ROCKFUSE

FTC cracks down on Flogs and false advertisments

admin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:52:14 +0000

Ahh to me its a sign of relief. To long I have seen scam after scam ripping innocent consumers out of their money and giving the honest internet entrepreneur a black eye. Now the FTC is implementing tough new standards online and will be cracking down once the new rules are activated.

The FTC are going after the fake testimonial, paid endorsements and fake blogs or flogs websites. Last year Oprah and crew strongly protested that their names were being used illegally to scam people of out of their money for items such as acai berry and other such health items. Now the FTC steps in and hopefully will stem some of these problematic website. read all the new rules here

So what exactly is the FTC targeting ? There are a few issues that the FTC has and it mostly pertains to paid endorsements and fake customer reviews. There are many flogs out there right now claiming that a company website or blog is an individuals personal blog and endorsement while in reality it is just a marketing scheme with sometimes real and sometimes made up individuals who are getting paid for the endorsement without disclosing the payment the viewer. Lets say I write a website on how I got ripped using acai berry. I write up a whole fake review of the product how I got ripped and make it look like I actually used the product and Im a real person. Then also on that page I have fake testimonial from other users who used the product and got ripped also. Then finally I might also have a celebrity endorsement that was never given. All three examples are problems and no longer will be allowed to be used unless clearly stated that you are 1 getting paid for the endorsement and 2 those were not actually customers but made up examples of what could happen when you use the product. The celebrity endorsement thing cannot fly anyway unless they actually give you permission to use their name on your page.

Another thing that the FTC will be clamping down on are result claims. For instance you no longer can state you can make 10000 a month using this product. You can say I made 10000 last month using this product as long as it is true. You also should disclose that those are not typical results and results may vary from person to person and company to company . I lost 100 lbs on this diet , stating this though even true may not be a typical experience and should be noted.

In conclusion you should really read the new guidelines and follow best practices when advertising . If something is not true then you should not publish it. I always found being honest you make a lot more money in the long run then running a scam on a few people.

tell me what you think .
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8 Tools that give you a productive Twitter experience

admin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:32:06 +0000

With the availability of Twitter everywhere and more and more people getting lost “in the buzz” these days, I though of compiling this list with the 8 most useful services in my opinion, which helps me to have a productive Twitter experience.

Tweepular helps you “cleanse” your Twitter account of followers “unworthy” of your attention. Get rid of people who only tweet once in a blue moon and dust up your folowers list.
TwitterContd lets you break free from the “140 characters or less” barrier that Twitter had imposed on you.
TwAitter schedules your tweets for later. Comes with an impressive outlook style calender system.
BigTweet lets you use it as a bookmarklet on your browser to share stuff that iterests you on web. Simply highlight the text that interests you, and BigTweet will automatically capture the page title and shorten the URL for you to post it on Twitter.
HootSuite.com helps you manage all your twitter accounts at one place. If you have multiple twitter accounts, then I highly recommend this App which will help you get the most out of multiple accounts.
TweetLater.com helps you auto-follow people that follow you, send automated welcome direct messages, and gives you the option to e-mail yourself tweets with specific keywords that you want to follow.
TweetOClock.com has a pretty simple and a straight purpose. Use it to find the best time to tweet someone you know.
Tweetizen lets you create groups for people that matter to you and digest the daily influx of tweets coming on your way to find the tweets that truly matter to you.

Comment and let me know if you have any other suggestions as well.

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Be a ROCKFUSE contributor – Get exposure to your blog and Earn Money!

admin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:38:41 +0000

That’s right. The title says it all. I’m going to convert ROCKFUSE in to a team blog.

I’ve decided to open up the doors and invite others would take interest in writing about Web 2.0, Internet Marketing, SEO, Blogging and Social Media to write for ROCKFUSE. But why write?

To get more exposure to your blogs and yourself through the 500+ subscribers that we have.
Connect and network with cool new people and other content contributors who share the same likes as you.
Showcase your own advertisements and earn from all the traffic that you’re bringing to this team blog.

That’s right. The graphic below will outline the basic perks that content contributors would be getting.

You have total control over the ad (468×60) displayed in the footer. You can put up your own affiliate banners, AdSense units or even a banner for your blog. It’s just my way of saying “Thank you for contributing”.

What is the criteria for a writer?

You will need to write along the lines of Web 2.0, Internet Marketing, SEO, Blogging, Social Media, Internet and anything that goes in between.
You will need to publish at least 1 article per week. Maximum is 3 per week. How often you’re going to write is up to you. More you write, more you gain. But even if you can’t meet the minimum per week of 1 article, don’t hold back from contacting me. I’m sure we can work something out. When you’re contacting me, just let me know roughly how often you can write and we can work something out.
I don’t have much constraints on how you should present the article. But it should be in flawless English and at least 200 words. Preferably something that would be useful for our 500+ subscribers. (Not the stuff you see everywhere)
I will only be picking 7 writers for now. So if you think you fit the bill, please drop me a message with your blog’s URL. Or if you would like more info, feel free to contact me.

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How to create a simple Contact Form with Google Docs

admin — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:23:31 +0000

Today, we will look into creating a simple contact form using Google Docs. The submitted results of the Contact Form will be stored in an excel file and we will also apply notification settings to make sure that you get notified by e-mail whenever someone submits some info through the form.

Step 1: Go to Google Docs and create a new form by selecting New > Form.

Step 2: Play around with the template that you’re presented with and create all the fields adn configure them for data validation.

Step 3: After building the form, go to More Actions > Edit Confirmation and review and edit (if necessary) the confirmation message that is displayed to the user after submitting the form.

Step 4: Decide where you want to put the contact form. You can let Google Docs host that contact form for you by linking to the published form. You can find that link right at the end of the form building page.

Or else, you can have the contact form right within one of your pages. For this, you will have to copy/paste the embedding code. Simple go to More Actions > Embed and copy/paste the code supplied.

Step 5: Finally, to be notified whenever someone submits the form, simply go to See Responses > Spreadsheets. And now, it will present you with the spreadsheet it will store your results in. And while you’re in the spreadsheet, go to Tools > Notification Rules and edit the settings accordingly so that a mail is sent whenever the spreadsheet is edited (i.e. the form is submitted)

That’s pretty much it. And this is not only limited to contact forms. You can basically create any sort of a form like this and use it within few minutes of being created. If you want to see the live form which I created for this tutorial, just click here.

save

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Get your Google Analytics traffic reports by E-mail

admin — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:22:49 +0000

If you’re managing more than half a dozen of web sites, it’s typical that you forget keeping track of your site stats from time to time. Well, if you’re using Google Analytics, there’s a cool option that enables you to send you scheduled reports from time to time, right to your inbox, which eliminates the need for you to log in and analyze stats online. So, if you tend to forget to check your stats from time to time to see how well your site is performing, you can schedule those traffic reports to come knocking at your door, as frequently as you like.

Just go to the report that you want to get mailed, (whether preset or custom, doesn’t matter). And look for the “E-mail button on the top left. (See screenshot)

And thereafter, you can select “Schedule” from the tab and specify when you want to your scheduled reports to arrive.

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Google Sets and it’s freaky AI prediction capabilities

admin — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:00:29 +0000

Wow! Google is much smarter than what we most of us people give it credit for. Although it might be hard for the typical user to figure out Google’s AI (Artificial Intelligence) capacity though everyday searches, you might want to check out Google Sets.

I was having fun with it the other day, so I though I might share it with you guys here.

Now, Google Sets, as Google Claims, is able to take a few inputs from a user and make a list accordingly, accurately predicting the list items that are likely to come after it. Well, of course, this works on simple stuff. Like when I input Dog, Cat and Cow, it would probably give me back Bear, Rabbit, Frog, Duck.

(Click to enlarge)

But, let’s push it a bit further. If it’s actually cutting edge, then this thing should be able to learn from what it’s fed and not just stick to algorithms. In other words, a list of animals is not uncommon to predict. To us earthlings, it’s kinda universal. But what about., hmm… LOST? Can Google predict something like the characters in a TV show?

(Click to enlarge)

Guess, it can!

And finally, something really specific? Google can learn aboutthings that are pretty popular with relative ease. Like a Hit TV series or animals. But what about a list of tv channels in a little country called Sri Lanka (where I am) that absolutely has little or no international web presence whatsoever?

(Click to enlarge)

Most of you might not know the correlations between the predictions and the inputs for Sri Lanka TV stations, but take it from me, they are very accurate!

I guess it’s safe for me to say that Google already uses these techniques in optimizing it’s user experience, only in a level that we don’t tend to see. For an example, ona search for “Viagra”, an article from “How Stuff Works” has the 6th position. Now, if manipulating a search engine is what SEO does, I’d think that it doesn’t affect Google much because there are plently on other people wanting to sell viagra, placed after “How Stuff Works” on this result, necessarily spending thousands of dollars per year, trying to get into the first page.

Google Sets would not mean that SEO is dying, but it would mean that Google is getting smarter and getting increasingly harder to manipulate. After all, manipulation is what SEO does.

Just something to think about…

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How to get your Feedburner subscriber count in Plain Text

admin — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:59:42 +0000

While tweaking down this theme, I wanted to use my subscriber count in plain text. Actually, it wasn’t that hard thanks to 45n5’s great tutorial in doing that. Not to mention, the dozens of other articles which pointed the exact same thing following that particular tutorial.

Anyway, all of them were from the time before Google started intergrating Feedburner into their own setting and because of that, the code was a bit outdated and gave a php error.

parser error : Opening and ending tag mismatch: meta line 1 and HEAD

And when I looked into the problem, I understod that it was because Feedburner specifications had changed around since the Google Integration. So, I worked around it and found the solution.

So here’s how to get the feed count in plain text.

In whatever place you want the feed count, insert these lines, possibly at the very top of the page (Don’t forget to replace myFeedburnerFeedId with the ID of your feed)

$whaturl=”https://feedburner.google.com/api/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?uri=myFeedburnerFeedId”;

$ch = curl_init();

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $whaturl);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($data);
$fb = $xml->feed->entry['circulation'];

?>

Then, in the place where you want the feedcount to appear, just insert:

And we’re done!

You can see on the top-right of this blog, it’s at work. Have fun with it guys!
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I moved to HostClear! Probably the best blog host I’ve been with.

admin — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:57:57 +0000

A few months back I was on the hunt for a web host. I have used a lot of web hosts in the past for my sites. But with the growth of my blogs and other sites, I needed to move it all to one hosting account to keep track of things. And after much research, I found HostClear and chose to give it a try.

And here’s my unpaid, non-biased review of it, for all of you who are trying to find just the “right” host.

Why?

Their one and only hosting plan is an All-in-one hosting solution providing:

FREE Domain For Life
FREE Instant Setup
FREE Site Builder
Unlimited Domains
Unlimited Hosting Space
Unlimited GB’s Of Transfer
Unlimited E-Mail Accounts
Unlimited MySQL Databases

That’s a pretty good deal for only $3.95 per month right? $3.95 is the 24 month-price though.

12 month price is $4.95 p/month while the 6 month price is $5.95 p/month, and no Setup Fees for orders more than 6 months! Overall, it’s the cheapest hosting plan I found that allows unlimited space, bandwidth and sites.

Support

Support is one of the most important things when it comes to web hosting. And that’s one of the things I like about HostClear. I’ve used their support system extensively and would probably rate a 10/10 for that. They’ve got a

Support ticket system which responded to all my questions in less than 30 minutes

A toll-free phone support line (I haven’t tried that yet)

And the 24/7 Live Chat facility which resolved all my general queries within seconds!

Features

If you’re looking to host your blog, then you’ve got more than enough features on HostClear! I know that because I’ve got 6 Wordpress blogs there, functioning perfectly! And I got a new domain of my choice – for life! For a full list of their features you can take a look here.

They provide a 30 day money back guarantee, so you sign up at no-risk and plus, you get a 99.9% uptime guarantee. I should tell you that I have never experienced any downtime at all with them.

Overall opinion

I haven’t had a single problem with HostClear and it would be unfair of me if I didn’t rate it a 10/10. I’ve done a lot of research on blog hosting and Host Clear should be the host that offers the best value for money!

If you have been a reader of ROCKFUSE, you would know that I wouldn’t recommend anything to my readers that I’m not 100% satisfied with. So, in that sense, HostClear is probably the best solution, in my opinion that is.

Check them out now! – Rest Assured, you won’t regret it.

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Monetizing Twitter – a Do or a Don’t?

admin — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:38:42 +0000

Although some users would not instantaneously like the idea of monetizing Twitter and becoming a “sell-out”, that won’t change the fact that it’s happening at large in the Twitter community today. I was never against it though. A lot of people were against it when some people started monetizing blogs too. But I guess it’s perfectly OK today; With most of us – at least.

I’ve seen account with 4000+ followers generally going for around $1000+, when listed on eBay. You can get a round figure on what’ it’s worth from WhatsYourTweetWorth. But, unless something convinces you to get rid of your Twitter Account, that’s not likely to happen right?

So, the obvious monetization moves would be to get your profile sponsored. You know, throw in a small banner in the background, send a promo tweet once every 30th Tweet, and so on. And obviously, “how much” would depend on how popular you’re on Twitter. That is, how many followers you are having and so on.

Of course, trying to find advertisers can prove to be a hassle. Doing it on eBay should be relatively easy, but you’re not guaranteed of an advertiser. And this is an instance where you can make use of services like Twittad. Not everyone would want to sell their profiles through a 3rd party, but it’s really convenient provided that you don’t want to search for advertisers yourself.

The idea of monetizing a Twitter Account still is a relatively alien idea to most of the people. But with the exponential growth of Twitter, I guess it won’t be that much of a big idea when more and more people start doing it. Nevertheless, an extra few bucks couldn’t possibly hurt, yeah?

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Track your PageRank changes with PageRank Alert.

admin — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:44:43 +0000

If you’re like me, having dozens of sites online, and can’t be bothered to check all of the when a PageRank update hits, PageRank Alert may be your solution to the problem!

I just had a minute to kill and so I thought of checking up the site. Signup process is fairly easy and after that you can enter an indefinite number of sites of which the PageRank will be monitored.

You can also create your watch list and make sure you get e-mailed for all your PageRank changes, as it happens, when it happens. Pretty little piece of a lifesaver if you ask me. Just thought you guys would find it useful.

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