He has now launched a new project called StackOverflow Careers (Beta) for programmers to submit their CVs. Basically it will be a repository of CVs of programmers. The idea is to reverse the hiring process where instead of employees searching and submitting their CVs for various companies and job openings, it will be employers who will come to StackOverflow Careers database and look for talented programmers.

It’s similar to JobStreet’s PitchYourTalent.com but it’s only for software developers.

Website: careers.stackoverflow.com

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I would like to thank Giacomo ‘Peldi’ Guilizzoni, Founder and CEO of Balsamiq Studios for sponsoring three copies of his great software for this contest.

If you want to own a copy for yourself after this, you can get it from www.balsamiq.com.

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Funny but true. First you are confused about certain topic, then as you get more info about it, you get less confused, but when the info gets too much… you are once again confused :)

via thisisindexed

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As the name suggests, LogoBee is a professional logo & web design company based in Montreal, Canada. It’s actually one of the few websites that have been around since 2000’s and have literally hundreds of logos under their belt (see here).

Their services start from a fair price of $199, which includes the following:

• 6 initial logo samples based on your requirement
• 6 revisions based on your feedback on the chosen logo
• Your initial variations will be ready in 5 business days.

If you have a website that is related to logo design or web design, you can also sign up to their affiliate program and make money.

Company Blog: blog.logobee.com
Website: www.logobee.com

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What’s more, if you withdraw more than RM400 there won’t be any service fees. Previously you had to pay $5 or RM20 for every withdrawal to your Debit Card. (more…)

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Want to win too? Two more copies of this mockup creator program will be given away next week. If you want the software, enter this simple contest here.

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According to some sources ICANN could start allowing registrations as early as next month. So, watch out for the day, you could make serious money if you can get hold of nice domain names.

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Basically this is how it works. If you are looking to get your logo designed, you come to LogoMyWay and create a contest. Your prize can be anywhere between $200 to $1000. And the most important feature is - and I think this is why LogoMyWay is successful - all the funds are prepaid and the designers are guaranteed to be paid. That’s right, the winning designer is guaranteed to get paid for his/her work. I believe this is why there are many quality works and tons of submissions for each contest.

It’s in the Business Model

For example 99Designs does the same thing with the same concept, but they do not guarantee a payment to the designers, prepayment is just an option at 99Designs that contest organizers can choose to do. Instead 99Designs concentrates on “100% Money Back Guarantee” business model. For this reason you can see that the submissions for each contest at 99Designs are much lower than that of LogoMyWay.

Important Lesson

Being a logo design marketplace, LogoMyWay could have a better logo. Their current logo looks not so professional, and the website could be greatly improved, especially to make it more web2.0 like.

But that’s the lesson we should all learn when launching an internet business. And that is, you shouldn’t be perfectionist when launching a project. Don’t hinder the project from being launched just because the logo looks certain way, or the website design is not what you expected. Rather launch the project and test the waters. If you see that the response is good and people really like what you are offering, then and only then do whatever necessary to improve your project i.e revamp the whole website, get a new logo etc.

There is a time when you need to be perfectionist, and it is not during launching new internet projects. For web projects, as long as it is bug-free and all the features are in place and properly working - you are ready to go!

Website: www.logomyway.com

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The above graphic, by Dee Adams, shows the eight CEOs with the highest compensations in the US for the year 2008. It also shows the number of minimum wage earners that each respective CEO’s compensation could have supported (see the image of a man below ceo’s feet). Bruce Wasserstein of Lazard ltd. was the top earner at $133 million, or the annual salary of 8,866 minimum wage earners.

I wouldn’t say it’s not fair because some of the CEOs do deserve large sum of money for leading and managing large corporations successfully. But how much exactly they should get as a compensation for their work is always questionable.

source good magazine via flowing data

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In the next two weeks I will be giving away three copies of Balsamiq Mockups to three lucky contestants. read on…

What’s Balsamiq Mockups

Balsamiq Mockups is a popular software for creating mockups without the use of Photoshop and Dreamweaver. It’s especially useful for web-designers and freelancers who are always doing wireframes and mockups for clients. It makes creating wireframes an enjoyable experience!

Balsamiq Mockups costs $79 per copy. You can read more about the product and see samples of mockups created by Balsamiq Mockups at their website http://www.balsamiq.com

Thanks to Peldi Guilizzoni, the creator of Balsamiq Mockups for sponsoring this contest.

How To Enter?

Easy! For each task you complete you get certain number of points. One point will be equivalent for one entry. In other words if you earn 5 points, your name will be entered into the draw 5 times, thus increasing your chances to win. One person can get maximum of 15 points.

Winners will be chosen randomly using the List Randomizer tool at Random.org.

Tasks to complete

You can do either or both of these tasks

• Follow me on twitter - twitter.com/ades (5 points)
• Tweet about this contest - example: win balsamiq mockups from adesblog.com details here http://su.pr/25U02U (10 points)

Once you are done with the task(s), use the form below to send me the details of your twitter id or tweets.

Good luck!

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However, withdrawing to local bank accounts is still not possible at the moment. But it’s a positive sign that in the near future PayPal will be fully functional in Malaysia.

Currently Malaysians can only withdraw to Visa based Credit and Debit Cards from local banks.

PayPal has also updated the withdrawal fees accordingly in RM. It now costs RM20.00 for withdrawal to your Credit/Debit Cards. (see screenshot below) (more…)

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What do you think? Could you use something like this in your daily life? What are the disadvantages that you see with this kind of device?

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For example, when people look for, let’s say “cars”, they would only see title of the post followed by pictures of cars in the search results. This would make your blog’s search function a lot more user-friendly and usable, because nothing is worse than looking for an image in the photography blog and getting search results in only text format.

Identifying images that lie behind the page through reading texts is a nightmare. Instead, it’s a lot easier to see few cars and decide which one to click right on the search results page.

Quick tutorial below on how to implement such a feature:

1. Download and install this plugin
2. Add the code below somewhere in your search results page (usually search.php). Make sure it’s inside the loop. It should be placed after the title tags and before the comments tags

<?php if ( function_exists( ‘get_the_image’ ) ) { get_the_image(’width=640&height=300&image_scan=true&default_image=http://www.yourdomain.com/default_image.jpg’ ); } ?>

Don’t forget to define the image width and height accordingly. default_image.jpg is the pic that will be used if the post doesn’t have any images in it.

You are done! Your readers are happy now.

Plugin Link: wordpress.org/extend/plugins/get-the-image/

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Main advantage of Online Advertising before traditional media is its ability to measure the users’ response and provide transparent reports for both advertisers and publishers. Having technology as the strongest benefit of online media ad networks often fails to deliver accurate reports due to discrepancy issues in ad measuring and tracking.

To solve this problem in 2003 a global consortium of leading bodies within the advertising agency, advertiser, media and research disciplines started the process of development of both the US and Global Guidelines. These guidelines were created to address long-standing marketer and agency concerns about the need for a standardized method of measuring Interactive advertising and a certification of those counts. Headed by IAB, other industry groups like AAAA, the ANA, the ARF, MRC, and others have all played an integral role in creation, adoption and further implementation of these Guidelines, which are constantly being updated along the technology progress and online media growth.

“All of the guidelines offer a detailed definition for counting an online ad impression, the primary currency of the Interactive medium, which is a critical component in establishing consistent and accurate online advertising measurements across publishers and ad serving technologies in the US and around the world. The guidelines address long-standing marketer and agency concerns about the need for a standardized method of measuring Interactive advertising. By simplifying the buying and selling process for advertisers, marketers and publishers, these guidelines are intended to hasten the growth of Internet advertising spending.” (www.iab.net).

With the growth of number of ad networks today it has become a necessity be certified compliant with the guidelines in serving and measuring ads. Other essential requirements may also include disaster recovery system, behavioral/activity-based filtering and the reporting of the time at which data is considered final, as well as publisher support system. Standardizing ad serving and ad tracking systems indeed makes it easier for advertisers, agencies and publishers to provide transparency to the performance of their campaigns, which in its turn hastens their selling process as well as the growth of Internet advertising spending as a whole.

Which ad-networks are compliant with IAB guidelines?

Here are some of them: 24/7 Real Media, AOL, Atlas Media Console, Burst Media’s AdConductor, CNET Networks, DoubleClick, Eyeblaster, Forbes.com, Google, Mediaplex, Microsoft, Turner Digital Media Technologies, Walt Disney Internet Group, Yahoo!, OpenX x, etc.

How about Asian Ad-Networks?

Being one of the biggest ad networks in Asia, Innity is preparing for the BPA Worldwide ad server system certification. BPA Worldwide’s ad serving system complies with all Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) guidelines and provides additional systems verification that goes above and beyond the IAB requirements.

Most of ad-networks mentioned above operate worldwide but they do not fully cover Asia, which actually comprises the biggest Internet population of the world and yet has a huge potential as at present it includes only 18.5% of the total Asia population. According to Internet World Stats out of 6.8 billion world population 1.7 billion are already Internet users, which indicates 362.3 % growth from 2000 to 2009.

At the same time out of 3.8 billion of ASIA population 704.2 million people are already Internet users and it shows 516.1 % Internet usage growth over the same period. Though number of ad networks in Asia is still much lower than in the US or Europe it is growing rapidly and there is a strong demand for accuracy and transparency of ad serving and counting mechanisms. Besides promoting credibility of the ad serving and tracking system within the market, third party certification also gives a greater confidence to advertiser and publisher clients in the reporting data provided by ad networks.

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And here is some of the interesting results they have got.

See all results here (or in PDF here).

As you can see from the results above, current employees prefer flexible hours at work, wants gadgets as perks, and overwhelming majority of them believe in company loyalty. I think companies should note of this survey results so that they can understand their employees better.

What would you like from your companies? What is more important for you? Pleas leave your feedback in the comments section.

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Will it get adopted? Hmm… given the terrible track record of Yahoo in Social Media sites (Delicious, MyBlogLog and Flickr are slowly dying), it’s hard to tell if this one will succeed. Nevertheless, as a service it’s very simple and extremely easy to use.

Check out my Meme at meme.yahoo.com/ades. Since it’s still in beta, if you want to register for an account you will need an invite for it. I have 15 invites at the moment, if you need one just let me know in the comments section of this post and I will send it to your email.

Posterous

Similar service Posterous.com on the other hand seems to be doing great. Many people are catching up, mainly pushed by early adopters and influencers such as:

• Michael Arrington (Techcrunch) - http://techcrunch.posterous.com
• Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) - http://scobleizer.posterous.com
• Guy Kawasaki (Alltop) - http://holykaw.alltop.com (using custom domain)
• Jason Calacanis (Mahalo) - http://jasoncalacanis.posterous.com
• and more…

How to Keep Up With Social Sites?

Social sites are cropping up like mushrooms after the rain these days. And they are getting replaced at a faster pace by the new ones. Remember sites like Friendster, Hi5, and MySpace? Now all we know is Facebook and Twitter.

It takes time to build your user base in every social site. And when these sites are replaced by the new, more recent one, you will most likely lose many users. Yaro Starak has an interesting read related to this discussion on his blog, titled “Social Media Mistakes: Are You Forgetting Your Fundamentals?“.

He basically suggests that you shouldn’t concentrate on building a user base on Social Sites per se. But your objective should be to utilize them to channel and build a user base on your own blog and most importantly a mailing list. He argues, Social Sites come and go, but your blog (or mailing list, or brand) will stay as long as you want it to stay. I agree.

Dashboard Screenshots of Yahoo Meme after the jump (more…)

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Google describe Sidewiki as: “Google Sidewiki is a browser sidebar that lets you contribute and read information alongside any web page.”

So, basically it’s a tool that allows you to leave comments on any website or page on the net. And anybody who has (New) Google Toolbar installed on their browser can see your comments that you left for that particular page.

What If I am The Owner of The Page (Blog)?

If you own the page, your comment will be displayed on top of all the other comments. So, this is a little privilege that you get by being the owner of the page. You can post a ‘welcome message’! (see below).

In order to inform Google that you are the owner of the URL, you need to:

1. Add and verify your site in Google Webmaster Tools. This process links your site to your Google Account.
2. Once a site is linked to your Google Account, visit your page and click the Sidewiki button to create an entry.
3. Select the ‘Write as the page owner’ checkbox in the entry form.
4. Click Publish.

Some Random Thoughts…

Few things come to in mind with the introduction of this Sidewiki.

• You can now comment on any page.
• You can now benefit from the comments of other people on particular pages/sites. You can read:
  • unbiased product reviews by actual people,
  • will be able to find out if the sites are ’scam’ or ‘illegal’ sites.
  • find out better deals from other people’s comments on e-commerce sites. Normally, sites wouldn’t link to competitors’ products ;)
• If you are blogger or website owner, it also means goodbye “comment moderation”. You are no longer in control of your comments, at least as far as Sidewiki is concerned (you have this much control).
• Just like in blog comments, bloggers can use Sidewiki to their advantage to promote their blogs by leaving comments on other blogs.
• Spam will be an issue. As usual.
• This is a speculation but Google actually might use the comments (Sidewiki) to improve its Search Results in the future. For example, if people comment that particular site is a scam site and let’s say there are 200 such comments by actual people who have been cheated by this website. Then Google might ban this website from its Search Results and Indexing. Thus improving its Search Results!

  I personally believe Google is moving in that direction, where the mass help improve Google its Search Results. As you know Google is already using people to improve its results, at least on personal level for the time being. (see below):

  

  But I think it’s just a matter of time before they go public with this feature i.e meaning that people’s actions on search results promoting some sites and dropping some sites, will actually affect Google’s Search Results in the future.

What’s your thoughts on this? Comments both on the blog and Sidewiki are welcome :)

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My thanks to Darren for the opportunity!

ProBlogger Readers, Welcome to AdesBlog!

If you came here from Problogger.net, I would like to welcome you to my blog. My name is Ades and this is my blog AdesBlog.com where I talk about Blogging, Usability, Making Money Online, Entrepreneurship, WordPress.. etc.

If you have found my guest-post on Problogger useful, you might like the following posts too.

• 3 Important SEO Tools: Google, Yahoo and MSN Webmaster Tools
• Different Uses of WordPress, as Twitter, Auction Site, Job Board, Forum etc. (series)
• Common mistakes of a new blogger
• Effective advertising strategy using StumbleUpon
• Increase your search engine results position (SERP) using Post Slug feature

For more great posts please go to my Popular Posts page, you may also browse the blog through Categories links in the right column below.

Lastly, I hope to see you around on my blog from now onwards. Please drop by again for more great articles!

Subscribe to my RSS: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/AdesBlog
Great Free Color Picker for Bloggers: http://www.adesclrpicker.com - my freeware software that will make getting HTML color codes from screen a snap! Give it a try!

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To get started i.e to be able to post your website (concept) for reviews, you need to review at least 5 other websites first. And that’s the main engine that keeps the site running. Otherwise, people would just post their own website and not review others’.

It’s a great idea - getting opinions of web designers for free. Very useful tool I would say for new bloggers who are new to effective webdesign and usability.

Website: www.conceptfeedback.com

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Today one of the major ad-networks LinkWorth introduced new fixed rate option called LinkBanner. They are running it with selected publishers for now, but will be implementing it network-wide soon.

Since global economy is struggling to come out from recession, I think it’s very timely to introduce fixed-rate banner options now. Because most advertisers would welcome this kind of advertising options, especially on high traffic sites (provided that the rates are affordable).

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