Bush Mackel

Not too long ago, the video game blogosphere was abuzz on account of tu4ar.com, a website that popped up on the Capcom Unity blog. The site featured a countdown to something and soon everyone was speculating that it was a countdown to the release of Marvel vs Capcom 2 for the next gen systems. Well it turns out that the rumors were true and Capcom has officially announced the release of Marvel vs Capcom 2 for PSN and XBL with a demo to be released on the PS3 sometime around April 30th.

Obviously the release of this game continues Capcom’s continuing plan of adding as little as possible to old games and then releasing them anew as if they reinvented the wheel. Excuse my sarcasm but we all knew that this was going to happen right? And now that it has… *shrugs* Look - Widescreen mode, online play, all characters unlocked from jump… Who cares?

I mean, I’m as big a fan as you’ll find for the game but what about something new Capcom? New moves? New functionality? New CHARACTERS? A tease for Marvel vs Capcom 3? How about anything? I guess that’d be too much to ask. Well don’t think that I’m saying I won’t get it, but I certainly won’t be in a rush… Especially when I think about how much of a dream Street Fighter IV was with the 360 controller. *rolling eyes*

I don’t remember when I first started looking at content on Hulu but it couldn’t've been that long ago… We’re probably only talking a month or two. The TV ads weren’t enough to get me to go online but a friend of mine kept sending e-mails around saying that he was catching up on the latest Family Guy’s using it, so I ended up doing the same after my wife made me miss about four weeks worth in a row. (In case you were wondering, the wife doesn’t find ANYTHING funny about Family Guy which means I hardly ever watch it).

Hulu is One of the Best Inventions Ever
The best ideas are often the simplest and Hulu is a prime example of that. I mean, from an end user point of view, there’s nothing really novel about Hulu… All they’re doing is showing video and YouTube’s been doing that for a while. I guess the thing about Hulu was doing what everyone else has been doing, but putting it where it had never been before. That’s to say that just about every cable provider nowadays offers some kind of On Demand programming. Hulu has just brought that offering to the Internet. GENIUS. Now I’m sure the real genius is what’s going on behind the scenes… Making this whole thing profitable with the bandwidth they’re using is probably no simple feat (If they’ve been able to accomplish that at all). But friends, let’s forget about all that for a second and focus on why I absolutely adore Hulu. The answer to that, is Battle Dome.

T-Money Counts Money With His Tongue
If you’ve never seen this show, it’s kind of like old school American Gladiators crossed with WCW (when it was good). Crazy awesome characters + sports competition with real people. It’s probably what the current run of American Gladiators is trying to be like. One of the best/worst parts of the show is the announcer who sounds like he has two doses of throat cancer. I cannot explain it any better than that and it’s definitely one of those things that just have to hear to believe. Well since Battle Dome went off the air, I have not been able to find it anywhere. Not on YouTube, not on Google, not ANYWHERE. UNTIL NOW.

So for that Hulu, you have my eternal gratitude.

I signed up for Twitter a long long time ago but at the time, I really didn’t get it. Admittedly, I don’t know that I really get it now.

BUT for some reason I’ve started using it more and for some reason I’m kinda enjoying it. I think maybe because it gives me an alternative to Facebook.

You know?

But don’t get me wrong, I like Facebook too. But Twitter is fast becoming my #1 seed. Why is this?

Why I Like Facebook
That’s a simple one - Because I hate MySpace. To me, MySpace is like a 14 year old girl in glittery lip gloss. Just… Not for me. (#):) I dig Facebook because it really takes the whorishness out of social networking, or at least it tries to. Of course now you have all those dumb Facebook apps and quizzes, but I guess that’s another conversation. Plus, it seems like EVERYONE is on Facebook. So if there’s someone you genuinely want to keep up and in touch with, Facebook is a great way to do that. And in that way it’s more personal, because it’s like you’re connecting with real people in a real way and there’s no hiding behind dumb and ugly layouts, top friend nonsense or any of that other crap.

Why I Like Twitter
If people on Facebook are people I allegedly know well, I know that they’re probably not into this blog. They don’t really care about tech and design topics the way I do, they would probably frown on me if they ever considered me a blogger, and they certainly don’t care about 360 achievements. My Twitter feed is really not for them. It’s more for people who find me interesting. And if you’re wondering, currently Twitter says that is about 13 people. ha ha.

Oh, you know another thing that might make me like Twitter? On Facebook, I really used to like the status updates. But it always read something like, “Bush is…” or “Bush…” and I didn’t really like that. For some reason it always felt like I was boxed in to what I was going to say. Weird I know. But if I were going to talk about an achievement I just got I would end up sounding really egotistical as I was forced into talking about myself in the 3rd person i.e. “Bush is getting a GTA achievement now.” But on Twitter I can talk about myself in any way I see fit - 1st OR 3rd person. “Beat that puke face.”

So that’s kind of where I’m at right now. And if BY CHANCE you want to get in on the fun, hit me up at twitter.com/BushMackel!

A long time ago in a post far away, I told you that I had finished the first portfolio piece for my design company, Bethesda Web Design.

And that was about it.

Now I’m going to tell you a little bit more about the site and look back and see what I did right, and what I should’ve done a lot better. Hopefully these lessons will help those of you out there who are trying to do the same thing as I and may save you some time and money in the process.

Digital Oil - The Short of It
As I was really just getting started in the web design game, I didn’t have any projects that I was currently working on, that is until a friend of a friend called me up about a website that he needed to get done. The concept was simple enough : A website that promoted a company that took digital pictures and turned them into oil paintings. And in addition to promoting that product, it would have to be able to accept pictures from users, allow them some basic editing features, and then process the order.

The First Project!
For me, even though I wasn’t going to get paid to do the site, it seemed like a great one to start my business with. I’d be able to work with a pretty amiable client and I’d have a pretty good test bed to see what kind of procedures worked and didn’t, but also if this would be the kind of thing that I could end up doing as a real business and consequently, exit to the rat race. PLUS, I’d have something to start my company’s portfolio so I could hopefully attract future clients.

What Went Right
It’s funny. The more I think about this project, the more I’m thankful that it was my first project and one that I was essentially doing free for a friend. Why? Because I’m not sure that much went right about it. Ha ha. At least in the grand scheme of things anyway. Don’t get me wrong, my friend was great throughout the whole thing, communication was decent, and a decent deliverable was delivered at the end of it all. But those things don’t really count, they’re more results of actions more than “what went right” actions themselves.

To re-iterate what I was saying, I think I only have one thing that I did really right about this project and that was knowing my strengths and limitations. In a nutshell : I’m a programmer. I’m not a graphic designer. In the past, I’ve wasted A LOT of my time trying to come up with designs for sites. This time around, I paired up with an old co-worker of mine who had thrown some side business my way and got him to design the site. Needless to say, he did in two hours what would have taken me the better part of a week. Now if this was a project where I was billing a client by the hours, it would be a win win situation, (instead of me trying to figure out how to tell a client it took me 40 hours to come up with something that looked like utter crap).

And in you can’t really relate to this little lesson don’t worry, that probably means you’re smarter than I. That’s to say it has been only recently that I’ve started to use my strengths and not waste time puttering about with my weaknesses. And furthermore - I think from a business point of view this “eureka” moment was a big step for me. I figure if I can keep getting more talented people to do the work I’m terrible at, things will continue to go quite well.

But enough about the one thing that went right. (#):) Stay tuned to see the many (many) things that went wrong!

It’s not too often on here that I write posts about art or design, but maybe because of my latest efforts in that field or maybe just because I secretly like this stuff (which is odd for a programmer)…

I felt compelled to shed some light on teddY-risatioN’s new design!

Before he released it today, I really didn’t think that I could like it as much as I did his old theme, but he really surprised me when it was unveiled and it absolutely floored me!

So Many Things To Love!
It’s hard trying to comment on the design because there are so many good things about it (imo) but I’m going to try my best and see what I come with…

• The Colors - He uses blues very well in this design… And all of them combine very well in the background and in the header and in the teddY-risatioN text. Furthermore, where he uses lots of other colors (in the header nav) and in the sidebar, they go very well there too. In the header the colors on the nav are blended very nicely so they don’t seem out of place, but are still different enough from the background to standout. In the sidebar the colors are a bit more grabby, but it works really well in the white area me thinks.
• The Top Nav - On most sites, (like this one currently) the top nav is usually just text. But teddY went out of the way to make his special and you see that with the cool Chemistry like symbol buttons. Very fresh and creative plus it certainly draws your attention in because of its uniqueness forcing you to check out areas of the site that would probably otherwise go overlooked.
• Sidebar - The problem with a lot of sidebars is that they always have to that delicate dance of “how much content” vs “how long” but here it is done quite well and attractively using collapseable areas.

• Footer - I’m a big fan of having footers on your blog, (even though I haven’t done it here) and putting a lot of good information in it. teddY also does this one well by adding a lot of good information down here that regular readers will love to see, but making sure not to have anything in there that’s WAY too precious (imo).

Again, well done teddY and I hope next redesign on here I can come up with something half as good as what you have!

In my travels on the Internet, I have dabbled with a couple different things including everyone’s favorite, Affiliate Marketing.

I say everyone’s favorite because as you go about the web, it seems that all the people who are making all the money are doing it from, you guessed it - Affiliate Marketing.

In my past experiences with this craft, I did what a lot of people do and signed up with Commission Junction.

Shortly after that…

My interest wained as it took a lot of my energy to try and make heads or tails out of that website…

• I just found it confusing,
• I felt like I was running around in circles trying to use it,
• and I really didn’t feel any connection with CJ

Introducing the Pepperjam Network!
According to their official press release…

…Pepperjam Network addresses the two primary shortcomings of other existing affiliate networks, namely (1) poor, unreliable communication tools and (2) lack of affiliate transparency…

Now I’ve admittedly only been with PJN for about a day, but I already feel better about it than I did Commission Junction. For one thing, the signup was painless and QUICK. Secondly, (and this is a big secondly), Robin from the Pepperjam Network personally called me and made sure I was good to go. I took the phone call as an opportunity to learn more about the company and Robin took all the time in the world to discuss everything with me.

Where the company came from, what the company is doing, how to get started, learning resources, and her direct phone number in case anything came up in the future that I needed to talk about. In today’s age, being able to speak to a human (and not a machine sent back from the future to destroy us) means a lot.

Getting Started
Once you’re signed up, joining programs and getting the code from those programs onto your site is easy thanks to the attractive and clean layout of the site. And btw, you can see my first ad from Pepperjam via of the 125×125 Jimi Hendrix Clothing ad in my sidebar. So if there are those of you out there in TV land who need something to fill up the last of your ad inventory, that might be another good reason as to why you should join up.

So look - There’s obviously a lot of good things that are happening with the Pepperjam Network, and a lot of them I haven’t even touched on including their widget that you can use to rotate multiple PJN ads or the ability to chat with PJN advertisers. If you’re like me and you’re looking to try affiliate marketing again or if you’re just looking to fill up your ad inventory on your blog, the Pepperjam Network is at least worth a look. (#):) Check it out aqui!

The preceding was a sponsored, yet honest review.

If you’re a blogger who does sponsored posts, chances are you’re very familiar with Pay Per Post.

And you’re probably also familiar with Google and how they have been pummeling the Page Rank of sites that “sell PR”, by using specific anchor text to link to sites.

Obviously this site has already been hit which is why (as of this writing) your Google toolbar says this site has a PR of 0.

Thanks Google!

How I Feel About PR
Well as I’ve said before, I’m not mad with Google. All they’re doing is trying to make their search engine the best it can be and selling links using specific anchor text we are undermining their efforts is we don’t use nofollow in our tags. But as I’ve said before, the big problem I have with all of this is that Google has not officially ever said, “you can do this, you can’t do that” and with their Webmaster Tools, I don’t think they have a good excuse to not give an official word to all the webmasters who WOULD play by the rules if they knew what they were.

Introducing Real Rank
So getting back to Pay Per Post, they issue posting opportunities to its members based largely on Page Rank and Alexa Rank. When all of their members’ sites started going to PR 0, they (thankfully) did not change the Page Rank of their members’ stats, (likely because they would’ve had a freakin’ hard time trying to fill all their opportunities). So after all of this, it was really only a matter of time before a new ranking system appeared, and it looks like Real Rank is the first one to get its head above water. Here’s a snippet of the description from IZEA (parent company of PPP) :

…gathers REAL traffic information, much like your analytics platform and ranks users based on their standing within the network. The formula is relatively simple.

70% weighted towards visitors per day
20% weighted towards amount of ACTIVE inbound links per day
10% weighted towards pageviews per day…

Does Real Rank Fix the Problem?
I guess it depends on what you think the problem is and what side of the ball you’re on. The reason why I felt obliged to make this post was because of Court’s post on the subject, where for him it came down to the question,

Can You Survive Without Google?

In his opinion he said that “[.01% of bloggers don't care about Google]“. I would argue that it is probably much higher than that. I think there are a TON of people who have turned away from Google for whatever reason… AdSense doesn’t yield anything for them, and they’re not getting anything for G’s Serps. And I think for these people, Real Rank may provide what they need to make a buck from their site. Now I’m not saying that it will help them make 13K a month, but maybe the “few bucks” they’re looking for that helps them in their everyday lives.

What About For Me?
I don’t know. I’m kind of in the middle of all these things… I’m always working to improve my AdSense earnings, but while that’s going on, I love making some side cash with Pay Per Post. And as Courtney points out, I think it’s a fair bet that Google won’t stop on these penalties and will start banning/de-indexing sites all together. If THAT happens, there will obviously be a drop off for me on visitors, which of course impacts every other stat including my new Real Rank. Maybe this is a time that I should consider changing MY business plan for this site. Of course that would I’d have to have one first…

What about you? Do you care about Real Rank? Is it making you consider doing things differently with your sites?

I was tagged by Mike some time ago in this meme, and thankfully I’ve found 5 minutes this Sunday evening to actually getting around to doing it!

Admittedly, I should’ve and could’ve taken care of this a while ago, but I think I thought it would be hard to come up with 5 Strengths.

(I still don’t know how this is going to play out). If this was a “5 Weaknesses” post, we’d probably be in business. (#);) \

Well let’s see how this goes…

• Like Mike, I can tell a good story. - If you heard me tell a story live, it’d be much better but I’d like to think that when I sit down and go for it that I can translate it into writing as well.
• I can be organized to a fault. - This could easily go into the weaknesses column, but depending on the subject matter, being organized is certainly a good thing from a reader’s point of view.
• I put my personality in my writing. - I’ve been told this by a couple of people, and it’s definietely one of those things I’m proudest of. If I was writing anything and it didn’t seem like it came from me… I wouldn’t know what the point of writing in the first place would’ve been.
• I can draw pretty good stick figures - And I’m not talking about just you know… Um… Stick figures. But the ones that comic artists start with. With ovals for heads and torsos and pipes for arms.. You know, all that good stuff! Now putting in the rest is often a bit difficult…
• Pointillism - Not sure if this would really qualify as a strength of my artistry, but I do enjoy drawing pictures using ink and just points from time to time. People really seem to like the quick things that I can do w/ it too. *nod*

Today being November 9th means that we all have two more weeks until the busyiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday!

(And maybe to mark the occasion), the biggest ads of the Black Friday season hit the net today - Best Buy and Circuit City!

GWA HA HA!

Truly for all of us Black Friday shoppers, this was a big day. Anyone else getting excited?

What I’m Really Looking For
Going into this holiday season, there weren’t many items that I was really coveting. As things are going, I think next year is going to be the big TV year for myself, but I was hoping that this year I could UP my digital camera game since mine is getting a little long in the tooth.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t readily appear to me that there are some sales on D-SLR’s but if anyone would like to correct me, I invite and encourage you to do so since my little guy is growing up faster than anyone anticipated!

What I’ll Probably End Up Getting
As has been the case the last couple of Black Fridays, I start at Best Buy and then go to Circuit City since those are usually where the bulk of “my deals” happen to be. Last year (and I think the year before) I went to local CompUSA at midnight (before the official start of Black Friday) and did some shopping there too. But as the local CompUSA has turned into a Micro Center and neither has their ads out yet, the jury is still out on that whole front.

What I do know is that Best Buy looks to have some good deals on 360 games and DVD box sets, so that may likely prove to be my first stop. I also heard through the grapevine that Circuit City has a $99 GPS so that might end up being a gift to someone. (I’m pretty sure they don’t read this blog which is why I divulge that).

On a related note, I’m pretty sure Rock Band will be out by then and I’m very surprised that the game hasn’t even been mentioned in the big retailer’s ads. Oh well.

What About You?
And of my fellow Black Friday shoppers getting excited for one thing or another? Some people are saying that BF is lookin’ kinda weak this year. Thoughts?

I don’t have the exact dates in front of me, but I know that many a webmaster has been waiting for this most recent Page Rank update, myself included.

Now, after the dust has started to settle, the whole thing seems to be a bit anticlimactic… But that’s probably due to most of us not getting the PR we expected or wanted…

And some of us losing the Page Rank that we already had…

The Crazy October 2007 Page Rank Update
Admittedly, this is coming from a guy who eagerly anticipated the update, but this last one was wild!

• Page Rank updates usually are spaced about 3 months apart…This one was about 6 (if it is truly done).
• Webmasters expected their sites to largely go up in PR, but a ton saw them go down as they were seemingly penalized for selling text links and otherwise manipulating the big G.

Do You Care About Page Rank?
I do. I wish that I could say I didn’t, especially being a young entrepreneur… One of the basic tenants of entrepreneurship and business in general is that you should limit how many people and things you’re dependent on.As far as my websites go, I do all the work on my sites myself and I own the domain names and I (to a large extent) control the servers they run on.

But as a blogger trying to earn revenue for my blogs, the easiest source of income I have to draw on is sponsored posts who largely decide how much to pay their bloggers based on Page Rank (amongst other factors). And on the surface of things, it IS as simple as a better Page Rank means more money. This is why I care about Page Rank.

But on the flip side of the ball, consider if I had a Page Rank of 5, I’d be certainly making a decent chunk of change from this site. Probably so much that I would rely on it as part of my income. And what would then become of me when I lost some of my Page Rank and dropped to a 3? My income would drop… A lot. And I’d be in trouble.

There are many ways to make money online without Page Rank! Look at Casey for example over at News Notion. Before SHE had any noticeable PR she was hard at work selling ad space on her blog and she got all of her spots sold out in a manner of days. DAYS! And however much she sold her spots for, she got to keep 100% of the profits instead of splitting down the middle (if she was so lucky) with companies like Pay Per Post and Sponsored Reviews.

Another way to make money is through affiliate marketing! If you have a blog that provides great information on products and that people are finding through search engines, why not drop some affiliate links (esp if you feel strongly about the product). Opal T regularly says how much she loves affiliate marketing and how she loves not having to be married to page rank and page rank updates.