You can make a difference: Get Ranked with Real Rank

Did your PageRank get spanked recently? If you say yes, and it's because you do paid post.

Well, it's time to change and think RealRank.

What's RealRank and how it affects you?
RealRank is the ranking system created by people at Izea Ranks. It's a ranking system will weight a blog 70% based on its daily unique visitors, 20% on its daily active inbound links and the last 10% by its daily page views.

All you need to do is just sign up with Izea Ranks, get the IZEA Toolkit(ITK) tracking code and embed it in your blog. The ITK will start the tracking and collecting of the data. RealRank's transparent scoring algorithm, on measuring a blog's actual traffic and its influence throughout the blogosphere, is more relevant and realistic.

All these collected data will enable advertisers to analyze the potential of blogs, and identify their target market, which will then directly influence their decisions on online advertising campaign.

With the real data Izea Ranks provided, advertisers as well as bloggers will be able to compare traffic between different blogs. Every week Izea Ranks will showcase the Top100 based on the collected data.

However, the ranking system is still at its infancy. In order to make it a blogsphere standard, Izea Ranks need to get more users to particiapte in order to be able to pool in more real data for comparison. That's why I'm write about it.

Go Zoodoka!

One of the many ways to promote your blog is through email subscription.

If you look around you would see that, nowadays many blogs have moved towards this email subscription direction. They have, from a blogger, become a content provider. Instead of having we, readers, log in to their blog, but having their content deliver to our mailbox.

You may ask what is the difference between RSS subscription and email newsletter? The main difference is that RSS only goes to your Feed Reader, while email newsletters are directed to your mailbox.

Email newsletter is not a new thing in the web world. However having email newsletter subscription for a blog is a step forward within the blogsphere.

Zookoda
is one of the email marketing application which is designed to cater the need of bloggers. And it’s free for bloggers who would like to build their readership and keep their readers coming back to their blog.

All you have to do is to open an account with Zookoda
, get the subscription form code and place on your blog. When your blog readers subscribe to your newwsletter by entering their email address, Zookoda
will add these data to your mailing list.

No installation is required. Zookoda
works on PC, Mac or Linux. It is compatible with IE 6 or later, and Firefox on the PC, as well as Safari on Mac.

Zoodoka also provides templates which can be easily edit and format. With the online HTML Editor Zookoda
provides, you can quickly edit or customize your email newsletter to your liking.

Meanwhile Zookoda
gives you full control over how your newsletter contents appear to your readers, which you can edit manually.

If one day you should want to discontinue Zookoda
’s service, you can just export your mailing lists in Excel format at any time you want with no obligations.

So if you thik you have great content and would like start email newsletter subscription service for you blog, Zookoda
will be a good place to start with.

New glasses for new year.

One of the many things I love to change for this new year is my glasses.

The last time I changed my eyeglasses was back in year 2001. Yep, it's been 7 years, and I still war that same old glasses.

And these days changing eyeglasses isn't cheap. For a pair of decent prescription glasses with good quality lenses can easily cost few hundred ringgit, or may be a thousand, depending the type of frame and lenses you choose.

But you now at Zenni Optical: Sell Rx Glasses $8 with case!

For a decent pair of eyeglasses with prescription, such as single vision, for only $ 8. It includes good quality stylish frame, anti scratch coating thin and light 1.57 index lens with full UV protection and polishing edge, hard case and a microfiber lens cleaning cloth. Or to upgrade to 1.67 index len, is additional $17. Well, under RM100 after conversion.

Not bad deal huh? And it also comes with full gurantee. Well my current eyeglasses cost me RM200 to RM300.

So what are you waiting for? I'm getting mine.



*This post is sponsored*

Starting an online business

The other day a book-lover friend was asking me about online shopping cart software. She’s planning to start her online business, selling imported books.

So I recommended her Ashop, shopping cart software which I reviewed earlier as it's easy to use and suitable for a novice like herself. Meanwhile she can also easily register her own shop domain with Ashop.

At first she offered me to design a nice looking shop front, but I had to turn it down since I'll be going into labour anytime. However, I showed her how simple is to customize the online shop front with the available web themes to suit her taste.

I showed her some awesome features that Ashop offers, with their online demo and tutorial movies.

I was showing her:
- How can she manage sales analysis with the admin panel, such as inventory and stock control with the multilevel product variants and tax variant,
- How can she easily keep track of and retrieve her daily sales data, such as how many visitors to her shop every day, the number of her customers, and potential customers and where they come from.
- How can she design her own discount coupon and gift certificates to send to her potential customers in future, and so on.

She was also happy to find that Ashop shopping cart software has SMS order alerts and is web-based, so that run her business while she travel outstation or overseas.

After going through most of the demos with her, she was impressed with this simple yet reliable software as it gives her so much control over her business.

However, there are still a few things that bothered her, such as the transaction mistakes, payment security and credit card fraud. To ease her worries, I showed her the software integration with Google checkout and PayPal. The Google checkout can help minimizing the chances of customers abandoning their carts, while PayPal can make sending and receiving payment transaction easy for her and her customers.

Without delay, I helped her open a PayPal account to show her how PayPal works as well.

With much amazement, she checked at the pricing and packages and finally decided to try it out their most affordable package, Ashop Light, which only cost her $39.95 per month, as she's aiming to minimize her startup capital.

The perfect portable DVD player for travelling

All these time when we go for our long distance family outings, Natalie and I would normally sleep throughout our journey, while dear hubby's driving.

Therefore, I've long been thinking of getting a portable DVD player, so we can play some of our favourite shows while we're on the move. However, I haven't come across one that fits my criteria, till now. O.k. I'm a fussy consumer.

At Digitalframez.com, I found this portable DIVX DVD player. It's the DIVX compatibility that really captures my attention. With it, I can play my borrowed Japanese anime files, which are mostly in AVI format, whilst on the move.

At home we have a DVD player with the DIVX compatibility, and I can play almost anything with it, such as AVI, mpg files and so on. But it's too bulky to be carried anywhere. And this 10 inch LCD screen portable DVD Player I found in Digitalframez.com is the perfect solution. It also comes with power cord and connector to outer source.

Other than the DIVX compatibility, it can be easily recharged with its built-in lithium battery by just plugging in to the car's cigarette lighter after a 4 hours playback of an extended version of a LOTR movie.

As for my news' fix on the move, it comes with a TV tuner. I can catch my regular news programs anywhere, only if Natalie's not hogging it.

This mini 3D home theater system fits snugly in our 24 years old 2-doors Toyota AE86.

Also, it's a way to keep Natalie occupied with her favourite programs during a long journey.

What's more to say? It's small, it's perfect and it's all I need for complete portability.