Wednesday, October 3, 2007

MyCommitment.org - Pledge to make a difference President Clinton recently announced MyCommitment.org and urges you to pledge to make a difference. Make a commitment to change something - big or small - and connect with others who share your vision for change. I have been inspired by all the things President Clinton and Vice-President Gore have been doing to help our world after they left office and I am happy to pass along the word about the latest iniative of the Clinton Global Iniative, a project of the Clinton Foundation. From the MyCommitment.org About page: MyCommitment.org seeks to: * Inspire Change. Provide information highlighting some of the world's biggest challenges, raise awareness and motivate others to take action. * Build Community. Connect people with others who share the same vision for change and help them create networks to put plans into motion. * Facilitate Action. Offer tools for visitors to make commitments to act and track their progress and results. * Strengthen Engagement. Encourage citizen action around America and throughout the world. MyCommitment.org builds on the success of the Clinton Global Initiative, a project of the Clinton Foundation, which has already inspired more than 600 commitments to action from some of the world's top thinkers and government and business leaders. Learn more about CGI member commitments. Launched in 2007, MyCommitment.org reflects President Clinton's dedication to promoting citizen service. Throughout his life, President Clinton has met inspiring individuals and organizations taking innovative and unique approaches to solving some of the world's biggest challenges. These encounters also led him to write his second book, GIVING: How Each of Us Can Change the World, which was released in September 2007. What will you do to help make the world a better place? Act on your dream! JD 9:29:43 AM    comment []

Sunday, September 23, 2007

I have been having problems updating this site I've been having some problems updating this site for a bit over a month. When I started using this new computer a couple of months ago, I installed Radio Userland (as suggested) in my Applications folder using my Administrator account. But, I was doing all my work in my jd account, and Radio Userland does not operate as most Mac OS X applications do. I was having to switch between my jd account for everything else and my Administrator account for blogging to this site. That was unworkable. So, I reinstalled the program in my jd account and started a process of searching through the databases and updating all paths and other configuration elements. It took a long time to get it working again. In early September, I finally managed to get it working so I could create and maintain my static sites, such as JohnDilbeck.com and GeorgiaDragRacing.com. But, I still couldn't blog. Well, that's not specifically true. I could blog, but it wouldn't upload the necessary files to my server. Finally, after a lot of searching and thinking, I found the problem. I changed one configuration item deep in the database and it started uploading the entire site from back in late 2005. This will take some time because of my slow dial-up connection, but it's upstreaming steadily as I type this. I really like Radio Userland, even though it can be difficult to use at times. It blogs right out of the box, but that's not my primary use. I have lots of blogs. I mainly use Radio Userland to manage my large static sites. I can create a new database for every site and store the page data in one place, the templates in another, and things like CSS files in still another. Once it is set up, it makes it easy to maintain large sites. Some of my sites have multiple sections and I use a different template for each section. Currently, I'm updating JohnDilbeck.com to a totally different design and it's easy to update a section at a time. If what I just did fixes the upstreaming and blogging features (and it looks like it will), I can finally turn my attention away from maintaining the tools and back to maintaining my sites. Even with the two or three months of work it has taken to get this operating smoothly, again, I would not switch tools. Radio Userland has been a very effective and efficient system that I have used for years. It's not for everyone, but after all the years I have spent learning to program computers, manage databases, and do all the other things, it's nice to have a system that is programmable and based on a database on my desktop. I look forward to updating my sites and getting focused on marketing for the fall and winter buying season. I just finished updating my art store where you can purchase posters, fine art, and photos from art.com and books and other products from Amazon.com. I'm testing a new system for marketing related items being auctioned on eBay, but I haven't decided if I want to keep using it or not. It's nice to get past this final roadblock and back on track. Act on your dream! JD 8:12:26 PM    comment []

Friday, August 31, 2007

How does learning style apply to copywriting and marketing? A Brief Jolt Of Intense Pain, And Then. Have you ever figured out your own personal learning style? We all have one, you know. This inconvenient fact is the bane of educators everywhere… because the teaching strategy that does so well creating a love of reading in Suzy, also puts Timmy to sleep (and makes him hate books). [John Carlton's Big Damn Blog] If you want your marketing efforts to be successful, eventually, you need to find your target market and communicate with them. It's difficult to intentionally try to connect with fewer people, but it''s necessary. You will never succeed if you try to sell everything to everybody. I know from painful experience that this is true. John Carlton writes about learning and teaching styles and how he intentionally uses his marketing methods not to attract more people, but to separate his target market from the rest and to talk to them. It will be worth a few minutes of your time to go read his article. Act on your dream! JD 5:31:25 AM    comment []

Monday, August 13, 2007

Kevin Anderson has passed on I won't try to tell you about Kevin Anderson. Others knew him better and will tell the story with more knowledge and feeling than I can. Kevin was a true online marketing pioneer and the founder of Cognigen Networks. Jack Spirko wrote about the loss of Kevin Anderson on his blog, and some of the top Cognigen agents are expressing their feelings about Kevin and all he did for us. If you do anything related to online marketing, you should read Jack's article. If your company offers replicated websites for affiliates, you should read the article. Kevin, you will be missed by lots and lots of good people. Don't wait to act on your dream! JD 9:15:17 PM    comment []

Saturday, August 11, 2007

APSense - A new business social networking site For the last few months, I've been looking at quite a few social networking sites. Some are friendly to business and others are not. Each has its place. I really don't have a lot of time for just socializing, but when I do, I tend to go to MySpace. I like to combine my socializing with work, so I'm continuing to look for business social networking sites that offer a variety of features for meeting new people, talking to friends, advertising my products and services, blogging, and joining groups of like-minded people. There are a couple I'm almost ready to recommend, but not quite yet. I want to spend more time on them before I make up my mind. I'm not going to recommend something to you that I'm not going to use myself. Today, I ran across a business social networking site I'd never seen, and I found it while surfing one of my favorite traffic exchanges. Take a look at APSense.com and see what you think. You can join for free and have almost full access to all the features of the site. Here's part of how they present their service: Apsense in a Nutshell... Apsense is a social network where people come together to share their business. We enable users to share their business through networking, discovering and creating quality business content. The development of new networks and constant exchange of information is happening everyday at Apsense. We are changing the way people build their businesses online. Meet other business individuals... In its purest nature Apsense is a web 2.0 enabled social network. We promote the exchange of business networks by providing tools for users to easily communicate, create interest groups and even build their own private social network. Ultimately our goal is to make it simple for you to connect with other business individuals. Find valuable business contents... All contents on Apsense, from business blogs to business discussions to product and service listings are collectively rated by the users (that would be you). Top rated contents are pushed to the top of our content listings so you can find the most popular and trusted business information quickly. So if you are looking for valuable business information online to help you build your business, don't waste time searching for it anywhere else! Create your own business contents... While all types of contents on Apsense are being viewed and rated by the users, these same type of contents can also be created by you. Why create your own contents? Everyday millions of people are searching for contents related to your business by using search engines and web 2.0 enabled websites like Apsense. So by creating your contents on Apsense, you are enabling millions of people to find contents about your business. For us, content is your business interests, your products & services, your business experiences, and anything else you would like to share about you and your business. I've only had a couple of hours to look over the site, and I'm impressed with it. I've joined a couple of groups, started one of my own, started building my business website on Apsense, and will be creating a new blog there in the next day or so. Of course, my group is about Site Build It and I urge you to come join APSense.com, add me as your contact, and we can help each other present our businesses and offers. Now, if you're a relative beginner to this sort of thing, I want to ask you, please, do not spam everyone with your advertising. There are places where advertising is appropriate, and places where it isn't. Get to know people. Participate in the discussions. Learn something new. Teach someone something you've learned. Don't just start posting ads everywhere! That's not what social networking (business or not) is all about. Have some class, don't be crass! Come on over and join APSense.com. It's free, and you can take your time to decide if you like it or not. There are a couple of upgrade options, but frankly, I haven't even looked at them or the affiliate program, yet. I'm too interested in the system they've set up, and too involved in learning how to use it, to even think of any of the ways to spend or earn money there. If you do join and add me as a contact, please don't spam me. I want you as a friend, and not someone I would rather hide from, or block. Let me know what you think about Apsense and other social networking sites. Are they effective and a good way to spend your time? Or, do you think they are a big time and energy drain? Act on your dream! JD 11:58:28 AM    comment []

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Tony D. Clark - Hierarchy of the Successfully Self-Employed Hierarchy of the Successfully Self-Employed. Maslow had his hierarchy of needs. The self-employed have our hierarchy of success. In this series, I'm going to cover each of the levels, look at how you move up the hierarchy, and explain why you'd want to. The levels are: Freelancer (physiological needs) Contractor (safety and social needs) Expert (esteem needs) Guru (self-actualization) [Success from the Nest] I spent some time exploring the Success from the Nest blog, today, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The information that is presented is serious and helpful, but it is presented with a light-hearted sense of humor and some delightful cartoons. If you are interested in being self-employed, and in getting the most for your efforts, I think you should read this multi-part series on the Hierarchy of the Successfully Self-Employed. Act on your dream! JD 4:44:08 PM    comment []

Monday, July 30, 2007

Top 15 things I have learned about affiliate marketing I have learned several lessons that I think may be valuable to anyone who reads this. You may agree or disagree, but at least give it some thought. 1. Anything that is a good value today will be a good value a year from now. 2. The more the hype, the less the value or longevity. 3. If it has a deadline, run away, don't walk, run - in a zig-zag pattern. 4. Don't send your valuable prospect away on first contact. Try to get their contact information so you can follow-up - yes, build your list. (I wish I'd done more of this.) 5. If you can't understand the compensation plan after reading it twice, you may never understand it, so maybe it is best to avoid it. 6. Always try to get residual income rather than one-off commissions. 7. Try to get life-time customers. 8. If more than five people email you about something the same day, avoid it. 9. Spillover is a myth. It may happen now and then, but don't depend upon it. 10. Earning money - no matter how you do it - is work. It takes longer than you think and it takes more creativity and effort. Nobody will do your work for you. 11. Don't spend more than you can afford. Define your budget and stick with it. If your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall. 12. Don't go into debt to try to make more money. Pour a percentage of your revenue back into tools and marketing. As a result of this, I'm spending more on marketing every month than I made the first two years of online marketing. But, it's all a percentage of income. I have no debt and I intend to keep it that way. 13. It takes a long time to start earning money with online marketing (unless you are very lucky or very good at what you do). It took months for me to earn my first commission check, and several more months before I got my second one. Now, I get checks from several companies every month. It did not happen overnight, but it can be done with perseverance, even if you make a lot of mistakes along the way. 14. Don't pay attention to how much money someone is claiming to earn. There is a huge difference between gross and net. 15. Help others grow and advance, don't take advantage of them just to get their money. Agree? Disagree? Let's talk. Act on your dream! JD 7:05:46 AM    comment []

Are you willing to fail your way to success? How Many Failures Are You Willing To Endure?. ...how many failures are you willing to endure before you decide it can't be done?... ...I'll tell you when I'll stop. When it's done.... ...If you don't fail and fail a lot you probably aren't stretching yourself. You aren't creating, inventing or designing extraordinary results. Failing, and adjusting your actions and failing again is how success happens... [Achieve IT!] The article that I've excerpted above is specifically about Brad Isaac's experience in creating an installer for his Achieve It! goal setting application. More generally, however, it relates to all experiences where we are working to accomplish a difficult goal and keep running into obstacles. We have to decide whether we are going to accept failure by quitting, or if we are going to persist in defeating each obstacle until we find a way to succeed. If you aren't failing at least some of the time, you aren't reaching outside of your comfort zone. In many cases, you only achieve the success you desire after failing again and again in the pursuit of your goal. After each failure, you have to analyze the results you got as contrasted to what you wanted. Then, create a new plan that takes into account your previous actions and results, and try a new, different way to accomplish what you want. Along the way, you'll experience failures, but you'll also experience incremental successes. Every little step takes you that much closer to the results you want. Keep what works and expand on your little successes until you reach your goal. Don't be discouraged if you don't succeed the first time. Learn the lesson from that failure, modify your actions and try again. If you insist on success and won't settle for anything less, you'll get to where you want to go. Act on your dream! JD 6:18:50 AM    comment []

How does urgency impact completing your tasks and accomplishing your goals? The Urgency of Considering Urgency ...One method of urgency control focuses at the immediate level on prioritizing your to-do items in your daily task list based on both importance and urgency and then sticking with the list until it is completed.... ...[another] method is to schedule date specific/urgent items primarily on the calendar as appointments as opposed to the to-do list, creating a time for the item to be accomplished.... ...When you put the bottom up and top down approaches together, you see that it is the combination of planning and execution that deter the negative effects of urgent but unimportant tasks. Planning allows you to create a schedule to prevent tasks from becoming urgent, and proper discretion in the execution phase allows you to decide which urgencies are actually important. Other urgencies should not disrupt the plan.... [Dumb Little Man - Tips for Life] You've done it. I've done it. We've all done it. We create a nice, tidy to-do list and dutifully start to finish each task and check it off as complete. Eventually, and almost always before completing all the tasks on our list, something else comes up that pulls us away. Sometimes it's an emergency. Other times it just feels more urgent. How does our sense of urgency affect our decision making? Can we incorporate urgency into how we prioritize our to-do list and how we plan to accomplish the most urgent tasks? Does urgency equal importance? Are there different degrees of urgency? These are some of the questions considered in The Urgency of Considering Urgency on the Dumb Little Man blog. Time management is critical if you are going to accomplish all the small goals that add up to making your dream a reality. If you schedule your tasks by both urgency and importance, you have a better chance of finishing the tasks you need to accomplish each day, and that increases the probability that you will accomplish your major goals. I've only excerpted small parts of the article. I urge you to read The Urgency of Considering Urgency and see if you can identify ways to help you better schedule how you accomplish your goals without getting sidetracked all the time. While you're there, look around the Dumb Little Man blog. I think you'll find some good information there. Act on your dream! JD 4:39:03 AM    comment []

Friday, July 27, 2007

NeoOffice - a great replacement for Microsoft Office on Mac OS X News: Dumping Microsoft Office for an alternative suite. Interested in dumping Microsoft Office but don't know where to find a replacement? Here's a roundup of some possible contenders, ranging from software from Apple to software that's available for free. [Macworld] This article reminded me that I just faced this decision and installed NeoOffice last week. Now, to be perfectly honest, I wasn't replacing Microsoft Office. I quit using Microsoft products over ten years ago and didn't upgrade after Word version 5 for the Mac, several years before. I've been using Microsoft products seemingly forever. I started with Word version 1.0 on the Mac and I used Microsoft Office on both Mac and PC for quite some time, since Windows 1.0 and Microsoft Office 1.0. I even wrote a book using Word 5 for Mac that included table of contents and an index, so I feel like I know the product, even if I haven't used any of the most recent versions. For most of the last ten years, ClarisWorks and AppleWorks have offered everything I needed, and since I own my own business, I'm not tied to any corporate dictates about the software I have to use. The only problems I faced were people who sent me documents in .doc format, which I could not read and didn't feel much of a need to read. If they sent the files as Rich Text Format (.rtf) files, then I could import most of them into AppleWorks - at least well enough to read. I was perfectly content until last month, but then my needs changed. I have plans to write a variety of reports and short ebooks over the coming months. I spend a lot of time researching various things and I'm going to write about them and make the reports and ebooks available - some free and some paid. In the past, I would have written in PageMaker and produced the PDF files by printing to the included Acrobat distiller. With my new iMac, I can no longer use PageMaker, so I had to look at different solutions. As you may already know, it is easy to print to PDF from just about all Mac OS X applications, but I discovered something that was very surprising. It seems that the applications I had available could create active hyperlinks in the docments, but those hyperlinks would not be active when I printed the documents to a PDF file. I tried AppleWorks, and, while the PDF showed the correct words styled with underlines and blue text, the links were not active; I could not click on the text and go to the URL in my designated browser. I downloaded Nisus Express with the same results. I tried Voodoo Pad with the same results. While researching the problem, I found on a forum (don't remember which one) that Word would create PDF files with active hyperlinks. That wasn't an option for me. So, if Word would do the job, I wondered if there was an alternative that would do what I wanted. I'd been following OpenOffice for awhile, and I was willing to install X11 and OpenOffice if it would do the job. While researching this, I ran across a project I'd never heard of: NeoOffice. NeoOffice takes the OpenOffice code and turns it into a Mac OS X application, complete with easy installation, and the Mac look and feel. Best of all, it wasn't related to Microsoft and it was free. The trouble was, however, that it was a 145 MB download, and on my slow dial-up connection, that just wasn't feasible. I mentioned this on the NeoOffice forum and several people offered to burn a CD and send it to me. I accepted an offer from one very generous person and a few days later, when the CD arrived, I was able to install and start using NeoOffice in less than an hour. The NeoOffice team used to ship CDs, but discontinued doing so due to lack of demand. Linboo.com had been shipping the NeoOffice CD, but when I tried their site, it was offline. I didn't know if it would come back or not. Since then, it has, and LinBoo ships a variety of Unix and Linux CDs, including NeoOffice 2.1 and OpenOffice. If I'd waited a day or so, I could have ordered directly from them. I am perfectly happy with NeoOffice 2.1. It does exactly what I want to do. At first, I was really disappointed. I tested a short report with multiple hyperlinks, and, when I printed it to PDF, I got the same results I'd been getting with all the other applications I tried. The resulting PDF had what looked like links (underlined and blue), but they were not active. So, apparently, the fault lies with the Print to PDF feature of Mac OS X. I would say that not creating active hyperlinks is a rather major shortcoming of the programming. I'm surprised that Apple hasn't fixed this problem. However, when I went looking through the NeoOffice menus, I noticed "Export to PDF." That sounded promising. Instead of printing to PDF, I chose to export to PDF and that made all the difference. The resulting PDF file has real, active hyperlinks. Why is this so important? If I were writing a short report of 10 pages or less, I would have to edit the document and print to PDF. Then, I'd have to load my full version of Acrobat (version 4), add hyperlinks to the PDF in the appropriate places, and then re-save the PDF report. For a one-off version, this is not much of a problem. However, I intend to update these reports and ebooks as it becomes necessary, and I don't intend to go throught this process over and over. I should be able to modify the report and produce an updated PDF with all the links in place. Now, with the NeoOffice export to PDF command, I can do this exactly how I want. Perhaps I'm getting lazier as I get older, or maybe I'm finally learning about this "work smarter, not harder" concept. I tried a variety of different links of varying complexity and all of them worked as desired when I exported the document to PDF. I've tried exporting word processing docs (Writer) and spreadsheets (Calc) and the resulting PDFs were exactly what I wanted. Now, I am not a corporate power user and have no need for probably 99% of what NeoOffice provides, but now I have the perfect application for creating reports, ebooks, and even books with tables of contents and indexes. A side benefit - that some of my friends may appreciate more than I will - is that I can open .doc files directly and they don't have to send the files to me in .rtf format. I still serve on a nonprofit committee that makes small seed grants and matching grants for fundraisers to small grassroots nonprofits in western North Carolina, and the standard format for sharing information by nonprofits is Microsoft Word. If you have a broadband connection, you can downlowad NeoOffice for free, or you can get a CD from LinBoo.com. If you don't use a Mac, you may want to look at OpenOffice.org or purchase a CD with OpenOffice from LinBoo. I've had no problem with NeoOffice and I spent half-a-day putting the various modules through their paces. The only thing that feels weird is that NeoOffice opens all the modules in one integrated whole and that feels more like AppleWorks than Microsoft Office. As long as your computer has enough RAM, it shouldn't be a problem. Right now, I have Radio Userland, TextWrangler, Safari, Preview, and NeoOffice all running in a Mac with 512 MB of RAM. I'm happy with NeoOffice, and I recommend it to you if you want to dump Microsoft Office. Will it do everything you need or want? I don't know. You'll have to test this for yourself, but the cost is right. There is very little work or risk involved in trying it for yourself. Act on your dream! JD 6:47:04 AM    comment []

Friday, July 20, 2007

Some thoughts about Seth Godin, Squidoo.com, and the alleged Google slap I've been listening to Seth Godin for a few years. His books, blogs and articles have offered good information and he followed up with Squidoo.com last year. I started building lenses at Squidoo back when it was still in beta and I really like the idea of Squidoo and the tools it offers. I'll be the first to admit that some of my lenses are much better than others. I try to do the best I can, but it's obvious that I'm much better at technical stuff than I am at writing. I'm still trying to improve the quality of everything I do, but sometimes I miss the target. Now and then, I feel really good about something I do, especially when it helps other people. An example of this is my Site Build It Webmasters lens where I'm promoting Site Build It and the people who use the service to build their sites. Other times, I don't feel so good about something. If I can't make it better, eventually I'll delete it and consign it to the bit bucket of failed projects. I have a lot more failed projects than successful ones, but I keep trying to improve the ones that work and to try new things as I discover or create them. Examples of failed projects include my attempt to create a success cooperative, a favorite travel destinations group of sites, and others that have disappeared from cyberworld. One thing I never do is try to mislead anyone or use any technical tricks to send you somewhere you don't want to go. Never. I know how to do it, but I won't. The closest I ever come to that is when I use domains and subdomains to redirect to other sites. I don't consider that misleading. For example, I use http://sbi.linktodetails.com to redirect to my affiliate page at http://buildit.sitesell.com/sellmoreonline.html. I don't think that's misleading. Do you? Sometimes I register a domain and point it to another site. One example of this is http://GetAFreeMarketingSite.com which points to my page at LinkScout. Another example is http://BuildBiggerDownlines.com which points to one of my Squidoo lenses. I register these domains to make it easier to market the destinations. I think it is obvious from the domain names what types of sites you'll go to when you click them or type them in from one of my business cards. Apparently, however, Squidoo has been having a lot of trouble with people building lenses that tricked people into going where they didn't want to go or seeing things they didn't want to see. I don't know any specific instances or examples, but I can imagine. I know I'd be angry if I went to a lens that said it was about one thing only to find that it was about something totally different - or that it redirected me to another site that was totally unrelated to what I thought I'd see. So, Squidoo has made some recent changes to try and get a handle on the problem. It has been theorized that Google penalized Squidoo because of these low-quality and spam lenses. Someone called that the "Google slap" and the name stuck. I've seen the rankings of my lenses drop in Google's search results, but now some of my lenses are starting to regain their former rankings. There has been a lot of speculation and many people have started writing their Squidoo obituaries. I don't think this is a major problem and I believe Seth and the rest of the Squidoo team will get past this blip in their growth. Instead of speculating, the Searchingdot.com blog posted Interview with Seth Godin on The Squidoo Slap. Nobody can speak with authority on what Google actually did, but Seth can speak for Squidoo, and he did so in the interview. I still believe that Squidoo is one of the best on-ramps to the Information Superhighway and I believe it is worth your time to build lenses and write about what you know and love. As I'm hearing repeatedly, "keep it real." Don't try to trick people and don't try to game the system. These tactics will always work against you in the long run. I don't know about you, but I keep a list of the people who have tricked, scammed, spammed, and misdirected me and I'll never do business with them - no matter how well their sales pages are written. Conversely, I also keep a list of people who offer great advice, useful information, and outstanding value. Those are the people I'll work with again and again. Maybe I'll write about that second list one of these days. One of the people on that second list is Ken Evoy. I've been buying products and services from Ken for years and I'm a better person because of it. He has perfected the under-promise, over-deliver marketing position. He, and his team, developed Site Build It! and I believe this is the best way to develop, build and market your online business. I mention this because Ken has been recommending to us that we should be careful about linking to Squidoo and the lenses on the system. His position is that Google holds you responsible for the sites to which you link. If it is true that Google has devalued Squidoo, then by linking to the site you may hurt your site's ranking. I pay attention to what Ken says, because he is right much more than he is wrong. This time, while respecting his caveat, I'm going to continue linking to Squidoo and some of the lenses there. I still think it is worth your effort to create Squidoo lenses and offer information about what you know and love. Just be aware that other people, some of whom I admire greatly, disagree. I'm always open to advice and suggestions. Act on your dream! JD 7:03:54 AM    comment []

Monday, July 16, 2007

Site Build It lens has been updated I've been updating my Site Build It! lens on an almost daily basis for the last couple of weeks. More and more Site Build It! webmasters are adding links to their lenses and websites, are ranking the page, and have posted their own comments on the guest book at the bottom of the page. I want to thank each of them for participating and I am more than happy to link to their lenses and websites. I find Site Build It! webmasters to be a special group of people. Most of them are friendly, helpful, and well-informed. That's one of the free benefits of being a Site Build It! customer. Want to learn more about SBI? Take about three or four minutes and watch this interview with Ken Evoy: (Open this video in a new window) For more interesting, educational, and entertaining videos produced by satisfied SBI customers, see I Love Site Build It! Act on your dream! JD 6:41:40 AM    comment []

Finally - A way to convert Microsoft Publisher PUB files I had a client who wants a website and all his documents are in Publisher PUB format. I searched for over a week to find a way to access the information in those files. Finally, I found a free online service that can convert PUB files (and several other formats) into PDF files. Go to www.pdfonline.com/convert_pdf.asp and upload the PUB file. Fill in a name for the new PDF file and enter your email address, and, in a few minutes, the PDF will be emailed to you. When I downloaded the PDF file in my email, I used the Preview application included with Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) to extract the text and graphics. I used the Grab selection tool to copy the graphics on the brochure and save as GIF files. This took a matter of seconds. On the brochure, the text was in columnar form, so, in Preview, I selected the text tool and held down the Option key while dragging to select just one column. Then it was a simple matter of copying the text and pasting it into TextWrangler. From that point, it will be just a matter of transforming the text into properly formatted HTML and putting up a new page on the web. I recommend this tool highly, because it was the only way I could find, after searching for other methods for several days, to convert a Microsoft Publisher file into text and graphics I could re-use on my Mac. Even Microsoft doesn't offer a translator application. There may be other ways, but this works so well that I won't bother looking any more. Total time from finding the site to having the extracted text and graphics ready to build the site was under a half hour, and that was mainly because I'm on a very slow dial-up line and it took some time to upload the PUB files to the service and to download the converted PDF files when they emailed them to me. With broadband, it would have taken 10 or 15 minutes. I believe they have a 2 MB limit on files to be converted. Act on your dream! JD 6:35:16 AM    comment []

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Stephen Ayer is building a glossary of traffic exchange terms Have you been confused by all the technobabble associated with online marketing in general and using traffic exchanges in particular? If so, you ought to visit Stephen Ayer's new Glossary of Traffic Exchange Terms. Stephen is the owner of Traffic Roundup, one of the traffic exchanges that works well for me. [Traffic Elements: the building blocks of web traffic] 10:56:57 PM    comment []

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

The Mac OS X version of Radio Userland rocks Moving from Mac OS 9 on my old Mac 8500 to Mac OS X (Tiger) on this iMac has been easier than I expected, with only a few minor problems that were resolved relatively quickly. The only serious problem I encountered was when I - for no reason I can find - decided to change from using Eudora to using Apple Mail. I've been perfectly happy with Eudora for well over a decade, and I have many thousands of emails stored in archive mailboxes for fast reference, should I need them. I started Apple Mail and imported all my old messages in Eudora. I watched as thousands of message subject lines in dozens of inboxes flashed across the screen during the importing process. When it was done, I looked in the inbox and couldn't find any of those messages. I searched on the Internet, read the documentation, and still couldn't find a good definition of the problem or a solution. After sitting back and smacking myself on the forehead - never fix something that isn't broke, I reminded myself - I dumped Apple Mail. It took a couple of hours on this slow dial-up connection to download the new OS X version of Eudora. Installation was fast and easy. I expected to have to spend hours reconfiguring everything, but - to my great surprise - when I opened the settings, everything was as I left it on the old computer. I guess I must have done the right thing when I copied everything over to this computer and installed the old version on OS 9. All my messages were there. All the filters - over a hundred of them - were present and working. I felt like I was back at home sitting in a comfortable chair. I had email access, again! With that accomplished, yesterday I set out to install Radio Userland and see if I could get my blog working again. Downloading went relatively quickly and installation was a breeze. When I started Radio Userland (RU), however, there was a problem. It kept trying to launch MS Internet Explorer, and I just don't use that browser. I didn't understand what was going on. I'd been using Mozilla on my old system with few problems, and I was starting RU with Firefox running. I thought RU was basically browser agnostic and I expected RU to use it with no problems - but it didn't. After searching online, I still found no solution. Finally, a couple of hours ago, I opened Safari and then started RU. Success! Blogging went fast - much faster than I've ever experienced with RU. Previously, RU was a chore to use, but it was so powerful and flexible, I suffered through it with only a few complaints now and then. Now, it is blazingly fast. A joy to use. The only thing that slows it down is when it FTPs all the changes to ISucceedByHelpingYouSucceed.com after I post to the blog. It was particularly slow this time, because I changed the design on the templates and when I posted it had to upload all the old postings along with the new one. This took some time, because of my dial-up connection. After the complete update was done, blogging a new post goes quickly. Now, to the real reason I use Radio Userland. The program is built on a very powerful database and has the ability to generate and maintain static websites. I use it to manage about a dozen sites, including a couple of large sites with over a thousand pages. I had set aside about a week to get all of that running, again. I could not have been further from the truth. Two hours later, and after editing only one line of code for each website (the path to where it would be stored on my hard drive), I can edit and rebuild any of those sites. As a test, I regenerated JohnDilbeck.com. When I did this on the old system, it would take hours and I always took a nap during the process. This time, it regenerated thousands of pages in exactly seven minutes! Now, this means that it created all the pages and images from the database onto the hard drive. I have not uploaded them to my server. In fact, I won' be uploading them until I go through and try to whip that site back into shape after a long period of neglect. I was planning all of July for rebuilding the site, in addition to all the other things I have scheduled. Now, however, I expect to be able to do it much more quickly, and I like the sound of that. As a further test, I regenerated all of GeorgiaDragRacing.com, and that process was always very slow. I started the process and went to do some other things. When I came back 17 minutes later, to my surprise, it was done. One of the strengths of using RU to maintain static sites is its ability to separate page content from design and presentation. I can use as many different templates and CSS files as I want. In the past, I used a different template for each section, but I'm going to try to redesign some of the sites to use only one template. Either way, I have full control over how I want to present the site, and each page is a separate word processing document in the database that points to the template that should be used during rendering. Not only that, but the page can send data to the template and vice versa. It's a programmers dream system for creating large websites. You've probably noticed that I don't have a lot of design sense and don't make use of graphics as much as most sites do. That's not a limitation of the program. All of that could be implemented, if I wanted. I just prefer to create sites that are mostly text, that load fast, and are easily indexed by the search engines. I think I have Radio Userland working as I want, and now I'm looking forward to using it more. Having experienced both, I can assure you that blazing speed is preferable to glacial plodding, as long as the same results are achieved and the flexibility for change is available. On a Mac OS X system, Radio Userland rocks! Act on your dream! JD 8:36:20 PM    comment []

Do I have Radio Userland blogging correctly? I'm in the process of upgrading Radio Userland from Mac OS 9 to OS X and moving the entire installation to a new computer. It's been interesting - which means I still have a bit of hair left. I think I just made a breakthrough on getting the blog to post properly. If so, that means all I have to do is get it to generate all my static sites from its database - and a couple of those sites are well over 1,000 pages. At least I'm making progress. Looking at this on a more positive note, Radio Userland runs much faster on OS X (and a faster computer). What felt glacial on my old 8500 now runs briskly on this iMac. I think it will be worth the effort to make the transition, but I won't know for sure until I get it all working, again. 7:37:46 AM    comment []

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Working hard to catch up The last couple of months have been very busy for me. I brought Mom home from the nursing home on February 23. She had been recovering from breaking a leg last December. That's why I haven't been blogging about discount coupons and happenings in Cherokee County, NC. I just didn't have the time or energy. Now that Mom's doing better and I've been getting a little sleep, I have been busy getting caught up with my online work. Murphy, NC Business has been completely rebuilt and the first part of the site is back online. There is still a lot of work to do with this site and it will be growing over the next month or so. 21st Century Small Business has been moved off of WebMax Studio, where it was a test site for me to learn all the features WebMax offered. Now, I've rebuilt it as an article site featuring over 1500 business articles. 21st Century Articles has grown from nothing to about 300 articles in less than a month. As of a few minutes ago, I've caught up on adding the special offer discount coupons to Syndicate Your Ad. You can see the current offers at ShowYourCoupon.com. Businesses, advertise free and pay only for results. Register your business for free. Now that I'm caught up with all this, I'll be turning my attention back to Murphy, NC and I'll catch up on what's been happening here and what's on the horizon. I'll also tell you about some websites I discovered over the last few days that I think you may be interested in. 2:32:40 AM    comment []

Sunday, March 19, 2006

RichSatire.com - a fun look at marketing hype Dan Nickerson is a very busy affiliate marketer who has a sense of humor and an eye for jumping on a new opportunity. He has many irons in the fire, including Got-Zip.com (a GeoAffiliate Marketing site), Pagellan.com (a shopping site where you can create a personalized home page), and one of his newest, RichSatire.com. It started with a light-hearted joke on one of Dan's forums, and then, almost before we knew it, Dan ran with it and created RichSatire.com. You've seen the hype on the TV infomercials. You've read the hype on countless websites. Now, Rich Satire, celebrity spokesman, is pitching for Crappo Products. Do you panic when you see more hairs in the shower drain? Maybe Follicle Frenzy is for you! Are your six-pack abs covered with flab? Try the Ab-Tazer for stunning abs. Do you have to lose that weight? Look into Rapido Weight Loss. These are just the first products you'll find at RichSatire.com. Note: if you don't have a sense of humor, don't bother visiting the site. (Context tags: humor, satire, hype, affiliate marketing) 6:26:16 PM    comment []

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