Vital Pixel

North Korea and Net Neutrality

Im sure that many people would consider the new freedom of ‘internet’ issue at hand, to be very similar to North Korea, and the Berlin Wall.  North Korea is a place where people are trapped inside, and are to be shot if they are caught trying to leave.  Which I would correlate with *going to the site you really want to be at*.  Where as, people on the outside are able to freely come into North Korea.  This is what I would consider, the internet providers way of getting people to go where they want.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea for more information on North Korea.  I watched a video on it a couple of months ago and it’s really quite interesting what goes on there.  The problem is, it’s not the kind of interesting that I’d like to see in my country.  But, this sort of thing could start to affect the way we browse the internet.

Net neutrality is important for anyone who enjoys browsing the internet, watching videos, and playing online games.  The fact that internet providers are now trying to start charging people based on how much files they transfer, is ridiculous.  Eventually it is believed that internet providers will start to charge money for the ability to go on specific websites.

This would mean, if the internet provider cut a deal with Yahoo, that they wouldn’t allow you to access google.  Or if they did allow you to access google, it would take an extremely long load.  The only reason for the internet providers to do this is because they want more money.  It seems to me like they’re making plenty of money the way it is.

I would consider this situation to be just like that of the Berlin Wall.  When there are things inside of the walls that the people outside the walls can’t get.  The inside being democratic/capitalist, and the outside of the walls being a communist environment.  Where people or ‘forced’ to share and use things they don’t particularly want to.  In other words, freedom lies inside of the walls, and the walls are heavily guarded with gunman ordered to shoot you on site.

Internet providers seem to be planning somewhat of the same thing.  Installing huge firewalls, and blocks so that you can’t access the sites you really want to.  While in doing this, getting you to go to other sites that ‘they’ want you to go to.  Of course you’re not going to get shot if you ‘try’ to get into the sites you don’t have access to any more, but they’ll make it pretty damn inconvenient.

I’m hoping, that if the internet providers ever grouped together and decided to do something like this.  Someone would come out and make a new internet provider that supported internet neutrality.  I know, that if no other internet providers formed, than I would try to start one.  I’m absolutely desparate for freedom on the internet.

With all of the new rules and internet laws being put into place though, this doesn’t seem like to far fetched of an idea.  I read that providers like Verizon, and Time Warner Cable are leaning towards making the switch by 2012.  I’m not sure what kind of boycotts and protests are already being planned for this, but I’d probably only be able to hold out a little while without my precious internet.

If you want to help do something to stop internet providers from breaking the rules of net neutrality, then you can google ’save the internet’, and/or ‘net neutrality’.  Good look saving the internet, and enjoy it while you still have it…

Top 10 Firefox Add-Ons

Here is my list of the top 10 Firefox add-ons. Some pertain more heavily to webmasters, but I consider them good tools for everybody that browses the internet. Each one of these add-ons have separate uses, and can make your internet browsing experience more enjoyable, or easier than it already is.

1. Digg Firefox Extension 0.4.3:The Digg Firefox extension allows you to interact with Digg (http://www.digg.com) and see information about the web page you are currently viewing while you use Firefox.
   I just recently started using this extension, and I’ve already experienced it’s awesomeness. Without even downloading it, it’s obvious that it’s going to be a great add-on. For any site that doesn’t include a digg button, you’ve now got one built into your web browser!
2. PicLens: Full-Screen, 3D — PicLens transforms your browser into a visually stunning experience for enjoying online photos and videos. Our interactive “3D Wall” lets you effortlessly search and zoom your way around thousands of images and YouTube videos faster and more immersively than ever before. Demo here
   PicLens is one of the top most downloaded add-ons on the firefox website. Why it’s awesome; it makes it easy to find what you’re looking for on image and video sites. The webmaster feature is great too, if you’re thinking of installing a photoblog, than you should probably download PicLens.
3. Wizz RSS: A constantly improving RSS and Atom feed reader. It is fairly powerful, feature rich and is well supported.
   Right now, it’s the best RSS reader out there, there is a few bugs, but hopefully they will be sorted out in later versions.
4. FireFix 0.7.6: Learns and corrects mistyped web addresses typed in the address bar
   I find this plugin pretty useful, it only makes a small difference, and if you never make any spelling errors, than it’s useless. I’m pretty sure tons of people on the internet make a typo when spelling google though, so it’s nice to have something correct our errors for us.
5. Others Online: Real people. Online now. Relevant to you. Discover people relevant to your Web browsing and other interests, on every page you visit, while you’re signed in. See what you have in common, their blog or Web site, and online status — even chat or email users privately. The more you use the toolbar, the more you find in common with others — and the more traffic you earn to your site!
   Not really sure how this works to get more traffic to your site, but it sounds cool, and looks good. It’s also pretty fun.
6. Video Download Helper: The easy way to download Web videos from hundreds of YouTube-like sites.
   This works also for audio and picture galleries.
   Self-explanatory really, most people have heard of these types of plugins. Which make available the option to download videos off of youtube and other sites.
7. DashBlog: DashBlog lets you quickly collect videos, images, text/quotes, songs and screen-captures from any web page and publish them to your blog (word press, blogger/blogspot, tumblr) and/or twitter.
   I like the other features of this add-on, which allow you to take screen captures, and then draw/comment on the pictures. The add-on basically speeds up the usual process of copying/pasting, or downloading and reuploading.
8. StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon discovers web sites based on your interests, learns what you like and brings you more.
   Stumbleupon is currently my favorite firefox plugin. It’s gotten loads of traffic to my websites, and is second only to digg in that category. It’s also fun to stumble around different sites in your interest zones.
9. Simple Mail: With Simple Mail you can get notified, read and write email messages inside Firefox.
   This is useful for me, because without it, I’d be constantly opening up my mail client to read/write/receive messages. This plug in makes reading your mail a lot more practical.
10. Tab Effect: Add effects when current tab is changed…
    Just a fun little addon, so you can be visually stunned when changing your tabs.

And that… is my top 10
Fireshot get’s an honorable mention, because I almost listed it.

Make Money With your Blog

Blogging is one of the most popular ways to get your ideas across to the general public. I use it, and there’s probably more than half of the webmaster population using a blogging platform as well. It’s a good thing though, a lot of blogs means there are a lot of good tips, information, and news that circulates around the web. Blogging is easy too, with just an update or two per day, and a little bit of help from your social networking friends, you can get your blog popular and make money with it in days.

Step 1: Traffic
I’m going to assume you already have traffic to your blog, and continue with this post. If you don’t have a steady flow of traffic coming to your blog yet, then check back next time for the Blog Traffic post, which I am due to release pretty soon.

Step 2: PPC Ads
By far the most obvious way to make money on the internet. Go and make your self a publisher account on Google Adsense to get started. You can customize your advertisements, and paste the javascript code into your page. Make sure to blend your ads in with the usual color scheme of your site, for maximum click potential. For every click, you get a certain amount of money (based on your keywords). You can also make money for getting large amounts of impressions. Don’t click your own ads, or ask your visitors to click ads!

Step 3: Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing, is simply getting someone elses product, and referring new users to it. Lot’s of sites on the internet have affiliate programs you can join. You can check out Affiliate Scout for several different sites that have affiliate programs. Sometimes affiliate programs have flat rates, like… $65 dollars per sign up. Or, they will pay you a % of the money the person you referred ends up making.

Step 4: Link Sales
If your blog has a high page rank. Which is Google’s interpretation of the value of your site. People will start getting interested in having their link on your website. The higher your page rank (pr), the more you can sell links for. The easiest way to sell links, is to join a forum like Digitalpoint or Vitalpixel Forums, and create a thread giving the details of your site, and how much you are willing to sell link-space for. Never fill up your site with too many links, and make sure to sell links monthly. Don’t offer life-time links unless you’re a directory, because you may want to take them down at some point.

Step 5: Products
If you have your own products that you’d like to sell, you probably know more about how to sell them than I do. But, the way I would go about selling my products, is to post a link to my website on a webmaster forum (in the buy/sell/trade section). Then, I would give details about what I was selling, and offer my services to those willing to pay. For Example;

I would say, Selling webmaster tip comics for $5 a piece. They would give me what they wanted the comic to be about, I would make it, give it to the buyer, and they would pay me. It’s pretty simple, and self-explanatory really.

Step 6: Blog Reviews

Once your blog starts to get a decent amount of visitors, and has a pretty good page rank, you can start selling reviews. When I start making reviews, I’m sure I’ll be using reviewme, which is the biggest name in blog reviews at the moment. You’re site will have to be reviewed by them, before being accepted into the program, but once your in you can make quite a bit of money.

Ad Placement

Where you put your advertisements is one of the most important factors when trying to make money on the internet. You need to make sure and keep your ads in places where people can see them, but also make sure they’re not an eye sore. Blending your ads in with the usual appearance of your website is also important. For example, if you had a green theme, and your google ads were red, there’s no way you would get as many clicks as you should.

The Comic:

Mixx.com

If there was ever a time to join a social networking site, it’s now, and the site is Mixx. Mixx is a fairly new social networking site that is constantly growing. At the moment it’s not very hard for users to get their articles to the front page, but plenty of traffic still comes from the site. Mixx definitely isn’t small, but in comparison to digg you could say it is.

If you sign up for Mixx now, and start building up your profile, then you have a great chance to become of of the power users of the site. We know that many people use social networking sites to boost their website’s traffic, and I’m one of them. I signed up to Mixx hoping that I could become one of the top content submitters on there. (this will be my first post submitted)

I created a group called young webmasters, so if anyone wants to join then feel free to. You don’t have to be young, or even a webmaster, you just have to be someone on mixx :D. (more specifically in that niche).

Tips and Reminders:

• Build up your friends. friends vote for their friends topics.
• Don’t ignore your friends. You shall get what you give :).
• Vote for other articles besides your own, this way people become fans of yours for finding and submitting good content from all over.

Happy Mixxing

Fun on the Internet

There are plenty of ways to have fun on the internet. Certain way can be more addictive than others, so you might not want to get into them at all. You could have your face plastered to the computer screen watching videos on youtube, or playing games on addictinggames if you’re not careful.

One of the more subtle ways to have fun on the internet, is to browse forums that relate to things you are interested in. Or one of my favorites… LOL Cats

more cat pictures

From your loyal VP

Beach VS. Internet for Nipples

Recently me and my friends been having some bad luck at the beach. Of course it’s my fault for being the reclusive nerd that’s quiet in class. It’s also my friends fault for being ugly though, of course this sort of egoism on my part isn’t great either is it? So anyways, we go to the beach on most saturdays… me, a really tall kid, a buff Filipino (really buff), a really white guy with horrible acne, and a Mexican with no real negative qualites. Then there’s me, the white kid with freckles, have as buff as the Filipino, and half as bold as the rest of the group.

So anyways, this post is supposed to be about how the computer is obviously a lot better place for receiving nipplage. I go to the beach, the white kid with acne rips off his pants, puts a shirt on his head, and start running around in a small speedo like a sand ninja. Of course the rest of us hide in shame while our friend rolls around in the wet sand corn-dogging himself and old ladies film him. He get’s attention, but not really in a good way.

Where as, if I just sit on my computer all day… I could probably see a million times more nipples than I could at the beach. I don’t even have to try, I could just unintentionally stumble upon nipples on the internet. You’ve got the dirty ads on sites, the occasional out-of-place zango popup, on that wretched site that actually uses zango. (Which I for some reason despise).

So, if you go to the beach this summer, don’t go for any purpose other than to have fun. If you want to find teh chicas, just let it happen. Despite the internet being a great place to find nipples, do resolve to using your computer as a gateway to women. They can use the angles technique, they can be fake, they might not even be human!?

This post was completely random and I’m ashamed that I made it…
I’m saving this as a draft, and if it ever comes up as an actual post you’ll know that I was short on material.