Casual Articles - Internet and Businesses Online

The Law of Attraction In Business
Entrepreneurs work harder than most Americans. They spend countless hours and enormous amounts of energy trying to reach business and financial goals that are often elusive. They seem to be doing all the right things: attending seminars, scouring the latest business books, networking, guerilla marketing, hoping, and praying.We all know of business owners who go through the same motions yet they are far more successful and don't work nearly as hard. And, they seem to have more fun. Surely you've seen situations where two people are in the same business, sometimes within a block from each other. The owner of the first business can be successful beyond measure. The other business can be close to bankruptcy.What is the difference? The difference is that the first business owner is allowing their natural brilliance to run the business. That natural brilliance is the Law of Attraction. We are all far greater than we think and we have truly amazing potential that most people are not even aware of. The real key to success in life and in business is accessing your "miracle mind" and unleashing your capacity for abundance.The best way to do this is to learn how to make the Law of Attraction work for you. The Law of Attraction is the most powerful law in the universe. It works just like a magnet. Our thoughts a

e FavIcons in .ico files, the icons are stored in an encoded format directly in the bookmark file.

You can apply the same principle to animated GIFs and you will notice that a miniature version of the animation also plays in the address bar and on the tabs.

Perhaps one of the main reasons why you don't see that many sites using animations is browser compatibility. Animated favicons are not treated at all by Internet Explorer. A static image will not be extracted from the animation either. Instead, the default .htm icon (as defined in Windows' filetypes) will be placed under one's Favorites - once added, that is. The animations are not supported by Netscape, Opera, Konqueror, Safari; at least so it seems at the time of this writing. The Fire

Online Auction Services
For many, online auction services have been the gateway to bringing millions of people on to the internet. Don’t you wish you had thought of this simple concept ten years ago or so? This article will discuss some key aspects that you should consider before diving into online auction services to sell or purchase goods.Currently there are four or five really popular online auction services on the internet. A couple of theses online auction services are so popular that I probably do not even need to mention their names and you could simply fill in the blanks. Just incase you have been living under a rock for the past ten years the most popular online auction sites are eBay, Ubid, Bidz, and Yahoo auction.There are several reasons why someone would use one or more of the many online auction services. The most popular reason is to rid yourself of your unwanted items. If you want to get rid of some of your treasures, but are curios what they might be worth you can quickly find out by searching for similar items on these popular online auction sites.You will hear many different schools of thought on what an online auction services should be used for. Some people feel that they are only good for buying items at greatly reduce prices. Others feel that these online auction services provide of a way to find ra

A favicon is that little image that most browsers display on the address line and in the favorites (bookmarks) menu. Tabbed browsers like Firefox and Opera extend the functionality of favicons, adding them to their tabs. The name was coined based on Internet Explorer (the first browser to support it) and derives from "Favorites Icon". Each web browser has a unique user interface, and as a result uses the favicon in different ways. The favicon allows a company to further promote its identity and image by displaying a logo, a graphical message, etc. Often, the favicon reflects the look and feel of the web site or the organization's logo.

A traditional favicon is actually a Microsoft Windows ICO file. An ICO file is actually a repository of bitmap like images. They are used because in some locations a 16x16 pixel image is desired, and sometimes a 32x32 image may be needed. Sometimes a 16 color image is desired, and sometimes a 256 color icon is desired.

You probably already knew all of the above.

But did you know that Firefox can display animated favicons? If you don't believe me, open Firefox and go to my site, bsleek.com (there should be a link at the bottom of the article). if you don't have Firefox, download it, it's a "must have" and you will quickly fall in love with the simplicity and convenience of tabbed browsing. Even if you are not a designer but just a site owner, in today's environment you absolutely must know how your site looks in all browsers. You would think that all websites should look the same, but as browsers become more diverse and more sophisticated, standards are not respected and things can get messy. For example, I just discovered that a few pages on my site don't look as expected in the latest version of Opera and need to be adjusted.

Ok, I hope by now you saw my animated favicon in Firefox and came back to the article to learn more about it...

The main reason why you can see animated favicons in Firefox is because Firefox abolished the proprietary ICO format in favor of the ability to display any supported image format in the favicon location, including BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG and... animated GIFs.

So now you know the big secret, the animated favicon is nothing but a tiny animated GIF.

Here's a very neat trick, that can actually be used to visualize how any image looks like as a 16x16 pixel icon - once you start designing one of those, you will realize that it is extremely hard to produce a legible image on a 16 square pixels canvas:

Find any page with any graphic that you are interested in. Right click the image and chose "View Image" from the dialog. A blank page should display with your chosen image and surprise: you can see a miniature 16x16 copy of the image as a favicon! Uhh... do I have to mention again that we are doing all this in Firefox?

A hacker's mind will immediately think of how great it would be to use this feature as a conversion tool. Unfortunately, unlike Internet Explorer and Opera, Firefox doesn't store FavIcons in .ico files, the icons are stored in an encoded format directly in the bookmark file.

You can apply the same principle to animated GIFs and you will notice that a miniature version of the animation also plays in the address bar and on the tabs.

Search Engine Optimization 101 - The Importance of Linking Strategies
Linking web pages and web sites is a great way to generate traffic to your site and those in your social network. Links have a value in directing qualified users to your site. Using the correct form of linking strategies ensures that more qualified traffic is coming and going from your main destination.Perform research and determine which linking strategies are best for you. Using any form of the backlink strategies will provide a broader audience for you to reach. Locate sites that are related to the content of what you have; performing a search for the same or similar key words will help you in accomplishing this. Then use that information to submit to them requesting to use your link on their page and in return you could do the same for them.Allowing both of you to win and generate more traffic to each site. Linking strategies are important in that form a more efficient way to advertise and promote your site. People aren’t always going to flourish to your site just because they located it on a search engine.If they are reading an article or a blog and see a word hyperlinked that need or desire more information on and click that word, they could be directed to your site. How does it feel to know that you could have lost that person because you didn’t use the proper linking strategies? Linking is es

like images. They are used because in some locations a 16x16 pixel image is desired, and sometimes a 32x32 image may be needed. Sometimes a 16 color image is desired, and sometimes a 256 color icon is desired.

You probably already knew all of the above.

Ok, I hope by now you saw my animated favicon in Firefox and came back to the article to learn more about it...

So now you know the big secret, the animated favicon is nothing but a tiny animated GIF.

You can apply the same principle to animated GIFs and you will notice that a miniature version of the animation also plays in the address bar and on the tabs.

People Search Semantics: (People Search Wars)
Perhaps it is just a matter of semantics, but the issue has caused quite a stir here at People Search News. Below, the editor attempts to make sense of it all.On a recent visit to my mother's house, she asked me if I knew of a Web site that had bread machine recipes. I told her to Google the term "bread machine recipes." The search returned about 8,060,000 results for "bread machine recipes," of which we chose breadworld.com as the one most worthy of a visit.Much to my surprise, instead of clicking the link, my mother typed www.breadworld.com into the Google Search box."Mom, why don't you just type the url in the address bar?" I said."This is how I always do it," she said.Then it dawned on me, there is a whole generation of people navigating the Web using only search results.My mother does not have favorite. She regularly goes back and forth between Yahoo, MSN and Google. The quality of her search results is directly associated with the specificity of her keyword choices. Hence, I began wondering about the different search results returned for three of the most popular "people search" keyword strings.First, my pick for the three most-popular "people search" terms are: people search, people finder and locate people. Arguably you could include all the variants of each term,

websites should look the same, but as browsers become more diverse and more sophisticated, standards are not respected and things can get messy. For example, I just discovered that a few pages on my site don't look as expected in the latest version of Opera and need to be adjusted.

Ok, I hope by now you saw my animated favicon in Firefox and came back to the article to learn more about it...

So now you know the big secret, the animated favicon is nothing but a tiny animated GIF.

You can apply the same principle to animated GIFs and you will notice that a miniature version of the animation also plays in the address bar and on the tabs.

Why Your Competitors' Lack of Sophistication is Killing You!
When I first started selling retailing online in 1999, it was easy. I had very little competition and search engines could be easily manipulated to provide lots of free traffic.Online success is much harder in 2007 for two primary reasons. First, the low barrier of entry means that competition is fierce in practically every possible niche. Secondly, while in the past, many of us capitalized on free traffic from search engine optimization, that strategy is much less dependable today and is quite resource-intensive.For many markets in today’s online environment, the most dependable way to generate traffic is PPC campaigns with major search engines. In fact, in many niches, it is probably the only way to generate significant business.Predictably, the shift from organic SEO to PPC has been quite good for the search engines, but not so good for the advertisers. However, the greatest enemy of PPC advertisers is not Google—it is lack of marketing sophistication among the advertisers themselves.Very few PPC advertisers could venture a good guess as to how much they should be spending per click on a specific search engine. Unfortunately, this lack of sophistication always leads to overbidding.If my competition is overbidding, I have a choice—jump in and commit suicide along with them or si

You can apply the same principle to animated GIFs and you will notice that a miniature version of the animation also plays in the address bar and on the tabs.

Eye-to-Eye at the 'Staff Recognition Center'
The Singapore National Eye Center has a unique approach to building customer loyalty and boosting staff morale. In the attractive main lobby, management posts customer compliments in a prominent area called the ‘Staff Recognition Center’.Alongside each letter hangs a picture of the staff member cited, and a certificate of appreciation signed by the Managing Director.Imagine how these staff feel when they come to work each morning. Just walking through the lobby they know they are appreciated – not only by their customers, but also by their organization. Imagine how customers feel when they come for their appointments.They already anticipate receiving good service, and are more likely to express their appreciation when they get it. This is win–win–win at its best: the customer wins, the staff wins, and the National Eye Center wins.Key Learning Point -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can do this, too! When compliments arrive, be sure to share the news - not just in the staff cafeteria or the in-house newsletter.Action Steps -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post testimonials (tastefully) in a public place, on your website, or in your regular mailings to customers. When co

e FavIcons in .ico files, the icons are stored in an encoded format directly in the bookmark file.

You can apply the same principle to animated GIFs and you will notice that a miniature version of the animation also plays in the address bar and on the tabs.

So, why not take advantage of this *now* and 'beat the rush'?

Basically, this is how it's done:

1. You make a 16x16 animated GIF.

2. You upload the animated GIF to the "root" of your site, or to any other location.

3. You hardcode in your page the location where Firefox should look for the animation.

That's really it, "big picture" wise.

If you don't feel too creative or just don't have time and/or patience, a reputable professional design firm (such as Bsleek) should be able to make a nice animated favicon for you. Another option - I don't endorse it, as your goal should be to excel through unique content and push your own image out there - is to find one of the many galleries online and either download a ready made animated favicon or take a large animated GIF and resize it and/or edit it in one of the many available tools. There also are sites that offer online animated favicon creation from a standard image (check out chami.com, find "FavIcon from pics", they have a simple but neat scrolling text feature).

If you are however a fellow do-it-yourselfer, then let's elaborate and look at some techniques and useful tips:

As far as tools go: If you are a lucky owner of Adobe's excellent Photoshop, then you also have a companion application called ImageReady. Linux users have Gimp, an incredibly powerful and free graphics application that can easily handle animated GIF creation. What many people don't know is that Gimp is also available for free for Windows and the Mac. There is also GIMPShop in the wild, which is a nifty GIMP version for the photoshop-inclined audience (did I mention free?). There are also many specialized GIF animation makers, some freeware, some not.

Things to remember when designing animated favicons:

You have control over the number of times your animation will play. Any decent animated GIF editor will ask you whether you want your animation to play once, several times (you specify a number) or forever. It is also important to know that after the animation cycled the predetermined amount of time, it will remain still on the last frame (not the first one!), so make sure that frame contains the image you want displayed at the end of the cycle.

If you really need to, you can set it to loop continuously.

However, out of curtsey to those paranoid about their computer resources being eaten alive by your animation and to those who find animated things in general terribly annoying, I always recommend that you set up a finite number of times your GIF will cycle through the animated sequence. 6 sounds like a good, conservative number, 12 is on the medium side.

By limiting the number of times your GIF plays, you might even set a cool viral marketing effect, where visitors will just click through your pages to see the animation start over. I clearly

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Using the words 'legendary service' is not enough to make it real. You must expand, imagine, innovate - and take real legendary action.

Have you recently had someone listen to a problem of yours, a situation which made you angry or a complaint and then they say; “I understand your frustrations, but you must understand that...” Isn’t it funny? Silly humans, they actually believe you are buying into their BS explanations

This article shows you step-by-step how to add your Blogs site feed to Yahoo! and MSN and much more.

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