4×4 Truck Lift Kits
Posted on July 2, 2008
Filed Under 4x4, BANS, Business, design | Leave a Comment
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4×4OffRoads.com has now extended its range of offerings. You can now find a full sett of lift kits for your 4×4 truck or SUV.
This is a convenient way for you to find what is available and select the lift that fits your needs and budget.
Find by lift type, producer or what is available for your own brand of 4×4 truck.
Yeah - these listings eventually lead to individual items for sale on eBay…
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Opposite of Paper?
Posted on June 26, 2008
Filed Under ChitChat | 2 Comments
So what do you think is the opposite of paper?
After this question came up in a family discussion it lead to some deeper thinking. Opposites are often quite obvious: Dark - Light; High - Low; Fat - Thin; Sad - Happy.
It seems that with paper for example you can look at various properties and draw different conclusions.
- Paper is white - usually but not always. Coal could be a candidate as it is black.
- Paper can be written on. Water can not be written on.
- Paper can be torn easily. Steel can not be torn.
- Paper is highly flammable. Fire could therefor be considered an opposite.
- Paper is a material. A thought or a feeling is not.
The list could go on - but you get the drift.
Let me know if you have a perfect answer…
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Buy 4×4 Video Games!
Posted on June 11, 2008
Filed Under 4x4, BANS, Monetize, SiteBuildIt!, design | Leave a Comment
As 4×4OffRoads.com is really becoming an authority site it is about time to expand it using InfinIt!
Today I added a BANS - Niche Store to enhance the site and add some interesting 4×4 off road video games. I selected the most popular 4×4 games from eBay. The store is nicely integrated with the same look and feel as the original site. At the same time I updated the core part of the site with a little more flexible setup, where the content centers on screen if the width of the browser window is more than 1024 pixels.
Enter the world of 4×4 Off Road video games! Race huge V8 powered 4×4s, monster trucks and ATVs around rugged terrain, including islands, massive arenas and volcanoes.
All the top 4×4 truck and off road video games are available:
4X4 Evolution 2
ATV Offroad Fury 3
ATV Offroad Fury Blazin Trails
Big Mutha Truckers
Cabela’s 4X4 Off Road Adventure
Dirt
Excite Truck
Ford Racing Off Road
Jeep Thrills
Larry Ragland’s 4X4 Challenge
Monster 4X4: Masters of Metal
Monster 4X4: World Circuit
Monster Jam Maximum Destruction
Monster Truck Jam
Monster Trux Offroad
Moto GP Ultimate Racing 3
Mx Vs ATV Untamed
Off Road Extreme Special Edition
Test Drive Off Road
I am working on adding a forum using the same InfinIt! extension. That will be done using the popular phpBB forum platform. More about that later.
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Digital Pens As Computer Input
Posted on June 9, 2008
Filed Under Digital, design | Leave a Comment
The computer has come a long way and the mouse and keyboard have been the major input devices. Interesting development has been done in using the digital pen as an input device.
Check out this video that shows a few new digital pens:
Afterwards you can perhaps find something useful here:
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4×4 T-Shirt from SackWear
Posted on May 30, 2008
Filed Under 4x4, T-Shirt | Leave a Comment
Tim McGrath from SackWear just sent me a Land Cruiser T-Shirt. Actually they have 3 types so far. The FJ45lv, FJ55 and FJ40 with other models to come in the near future.
Here is a picture of me wearing the “Safari Cruisers” T-Shirt.
You can view their t-shirt offerings online at www.sackwear.com (not all of them 4×4s)
Much appreciated - thanks a lot 
Popularity: 15% [?]
Earthquake in Southern Iceland 2008
Posted on May 30, 2008
Filed Under Iceland | Leave a Comment
A big earthquake with the magnitude of 6.3 Richter shook our parts of the word yesterday afternoon (2008-05-29 15:46).
The earthquake started about 50km south of Reykjavik, where I live. We could clearly feel the earth shaking but no damage here. In Selfoss and Hveragerði, small towns close to where it started, there were some damages - things falling and braking. Some damage to houses and bridges and a few people with minor injuries. Many got scared and slept in tents or moved to relatives. Icelandic houses are built to withstand quakes like this.
Earthquakes are common in this area where the continental drift makes two large landmasses rub against each other and breaking out in earthquakes every hundred years or so.
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Free Photoshop Anthology book
Posted on May 23, 2008
Filed Under Digital, Photography, design | 2 Comments
Just wanted to give you a link to this free ebook about Photoshop:
http://photoshop.aws.sitepoint.com/
This is a real professional quality 278 page book especially geared towards webmasters.
Get it if you want to dig deeper into making you own graphics.
The book is only free for less than a month now…
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Social Networking for Smaller Sites?
Posted on May 13, 2008
Filed Under design, web 2.0 | Leave a Comment
Google is working hard on a simple plug-in social networking solution for smaller sites. This looks really promising. Basically you can use the login features of the bigger social sites and have your readers contribute and add friends with the help of sites like FaceBook.com, Yahoo.com, Orkut.com and other sites that support OpenSocial standard.
This is all done with small code snippets, much like AdSense, that you generate easily without any programming.
The end result should help in attracting more visitors and added social features that visitors are expecting.
The idea is explained very well in this Google Friend Connect video:
From Google Friend Connect:
Everyone wins in a friend connected web:
- You, the site owner - Google Friend Connect gives you a snippet of code that, when put into your site, will equip the site with social features, including the ability to run third-party social applications. Moreover, it enables your visitors to log in with existing credentials, see who among their friends is already registered at that site. It also gives them one-click access to invite friends from their existing friends lists on other sites, such as Facebook or orkut.
- Your site’s visitors - Visitors no longer need to create a new account or develop yet another friends list just to use the social applications on your site. We create the infrastructure that allows one login to be used across multiple sites and the ability to reuse existing friend relationships that the visitor has already established elsewhere.
- OpenSocial developers - With Google Friend Connect, any website on the web can become an OpenSocial container. Their social applications can now run on social networking sites and anywhere else on the web that uses Google Friend Connect. By placing these applications on sites where users already visit, these application will be seen and used by more users more often.
- Social networks - With Google Friend Connect, social networks thrive as hubs of activity while giving their users more opportunities to bring their friend relationships to other websites while simultaneously bringing their friends and activities from outside the social network back in — with people having the ability to publish their activities across the web into the activity streams of their social networks.
To read more about this development or take part in testing it you can visit:
http://www.google.com/friendconnect/
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Outsourcing My Web Business
Posted on May 5, 2008
Filed Under Business, web 2.0 | 2 Comments
Outsourcing is the current buzz around the net.
I’ll start you off with some pointers in how and what I do - just get some details down and add some meat to the bones…
Lets be clear about the fact that I am no expert in outsourcing. But simply running my daily live I outsource a lot of tasks, sometimes without noticing. You do too. Buy a pizza or take away chicken and you have outsourced COOKING.
Here is a list of a few outsourcing routes I have tried:
www.Need-An-Article.com - I use them for article writing when I don’t feel like writing it myself from scratch. Using the service is pretty straightforward - you get reasonable quality and can ask for one revision. I had one writer that was not up to par but most are ok and I found one that was very good. It is important to get your own voice into the article and make minor adjustments. The cost is a little over $5 for each article as well as a monthly fee of $10.
Example:
http://www.digital-photo-web.com/madame-tussauds-museum-london.html
(took the photos myself)
www.AbsoluteCovers.com - Ovi Dogar is a very capable and quick graphics designer. I used his service for the graphics for creating my eBook cover. The result was very professional. In addition to the cover he made the graphics for the sales page from a photo I sent and some text. Can’t recall the cost but it was less than $200 for the whole package.
Example:
http://www.4×4offroads.com/book.html
www.SubmitEdge.com - I recently started using their services. For $15 I can get 100 one way links from directories. Pretty hard to do that by hand for less. I also am trying out the “Basic link building package” for $79. So far so good - except the first article I just got back is not acceptable. I am just now asking for a rewrite on that.
Photo Journalists hired - I currently have one guy who is writing articles for me on a regular basis. I asked for submissions in my newsletter and got a few responses. The cost per article is fixed and is of course way higher than NAA but the quality and relevancy is also much higher. This way I can have original and interesting articles from places where I can’t be. I am looking for more photo journalists (of both sexes) to take the website even further.
Example:
http://www.4×4offroads.com/off-road-adventure-romania-easter.html
Hope that this list gets someone inspired to try some tasks. Like most webmasters I am sometimes a little too convinced that I am personally the best man for each job. However I think outsourcing is vital for healthy growth to increase profits and safe time.
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WordPress Blogging or Building an SBI site?
Posted on April 30, 2008
Filed Under Business, SiteBuildIt!, web 2.0 | Leave a Comment
As you may know I am a great fan of Ken Evoy of SiteSell. His clear thinking and especially his way of transferring those ideas to the people around him is mindboggling. Ken likes to shake up things and get you to look deeper than before.
This time Ken set forth a direct attack on the blogging craze.
Blog or Build? With Site Build It!…
You Actually Do Both Automatically.
Beyond That, Is Full Blogging Right For You?Should You Full Blog? For Most Small Business People…
“Full-Blogging” Is the Wrong Choice To Build a Business
Blogging. Everyone’s doing it.
And that is a financial mistake for most small businesses. Few make much money at blogging because it is usually the wrong way to grow an online business. That’s important if you want your Web venture to be more than just a hobby (”an activity or interest pursued for pleasure and not primarily for income”).
What is blogging, exactly? Well, after you strip away all the hoopla…
Blogging is merely a different way to build a Web site. Its content is organized by the date/time of its “posts,” which are what blogs call “Web pages” (even the word “posts” suggests time-sensitivity).
The points he makes are well thought out.
Of course his statements have caused a stir in the blogging world. Rosalind Gardner got all angry and wrote what I consider to be a less well thought out response:
http://www.netprofitstoday.com/blog/blogging-is-a-massive-mistake-huh/
Andy Beard takes a much more balanced route and admits he has learned a lot from Ken and understands his point.
http://andybeard.eu/2008/04/ken-evoy-attacks-blogging-wordpress.html
I think the main point Ken is making is that for the average business a full blog is simply too much work for the actual results it will produce. Taking the long time view will make the blogging posts of little value.
Some are talking about the technical aspect of blogging vs. building. SBI is not really a technical solution it is a marketing strategy along with a handful of tools to support the growth.
For me - as a technical thinker and doer - I chose to create this one blog to link all my sites and to have a place where I can express my views on a number of things - small and large.
My recommendation:
Choose WordPress if you are willing to spend more time and cost or are willing to take on the steeper learning curve. You will have to learn about the more technical sites of hosting like upgrading the software and handling technical challenges. Outsource these things and the cost goes even higher.
Choose SBI if you want to drive your business safely to a set goal. My SBI sites are the core of my strategy of building an “online empire” (sorry if that sounds like a used phrase).
In the end it is all a matter of delivering value to your customer and making the world a little better.
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