Justin Germino Ramblings

Was a really easy going weekend where I spent much of my time just playing with the kids in the mornings we dueling at the playground with our new Nerf Vendetta double swords which also slot together to form a double bladed sword.

[easyazon-image-link asin=”B004XMU6JQ” alt=”Nerf N-Force Vendetta Sword” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31w7VYEp54L._SL160_.jpg” align=”left” width=”160″ height=”160″]These are some high quality swords and at about $20 per double sword you really get 2 foam weapons in one.  I bought 3 sets one for my kids and one for myself and we already enjoyed about 3 hours of total dueling time.

It helps keep the physical activity level up and the kids are big time live action battle fans.

Meanwhile, my oldest son who is going to be 8 years old on Tuesday is fixated on Wizards101 lately and I joined him in a few sessions this weekend and see why he likes it so much.  The game is a cross between Magic the Gathering, World of Warcraft but set in a Harry Potter type of scenario.  The turn based combat where you choose spell cards to attack, defend, heal or augment spells make it an interesting but simplistic strategy game.

The simple quests are easy for kids to follow and the arrows which show you exactly how many steps to reach your quest goals are ideal for little kids.  Even my 4 year old created a character and started playing by choosing cards in battle, though needed help with reading the quests he can follow the arrow to reach goals with ease.

Saturday night we enjoyed a feast at Benihana where I had the Salmon while my son had Chicken and Shrimp, the meal was fantastic but I never did get my $30 off birthday coupon that they were supposed to send me.

-Justin Germino

[az_easel item=”B004XMU6JQ”]

Today is my oldest boy’s birthday and he turned 8 years old today.  He is a great kid who has a passion for computer games, bug hunting and wrestling/sword fighting with his dad (Nerf N-Force swords).

He is so much like me probably because he is a Libra born October 4th and I was born on September 29th, but in his mannerisms and his likes.  I am very proud of him and hope he likes the gift we got him (it was a new bicycle since he didn’t really have one) and we are taking him to Peter Piper Pizza with some game tokens to celebrate after school.

Being a father and a parent is one of the greatest things in my life and I really truly live for my kids in the hopes that I can inspire them to become the best at whatever they want to be when they grow up. 

Wishing my boy a Happy 8th birthday, and watching him grow and learn over the years.  It won’t be long before he starts his own blog and YouTube channel I imagine as he has been asking for a  while and I want him to make sure his handwriting is solid before he does so much typing, I know because I have horrible handwriting since all I do is type myself.

-Justin Germino

It is actually getting more difficult to find specific items on classifieds for local area’s if you don’t live in an area that has it’s own dedicated city listing.  For example if you want to find virtually anything in a New York City classified you know you will find hundreds or thousands of matches generally because the city is so large and so many people use almost all of the classified sites that you will find somebody posting something there.

I can’t find any such site that recognizes any listings for Casa Grande, Arizona for example and Craigslist only has a “South Phoenix” or “East Valley” equivalent which really means 40-55 miles north of the city I live in.  Even with its population of over 120,000 people it should have it’s own listing.

Zaarly, is a unique classified site in that you post what you want and the dollar amount you are looking to pay for it.  You then get offers from people who either will sell it for what you are looking to pay or make a counter offer for what they are willing to sell it for.

This has a lot of potential to make it easy to find stuff you want without having to deliberately search through endless piles of listings.  You just post what you want and what you want to pay and wait for offers to come in.

It saves time, but again I was browsing for any wants in the Casa Grande city and couldn’t find anything.  They have all the major cities covered, but apparently nobody from my current city has decided to try the service yet.

Some items I would be looking for are used iPod touches, maybe some cheap used Wii or Xbox 360 games…etc.  I can use Swap.com or other sites but you still have to pay for shipping and the ‘fee’ assessed for using their service.  Direct people to people trading or purchasing saves you the extra fee’s and if you can find someone within a driving distance who can complete the transactions you even save the shipping.

Zaarly has potential and can do well if it can grow it’s user base and include some listings closer to my general area.

What are some of your favorite classifieds sites or ways to find or sell items online?

-Justin Germino

There has been a lot of feedback in the online community and even an article on CNN about how the Silk browser in Amazon’s new Fire tablet filters all content you visit through their cloud.  This increases the load times of sites by up to 200% but also means Amazon tracks everything you visit and every transaction you perform that isn’t encrypted.

People who are up in arms over the Facebook tracking cookies that track where users visit even when leaving Facebook supposedly, or Google’s pattern and habit tracking of Chrome would probably see this as an even larger threat to user’s anonymity in where they go and what they visit online.

It is common knowledge now that your “habits” and “patterns” are what advertisers want.  This personalization of what you buy, where you visit helps better tailor advertisements, coupons and enticing offers for the products or services you are more likely to be interested in.

Corporations themselves want to collect this data to gleam more revenue from advertisers to sell this data or in the case of Amazon align their own product / service offerings to better align with users patterns of behavior.

But how do consumers and users feel about all their browsing patterns being tracked with such detail for such purposes?  It should be no surprise that the majority of web surfers do not like the tracking, but far fewer are willing to make the changes in browsers or option configuration to actually disable the tracking or go around it.

The inconvenience of running Chrome in Incognito Mode all the time outweighs the pros of having virtually none of your cookies, set and data listed.

Using a site like Kroxy or VPN service to pass all your traffic through so websites don’t know where you are coming from is also an inconvenience most are not willing to do.

So, how upset are you if your tablet browser which is from Amazon and is all about making everything Amazon more accessible and within reach also tracks all your browsing information? 

Do you think this will deter users from buying the Fire as a tablet device?

-Justin Germino

I can’t stand false reporting and fake analytics, so my personal blog was unhitched from my FriendFeed account because I didn’t like that all my Friendfeed contacts listed as RSS subscribers which made it look like this blog had over 1000 RSS subscribers when it has under 100.

The Google RSS subscriber button is misleading in this way if you have a large Friendfeed network and can give false impressions to advertisers who do want to see a large subscription base.  Also it really is false and would be as accurate as reporting Twitter followers as RSS subscribers which just isn’t the case.  Just because you auto share a post link on your social networks doesn’t make everyone following you a subscriber.

Odd things have happened with my personal blog becoming more inviting to advertisers as of late since it was ranked a PR3 and my traffic increasing from it’s former average of 2500 visits per month to nearly 10,000 per month.  I am seeing this personal blog starting to get more attention and ramp up revenue like DragonBlogger.com was about 2 years ago.

[easyazon-image-link asin=”B001TH7GUK” alt=”AmazonBasics USB 2.0 A-Male to Mini-B Cable (6 Feet / 1.8 Meters)” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/419ca-2c9tL._SL160_.jpg” align=”left” width=”159″ height=”160″]This bodes well because if I can increase the monetization of this site I would further increase my blogging related revenue and potentially be able to reach my goals which still remain at earning $1,000 per month consistently through blogging related efforts.

I met this goal for the first time last month and will just miss it this month but be close enough that I think it is achievable and I may be able to hit it consistently by the end of the year.

Though the hours I put into blogging make it feel like a 2nd (or 3rd) job, it really has helped ease some of the finances and allowed for some extra’s that I wouldn’t have been able to gotten.  It is completely with blog funds that I purchased a new $1300 computer system and it is blogging funds that I will finance a Legoland adventure with the kids and entire family in October which is putting my blog earnings to good use.

Blogging also has allowed me to start paying others, so even though it isn’t a lot I feel like I am helping people earn some money for themselves and in some cases bloggers writing for my site can earn more than they do writing for their own.

One thing I don’t ever do is try to misrepresent my statistics, numbers and earnings.  I am very open about full disclosure on how many followers, readers, subscribers and analytics around my sites.  I don’t believe in earning through deception.

-Justin Germino