Brilliant!

Here is the original Lifehacker article – Look busy with a fake desktop background.

Technorati Tags: Lifehacker, Looking Busy, Seinfeld, Work

What has ended up working out for me the best is the combination of the Firefox 2.0 and the Performancing Plugin. The reason for this is that Firefox 2.0 has a built in spell checker which I really need. Then the Performancing plugin allows you to post to your blog from a simple interface. This works better for me since I do not have to log into each individual blog that I post to in order to write something.

I definitely recommend it if you blog on a regular basis.

Firefox can be downloaded here.

The Performancing Plugin can be downloaded here.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Blog Desktop Editors, Firefox, Performancing, WordPress

One of the main differences between Los Angeles and Austin (other then the traffic and the people) is the food. I have long been a fan of Rudy’s BBQ and eat there on almost a weekly basis.

Today I decided to try something different – Schlotzsky’s Deli. It is similar to Quizno’s except for the fact that they make their bread fresh daily (not like how subway does it with frozen dough). The other thing that is cool about Schlotzsky’s is that they have 2 free Mac’s available that you can surf the internet from (I am blogging from one right now). You can also bring your laptop to surf free internet to.

I have to say that it is nice to see companies finally realizing the pull that the internet has on people. See I am not a big deli sandwich type of guy but Schlotzsky’s has just been added to the list because of the internet access.

I have been blogging for about a year now and I only started to try and make money from blogging about 3 months ago.

When I started I started like most people and got an Adsense account and expected the money to start rolling in. As you probably know that did not have. To date I have made about $25 from Adsense. At this rate it will be another 9 months before I get to $100 and actually see a check.

Anyway, you may have noticed that on this site and some of my other sites that I have some affiliate links to various vendors. I started that about 1 month ago and I have made about $115 from that in that 1 month. Pretty sweet.

Well anyway I came across this guy that is claiming that Adsense is dead and goes into some of the reasons why it is dead. He also starts to go into how he is making money through affiliates. 

The e-book that he has is free and the one that goes into the details will be free and available in a few weeks.

The coolest part about it is that he is offering an affiliate program that pays $0.50 per person that downloads the free e-book. Therefore you can get some free knowledge and try your hand at making some money via an affiliate.

The site is called Adsense is Dead.

Technorati: Adsense, Monetize, Blog, Blogging

You may have seem my post – Christian Family Blog – My Blog about Raising My Family as Christians – in which it was my goal to dislodge a atheist web site for being in the number one position for the term “Christian Family Blog”.

Well in 2 days I succeeded.

The above mention post is now number one for the term “Christian Family Blog” and I am pretty sure that in the next few days that this post will probably bump it down to the number 3 spot.

Why would I want to do this? The reason is simple. If people are really looking for a blog about a Christian family they do not want to find an atheists web site. Just today I have gotten several hits on this site and my The Abundant Life web site from people who were looking for a Christian family blog.

I hope more Christians step up and get their sites to the top so people can find what they are really looking for.

Technorati: Christian Family Blog, Blog, Blogging, Jesus, God, Christian

One of the blogs that I frequent regularly is problogger.net.

This blog is a guy from Australia that makes his whole living from blogging on this site and few others. The blog incidentally is about how to professionally blog and make money from your blog,

As of 8/22/06 Problogger is #55 on the top 100 blogs on Technorati. That says something for his site.

Anyway I was checking out his feed and noticed that he now has a job board for paid blogging opportunities. You can either post an opportunity or attempt to land a blogging job via the site. Opportunity posters must pay to post available opportunities.

The address is - jobs.problogger.net.

This is similar to the Performancing Exchange that perfomancing.com except that perfomancing is more of a forum that people can post to and then make comments.

It is really interesting how there are so many different avenues are available to bloggers to make money from their blogs.

Technorati: Problogger, Blog, Blogging, Job Board, Jobs, Blogging Jobs

I usually do not plug my Christian Blog about my family very often because I do not think that people usually appreciate having religious views thrust upon them.

To me this case is a little different though.

Me, being a Christian, I want my kids to grow up a be product members of society. In order for them to do that I need to be that. For my I have gotten the most direction from the Christian Church.

I grew up as a Catholic but as a Catholic God seemed so far away. He seemed like he was up in heaven and we were way, way down here. Only the “called ones” ever got to talk to him and only a fraction of those ever heard from God. Also, the only way to get to heaven was to be a really good person and then MAYBE you would get in.

As a Christian I was taught that God is here – he is everywhere. Then if you believe that Jesus died on the cross for you sins, and you accept that sacrifice, then God lives in you and you go to heaven. There are no rules that you “need to follow” but that if you are really saved from hell that you are thankful and that makes you want to be a good person.

That is where I am at.

I want to be a good person. I want my family to be good people. I want them to be the type of people that other people see their lives and want to have lives like them.

So anyway, back to my Christian Family Blog – why do I have it and why am I plugging it?

Why do I have a Blog about my Christian Family?

 The primary reason is that it helps me to get my thoughts together about what I believe and why I believe it.

You would surprised in the things that Christians believe without ever looking into the issue themselves. A lot of times things are just passed down from person to person and church to church without anyone asking – Why do we do/believe this?

The second reason for the blog is that I hope that the things that I write about will help other people.  

There are other people out there that are like me who are looking for a Christian perspective to the issues and questions that they are facing in their lives. I hope that the things that I have found will inspire others to ask the hard questions and really figure out what they believe.

Why am I plugging my Christian Family Blog?

That is an interesting question.

I was looking for someone on the internet that is a Christian and blogging about their family. So I went to Google and search for “Christian family blog” and I was very surprised at the results. The first site in the Google results was an atheist web site that was making fun of a Christian family.

I try and take the stance where I respect other people’s beliefs whether I agree with them or not. What I do not like to do is trash someone else’s beliefs or make fun of them because of it. When it is all said and done we are all going to find out who was right and who was wrong when we die – enough said.

So anyway I did not think that it was too cool that a site that was not the proper result for “Christian Family Blog” was coming up as #1. When I saw this I plugged my site over on my idano.net web site but my post did not have near the content volume as the other post I was trying to beat so I ended up being #3 under them.

This was not the desired result.

So here I am, writing a nice lengthy post in the hopes that it will knock the other site out of the #1 spot. Please realize that the main goal here is not to get people to read my site but have at least one Christian site in the #1 position for that search term. In fact you probably have noticed that I have not even given you address to my other site. At least not yet.

So finally that brings my to a little rant about Christians.

In my opinion that majority of Christians are really out of touch with the latest technologies of the internet being – blogs, Search Engine Optimization, and Web Design. I am sorry but the majority of Christian web sites are terrible in the above areas but also in content.

When you go the average Christian web site (I do not know of any blogs) the format looks like it was done back in the 80′s. Also, the content is this absolute “you are going to hell if you don’t repent” type of tone. It is the same thing as those bumper stickers you see on people’s car that say “Read the Bible” or “Repent”.

Does anyone really think that those things work?

I do not think so. I think people think that it is weird and it gives them the wrong idea about Christians – it is counter productive.

What I think that Christians should be doing is living the life that God would live if he was here. When God was here (as Jesus) he was nice to people, he helped them, met their needs, and cared for them. Because he cared for them they respected them and therefore listened to them.

If Christians would just live the type of life that would cause people to respect them then I think the world would be a much better place. This stuffing the Gospel down the throats of people needs to end. That is what causes sites like the one I am trying to beat make fun of Christians. Unfortunately we Christians have brought it on ourselves.

Ok, rant over.

So here it is, my Christian Family Blog, it is named The Abundant Life. It has this name because that is the type of life that I a Christian should be living.

Anyway thank you and God Bless.

Technorati: Christian Family Blog, Christian, Jesus, God, Blog, Blogging, Catholic

I had just got done removing all the Adsense from this blog and my idano.net blog when I came across the Ontok Highlighter.

The Ontok Highlighter automatically creates links on your pages that if clicked or hovered over will pop up a set of ads that relate to the highlighted keyword.

I like this a whole lot better then the standard “in your face” type of Adsense as it gives people the option to see ads if they want to – they are not forced. Having this makes you site more appealing any I would think that the click through rate would be better since people are “opting in”.

It is really easy to implement on your site. You just go to their generator, fill in your Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network, Shopping.com, Amazon Associates Program, or eBay Affiliates Program codes. You then select the color scheme that you want and hit the generate code. You then take the generated JavaScript code and paste it into your page – that’s it!

Then when you load you page it search for relative keywords and automatically creates the link and ads for you.

The following link iPod Nano should give you a taste how how this works.

Technorati : Adsense, Blog, Blogging, Ontok, Ontok Highlighter

That was the original intend of my idano.net blog but it has now been narrowed down to Blogging with WordPress. I also have 3 other blogs that are topic specific so I am restricted there to.

I think that if you blog you need to have at least one blog where you are just talking about whatever. That is what this blog is for.

Also, I have not put this blog on my hosting because I do not want to be bothered with plug-ins, performance, whatever. I just want to blog about anything that passes into my head.

So another words – Do not expect this Blog to be about anything in particular .

Technorati : Blog, Blogging, Movable Type, Personal Blog, WordPress