Boutique Online Store for Books CDs and DVDs

Google has become a massive repository where you can just enter the ISBN of a book to instantly discover who has it in stock and at what price. It is critical that the title, author and ISBN of the book be displayed in the web page title so that it can be indexed. Use this feature to check competitors and market availability. Some books are out of print very quickly - others go into a second or third edition.

Introducing Handy Folks In order to give visitors a "compelling user experience" they decided to feature both the front and back cover of each thing. You hear: "Don't judge a book by it's cover" but I personally find it annoying not being able to see at least how the publishers promote their offering. What about the cast for a film, or the list of songs on a CD? You find it all on the back cover...

The inventory has exactly a quantity of one for everything. So it is first in, first serve. If you come back to the site one week later - the item might be gone. I guess that's why some places call themselves opportunity shops...

Did you notice the ubiquitous Bitcoin logo in the corner? They decided to support this new cyberspace currency to gain an edge. When PayPal started many detractors raised their voices but even now, MasterCard or Visa don't want to let you send money to an email address...

Working from home revisited

An internet connection, a computer and a cup of coffee is all you need to make your day's worth. Really?

Globalisation has its rewards. If you live in India, Russia, the Philippines or Bangladesh you can now sell your services and support your family without having to migrate overseas.

If you live in the USA, the United Kingdom or Australia you are scratching your head as to how people can make a living working for a pittance like that - undercutting rates and driving prices down to a ridiculous level.

The clients who commission the work are hiding behind a dummy username. They are probably not the Fortune 500 companies. More likely they are themselves operators working from home - forever scheming the next wondrous website that will make them millions. But right now, they are investing as little as possible - trying to leverage any bit of technology that might come their way. They never commission someone to take on and deliver the full project for them. Outsourcing is not exactly the word. Instead they fan out bits and pieces so that no participant could steal the project from them.

They are hopeless at telling you what they exactly want. The more descriptives state; "I want a website like so-and-so!" By the time you submit a proposal you have wasted as much time as it would take to actually complete half of the work involved. They like to bait you saying they are looking to establish a working relationship with a reliable contractor. When you read between the lines, you discover they will repeat the same ploy with an endless supply of beggars who have nothing much to lose.

What types of trades are affected by this plague? Besides PHP programming you will find all sorts of web marketing related activities such as scraping other websites for data gathering, web design, WordPress plugins, copywriting, link building, etc...

They are two ways of being compensated in those marketplaces. One is a fixed price contract, the other is an hourly rate. The hourly rate option involves a piece of spying software to download onto your PC to take random snapshots of your screen to prove you are indeed working on the project rather than watching your friends on facebook. The fixed price option is fraught with danger as clients like to pile on requirements and withhold payment by arguing you haven't ticked all the boxes involved.

It is still amazing that through technology and globalisation people are able to work in a distributed fashion with folks they will never see face to face. Correction: some require you to take Skype calls to manage the project. This results in having to keep your PC turned on at all times in case they might want to call you in the middle of the night because of timezone differences.

Great Western Tiers community radio

When you put together the components of not-for-profit, locality and public relations you get an unusual pudding: a local community radio!

Started off in the mid 1990s, Heart FM community radio station still broadcasts in our time in the middle of Tasmania.

The broadcasting schedule of "easy listening" dispenses vintage pop hits of the 1980s with linked up newscast, local weather and some talk back shows.

One noticeable show is Mouldy Oldies by presenter Les McSweeney. Les has an extensive collection of 78 rpm records dating back to the 1930s. it is quite a discovery to hear those sounds from beyond the grave together with Les introductions.

The broadcastingo license limits drastically the geographical reach of the station yet a survey reveals some 2500 regular listeners tune-in to the station. The local area is mostly an agricultural community in this northern central part of Tasmania. They indeed like to hum along those old hits while riding their tractor all day across the countryside.

Fusion is a Christian ministry operating from the village of Poatina as a rehabilitation centre for people fleeing addictions and abuse. The radio station originally located there has now a studio in downtown Longford - the nearest township, to facilitate local community interaction.

Sponsors are a rare breed and are much needed to bring in the cashflow of a not-for-profit organisation.

Open air broadcast is a way to reach out and connect with the listeners. Events include the local butcher store grand opening (a station sponsor) and public holidays such as Australia Day or the local agricultural show. These are run along the format of open crowd festivals innovated by Fusion International. The idea is to coordinate sport and activities to get a local community interacting with each other. Suddenly folks encounter their neighbours after dwelling in the area for a while but lacking the opportunity to get involved into anything together.

It looks like in our pro-active 21st century world we have to be reminded again how to interact with each other and be aware that not everybody is a religious fanatic or a paedophile.

The Heart FM community radio mandate fits perfectly with the Fusion order of business in social work. In fact several Poatina inmates serve as volunteers at the radio station and run their own late night show - Captain Midnight.

More recently the station indulged in an internet presence to offer Fusion supporters an idea of the programming by providing the download of specific mp3 files.

Socially Mediated

Social media relates to a variety of things to different people but is there scope for diversity? If you want to bookmark websites regarding your project, photos of your recent trip and summaries on your endeavours where can you go? Evidently facebook comes loud and clear to meet those points but are they trying to be all things to all people? After all they are now large capitalisation entities and shareholders who want to rake in the dividends from advertising income.

Talking about revenue bring in cash but more importantly your profile. Yes you read correctly marketing heavy weights are always on the lookout for ways to quantify your buying pattern and social media sites are the main source of information for that. So for a charge you can land a snapshot on how many times something was posted that matches your favourite keyword.

So the issue of privacy is the one that gets levied the most against the social media fad. But is it a fad or is it to stay? It is one thing to have a presence towards your relatives and acquaintances but what about if your ex, your employer, someone across the street starts to spy on you? Introducing Social Buzz a facebook look-alike without the heavy footprint.

The needs of an online community are fairly simple. Leave an article, bookmark a web page, upload an album of related pictures or a clip, track a discussion or an event through keywords and that's basically it. Certain social media platforms are growing through invites only - others allow any person to sign-up. Some entice you to run through your inbox and blast an invite to any email at hand - a crude spamming method if there was one.

The next problem with facebook is the ever increasing growth of apps that try to tag on the vast pool of connected friends and weave a web of intrigue. It began with games, then birthday reminders now job hunting networks and whatever will follow. No wonder we all know someone we would dearly connect with but cannot because they run away for cover from the social media landscape.

Just like in the past you would pursue in private now you can do that offline. No I don't mean going back to the old fashioned postal service. I mean switching to a less popular social media system off the beaten track.

Thank you – the magic word

It's not just children but adults too who need to be taught the wonders of giving thanks. Or is it too late by then? Taking things and people for granted is a worrisome trend these days which probably accounts for much of the strife in our society.

As always it is as a result of a setback that you tend to come to appreciate the things that you have left. As human beings we are by default self-centred. On the other side of the coin we are craving for acknowledgement and acceptance. So if you build the habit of uttering a well thought of and deserved "thank you" in your conversation, the rewards are manifold. You have heard the phrase: "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." When we meet a new person a quick mental evaluation occurs in our thoughts to discern ally from opposent.

Compliments from a stranger always seems unsincere because they don't have any background with you to qualify giving any report on your personality - good or bad. People in sales of all creeds have learned the good one-liners from Dale Carnegie's book "how to win friends and influence people". In the current society of rampant divorce and distrust at work the motto is more like "how to alienate strangers and bust your marriage"...

If something is going to change it might as well be you. To give is better than to receive. Following up on that, you will discover more long lasting satisfaction in releasing an associate to be the best thei can be than in concentrating on your short term goals.

Amazing isn't it? Would altruistic motives be the cure for a decadent society? Utopians have mused about this for centuries but the reality is that we live in a spiritual world as well as a physical world. Unless you acknowledge the forces at play which pull your attitude one way or another you will keep being indecisive not knowing who to obey.

Notice I use the world obey here. You thought you were a mature person - in control of your own destiny. Just look at your life and you will find this is not so. You find it impossible to connect with God? You'd rather not connect with God at all, hoping you don't have to answer to anybody for your existence? You are wasting away searching for value and reason in a world that's going nowhere fast? Why don't you rejoice that someone dared to tell you about Jesus Christ, the Son of God

The appeal of black and white photography

In the mid 1800s painters making a living out of portraiture experimented with photography. Photography to them was a new method where they could re-use their skills in image composition. The camera was held on a stand and the artist could exactly compose and focus the image under a black cloth to prevent reflexions.

Maybe the lack of colour forces the mind to evaluate the graphic composition of the image.

The only situation in life where we see in black and white is at dark or in poorly lit situations like in a well. Therefore subconsciously black and white may be associated with fear or unease.

Black and white gives an image a unique level of abstraction. Your eye never runs independently of your mind. A smooth shading in the levels of grey is quite suggestive in expressing volume or even temperature. In yesteryears of chemical darkrooms the operator would mask some parts of the negative to give more time for some rich graduation to appear in the highlighted areas.

A black and white portrait has always more stature than the same image in color. Yet again the portrait of a young person is more attractive in color unless you focus on the plight of the poor the orphan or the sick. A black and white portrait of a woman makes you to focus on her stare as the makeup has a lesser impact. Looking into someone's eyes is a gateway into gazing into their soul. Black and white portraits have this uncanny effect.

The removal of color in a still-life or a nature scene has a dramatic impact. The top of trees quickly turns into a silhouette. A grey sky heralds rain or worse thunderstorm even if the picture was taken on a good sunny day. Still objects tussle with one another through forms and degrees of contrast.

Photography has the ability to suspend existence out of time but this is even more so in black and white. It is just recently that newspapers print in color. Photo journalism has produced a long tradition of celebrities and leaders providing instant recollection of their faces precisely because those images are stored in our memory in black and white.

See Photo Exhibition - people for some fine illustrations.

Give me links

Being in the wrong neck of the woods on the internet can be as detrimental as being invisible. There is no shortcut way to form your backlinks trove in a flash.

The internet in just ten years has turned into a very complex marketplace. Gone are the times of the dot-com boom where there was no limit. After the dust has settled down we can review the various trends that passed across our commercial landscape and select the good ideas from the bad ones.

Advertising Banners
Animated GIFs were the pride of many graphic artists who did a fine job of getting the web surfer's attention but the response rate after a while dropped to abysmal levels. Blatant advertising has turned out to be a worn out method. People do not want to be side tracked in the event of their web surfing. Over time indivuduals have developed an avoidance to anything that flashes and grabs.

Link Directories
Akin to a bookmarking website, web addresses with one page after another of links have gone past their use-by date. Search engines no longer report links found there. Users select to do a query rather than going to a favourite portal and then dig down to their area of interest - only to find bad quality links not at all relevant to their search.

Reciprocal Links
Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours was the motto of roll-your-own web builders. Since few people code directly in html any longer, there has been a dichotomy between the geeks and the marketers and the result was the prevailing of search engine advertising. Reciprocal links were also cause for foul play. Someone would put up a link for you and take it away soon after you did your part in good faith.

Blog Comments
The boom of blogging platforms some years ago witnessed another form of abuse: planting stupid links on any blog opened for replies you could find. The response was drastic. Fast on the heels of anti email spam measures people tried to streamline the stamping out of such ill. The no-follow link was born. You could click on it but it didn't tally in your website popularity stakes.

Writing Articles
This is the premise of the free economy - attract visitors with a piece of some value to get them to return for something else worth buying. Composing some useful information in order to build your repute as a source of authority provides you the privilege to leave a plug at the end of the article telling people what you do.

Commission Schemes
Pay per click (PPC) advertising is plagued by fraud. Your opponents might click on your ads to consume your advertising budget. Unscrupulous website operators might get friends to click on their ads to bump up their income (thinking a different IP address might hide their tracks). Instead of paying people for each click on their link, affiliate marketing schemes pay a commission on each purchase generated by that link. A cookie is set on the visitor's browser to track the originating referral in case the sale is obtained at a subsequent visit.
being rewarded for generating traffic

New website for a competitive advantage

Did you ever wanted to know what could make you special in the competitive landscape? Beyond price or product can you think of how to make the user experience memorable?

If customers reach you in cyberspace how can you make their browsing a worthwhile experience? A happy client is the best kind of promotion as the slogan goes.

There is a plethora of one-size-fits-all website packages on the market purporting to do all you need for a pittance. Well, maybe so... but how can you differentiate yourself if your competitors also run the same plain-vanilla website engine?

It will take more than flashy images or a multimedia experience to make your mark. What about if you go beyond the customer expectations?

If you are a retail outlet, free delivery is a sign of good service. You absorb freight charges in your overall costs and clients are relieved that they won't be penalised if they live in such and such postcode.

Taking it one step further - can you integrate your offerings with some calculating module to personalise a profile for each visitor? Mortgage repayments, dieting plans are good candidates. What about an area calculator if you are selling carpet or tiles?

If you are a hotel or a resort what about providing a plan of your facility? As you mouse over each room an image reveals how the place is appointed and if you click further on the window the exact scenery from that room scrolls on the page. Click again to see the rates offered for different days and the availability.

A designer website is what your business deserves and if you have to upgrade your office procedures for the exercise why not. If you consider the expense of getting traffic to your website why not make the most of theopportunity once they get there?

Bruno Deshayes web design

Can you multitask?

The skill to follow several goals simultaneously is the mark of the achiever. A goal setting system can improve our limited capacity to cope.

The other option is to be a one track mind and the real trouble is getting stuck in an overwhelming challenge while other possibilities escape away. In fact it is rather a luxury to be able to concentrate on just one thing and it may not bring you that much benefit. You have heard it said "I will sleep on it." The inference here is that a flash of creativity can occur when your soul is at peace and you do not push yourself to perform.

Why do people use a diary? Sounds like a lame question to ask. But the answer, besides the fact we miss things is that writing things down calls a commitment out of us. We are no longer subjected to whatever catches our focus at the time but we make ourselves bound to do whatever we stated we would do.

Obviously a diary is to keep track of your appointments. The next step is to keep a journal. Each night your would write down the things that mattered to you that day and 3, 6 or 12 months later you would ponder with delight at the common things you were battling with at the time. Keeping on with those good recording habits the final step is to write down your goals. Writing them and leaving them aside obviously is not going to help but it's a beginning.

You must be able to write your dreams. You have to picture yourself being with the people you want to meet. You have to call yourself to release your potential and believe that somehow you will stand where you ought to be. And here is the test: the moment you decide to do something worthwhile opposition shows up. But that is to be expected. As iron sharpens iron so opposition makes you stronger.

People complain about the boss looking over their shoulder but somehow they should be grateful they have a boss in the first place - I mean a person whose job is to organise your work for you! It is when you have to work on your own that you realise that management skills can make you or break you. Wearing several hats can be your undoing. Being a good technician but not watching the cashflow is deadly. The opposite is true. An accountant without business sense makes a poor marketer.

The benefits of using a goal achievement resource should by now be obvious.

Optimize Me!

In order to improve your website in the sight of search engines your attention will be two-fold:

Optimisation on the page

It is rather unnerving to face the fact that a machine - not a person, is going to pass judgement on the quality of your website. The good news is that it is done with an algorithm which is the same for all so that at least we have no favourites.

In order to ascertain what your website is on about we rely on the concept of keywords. It is a phrase encapsulating your activity. How it is displayed and how many times it does will be the criteria to figure out how closely you are really part of that category.

The crawler will massage that information to rank your site. You can get a feel of how well you are doing with the SEO utility

Optimisation off the page

How can a blind, mindless computer find out how accurate is your call to fame for the keyword mentioned above? Simple - by just corroborating what others are saying about you on the web. Amazing - because that is one thing I have absolutely no control over.

A backlink is any link out there pointing back to you. Just like you pass traffic to other commonly related sites there must be some information about what you do or say together with a link back to your domain.

How that happens is the dark art of web promotion and the search engines use the amount and relevance of links aiming back to you as an indicator to differentiate between you and your competitors.

It is not only the quantity of links out there which is being added to calculate your page ranking - it is also the text within the link. This gives the algorithm an insight about the keywords you really belong to as opposed to what you say about yourself on your website. If many pages out there fail to match your domain with a given keyword then your claim to that keyword on your own site takes a hit.

Another ingredient is the crowd your backlinks come from. If you are an investment consultant and your backlinks come from pages also loaded with hordes of massage parlours or dieting propositions (in a nutshell totally irrelevant activities) then the weight of those backlinks is discounted because it is plain to see that they did not come from wholesome promotional activity but from a conspicuous attempt to stuff (or worse purchase) links in a hurry.

Online bookkeeping is to your benefit

Doing your bookkeeping on the net? What a novel thought! What would get people to do that?
In an increasing mobile society where being in touch is more important than where you are, online bookkeeping does make sense and is in fact filling a gap.

Having access to your records regardless of where you happen to be can save you getting in trouble if you default on a payment because you couldn't recall the date or the amount.

If you run a venture or a club there might be a need for several persons to update receipts and expenses from different locations in an orderly fashion. Setting up a virtual network and deploying some elaborate software can be time wasting and expensive. These features are taken for granted with an internet-based application.

Wise Accounts does away with several levels of threats like hard disk breakdown, a stolen laptop, PC viruses and so on. If you use the web for internet banking the next logical step is to use the web to reach your accounting details even from an iPhone.

This concept relates to the grand idea of cloud computing where users no longer want maintaining their own PC resources. The shift is to use farms of hosting systems with fail-safe storage and redundant power supplies.

Curiously for folks who have been using computers in the 1970's that's where it all came from! In those days all you had was a terminal hooked up to a mainframe. Then in the 1980s the IBM PC appeared everywhere. People asked for extra flexibility in their reports. Frustration ended when they could re-massage their data in a Lotus 123 spreadsheet. It looks like after 40 years we have gone full circle... Fashions do come in recurring waves.

Aside from what the pundits are trying to tell us the marketing motto is this: "just like instant coffee and microwave ovens - It's all to do convenience." If you use cyberspace to check the news, download music, check your email, apply for jobs and anything else, the next natural step is to use it to also keep your financial records.

What about privacy? Many systems use your email address as your username. They dispatch your password to that address to ensure it is not a dummy token but indeed does reach you. Apart from that connection they know nexto to nothing about you - neither would they want to. You can also change your email address at will.

Algorithmic Investing System

What can you gain from an computer trading system? Is it any better or worse than flipping a coin? Unlike popular thinking an algorithmic trading system based solely on stock charts can pick a good quantity of profitable trades.

Why is it so? To begin with let's be selective. Not all stocks that you come across to trade are worth putting your money at risk. That's in fact a benefit because you have a limited amount of money to trade with – therefore you have to be quite specific about what you choose. Individual shares peculiarly those with a small capitalization are to be left alone unless you have insider knowledge. Indices and very large stocks behave well under the scrutiny of technical analysis. Further on futures have the reputation to be the most tame. In April 2010 a commodity such as palladium yielded close to 100% returns in just 9 months. Imagine doubling your money in one year.

A trading robot doesn’t care about a company balance sheet (or what remains of it after the creative accountants have done their interpretation on it.) As the old saying goes: "Everything you need to know is already factored in the price!" An automated trading system doesn't fidget whether or not to be in or out of the market. It is constantly in the market swinging from long to short and back again. It does not give in to market emotions but it does take advantage of big moves in the market by being brave enough to change position early in a move.

You might think such an automated trading system is the privilege of players who can afford to hire hordes of computer geeks. Check out this automated trading system with results published daily. It runs on a 9 months rolling window of data. For each item traded a chart and a log of trades with a listing of profits and losses is produced.

Even though there is still quite a choice of items to choose from investors tend to trade in an field or market they know about. They mentally recall the last high or the last low over the last 6 months. Nevertheless comparing your own trades with what Trading Pal did can be quite a wake up call to the shortfalls of your own ad-hoc system (If there is such a term when all you do is give in to your emotions.)

Am I my brother's keeper?

Taking care of yourself is a self-preservation instinct. But comfort can also be known by another name: complacency.

Just like you see keen runners jogging on a brisk windy morning just to get physical you may wonder if some individuals actually willingly stretch themselves in the area of money, education or family.

Do you know someone who is reeling from a marriage split-up? Have you offered your home to offer a safe environment for recovery?

Do you keep abreast of emerging changes in your profession so that you may steer your career where new openings will be? Or do you expect to be retrenched to act about it with the view of receiving a termination package or some government benefit?

Is the guest room in your house cluttered with mess, discarded furniture and other impediments or it is kept ready to welcome an overnight stay?

Do you make just enough money to cater for your necessities because you do not want to pay too much taxes or do you plan at having enough cash to carry out acting on the cause you feel motivated about?

Do you go out of your way to see eye to eye with a deprived family member or do you sing to yourself "que sera, sera"?

Have you set aside some funds for a rainy day? Would you be willing to use it to stand in the gap for a person in need you care about?

If you operate your own business do you shy away from hiring staff - cruising along nicely just by yourself, or do you see your ability to instruct and generate work for others?

Do you offer to teach at the local community center or do you waste your spare time following degrading reality shows to ease your boredom?

Do you make conversation with the cash register operator when you do the groceries or do you dash home to connect with social media - people you can neither see nor hear?

Do you know people next door, do you keep in touch with local issues, do you engage in local politics or are you resigned to think your vote does not matter?

The choice is up to you: you may choose to step out of your comfort zone at your own call or at the worst possible time you will be jolted in the deep end because you ignored all the chances beforehand.

Bread of Life

Is Your Resume Functional?

As soon as changes of direction and gaps appear in your employment record you may consider a functional resume. The time worn chronological format is a bit like a trail of where you've been as well as how long you remained at each place on the employment circuit. It gives out unnecessary information that can be detrimental to you.

The first move towards a functional layout is when people list their job experience in reverse chronological order. Certainly no employer is too concerned about how you kicked off in your work career as many people take casual jobs unrelated to their studies.

So from a recruiter's point of view your last job is the most important because what you are doing right now gives many pointers as to how employable you are to them.

But why not go further? If your purpose is to match the details spelt out in the job description and you must overtake hordes of invisible other applicants for that one position why not give it your utmost? You've got it - your last assignment may not be the most relevant for the position you're going after. Who decides you must list your background in reverse chronological order? So what are the complications? To start with you can no longer list your start and end dates. What about posting the length of each role you had instead? Does the employer mind if you started the last job in May or April? Who cares!

How will you then reorder your work experience in a functional layout? It will be the best match for that one position you're going after. Here lies the major trump card of the functional resume: it is specifically written for that one job posting in order to improve the chance of being shortlisted.

This is a total departure from the reverse chronological cv that people would mindlessly blast on blogs or resume farms in the hope that the perfect boss will find you. Stop dreaming! It's not going to happen. What you have to do in a competitive job scene is pinpoint the jobs that will both give you the most fulfilment and give you the opportunity to release your skills. Then apply for each one of those job posts with a tailor-made functional resume.

Sound like a lot of work? Don't worry some smart operators are already using online resume tool.

Knowledge test - playing it right

In a competitive world knowledge tests are just another hurdle people have to face to get through the door. Like a ritual you have to show your worthiness to be accepted.

The upside is that you can prepare yourself for the task and avoid the effect of surprise. The goal post has just been shifted. Employers are focusing on those test-wise individuals who have worked diligently to comply and those who relied on their good looks or amicable disposition are missing out.

As a result the workplace becomes more and more a sweat shop where people's output is predominant no matter the cost. You are no longer a endowed unique human being but a disposable part in somebody else's machine.

As it is you can either prepare yourself to make it through or miss out altogether. As psychologists devise questions more in line with real-life decision making the relevance of the exercise will rise. Another good idea to consider is that the bar is now set at the same level for everybody. Those coming out of university consider tests as part of their culture. People re-entering the workforce will find it another nuisance revealing their disjunction with the world they try to blend into.

What about tests where there is no right or wrong answer? Introducing the personality test. This device aims at identifying the values each one of us will naturally move towards. How can a batch of 50 or even 100 questions could ever determine if someone has empathy, sales drive, leadership skills or analytical skills? From a boss's point of view some measurement is better than no measurement at all.

Giving the same test to a batch of candidates is the easy way to pick the more reliable individuals. Also remember technical advances such as optical character reading, handwriting recognition, speech to text converters and so on. Even if change doesn't sit right with you doesn't mean that others will pass the opportunity. When money or competition is involved people become very creative and dependable in order to survive.

Practice makes perfect as the saying goes. Having a teachable spirit is a trait every company will be after no matter your seniority. One thing we know will remain there: change! Be prepared. Avail yourself of an aptitude test service. This could make the whole difference for you.