The Funky Olive: The 7 Wonders of Canada

http://funkyolive.blogspot.com/

Dotnet 3.5

"Orcas" Express + "Astoria" + BizTalk Labs!! Oh Yes!

OK, so it's Saturday morning, Yil and I have walked the dogs, I've had my first coffee, and I'm ready to do some Satdee mornin' hacking!

Now, I've had a few things on this week, so I've had to put off reviewing my "cloud" technologies to see where they are at... and boyo, was I in for a bit of a buzz!

But before I get into that, something's been on my mind for a while. Now, I turn 30 in a few days time, and for those near or around that vintage, you probably will agree with my next few thoughts. Following my graduation, I entered a tech industry that was in the grips of a revolution; the interactive web site! It was crazy, the dot com daze, the rivers o' money, and all the while I'm just as green as a pepper, not seeing the opportunities to do something amazing. Fast forward 10 years, and while there have been some spikes in the cardiograph of technology, there hasn't been anything worth grabbing your mamma about... until now.

Seriously, a renaissance is upon us. The opportunity that cloud based infrastructures will give online players is unprecedented. And I'm not talking about basic services like storage, data layers, and web services. When you look at the pace that cloud based infrastructures are evolving (way quicker than inside the firewall), we already have an Internet Service Bus, and it won't be long until Live CRM hits the street. And the tools are evolving too, with "Orcas" already available in Beta, and already with "Astoria" support, the whole developer platform is syncing. Add to all this, the fact that it's not just a few small startups providing these services, but THE biggest players in the industry (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Yahoo) providing the grunt, customers are warming to the idea of fully web based solutions. And all at a no cost bootstrap! It's the pay as you grow model enabled by economies of scale.




So, back to my review. What am I playing with today? Well:

Scooby

Everywhere you go anymore in the shopping world, someone is trying to sell you their credit card. They offer all kinds of deals, such as freebies or savings off your first purchase to get you to sign your name on that paper that makes another sale to achieve their quota. I can't say I haven't ever taken advantage of one of these opportunities myself, because that's how I ended up with my Sears card. While Christmas shopping a few years ago, I was making a good sized purchase, and when the salesclerk told me I could save an additional 15% off this purchase if I had a minute or two to apply for their charge card. My brain automatically calculated what I could save if I did apply and it was enough for me to accept her offer. After a painless minute or so of answering a few questions, the salesclerk gave me my temporary card and rang in my order, complete with my bonus savings of 15%. I then turned around and made an immediate payment with her for my entire purchase. Ha! Sears wasn't going to make any money on charging me their 28% interest! I planned to cut that card up when the plastic version came in the mail, but then had second thoughts on that, and just kept it. I have to say it has come in handy when an appliance has gone off to appliance heaven and I haven't had the funds to go buy a new one. Personally, I always pay the nominal deferral fee and opt with the no interest plan over so many months. It makes it much easier paying for a large purchase when you don't have the money. So now considering every appliance in my home is a Kenmore brand from Sears, I'd have to say that my credit card with them has been a great little financial tool.

Credit Cards though can be a hazard for many people when not used properly. I was reading this article about shopaholics and credit cards, and trouble can definitely arise for you with credit and bad shopping habits. It seems too that most shopaholics are under the age of 25, which makes them not have as much experience with paying high interest and overextending their credit. They just love to shop whether they have the means to pay for their purchases or not.

Another thing to be cautioned about is the rising credit card fraud that happens all too frequently these days. I tell you, these guys are just too smart for their own good. As you know I work in a bank, and it amazes me the number of people that just come in to pay their bill for their credit cards, and don't even know what the charges were for! I kid you not! So always make sure you do a reconciliation of your charges showing on your bill. You can really only protect yourself so much. Sometimes though if you've used your card somewhere where a not so honest employee gets a hold of your information, it can cause you a little grief on your bill. I'm speaking from experience here, as I had returned from a vacation once and found my next bill to have charges at a place I had never heard of, but it was in the same city I was vacationing in. Turns out one of those dishonest employees was working somewhere I had used my card while I was there. I didn't have any problems with my credit card company getting a credit on my bill, but it did take some time, after receipts were ordered from the vendor, copies sent to me along with an affidavit to sign saying it was not my signature or charge.

I'll end this post with one more thought for you to think about when it comes to checking your bill closely... remember the TJMaxx credit card fraud by the masses? Need I say any more?

Pay Per Click

The Launch Of PayPerPost Direct
May 25th, 2007

PayPerPost (PPP) has announced the launch of a new service where you could get paid to blog which is called PPP Direct. It is a feature that hook up advertisers directly to bloggers or posties to write special products or services from the advertisers. You could find this feature from ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews but with a significant difference in term of revenue for posties.

In a nutshell, you just need to specify the minimum amount you want to be paid for these Direct opportunities and stick a widget from PPP on your blog. When an advertiser finds your blog and decides they’d like you to write something, they just need to click on the badge attached to the widget and make you an offer.

The main reason why you need to install PPP Direct is like what I said earlier, you keep more money compare to the other paid to blog services. If you are using ReviewMe or any competitors services, they charge between 50-100% markup on your post, while PPP direct will only charge 35% for their self service model.

How could PPP charge lower that the others one may ask? PPP Direct cuts out the middleman (including themselves) in transactions that are driven by your blog. You still can participate in theirs and others marketplace programs if you want to, but what for if you could generate more income from PPP Direct isn’t it. PPP Direct will only charge a 10% service fee, and nearly 5% of that is PayPal and Credit Card Fees.

Hi Friends

Free eBook: Search Engine Optimization Made Easy

Monday, April 30th, 2007 If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Hi Friends,
I came across another free ebook that is a must read. It’s called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Made Easy by Brad Callen, the same guy who wrote other free ebooks, AdSense Arbitrage and Google AdWords Made Easy. […]