Promote Your Blog Through Social Bookmarking

You can generate lots of success from your blog promotion by social bookmarking to generate back links. Quite surprisingly, many bloggers don't do this because they think it is too time consuming. If you want to be a successful blogger, then you should be social bookmarking to generate back links for many of the posts that you do.

Social bookmarking to gain links is very easy to do and involves posting the particulars of your blog post on several social bookmarking sites.

First of all, you need to be blogging consistently. If you are extremely busy, then you can post one or two articles per week, and doing this will be way better than doing nothing.

This is OK if you stick to your schedule. Just don't let your blog lie dormant for long time periods as this will erode away any benefits that you have already gained.

Each blog post can be bookmarked to all of the top social directories, as time permits. If you want, you can add a plug in which will cause your posts to be automatically bookmarked to the top sites every time you post.

One of the best free bookmarking services is Onlywire.com. With this service, you can bookmark to over 20 of the top social sites with one mouse click.

It will take a little bit of time to sign up with all of the bookmarking sites within Onlywire, but it will be well worth your time to do so and you will only have to do it once.

Make sure when you bookmark your blog posts to include relevant keywords that are associated with the article. It is therefore important to produce high quality articles which contain targeted keyword phrases.

To get the most out of your blogging, you will first of all, want to generate a list of targeted long tail keyword phrases. Next, write each blog post using the keyword phrase as the central theme of the article. When you bookmark your blog posts, create a short summary that includes the keyword phrase and don't forget to place the keyword in the tags portion of the bookmark.

You will start to understand how valuable social bookmarking to increase back links is for your blogging when you see the resulting traffic. This traffic will not only come from the social directories, but also from the better search engine rankings which you will receive.

Adult Webmastery From Home

Being a webmaster in the adult business meets all of these criteria. At $100 Billion it is the biggest online market there is. It brings in more money than Google, Yahoo and Apple combined!! 1 in 7 clicks is for adult content and there are 600 million people searching for it every month.

It is one of the few recession proof businesses there is because during tough economic times people search for things that give them pleasure and are looking for a bit of escapism. Adult content provides just that.

Even though adult videos have become quite commonplace today some still may be embarrassed by making money as an adult webmaster. There's nothing to be worried about since you can do all of your marketing online and nobody needs to know your identity. Besides everyone from housewives to college students and business professionals have become involved in this business as a means to earn a secondary income.

Being an adult webmaster has the potential to earn you $5000-$10,000 a month and even more. Of course this won't come without work, but marketing businesses online has become much easier than it was even just a few years ago. With video and social media like YouTube, MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook it has become much easier to advertise to a focused market without spending much money.

Although it won't produce overnight riches you could be earning a livable income in a few months time. Add to this the fact that since most online content is subscription based it is also a residual income that will continue to come in for months and years allowing you to build it up into the six figures.

If you'd like to learn more about how to build a business around the adult industry without being in the adult industry click on the link below.

Blogging Profit Tips

Of course, it involves more than producing interesting content for readers, but the process is quite easy enough to follow for the benefit of those who want to know how to make money blogging. Here are some of the strategies that you can apply on your blog/s:

Make flagship blogs

This requires you to focus on several blogs for them to be able to achieve popularity in their niche. A large audience base and high visitor traffic are the must-haves of flagship blogs. To make this work, you must have fair knowledge in niche marketing and networking skills. Maintaining flagship blogs are very time-consuming, but you will be rewarded by more options in monetization as well as fame and personal satisfaction.

Write sponsored posts

This method on how to make money blogging requires you to create multiple niche blogs, which can have their own domains or powered by free services such as Blogger. You have to produce quality content and focus on promoting their Google PageRank and Alexa Rank, among others. You will then submit these blogs to websites such as PayperPost, Review Me and Blogitive, which pay per blog post.

Try automated blogging

You will create blogs and set them up so that they will pull content from news sources, RSS feeds and search engines automatically. The content will serve as your websites' content. This method will require very little work on your part, just regular maintenance and a little SEO.

Join a blog network

This is one of the most effective methods on how to make money blogging. You will get paid to create and maintain content for blogs. The amount of money that you will earn will depend on the number of page views you get. You may receive a share of the ad revenue of the blog or a token base fee. This provides a somehow stable monthly income for you and more valuable contacts.

Blog Skill-Building Through Twitter

Twitter. Yes, I know, it's another social network that you probably avoid like the plague if you're not big into the whole social networking scene. I mean, I didn't even get a chance to really look into Twitter until about a month ago, and I kept wondering if it was going to be a good thing or a bad thing for me.

After all, blogging is a very different kind of communication than Twitter, because you have the time to develop your entire thought and topic until you come to a reasonable conclusion. So why should I even look at Twitter? I have a Facebook (that I hardly check) and I spend all my time blogging and being less than ideally social.

And the social aspect is exactly why I suggest using Twitter! Being social, charismatic, and exciting are three major components to bringing in readers and holding their attention. If I told you that a social networking site like Twitter actually helped you improve those skills, I would understand if you laughed at me. But, it's true, and if you want to know what makes a difference in your blogging skills, just give it a shot.

Take a look at Twitter and work to be social with others and you'll find that it's easier to write conversational blogs. On top of the fact that Twitter is meant to be for short, quick updates, the character limit actually will help you design strong taglines without even trying. Don't turn into a spammer. Bring some value to what you have to say and learn how to integrate your business with your personality.

Black Hat SEO Techniques

If you work in the SEO industry, it is likely you have encountered black hat SEO methods. For those who perform black hat techniques to manipulate the search engines, the ends justify the means. While most webmasters work hard and struggle to get their sites at the top of the search engines, webmasters who use black hat techniques sit back and relax. It is not uncommon for these webmasters to make $100,000 within three months.

This is the reason why using black hat seo is so appealing. This is also the reason why spammers practice their craft. They do it becaues it works. When you send out a million emails, there is a mathematical probability that you will generate a certain number of responses. Because of this, it is easy to see what motivates those who practice black hat SEO methods. The search engines are forced to constantly change their tactics to fight against these webmasters. If companies like Google didn't take the time to make changes to their algorithms, many webmasters would never be able to get their sites to the top of the search engines.

If you are a webmaster who uses white hat techniques to optimize your site, it can be annoying to see websites rank higher than yours which use black hat techniques. At the same time, it is important to remember that these websites give you a chance to succeed. Most webmasters who use black hat techniques must rely on automated tools to help them. Honest webmasters have to put in a bit of elbow grease. This is where we succeed and those who use black hat techniques fail. Sooner or later, companies like Google will win. At some point in the future, search engines will be governed by strong artificial intelligence. Once this happens, the number of webmasters using black hat technique will be eliminated, or greatly reduced.

It is likely that webmasters who use black hat techniques will never completely vanish. The reason for this is because they are humans who have brains. There will always be someone out there who is clever enough to trick the search engines, no matter how advance they are. As of this time, those of us who use white hat SEO techniques can be content in knowing that the black hatters are making things easier for us.

SEO Types Exposed

Search Engine Optimizers (SEO) can wear many different “hats”. The color of the single hat is determined by the SEO philosophy and the methods, that is used to optimize websites. We usually speak of:

• Black Hat SEO
• White Hat SEO
• Gray Hat SEO

As an affiliate it is important to understand the difference and the risks between the single SEO Hats.

Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO is also known as SEO spamming, and is when someone creates websites that have little or no value, that are intended to trick the search engines into offering irrelevant or low-quality search results.

Black Hat SEO will heavily leverage technology and automation in order to create tons of poor quality sites, and gain inbound links from other websites (link spam). Once the visitor has arrived to the website, the owner of the website will often use some kind of cloaking or redirect to show the visitor a sales page of the products, that is the really goal of the Black Hat SEO technique.

Black Hat SEO are all about getting fast results. The method they use to optimize their websites will often get the website to the top of the search engines very rapidly, but when the search engines catch-on, the website will very often crash or get banned.

I do not condone Black Hat SEO for affiliates, because it is very risky SEO business, and it can especially damaging, when it is used on a website, that you have invested heavily resources in.

White Hat SEO

White Hat SEO focus on building quality content first and SEO second. White Hat SEO may use technology and automation to build their websites too, but they use it to accomplish different goals. They write content for people, not search engines. White Hat SEO tend to rely more on their content and marketing skills to achieve a top ranking, rather than automated programs.

White Hat SEO understand that good search engine rankings takes time and don’t try to rush results. White Hat SEO are able to get more inbound links from other websites, because their content is considered valuable. They go by the philosophy CONTENT IS KING.

When you use White Hat SEO tactics you run absolutely no risk of being banned by the search engines and visitors who come to your website will also be more likely to convert.

Gray Hat SEO

A lot of SEO fall into the Gray Hat category, and there are many shades of gray. Some Gray Hat SEO tend to use more questionable tactics and take greater risks. Gray Hat SEO is all about risk versus reward. Some Gray Hat techniques may be frowned by the search engines, but are not necessarily against their rules, while other techniques may be more risky and should be used only after careful consideration.

What SEO hat should you wear ?

The hat that you decide to wear should be determined by your goals and objectives. I would never recommend anybody to use any black hat SEO strategies, because these strategies are short-lived and will almost always get you banned in the search engines.

Everybody should strive to be a white hat SEO and focus on writing quality content. However it may make sense for you in some instances to use Gray Hat SEO tactics to gain a competitive advantage. But when using Gray Hat SEO tactics it is very important, that you measure the risk and reward of each strategy, and determine for yourself, if some of these Gray Hat SEO strategies makes sense for your websites.

But it is important that you never take too big a risk with your most valuable websites, and here it is much more valuable, that you make a more safe and long term SEO strategy for these websites.

Impact of White Hat SEO

All websites are created with single aim to get higher search engine ranking and earn greater profits. Thus struggle for top SEO ranking is everlasting making it an on-going procedure for websites as search engines change their criteria and preferences for keywords.

SEO experts that are reliable and genuine always opt for 'white hat SEO techniques' that create long-term online results. In white hat SEO, all rules and regulations laid by search engines are followed by site optimizers. Indexing of the content is done in exact way that can be viewed by the users. Created Website content aims at the customers instead of the SEO algorithms.

White hat SEO is the legal way to optimize a website in order to make it generate satisfactory web traffic. Chances of website getting penalized also reduce due to absence of wrong SEO techniques. The strongest point is good quality content and truthfulness. Keep your website structure simple and ensure that the programming and software part is simple and easy to understand especially for search engines. This would lead to better ranking of your site because of well optimized keywords/phrases.

Primary goal of white hat SEO is to offer website that has helpful information and is build properly. If you put quality content on your website than naturally the chances of getting links from other sites increases. Websites may take some time to get noticed, but it has a long-term effect on the success of your website.

Websites using this technique consists of appealing design and have better navigation links. For better promotion you can post meaningful text on other websites of your preference. The text or comments you put up on another website should be meaningful.

Widely used white hat SEO techniques are as follows:

1) Directory submission

2) RSS feed

3) Site feedback

4) Quality content formation

5) Creation of site maps

6) Article submission

7) Allotting back links

White hat SEO increases the attraction quotient of a website as it presents original content simple to understand and delivers right kind of information. Sometimes white hat techniques take much time to show up the results which could make you feel that it is not the right option! But the wait here is always worthwhile without any risk of your website getting blacklisted by the search engines. SEO experts of good repute and knowledge understand this fact and abide by the guidelines laid by the search engines.

Five Essential Mac Applications

Mac systems have become extremely popular and rightly so. With the plethora of functions and options they offer to the users, these computers have virtually limitless capabilities and can be used for a wide variety of purposes ranging from making documents, editing files, mixing music, making and editing movies, designing, managing accounts and so on and so forth. With the many hundreds of applications that can be stored and run on the Mac systems, listing five of the best is a tough task but we do it here in this article to help you gain a better understanding of the system.

The top 5 best Mac applications in our opinion would be:

1) the Firefox browser,

2) Coconut Battery,

3) Audacity,

4) TidyUp and

5) Photoshop.

Firefox

The Firefox browser since the time of its conception has received rave reviews. It is said to be one of the web browsers being used in the present and has replaced the conventional Internet Explorer browser in most computer systems. The Firefox browser has an exceptional feature in the form of a virtually limitless library. This library can be adjusted to the user's personal tastes and demands, making it an extremely flexible feature. The newest version, Firefox 3 has a plethora of exciting new features which make using the World Wide Web a more fun and convenient experience than ever before! The browser works faster than almost all other browsers, thus saving you time and being more effective in loading web pages. One of the most useful new features of the browser is the Instant Web Site ID which allows users to scan the potential threat factor of any new website and immediately avoid any possible swindle or scam.

Coconut Battery

Coconut Battery with its attractive, sliced coconut logo is an interesting Mac application. Built on the recently developed technology known as CoreData, this application allows the users to keep a thorough track of every important aspect regarding the computer's battery such as the current state of battery life, the strength of the battery when it was installed into the system, the battery charging habits or patterns you follow and so on and so forth, thus helping you to maximize the performance of your Mac.

Audacity

Audacity is a software program or application that allows the user to edit the sound files. This allows you to improve or manipulate the quality of the sound files in videos, music streams and other sound clips. The application can be used for editing the sound files that already exist on your Mac or have been transferred and also for recording new ones. The application works as an open platform software.

TidyUp

TidyUp is an extremely handy application. Often we unknowingly make extra copies of a file while transferring them to a different location on the computer system or forget to delete a copy after it has served its purpose. Doing this uses up excess space in the computer's memory. This application lists out any such duplicate files, allowing you to delete them without losing the original or eating up extra space.

Photoshop

Photoshop is a high end editing and graphics application which allows one to edit picture files and completely transform their appearance.

Google Wave Will Change The Internet Forever

Google Wave is "a personal communication and collaboration tool" announced by Google at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009. It is a web based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking. It has a strong collaborative and real-time focus supported by extensions that can provide, for example, robust spelling/grammar checking, automated translation between 40 languages, and numerous other extensions. It was announced in Google's official blog on July 20, 2009, that the preview of Google Wave will be extended to about 100,000 users on September 30, 2009. At that point, the current view of the Google Wave website (which is a preview with the keynote embedded), will be replaced with the application itself.

Google Wave is designed as the "next generation" of Internet communication. It is written in Java using OpenJDK; its web interface uses the Google Web Toolkit. Instead of sending a message and its entire thread of previous messages or requiring all responses to be stored in each user's inbox for context, objects known as "waves" contain a complete thread of multimedia messages (blips) and are located on a central server. Waves are shared and collaborators can be added or removed at any point during a wave's existence.

n real-time, letter by letter, as they are typed by the other collaborators. Multiple participants may edit a single wave simultaneously in Google Wave. Thus, waves not only can function as e-mail and threaded conversations but also as an instant messaging service, merging the functions of e-mail and IM. It depends only on whether both users are online at the same time or not, allowing a wave to even shift repeatedly between e-mail and IM depending on the user's needs. The ability to show messages as they are typed can, also, be disabled similar to conventional instant messaging. The ability to modify a wave at any location lets users create collaborative documents, edited in a manner akin to wikis. The history of each wave is stored within it. Collaborators may use a "playback" feature in Google Wave to observe the order which a wave was edited, blips were added, and who was responsible for what in the wave. The history may also be searched by a user to view and/or modify specific changes, such as specific kinds of changes or messages from a single user. Google Wave is still in active develop

Waves, described by Google as "equal parts conversation and document", are hosted XML documents that allow seamless and low latency concurrent modifications. Any participant of a wave can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Users can reply to blips within waves. Recipients are notified of changes/replies in all waves they are active in and then view the changes when they subsequently access a given wave. In addition, waves are "live". All replies/edits are se
ement. It is expected to continue to be so until later in 2009, possibly launching to about 100,000 users by the end of September. Google Wave is currently available in a developer preview for sandbox access.

Have you signed up yet? If not, get to it at http://wave.google.com.

Black Hat SEO Vs. White Hat SEO

People often use the terms 'white hat' and 'black hat' in the online work community. What do these terms actually mean though? It's simple really, white hat refers to a practice used in your business practices involving SEO in which you are following the rules and doing nothing sneaky to try to get ahead of your competition. Black hat is, well...the exact opposite. People use black hat techniques to trick customers, search engines, and their competitors. These techniques often get them in some sort of trouble and they are definitely not recommended.

The following is a list of some of the basic white hat and black hat techniques/practices that you want to use or avoid in online work:

White hat techniques-

1) Internal linking - Creating clear and legitimate internal links within sites is very important. Avoid using pictures or logos for internal linking as they cannot be identified by search engine bots, thus not counting as an actual link as far as search engines are concerned. Use text links at the bottom of your homepage, along with a sitemap of your whole site.

2) Content creation - Everyone who has done significant research on SEO knows the importance of good content for a website. Websites rich in unique content are easily crawled by the search engine bots. Content creation should be to the point, unique, have relevant keywords to your niche, and be informative to the reader. Choosing the proper keyword phrase is a must. One must choose specific and relevant keywords and optimize the homepage as well as sub-pages using those keywords.

3) Site optimization - Effective site optimization leads to better website appearance and has a better chance of being found by your potential customers. It covers all important aspects like Meta tags, titles, content, links, etc.

Black hat techniques-

1) Hidden text - Some websites try to fool readers by making text the same font color as your website's background. These websites are easily caught by their competitors and often search bots will recognize this as well, and the site will get blacklisted. Not a smart tactic since it is easily found by someone who knows what to look for.

2) Stuffing keywords into your content - This is the most common and most used black hat SEO technique. In this case the website owner will insert a large amounts of keywords or phrases repeatedly without having any relevant meaning. This will result in sentences that make very little sense, and again can be caught very easily.

3) Doorway pages - It is very dangerous to insert a doorway page, simply to target specific keywords or phrases. This has little or no value to the user and thus only hurts you.

4) Duplicate sites - Some webmasters create duplicate sites of their original site for website promotion purposes. They think that their new site can outrank their old one. This is simply not the case and it is a very banned practice.

5) Cloaking - This method refers to the use of many black hat SEO techniques simultaneously for submitting varied information to search engines, which are invisible to the visitors. They sometimes go undetectable but can be identified by the competitors, and will result in the banning of the website by most, if not all search engines.

6) Interlinking - These are multiple websites that are interlinked to each other for link popularity. This is a rather difficult technique to be detected, but it is definitely not recommended.

In the end all reliable and genuine online work companies practice white hat SEO techniques that have long-term positive outcomes. Black hat SEO can get your some quick traffic to begin with, but in the end it will only end up hurting you.

Effects Of White Hat SEO Techniques

Struggling for a top SEO ranking has always been the prime concern of the web masters. The more they are able to deal with the intricacies of a website the more they are able to carve a path for themselves in the web world. In order to attract a number of visitors as well as the spiders it is important for one to know the best SEO techniques. So what is best - White Hat or Black Hat?

This piece of writing will help you to have a clear idea of what is best.

In the world of internet marketing the webmasters try to employ the white hat techniques that produce a long term result and few try to take the short cuts involving the black hat techniques. An SEO technique can be considered as white hat if it follows the search engine guidelines and engages no trickery. It is all about ensuring that the content on the search engine indexes is just the same that will be viewed by the users. The content of the page targets the readers and not the algorithms of the search engines and so the web pages are beneficial to the internet, search engines and webmasters.

Black hat techniques always involve the risk of a site being banned or permanently removed from the database. This technique uses hidden texts not visible to the viewers but visible to the spiders of the search engines. It attempts to improve the rankings of the website but in the long run harms the web pages as the methods used are not approved by Google or any other search engines.

The Most Popular White Hat Techniques

• Original and relevant content creation
• Article submission
• Director submission
• Request site feedback
• Create Back links
• Prepare business blogs
• Create site mappings
• RSS feed
• Forum contribution

The above white hat techniques increases the stickiness of a website by presenting unique content that is easy to understand and at the same time informative. It helps to build the links naturally and it sincerely provides the contents for the viewers and not for the search engines. With white hat techniques a website may take a long time to demonstrate its results and at times even after so much of hard work it may not be a success. While it is quite easy for a black hat webmaster to find all the vulnerable means of placing the content on the page so as to get a higher ranking in the SERPS. You might think it to be a lucrative option of getting a higher ranking but it is not so. Why? The black hat practitioners always carry with them the risk of being banned by the search engines and this not only hampers the clients of the SEO farm but also damages the credibility of the company immensely.

Automated Forum Posting

Have you ever heard of paid posting before? It's a common practice amongst forum owners. The purpose of it is to create content on the forum that will engage new users.

Why is this necessary? Because when a new forum is created, there's no content, there are hardly any members apart from yourself and maybe a couple of friends who are helping you out. Everyone new that comes across the forum doesn't want to bother registering because they can see that the forum isn't active, it's a waste of their time.

So, people pay for posts. But the latest craze, is automated forum posting. You see, Yahoo Answers provides the sort of content your forum really needs. They have thousands upon thousands of different questions being asked which are essentially topics.

These questions get answered by Yahoo Answers massive user base, which act as replies. The sorts of topics that are made on Yahoo Answers range from all types of things, there's literally content for every topic.

So, automated forum posting scripts will take relevant content from Yahoo Answers and use it to create new topics, replies and new members for your forum. Making your forum activity with rich, relevant content.

The best thing about all of this though, is that automated forum posting scripts cost much, much less than the 'paid posting' that many forum administrators are doing. Many forum administrators will pay people to create these topics, because they're unaware of these automated scripts which do the job just as effectively.

If you're having trouble getting new members to your forum, try out the Launch My Forum, forum population software. There's a free trial available at the moment. This will guarantee you thousands of new topics, replies and members. To get hold of your free trial before it's too late, click here.

Buy Refurbished, Save Money

Since not all people can buy the things that they want, some would settle on getting second-hand products just to experience the thrill of owning one. refurbished Mac Pro is available as well to reach out among people who simply do not have enough cash to enjoy this treat!

The only problem is, not all people are aware about the steps necessary on how to look for the best deal when it comes to buying a refurbished Mac Book Pro. But it is necessary to look for products online as to spot the different merchants and to be able to compare prices better. However, even though you do this, it is still important to note whether you will be comfortable with the second-hand product that you will get. Is the product provides the necessary warranty that you need? To be on safer grounds, it would be nice to consider grabbing Apple Certified Refurbished Macbook.

If you opt for Apple Certified refurbished Macbooks, you simply have to understand that these are original Macbooks that were refurbished by Apple so they are again sold for the consumption of new consumers. These products can merely be found on the online store of Apple and these are generally sourced from canceled orders or those that were returned. You don't have to worry about any defects since Apple make it a point to test and restore these returned notebooks so they can be on their new conditions once again. Given the fact that these notebooks were already sold once, Apple has no other choice but to sell them at a discount. So it would be easier, you can put things this way; their loss is your gain. Even though the units are pre-owned, it is still completely functional units which operate and look as if they are new. The best part is, these extremely discounted items are obtainable with the same warranty that you would expect from new Macbooks. Some third party merchants may provide only up to 90 day warranties but let it be known that Apple will give the warranty that will cover up to 1 year!

Getting refurbished Mac book that is Apple Certified will not rob you with the peace of mind that you need when buying an item at a high price. It is really great to buy your items directly from the manufacturer since in return; they will have you covered as well. Don't worry because Refurbished Mac Book Pro are available in wide range so you can get the one that you prefer the most. Even though they are not really customizable, lots of SKUs are obtainable to the point that you will certainly find one which is close to your personal interests. Nevertheless, if you are still willing to buy other refurbished Mac Book Pro other than those that are certified by Apple, then you are free to do so as long as you check the item well. Don't be afraid to ask the seller all the information that you have in mind about the product so you can get your money's worth.

Lockerz Overview

Lockerz is the place to go to buy the coolest stuff at the lowest prices, watch exclusive video, discover new music, play the hottest games, hang out with your friends - and get rewarded for just about EVERYTHING you do on the site.

Our mission is to be your daily habit, not a site for your parents or grandparents looking for their long-lost friends from Kindergarten. One other thing you’ll love about Lockerz are PTZ (or “Pointz”). PTZ are Lockerz’ proprietary loyalty “currency” that you earn whenever you buy, watch, play, share, invite friends, or even just show up on Lockerz. Redeem PTZ at the PTZ Place for incredible prizes, great products and dream experiences.

Too Good to Be True? Why are we doing this? To thank you for joining early. To build a Lockerz community of cool, stylish, cutting-edge people who love to buy great brands. To give you a taste of how PTZ will work when we go live this fall. And to test out different prizes and PTZ levels. That’s key. This version of PTZ Place is a test. PTZ levels will change when the full Lockerz site launches.

Lockerz is set to launch sometime in the Fall 09. Members who sign up now will get to explore and help shape the site before the launch. We hope you’ll join us.

I myself am a member of Lockerz, and have already amassed 32 PTZ in a matter of two days. 300 PTZ gets you an iPod Nano, 500 PTZ gets you an Apple Time Capsule external hard drive, 600 PTZ buys you an iPod Touch, and 3000 PTZ gets you a 42" plasma screen television. I want it all! The site doesn't officially open until October, but if you can join now you can make it to the VIP list and get double points for everything.

Send me an email or comment on this post and I will send you an invite, as Lockerz is currently invite-only.

Mac Vs. PC: Another Debate

You can debate PC vs. Mac till the cows come home and you'll never find a right or wrong answer, so I'm going to give you some facts and let you make your own decisions. To give you a bit of a background, I am both a Mac and a PC user and will give you an honest opinion on the pros and cons of both.

Macs were designed with one thing in mind - design work. They excel at graphic design, video production, and even audio work. This was 30 years ago. Today they are still just as good as they were for all of the above purposes. However, that's the extent of what they can do. Until the switch from the IBM Power PC processors to the new Intel based Macs, at least. Now they can do more - if you take advantage of the Boot Camp feature and dual boot Mac OSX with Windows XP. That opens up a whole new realm of possibilities as the line between Mac and PC becomes less clear.

PCs were designed with one thing in mind as well - business apps. PCs were terrible at editing graphics, producing video, and editing audio. That was also 30 years ago. With the video gaming industry constantly pushing the limits of what PCs can do, PC engineers had to constantly reinvent the wheel in order to keep up. The result is a machine that can do everything the Mac can do and more. Not only is it possible to run any program the Mac can run (they make Windows versions of all the popular Mac software), but a PC also has the processing power to run all of the most number-crunching intensive business applications as well.

Function versus design is really the question you should be asking yourself when trying to decide on a Mac versus a PC. What are you going to be using the computer for? Is it just going to be used for photo editing, or are you going to use it to play games, surf the internet, balance your checkbook, and email your clients?

If your only concern is in the artistic line of work, then you may be better off with a Mac. Keep in mind that specialization comes with a premium, and you will not be able to get yourself anything decent for under $2,000.

On the other hand, if you want a machine that can do everything, then you are best off with a PC. They are cheap, they easy to repair, and they have an install base of over ten times that of a Mac and you'll find much more support for a PC. You can pick up a comparable PC for around $800, that even if it lasts for 2 years versus the average 5 years to a Mac (note these numbers are skewed, but I'll use them for simplicity's sake), you can buy another PC to replace an old one and still have spent less than buying a single Mac.

Support is also another issue. There is no shortage of support for PCs, be it software issues or hardware issues. Every major retail outlet has their own in-house tech support team that can fix any issue you have. Macs on the other hand require the help of an Apple "Genius" who, though specialized in Apple products, are more expensive and less in quantity than a PC specialist.

On a side note, I wanted to mention something about viruses. If you are not connecting to the internet at all, and you are not using "warez" or pirated software, then you have NO chance of getting viruses. It doesn't matter whether or not you are on a PC or a Mac, because those are the only points of entry for viruses.

There are a number of Mac viruses as of this date, albeit not ones that are life-threatening. The reason for this is the install base of the Mac versus the PC. There is over ten times the amount of users of a PC over a Mac and therefore they are targeted appropriately. As I said, though, if you don't connect to the internet or use illegal software then your threat of viruses is reduced to none.

Another point that I would like to mention is that Apple is currently being sued for false advertising on their notebooks and their purported screen resolutions. Contrary to the PC, they are not capable of displaying true 32-bit 16.7 million colors. Apple's claims to the amount of colors their notebooks are possible of displaying is due to a software technique known as dithering. This gives the illusion of more colors by causing adjacent pixels to display different shades of a color and fools the eye into seeing something that is not there. This is done by Apple because their notebooks use a 6-bit display as opposed to the 8-bit display that PC based notebooks use. Although this lawsuit is new, the issue is not. Macs have been using 6-bit displays in their notebooks for years now, but it's only come to light recently. And Apple is no stranger to lawsuits as well. They have consistently made statements about the performance of their computers being much more than they are actually capable of and have had to remove those statements from their website and different advertising campaigns on a consistent basis. The point I'm making here is that you should not listen to Apple when it comes to them telling you what their machines can do because they have been caught lying quite a few times. Instead you should talk to someone who uses the product and get the facts.

Lastly I want to compare prices. Briefly I mentioned numbers earlier, but that was for the average desktop. Laptops/Notebooks are markedly more expensive. Still, the PC wins out as far as best bang for your buck. You can purchase an HP laptop that will have more power than you need for photo editing for around $1200 at any major retail chain - not to mention how much cheaper if you go through online outlets. A MacBook Pro, on the other hand, sells for $2,000 for the low-end 15" version.

As I have said before, I am both a Mac user and a PC user and although it may seem that I have a PC slant to my opinions, it is only because I sift through the nonsense and know all my facts. The Mac is great for what it's designed for - artistic design work. The PC is great for what it's (currently) designed for - everything. The debate will continue to go on, but my advice is this - see what you can afford, assess what you want to use the machine for, try both out at a store and see which you are more comfortable with and then purchase whichever machine fits your needs best.

Five Reasons To Buy A Mac Instead Of A PC

While both categories of computer systems are rated to be equally useful and advanced by most users, in this article we shall discuss some of the advantages that are unique to using MAC in the form of 5 reasons to buy a MAC over a PC.

Most viruses are for Windows, not Mac!

The first advantage that a MAC system has is that it is stronger when it comes to preventing virus entries into the computer system. Unlike what many users believe, MAC systems are not completely immune to virus attacks, but are, to a certain extent, more protected than the ordinary Windows PCs are. The principle behind the supposed immunity of a MAC system to most common viruses lies in the fact that most common viruses are developed using systems that run on one variety of the Windows Operating System or the other. Because the basic programming of the viruses is done on systems using the Windows software, the structure of the viruses is not, for the lack of a better word, compatible with the structure of MAC systems. Since Windows based viruses cannot subsist in a MAC computer system, the infiltration rates in MAC systems is drastically lower than it is in Windows computers. The viruses are so designed that they target only other Windows computers. The structure of the Windows software was designed with a number of weaknesses and flaws that often allowed for the un-containable spread of malware and by the time the user became aware of the threat, the damage to the system was already great.

Advanced software system

The software system that comes with MAC is far more advanced in comparison to the software used in the Windows computers. Windows personal computers use the Vista software while the MAC computers use OS X or Operating System X.

Smooth compatibility

Another reason why one should opt for a MAC system over a Windows system can be seen in the smooth compatibility between both the hardware and the software devices in the MAC systems as compared to the Windows systems where the two sets of components of a computer system- that is the hardware and the software- are not very compatible with one another, causing work to slow down. The reason as to why the software and hardware in the MAC systems work so smoothly lies in the fact that the Apple Company manufactures both on their own and hence the relationship between the two is more controlled and even and there are fewer kinks. Hence, the computer system requires lesser maintenance in the long run and is much easier to use.

High stability, High performance

Owing to all the aforementioned reasons, the MAC system is invariably more stable than the Windows system. Hence, the chances of your PC crashing, the disk drivers spoiling and your losing vital information are immediately reduced. The system is on the whole more stable and less prone to problems of unsteadiness, security threats and system failures.

Versatile functionality

The MAC PCs allow for a greater variety of functions and thus can be used by professionals from all walks of life. One can use the system for all kinds of purposes such as editing movie clips, sound files, photographs, business-related work etc.