Category Archives: Reviews

Google Image Swirl Makes Finding the Perfect Image Easier

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Check out this great new tool from Google: Google Image Swirl.

Basically what it does is allows you to dial in images based on how close they are to the last image you selected.  For instance, you can search for cats and keep selecting cats until you find the exact one you’re looking for.  They take image properties into account, such as color and face composition.  I could be crazy, but it also looked like it was pulling out expressions.  Here’s an image of my experiment with cats:

Zac Johnson did a great writeup on how this is relevant to you and your Facebook ad campaigns.  I think it’s also relevant to the many other ad platforms as well.

Review: Make Money Online

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“Make Money Online” by John Chow with Michael Kwan was an interesting book.  I’ve been doing the online marketing thing for a little while now, so the book had a lot of things I already knew.  That being said, there is still a ton of value in the book, especially for new users.

The price of the book, a cool $10.85 on Amazon as of this post is great.  For that price, why the hell not buy it?  I learned a few tidbits that I didn’t already know, and I consider myself an expert, so I’m sure that if you’re just getting started you’ll learn something too.

Basically the book outlines the tools you need to make a blog, fill it with content, and then promote it.  You’ll find lists of useful links and tools in the appendices of the book as well.  There is a nice balance of physical real world tools, detailed steps, and concepts for success.

You aren’t going to get advanced PPC techniques with this book and you’re not going to get the big scoop on the affiliate game.   The book should really be called Make Money Online Blogging, because the book doesn’t really even touch the tip of the iceberg in terms of making money online.  It does do an excellent job of explaining how to make money from blogging though.

Overall, great book for the price.

Shoemoney System Review – Week 9

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I’ve been using the Shoemoney System for about nine weeks now.  I’ve seen all of the videos up to the ‘Facebook Ads Results’.  I personally love Facebook advertising and it was a great experience seeing some of the training videos, because I could pick up things I hadn’t known about.  I consider myself a fairly advanced user and was still able to walk away from the Facebook series with some new knowledge of FBML and Split Testing.  If you don’t know what those are, you really should be a member. Jeremy does a pretty great job teaching you about it.

Other points:

  • The $50 Facebook coupon was released finally in week nine. This means you should expect to see your coupons about two months after you start the system.  We all look forward to seeing the other $2450 in coupons.
  • I can’t comment on the quality of their support, because I haven’t needed to use them yet. I’ll addend this post if I do need to though.
  • In week 9 I’ve seen 27 Videos. Of those videos, I found that seven were useless (i.e. they were how to sign up for something), 4 were entertaining but not really educational (i.e. interviews and tours), 3 were great for beginners, seven were great for novice/intermediates, and five were advanced.  Overall, I’d say the best customer of the Shoemoney is a beginner to intermediate user.

Looking through the comments from the last review I did, some questions came up that I’d like to answer here:

  • Do you recommend this course for a newbie? Yes.
  • Does anyone know if the people that were allowed to join yesterday [Week 7] are already caught up to the people that joined on day 1? No.  The content is slowly released over time, so people that joined on day one will always be ahead (until they finish).
  • …The ShoeMoney System is now permanently open from Jeremy, I thought it was a exclusive program only for 500 student[s]… The first 500 people were just a test group.  I’m sure he doesn’t want to limit his potential to just 500 people.
  • I am seriously thinking about joining the Shoemoney system but not too sure whether it is actually any good at teaching about Adsense? In week 9, Adsense hasn’t been covered.  If you’re looking for something specifically for Adsense, this may not be the program for you.
  • Do you guys have any idea how to cancel you shoemoney system account? I can find the freaking cancel-button…

Here you go dude. Its all handled by Clickbank:

The ShoeMoney System billing is handled by ClickBank. Unfortunately we have no way to initiate a refund to you from our end, but it’s very easy for you to initiate the refund request and get the funds credited back to your bank account in 72 hours.

All you have to do is go to http://www.clickbank.com/orderDetail.htm

Entetr your Order number (this will be in the email you received from ClickBank when you purchased the product) along with your email address and click ‘Submit’

Then follow the step-by-step instructions for requesting a refund.

  • So I guess it is not possible to just get the whole thing, all 12 months, right away by paying all the money up front? True.  You’ll need to wait for the videos to be released.  This may change in the future though.

Have more questions?

Ask them below.  We’ll get them answered for you!

Great Improvements to the Shoemoney System

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Ok, so I have done two other reviews here and here.  They sum up week one and then a recap in week 3.  There have also been a ton of comments with user feedback.  Thank you to everyone that commented.

Make money online with Shoemoney.

Unlike the first three weeks, I am VERY happy with how the last few weeks have turned out.  We went through the Arbitrage series, and I’ve been excited to be working on that.  I’ve had mixed results – especially with international people (especially from Nigeria) trying to phish my auctions.  I’ll probably cover that in a separate blog post.

I talked to Jeremy for a little while Monday about the issues I’ve been having with eBay as well as shooting the shit about some of the other stuff in the Shoemoney System.

The biggest improvement they’ve made over previous weeks is the addition of micro videos that act much like a glossary for new users.  They focused on core training and there are no longer “how to sign up for x” videos.  I think that added a lot of value to the product overall.

Changing the whole system like that makes a huge statement about their ability to change based on the input from the users – as well as attesting to the back end support that comes with the product.

Let me cover my points from previous posts now:

  1. I still have no coupons – After talking with Jeremy, I understand that he’ll be rolling out coupons with each section that covers that particular coupon type.  If I’m not mistaken, Facebook will be first.  That makes sense.  He has agreements with the companies that provided the coupons that keep him from giving them all out at once.  Once again, that makes sense.
  2. I received my sign up gift! – I got Crush It and a Shoemoney shirt.  I’m reading Crush It now.
  3. The podcasts are still old – I really wish he’d either do more shows, or maybe pick out the irrelevant content.  I have heard – as of Friday’s webinar – that he’ll be making content available via podcast, but he needs to clear up some legal information regarding downloaded content vs. streaming.  I suppose he’ll need to work out some piracy protection as well.
  4. The videos finally taught me some things I didn’t already know – I think this is the biggest point.  I knew the arbitrage stuff in concept, but wasn’t sure of the details to work it all out.  I’m glad I could see a specific example – even if results aren’t typical.  I know how to do Facebook ads as well, but after talking with Jeremy, I hear there will be some hidden diamonds in there.
  5. Their support still isn’t very good, but I guess Jeremy isn’t very happy with them either.  He’s going to bring it in house like Shoemoney Tools, which should make responses MUCH better.

Overall, I’m very impressed this week – especially since I was able to work directly with Jeremy to solve some very specific problems.  I think everyone interested in making money online should try this product first – especially since it’s only $197 a month and has a 60 day money back guarantee.  Their return rate is also only 6% as of this post.  That’s amazing!

The Shoemoney System just opened up to new users again today, so if you want to sign up, check them out by clicking here.

Shoemoney System: Third Week Review

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Ok, so this is an update post to my original Shoemoney System Review.

First of all, I still haven’t learned anything new.  There is an eBay arbitrage set of videos coming up that I think I MAY learn something from, but still in week three, I have nothing more than when I started.

Hitting some of my original points with followup:

  1. I still have no coupons.
  2. I still have no sign up gift. I did follow up with them many times and they took my address.  I haven’t actually gotten anything though.  I know I’m in the top 100 now though.  That’s nice.
  3. The podcasts are still old.
  4. The videos still don’t teach me anything I didn’t already know. I think I may learn something, but I haven’t yet…

Here is a new point:

  • Their support isn’t very good. I’ve asked a few questions, and gotten some spectacularly canned answers.  The direct access to Jeremy is WORSE than just @replying him on Twitter and NOT being a member.

I’ve had some ideas for how videos should be released and I intend to share those with Jeremy or his team at some point, but I doubt they’ll care to listen.  Maybe they will though.  My big thought is that the user should get a video credit released every 2 days and be able to select from ALL of the videos which they want to see – that way advanced users can just skip the easy stuff like “How to sign up for Gmail?”

Other reviews I’ve found:

Negative

I have not found a positive review yet, but if you know if a REAL one, please let me know.

Positive

  • Neil Beck’s Shoemoney Learner – Of all of the reviews, this guy is a beginner and finds the system extremely useful.  I found this review the best of all so far.  Great job Neil. (Added 2/22/2010)

What are your thoughts?

Review: The Shoemoney System is Meh for Advanced Users.

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I’ve been checking out the Shoemoney System for the last few days, and I haven’t learned anything that I didn’t already know.  I’m hoping that it ramps up soon though.  The videos are basic basic basic, but I’m sure he’s just leveling the playing field for other users.

The sales letter when you first sign up seemed long and annoying.  Why not just do a buy button at the top?  I knew I wanted to try it, but still had to sift through all of that stuff.

The videos and coupons that he advertises are released slowly over time, so you can’t just buy a month, watch and download everything and then cancel (shucks).

It looks like the only complete content is the old podcasts that Jeremy did as Net Income and The ShoeMoney Show on Webmaster Radio, but I’ve heard all of those already.  It would have been cool if the did the work to edit them down into something more to the point.

I also haven’t been impressed by the promise that the first 100 signups for the system get a special bonus, but it’s been like a week and a half and we still don’t know who we hare.  I’m fairly sure I’m in the first 100, because I signed up in 3 minutes, but who knows.

Unfortunately, content is released so slowly that I don’t really have much to say.  One of the videos everyone can watch, because it’s public, and the other three are about things I know very well: setting up a Google account, what affiliate marketing is, and setting up a ClickBank account.

I also noticed that many of the users complained about the same things in the week 1 webinar, so I don’t feel completely alone with this.

My conclusion?  I’ll give it a little more time before I completely judge…

Google Maps Adds Webcam View

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picture-1I was just checking out the new webcam feature on Google Maps.  This seems awesome.  You can really get a level of detail about a place that you just couldn’t before.  It would be really cool if the would mix this with something similar to Microsoft’s Seadragon software and synthisize photos in three dimensions too.  I’m sure that’s coming down the pipe.  Anyways, check out the image to the right or check it out yourself.  You don’t actually see video on the map (because I’m sure it would be a bandwidth hog), but it links to the cam and shows the last cached image from the cam.

Just go to Google Maps and look up a location.  Make sure you click “More” and select the checkbox for Webcams.  Do you have a webcam on Google Maps yet?  Post a link in the comments.

What do you think they’ll add to their maps feature next?

A review of 2008.

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Here are some of the more popular blog posts that I made in 2008:

Hands down, the most popular post I made was How to Make Fire in Photoshop.

In March, I made a controversial post about Macs, PCs, and Linux.  I should probably do a follow up on this.

I found a solution to my Outlook / Google Calendar synchronization issues.  Actually Google found a solution.  Thanks Google.

I listed my top ten free applications.  I plan to do another version of this post in 2009.

I made a few submissions to shirt.woot derbies, but never won.  I have no problem admitting that the competition over there is pretty stiff, and the technical ability of some of the artists surpasses my own by quite a bit.

In December, I started doing contests for shirt.woot shirts.  I’ll probably change this up in the future to offer other things.  This just seemed like a great place to start.

I know I also did some things wrong.

By far the biggest thing I regret doing in 2008 was taking a break from blogging from May to September.  I think that really hurt my readership, and I’m going to try and refrain from doing that at all this year.  My blog also lacked focus.  I’m still having trouble breaking my topics apart.  Right now I think my lack of focus leaves readers wondering what I’m talking about half the time.  I’m really passionate about Woot, but a lot of internet marketers probably don’t care, and when I’m talking about internet marketing and programming, Wooters probably get bored.  Interesting perplexity.  I will try to address this in 2009 as well.

I have some pretty exciting plans for 2009 that I will follow up on later.

Saving Bandwidth with Google Ajax Libraries API

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The News

I first heard about the new Google AJAX Libraries API from Jeremy Schoemaker’s blog.  He mentions using it to reduce WordPress bandwidth, but really it can be used to reduce bandwidth in most AJAX based web development environments.

The Exciting Part

I persoanlly use prototype the most, and I’m extremely excited that I can use their libraries instead of uploading my own for each site.  I’m especially excited that calling specific version numbers is possible.  This makes upgrading a code set extremely simple, especially if you call the code version as a variable at the beginning of your code.

Realistically your javascript code is probably one of the lightest weight parts of your code, but every little bit helps, especially if you’re serving a large amount of users every month.

Optional Settings

Script Compression

I think one of the greatest optional settings for all of the scripts you can load is compression.  It’s not available for all of the APIs, but it is for most.  What it does is remove all of the whitespace from the API to reduce file size for the end user – increasing speed.  If you mix that with something like the javascript compiling on Google Chrome and you’ll have lightning fast AJAX applications.

No CSS

You can optionally remove the CSS from the scripts you’re remotly loading, which allows you to do one of three things: load the default CSS, load your own CSS, or not load the CSS at all.

Resources

WordPress.org: Google AJAX Libraries API Plugin – This plugin uses the GALA whereever possible in your WordPress installation.

Google AJAX APIs Blog – This is a great place to go if this really iterests you and you’ll be using this code regularly.  They’re always adding new scripts to the API, so if you don’t see the one you want yet, keep an eye on their blog.

Google Image Search Gets Upgraded

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google_logoGoogle image search has always been a great tool for finding images of things, but it has never been great for really dialing down what you want based on the image composition.  They’ve recently added the ability to dial down your search by image type, which is great for finding specific things that you want.  For instance: I can search for line drawings of vermont.  Interestingly that search brings up a lot of maps.  Maybe in the future, they will add “maps” as a criteria.

Comparison

Google image search still isn’t as robust as something like iStockPhoto, but I think that is probably the culprit of some sort of technical difference in their systems (i.e. Google is indexing images and iStockPhoto is all user submitted images).  Because iStockPhoto has user submitted entries, they can enter meta data that Google just can’t derive from just the image.

Capabilities

Right now, you can filter image searches by news content, faces, clip art, line drawings, and photo content.  They are using photo recognition and search data to add additional meta data to the images.  For instance, the news content option checks the surrounding text around the images for meta data that pertains to news.  They can use photo recognition algorithms for recognizing facial structures in the images.

The Future?

I’m hoping maybe someday they will add features similar to iStockPhoto like color recognition and content layout.  Color layout is something that I’ve been looking forward to for a while now.  It’d make it really easy to pick up images that go with a specific theme in a website design or something to that effect.