Guy Vaynerchuk – Stop wasting time, just start doing it
March 17th, 2010Surcentro – How’s your site doing?
March 17th, 2010
If you want to check how your own websites are doing, or compare your success with that of your competitors, then Surcentro can help. Type thewebsite on the main page to be shown the number of visitors, pagerank, indexed pages and the rankings on Alexa and Compete. There are a number of similar online tools but this was effective at finding statistics for webpages, from lesser known ones to those with high traffic. For some low traffic websites the information on number of visitors won’t be available but you can still check the ranking.
Surcentro also gives a list of similar sites, which can be particularly useful. If you’re thinking of paying for advertising on a site you can see the traffic and how it compares to its competitors. As well as giving this information and charting it in graphs, Surcentro gives a listing of new websites and the top websites according to traffic. This is a type of website I use frequently and I did find this one better than others I’ve used due to the extra information provided.
ValueJockey – Find the Right Price for Saleable Items
March 15th, 2010
Finding a website where you can sell your items is easy, but knowing the correct price to set on them is harder. ValueJockey is an interactive service that lets you list your item with a photo to get feedback on how much it’s worth, whether or not you want to sell it. Members include professional valuers as well as hobbyists, so this is a worthwhile service that would help avoid scam valuations from buyers. It should also help avoid underpricing or even overpricing an item, both of which mean losing out. The website has links to sales sites so you can carry on to list the items at a realistic price. It’s also possible to give links from ValueJockey to other sales sites of your choice including eBay and craigslist.
The site is as simple to use as the main sales sites, with a menu of categories to choose from in order to list your item. Then upload a photo and put some details to see it displayed. You can ask the particular questions you have about pricing in the short product description. The sales field will display valuations other ValueJockey members give as feedback. I’ve had a coin collection I’ve had trouble getting valued, and could see that this site provides the kind of detailed information I need even in this specialist niche.
The number of categories is comprehensive, and if you have expertise as an enthusiast or professional your valuations would add to the service. Professionals can list their details so it’s also an aid to promotion. Apart from valuations, members are encouraged to write and submit articles on their areas of expertise. Everybody has something they would like valued, whether they’re collectors or just rummaging through their attic, and ValueJockey provides a handy solution.
Moms4Mom
March 3rd, 2010They say that there are no guidebooks to tell you how to be a parent, but with the internet that’s no longer true. Moms4Mom is a great example of how the internet can be used by pregnant mothers and parents at all stages in their children’s lives to find out everything they need to know by asking the real experts – other parents. I wish I could have seen a site like this when I first had my children as the main questions I would have wanted answered are right up there in the frequent discussions.
Why do toddlers stop eating? When do you start taking children to the dentist? Are there problems with colic medecines? As if that isn’t enough there are even tips about how to get on with the parents of your children’s friends. And if your questions aren’t here you could join and ask them yourself, plus give your own expert advice if you’ve been through any of the other parents’ dilemmas. Dads can also ask questions too, despite the name of the site. Any parent will know that this is the type of site that’s really needed and I’ll certainly be coming back to it as it ranges from pregnancy right up to questions about leaving older kids alone and teaching them to ski.
PrettyGraph – Present Your Data Professionally
February 24th, 2010PrettyGraph is a catchy name for a tool that lets you create graphs for a variety of applications, from blog posts to marketing and scientific research illustrations. The home page shows some of the graph styles available, and they would add visually to a website or to a report or presentation. The designers describe PrettyGraph as looking better than Excel to help you beat your competitors. The graphic quality would also look professional in brochures.
Graphs really help get the message across to show the traffic on your website or blog, or to make sales projections and map trends and market shares. Graphs aren’t just used to add attractive illustrations: charting your website traffic can help bring in advertisers. For students they add impressive meaningful illustrations to projects. The variety of types of graph means they can also be used for more technical and scientific presentations. I could see this tool being used for such a wide range of purposes that it should gain interest.
RefrigeratorArtist – Share Your Child’s Artwork
February 16th, 2010RefrigeratorArtist gives parents the chance to share their children’s artwork online, making it possible to keep a permanent record of all the favourite pictures produced by the family. These can go into an individual gallery with the name of each child, and you can select pictures to go into the voting to try to win $400 in US savings bonds each month. Vote for your favourites from the children on Refrigeratorartist to help select the winner.
Keeping a digital record will help a lot of parents because the actual pictures really do stack up over the years and families can only keep a few. The site also has products available to purchase with the children’s artwork featured, including t-shirts and mugs. I can’t help thinking there will be plenty of competitive voting going on, with friends and relatives nagged to vote for children, and more nagging will come from the children to get the t-shirts and mugs. So it should be a financial success for the designers while still being a lot of fun and a useful resource for families wanting to keep an archive of their children’s artwork.
How To Invest Like Warren Buffet
February 6th, 2010Warren Buffett is worth just short of $37 billion, he started his company from scratch. In another of our videos highlighting some of the world’s most successful startup founders philosophies and paths to success, here’s Warren Buffet talking about his extremely canny investment and subsequent exit, in PetroChina.
Virtual Piano – Play Piano Online
February 6th, 2010
This is an irresistible website if you enjoy playing musical instruments – whether or not you have any real ability. Virtual Piano presents you with a keyboard on screen which you can play in two ways. Either you can click on the keys with your mouse or you can use your keyboard where the letters correspond to the white keys and Shift lets you play the black keys. You soon get used to finding the keys on the keyboard as they go in sequence, but it won’t help you actually learn to play a real piano keyboard.
The site is still being developed and at the moment it can be used for fun, or to play tunes and have them recorded for you. Future developments include the ability to print out music, which would be useful. Virtual Piano also has some music available using the alphabet so you can type the tune into your keyboard – so you can play even if you have no training at all! There’s a Virtual Piano Facebook group for more information and so that you can hear what other users have created using this quirky technique.
Felix Dennis – How To Get Rich
February 5th, 2010An interview with one of Europe’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, Felix Dennis founder of Dennis Publishing.
Dennis started his working life as a grave digger, moving into publishing with the ill fated Oz magazine, which landed him a stint in jail. Whilst this interview is not exactly the best piece of journalism I’ve seen, Felix Dennis himself is a very unique entrepreneur and gives some excellent startup advice. Buy his book to read some really frank and very honest advice about what it takes to make hundreds of millions of dollars from nothing.
Trivlike – Trivia Quiz and Friendship Site
February 5th, 2010
The exciting thing about Trivlike is that it quizzes you with a tight time limit on each question and you have to make your choice of answer rapidly. There’s just about time to read the question and the multiple choices before you have to click, and the time slider is going down quickly. To start you need to sign up with your Facebook account and then it asks a few more questions – for example you can choose a different screen name – and then you can try your first set of 20 daily questions.
The questions are tricky, especially as there’s an American focus to them. Once you start taking the quizzes you can move on to a second feature of the site, and this is where I would have liked it to be slightly different. Before logging on I hadn’t realised the quizzes would also be used to help find good matches with like-minded people for dating and friendship. This is a fairly standard option on other social networks, if you want to use it, but I would have preferred a more clear option for those of us who would only want the site for the trivia quizzes and perhaps to chat to others who enjoy them.
This could be achieved by tweaks to the design, which at the moment seems to hint more towards it being a dating site. It could be both, and a quiz and friendship site with a dating option might be the better way round to go – I wouldn’t have logged in if I had thought it was a site with questions to help find a partner. Some people would like it as a dating site so it all needs to be made more clear and easy for people to opt for dating or just quizzes with or without chat.
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