Deb Bixler sent me an email the other day thanking me for running the contest. I also offered Deb the opportunity to post a promotional blog post here on Pixelheadonline. Deb Says:
Thank you Adam, for hosting the logo contest. It was fun to be a part of the competition. I enjoyed the interesting variation from my day-to-day internet work to spice things up. I am a speaker and presenter in the area of sales as well as healthy living.
The logo which I entered in the contest is posted at my sales and marketing site: www.CreateACashFlowShow.com . This is a network marketing resource center that is home-party specific. It is designed as a resource center for direct sales professionals.
I also have a blog that is geared toward healthy eating. At www.WowYouAreReallyLucky.com visitors learn how to boost their metabolism, lose weight and skills to keep the whole family healthy in this fast paced world. This video is a funny excerpt of my healthy cooking show “Now We’re Cooking” Thanks for including me in your awards even at the third place level.
Joel Comm just sent out an email inviting me to add him on Twitter . Joel’s post got me thinking about Twitter, and the developments that Twitter has undergone this year.
Looking at my Emperor Anton Twitter page, I notice it is a PR5. I am not sure how much if any “Google juice” it has, since tweets are only run 20 deep. So a link on there can only remain there as long as it is within the last twenty tweets. It may count for a little bit of Google juice, but probably not since any links in the tweet have a “no follow” tag. But I have seen tweets show up in the SERPS, so if you put a link to a desired site in a tweet and it shows up in the SERP’s, it could possibly result in a bit of traffic.
Twitter Update: Have You Overheard?
Overheard.it posts tweets on their site that are prefaced with “Overheard” or “OH”. Also, to be posted on the site tweets must be marked as “unprotected” or visible to the public.
After you post an OH tweet it will show up on Overheard within 15 to 20 minutes, unless you add them as a friend, then it should appear within 2 minutes.
So your tweets can be published on yet another site. I know lots of people post their tweets on their Facebook page, blog, Myspace, and Mybloglog to name a few. And now you can add Overheard to the mix.
Brilliant Marketing
Overheard is part of the Sidebar Network, which is a network of sites being developed by the web design company, Sidebar Creative. From what I can tell the Sidebar Network consists of:
Snitter, which is a desktop application from web developer Jonathan Snook, that lets you view your Twitter account. I am a little foggy on what Snitter is, but hopefully Jonathan or someone else from Sidebar will comment and give me an update. Watch Snitter’s Twitter Updates.
My Mile Marker, a site that lets you keep track of your gasoline consumption over a period of time and for numerous cars. Love the user agreement you must agree to when signing up for the service.
It’s a web site… it won’t destroy your computer. We’ll take your data and store it, but if we lose it, we’re sorry. We’ll probably sell aggregate data (but not your name or email address) to advertisers. We reserve the right to charge for this at some point. These terms might change in the future, but if they do, we’ll let you know. Cool?
This reminds me so much of all the Facebook apps that companies are developing in hopes of getting other Facebook user to use and become loyal customers. Give away something free and get some advertising in exchange.
If I were using Myspace, I would give Kudos to SidebarCreative for developing the Overheard site and further developing the Twitter advertising model, which even Joel Comm is starting to use.
To use the service while using Flickr, you must be signed it to your Flickr account, and then when viewing your photos, click the edit button at the top of one of your photos. You are then taken to Picnik where you see all the editing options that are available to you from a Picnik’s free account.
Its a pretty simple interface that includes such options as cropping, red eye reduction, color adjustments and more. There are plenty of advanced features available as well, but many more features can be obtained by upgrading your free account for a little less than 25 bucks a year. For someone who does not want to make the purchase of Photoshop, this might be an awesome tool to use for editing of photos. I will probably continue to use Photoshop, but I can also see myself using Picnik while using Flickr.
Also, while surfing the net, there is a Firefox addon, that lets you edit graphics online through the use of your right click menu. There is also an extension for IE if that is your browser of choice. Here is the Picnik tools page for a list of available photo editing tools .
In addition to Flickr, Picnik can also be used with Facebook, PhotoBucket, Picasa, and Webshots, and it’s API is available for others to use and develop for other applications.
What do You Think?
This is the first Internet based Photo Editing site that I have used or reviewed for that matter. While doing the review I was exposed to several other sites. Does anyone have any experience with any other photo editing sites? What do you think about PicniK?
Steven has shown that he is a master of using the Social media to build traffic with many of his posts becoming very popular on sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon, and Del.icio.us.
A couple of key tips that I would like to highlight from the post include:
Get to know the differences between the various social media sites.
Forrest also has a blog were he offers up some Photography tips. In his post, Vivid Color in Photoshop, Forrest relates some of the methods he uses to create vivid life like colors using both common sense and Photoshop.
Two of the common sense methods or maybe not so common sense methods for outdoor photography he suggests are:
Shoot outdoor photos in the hour before the sun is going down or in the “Golden Hour”.
Shoot just after it has rained.
Photoshop tips
Several Photoshop tools that he suggest using in the post are;
Using the Channel Mixer to fine tune the color saturation.
Using the Color Balance tool to create more natural colorization options.
In addition to telling how he adjusts photos manually, Forrest also offers some down loadable tools to automate the procedures that he discusses.
Below are before and after pictures of a Lake Pontchartrain Sunset I took on our New Orleans trip that I edited with Photoshop using Forrest’s techniques.
Before Editing
After Editing
Be sure to check out Forrest’s site for some tremendous photography resources as well as his photo galleries.
In addition to finding the Stumble Through Button, another feature of the StumbleUpon tool bar that my son and I have been using, is the feature that allows surfing by selecting a channel. The channel that we have been using is the online games channel which allows us to stumble some really cool online game sites.
For example, yesterday I came across Old Poppa Crappaud’s Mansion Impossible game, which is a real estate investing game where the objective of the game is in the shortest amount of time, to buy the million dollar mansion. This is done by buying and selling smaller pieces of real estate, which then enables you to increase your net worth so that you eventually will be able to afford the grand prize, the big mansion.
My Five Times
1.45 yrs 2 mo
2. 33yrs 3 mo
3.28 yrs 1mo
4.26 yrs 2 mo
5.24yrs 5mo
Real Estate Investing Game Details
Not including the big mansion, there are three different types of houses… the cheap, middle and high. The profits from each is a direct ratio of so the cheap houses will result in a little profit. But you start out with 100K, which is enough to buy one little house. You need to make a quick buy, and then sell and make enough profit to be able to buy two of the little properties, and then get enough profit so that you can buy the next level of real estate investment, and so on until you can afford to buy the big mansion. When you click on a house and you don’t have enough money, a balloon comes up saying “Too Much”. Within the levels of investment properties, I also noticed there are some that will start out at higher prices or lower prices. The lower priced properties of the next investment level are the ones to keep an eye out for, as these will allow you to move up to the next investment level that much quicker. Once you go up into the next level, don’t be tempted to go down into the lower levels for a deal, as these deals in the lower levels will waste your time, and prolong the amount of time until you can buy the big mansion.
Why I love this game
It introduces the concept of investing in real estate as a fun game.
It requires concentration.
Allows you to improve your time based score.
All you have to do is click the mouse.
To put it simply, it is a fun basic real estate investing game. Check it out and see if you can beat my scores. Let me know how you do. Oh, and if you don’t have the Stumbleupon tool bar installed, I strongly suggest you download, install, and start Stumbling. Click on the badge to the left to add me to your StumbleUpon network, I can still add a few friends, as I have not reached the 200 friend limit.
My StumbleUpon Page
