a fair amount of technical knowledge (e.g. to build websites in the correct way) and marketing knowledge, and with the way that things are going online (e.g. more competition every day, Google changing its search algorithms on a frequent basis, the high cost of pay-per-click advertising - if you get it wrong), it really isn’t for beginners unless you have a sound plan and are willing to follow it, without distraction.

You see, that’s another problem with Internet Marketing - you’ll soon be inundated with the next best thing since sliced bread, and all this does is make you take your eye off the ball, and instead of moving forwards with what might turn out to be a good money-making project, you put it on hold (maybe indefinitely), while you try out that new thing you just bought.

And while you’re trying that out, something else comes along, and so the vicious circle continues, ad infinitum.

We actually had plans, when I left my well-paid regular job, and they fell apart almost instantly for reasons that are not relevant here, and we ended up running an ecommerce business.

Now, it’s much more rewarding than anything I ever did in my corporate life - saving dogs from horrendous deaths makes a genuine difference to the families we help - but I actually work longer hours now than I ever did.

Part of that is because it’s our own business, and that’s what tends to happen, and part of it is because the only real way to differentiate ourselves from our competitors is to offer 24 x 7 support to our customers - it’s greatly appreciated by those that make use of it, but it does mean our work and sleep patterns get all out of whack constantly.

So, bearing all of that in mind, what can the absolute beginner (or newbie, as they are unflatteringly called) do to earn an honest buck online?

Well, there is one way that most people could get started with almost instantly, and I’ve managed to obtain a FREE video for you that details (more or less) everything that you need to know.

The first thing you need to do is to download the following file to your computer, by right-clicking on the link and selecting the Save As… option.

• HowToMakeMoneyOnlineFastForDummies.wmv

Now, this file is 52MB, so it may take a while to download!

Once you’ve downloaded it, you’ll need to play the video, which is in Windows Media Player format, and most Windows computers will already have a version of this software loaded and ready to go.

So, grab yourself a drink, sit back and watch this video today - it could well be the catalyst you need to get yourself out of the rat race.

I came across a great tool today that you can add to your website in minutes – and the best bit is, it’s 100% free!

It’s called the Mini Search Automator Widget, and you simply need to configure a few options, copy the code that’s generated for you, and then paste it into your website.

1. You can type in any search term you want.

2. You can search across a wide range of sources including Google Web, Yahoo Answers, Google Images, Yahoo Images/Flickr, Google Video/YouTube, Truveo Video, Google News, Digg, Wikipedia, Seeqpod (music), Last.fm, and Amazon.com - all of them are a click away!

3. You can earn money by referring people to SearchAutomator.com.

4. You can also earn money from Amazon.com too.

5. And you can search your own domain (although your site will already need to be indexed by Google).

You can pre-configure up to six recommended searches (e.g. terms that are related to your website), every feature of the widget has a tooltip to tell you all you need to know about using it, and it won’t slow your page down as it’s only 8KB in size.

You can use this widget just about anywhere too – on your site, your blog and even on forums.

So, grab up your free copy of the Mini Search Automator Widget now!

Technorati Tags: Search, Widget, SearchAutomator

Being a bit of a geek (or is that nerd?), I’ve installed no end of supposedly useful tools and applications on my various PCs over the years.

Most of them turn out to be nothing more than a novelty that gets tired very quickly, and so they get unceremoniously dumped soon afterwards.

But there is one free tool that I’ve had installed on my PC for a few years now, I use it every single day, and it really does save me loads of time, not to mention mouse-clicks!

It’s called (more…)