FYI about DIY

I ran to Home Depot and Lowe's these days to find rescue for my weeded lawn and I got some fertilizer and a weed removal tool to try on. My wife and I also think about turning part of our garage into a storage room or a small home office. Obviously, we know that we have to hire someone else for lacking of hands-on skills and know-how.

Usually when I'm at Home Depot, my son followed me around while I really don't have much idea what I should be looking for my needs. I wanted to show him how things can be done but my lacking knowledge doesn't help me much, or at all. In store, I'm out of luck, I don't even know what to ask and how to ask sometimes. Online, I ran into some rescue.

For your information, the site to the help is DIYnet.com. Though I'm not sure how much or how deep information or projects it covers yet, at least I quickly find a written article about weeds prevention and I had also went thought a interactive tutorial about patching and reseeding a small lawn area. Now I feel a bit better and more confident to combat with weeds not, at least. As a result, I'll hold off looking for books or videos about how to deal with specific projects that I'd like to achieve. In fact, I've been looking for such materials but to no avail until now I found it online at DIYnet.com.

Though search engines might help me finding information. For DIY things, I'll turn to DIYnet.com from now on.

DIYnet.com, also DIYnetwork.com. According to the 'About Us' of the site, here I quote:

"you'll find more than 10,000 projects with complete step-by-step instructions, resources and related links. This Webby Award winning site has more than 20 message boards, where do-it-yourselfers share ideas, plus an interactive program guide. Site highlights include online Workshops, and DIY Kits, with instructions and product lists. Start doing it yourself today! To begin, simply click on your favorite DIY topic: Autos & Boats, Crafts, Gardening, Hobbies, Home Building, Home Improvement, Living and Woodworking."

Blinkx, is it a Search?

Blinkx (www.blinkx.com) let you search in a blink without doing a search. This is a productivity tool I tried today.

The major difference comparing Blinks to Google search is that it does not require an explicit search term to be typed into a search box. Instead, the software tool automatically scan through the content on your 'active window', derive the keywords from the active window, do a search in the background, and make available of top results in form of pulldown integrated on your active window top. The results are grouped into categories - web, news, product, blog, etc. Search terms and click on button is not necessarily required.

The advantage of Blinkx is to eliminate the search terms, a required element for the searchers before conducting a search. When you have less ability to come up with search terms or you do not have enough idea about what you should be looking up, Blinx is acting as a keyword suggestion tool without explicitly keyword recommendation. It simply does the search for you using the keyword it calculates appropriate.

I personally found it a neat idea to auto-search in the background for me, in any window, on any page. However, my iMac does not has the luxury to equip with it yet to try out for a longer time. With all the tools and information available, one neat tiny tool can possibly make a big difference. I'm not sure whether this tool will make a bid splash or not, but, this extension of Google Adsense type of relevant ads is start being applied to provide relevant information on the fly to users.

Keyword Advertising and Bankruptcy

Web sites needs eyeballs, pageviews, or traffic to sell content or products. Google Adwords, Overture, FindWhat, etc. all provide cost-per-click (CPC) service to merchants or sites to buy web traffic via bidding on keywords. The thing is 'keyword' is the focus, thus it became a commodity, virtually, being bought and sold in a way online to gain targeted visitors for the merchants, and to earn revenue for the search companies.

There's a company called NORVERGENCE has just filed Chapter 11 and is falling on tough financial times. How is it related to CPC advertising? Indeed, it is related in this not-so-crazy world. You might not be able to buy a trademark keyword of a company name in some cases, either you'll be strong-armed to take the bid down, or the seller like Google won't sell the keyword at all for one reason or another. When the company like NORVERGENCE is going under in T1 market, their competitor(s) is sending out emails to affiliate, strongly suggesting them to buy and bid on 'NORVERGENCE'.

Here's the original email I mentioend:


Dear XXXXXXX,

OPPORTUNITY IS KNOCKING TONIGHT
---------------------------------------------------
In our business, acting quickly to changes in the T1
industry is what helps us gain an advantage over
our competitors. One such change just occured today!

A large carrier called NORVERGENCE has fallen on tough
financial times. So tough in fact that all of their
T1 customers run a significant risk of having their
service turned OFF on JULY 15 (tomorrow).
---------------------------------------------------

CALL TO ACTION
---------------------------------------------------
If you advertise online, please add 'norvergence' to your
list of keywords - also add it to your META tags and
mirror site content. There will be a significant flow
of traffic to that keyword in the coming days.
---------------------------------------------------

Happy Advertising,

Patrick Oborn, CTO
ShopForT1.com
poborn@shopfort1.com


What's the point? The idea behind this suggested practice is to act quickly to hijack competitor's potential or even existing customer base. Will this work? My guess is that this approach will work to some extend. For one, people searching on 'NORVERGENCE' hopefully is looking for problems of the company, or might be existing customers seeking for solution to the potential outage. It is the later that is highly targeted potential customer. When it comes to keyword bidding and purchsing, sheer numbers of traffic you get is one thing, relevant targeted traffic is another, and is oftenly more important.

I hop on Overture and did a search on 'norvergence', I got the followings ranked #1:


NorVergence Bankruptcy: Customer Issues
Keeping your phone lines turned on - Ensure your service, connections, and telephone numbers remain intact with no interruption of service as a result of NorVergence's recent bankruptcy.
www.myameritel.com (sponsored listing)
(Advertiser's Max Bid: $2.00)


Someone is really doing it.

Dictionary and Web Definition

Speaking of information gap, the gap is definitely widening. To achieve the same thing as simple as looking up a reference book, dictionar for example, the old way is to thumb through a dictionary, the new way is do it on a electronic dictionary. As many of you are on the Internet, the place I usually go for looking up a definition of a word is at Dictionary.com, and I also found InfoPlease.com a great reference site. If you're on Google, type 'dictionary:[word]' will take you to some dictionary definitaion too.

Once you get used to it at the finger tip, I can easily look up and learn about a work, how it is pronounced, and it's meaning withing seconds, as opposed to dozens of seconds to achieve the same thing using traditional way of a paper dictionary. The dictionary lookup has been built into many software tools since years ago. I remember the Encarta reference CD-ROM was packaged with the iMac I bought several years ago. Since them, the efficient way of doing research electronically has been promoted by man parties.

Today, the search king Google offers comprehensive Web search at google.com, as many other search engines do. Using a specific syntax offered by Google, you can look up a 'Web definition' the a word or key phrase like a nutrition supplement or something you'd like to know about. Try this, in the google search box, type in 'define:idea', you'll get the Web view of what the 'idea' is being defined as on many Web sites. Try another word yourself, this will give you better idea of what this useful tool brings.

I use it a lot now to weed out untargeted information and to get to the definition of a word or phrase directly without needing to read through too much Web results. I am the type of person who does a lot of 'What is' type of queries on the Web. Now, this is easier for me, how about you?

Grand Open - Internet Information Gap

Ideas come and go, I'd rather write them down when I get a chance and when I still rember them. The information gap has widen, thanks to computer and the birth of internet. The gap is biger than before among people who use computer to access the Web and people who don't. Some people love the net while some people hate it and think it is devil, like the newspaper is to people who never read them for one reason or another.

I'd use this blog for ideas relate to the Internet. I'm not sure when this blog will go and where all ideas will take me to in this information world. Whether you like it or not, the ideas brough to this place will be focusing on 'e', a common initial added to commerce and business, as in e-commerce and e-business.

Please join and comment on the ones I put here. Let make it useful, understandable, as well as a practical place to learn together without fearing being the victim of the information gap.