Justin Germino Ramblings

Seriously, I did move and try to update my address in Google AdSense in the W9 section under profile –> Payee Profile Settings, but the new address never took and now my 1099 never arrived. Without that 1099 I have a hard time doing my taxes, and Google with all it’s embracing Internet everything still requires to send you a physical paper copy of your 1099, they can’t just have you login with plus factor (page your phone) to see your 1099 online…seriously?

The fact that I had to open a support ticket, Google cannot bother to let me talk to someone on the phone, that their email response says to update my payment settings which I did 5x and it still won’t reflect a change of address.

So I finally updated it again at the Payee Profile (Edit) as well as the W9 and it looks like it finally took this time.

How is it THE top Technology Company still has to rely on sending a paper copy of a 1099 anyway, why can’t they have an online copy that you can view and print in PDF format? As a way to backup the paper copy sent via snail mail?

So now I will be later than I ever usually am submitting my taxes all because of this delay with getting my 1099 from Google, not 100% Google’s fault as I didn’t address or notice the change of address sooner, but I think they should allow you to print and view your 1099 online without having to have a snail mail copy sent to you anyway for being a large tech company.

Literally within 24 hours of Google penalizing MyBlogGuest publicly all of my sites that had occasionally published articles from MyBlogGuest have been punished by Google and slapped to PR0 with manual actions taken as Google notified me in Web Master Tools.  Now MyBlogGuest was a resource I leveraged to find articles to help cover content on my site when I went on vacation or didn’t have enough time to write content and helped provide some filler articles.  The service in itself has a good intention, to bring guest bloggers and blogs together, the problem is that the system is rampantly abused by SEO companies and people who are paid to put guest blog posts into the system which have dofollow links to companies that paid them to put the posts and links into the system.

MyBlogGuest does what it can to scan for this, but it obviously is not immune and is being held accountable for what poor quality advertisers have done with the marketplace.

I have been a member of MyBlogGuest for a long time, and never paid to put articles into the system except for an initial review, but I often found articles in the marketplace and used them as filler articles for my site when I had to go on vacation and/or didn’t have time to write many articles that week. My sites were all penalized from hosting and linking to MyBlogGuest in previous posts, 5 of my 7 blogs were dropped to PR0 from PR4 and PR3 in most cases. I don’t think the network in itself should be penalized, do many of the people who publish articles into the network get paid to put blog posts with dofollow links in them, yes, and those links/and those sites should be punished. MyBlogGuest is merely the host of bloggers meeting with each other and offering content. Really the advertisers who buy into the system and put the articles into the marketplace, the target sites that aren’t nofollow from the guest posts should be penalized if there is a penalty to be had.

Still, I also know from the quality and types of articles, there are some good ones, the ones with valid Google Plus author bio tend to be more legit and higher quality than the ones without. But 90% of the advertisers in the system are there only to promote dofollow links for the guest posts, they don’t ever respond to comments on their guest articles, it is published content abandoned and leveraged for the dofollow link in the author bio. The community itself is excellent, the forums are excellent, but the system was abused by companies hiring SEO people to put articles in the system to be picked up by bloggers. This was instead of the olden days when they would fish and just offer to pay bloggers directly to host articles, they still paid for someone to create the articles and put them in the system and fish them to various sites, this is why PageRank requirements exist for articles, nobody would care about PageRank it would be more about traffic.

For MyBlogGuest to continue as a valid service and perhaps recover from Google Penalties, and it can, it needs to switch and focus on audience/visibility and social brand promotion for the guest author, rather than the dofollow link in the article. If the continue to allow dofollow link, then I think enforcement of Google Plus Authorship and some sort of site verification/ownership of the link should be required to further cut back on abusers taking advantage of the marketplace.

Even now, the requests to remove links from former MyBlogGuest articles COME POURING IN and I get them via email and from MyBlogGuest Inbox messages as well.

What one can do in the meantime would be to nofollow every single link in every post to be sure to prevent penalties, one such plugin is http://wordpress.org/plugins/follow-nofollow-control/ which can nofollow all external links out of your site so you don’t have to go through dozens if not hundreds of older posts to find the external links which may cause you grief.

So my Netgear N900 has just simply caused me so much trouble that I have had enough, it would randomly drop all Wi-fi connections about 2x per day and I was forced to reboot the router twice a day or three times a day just to maintain connectivity for all my Wi-fi devices.  I tried updating the firmware, and every other tweak I could find online and it would just work for 4 hours fine, then boom all devices couldn’t connect o Wi-Fi and it would never recover without a reboot.

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So I decided to try the ASUS RT-N56U which I have read many great reviews on, though they did have a big security vulnerability exploited and patched in February I was aware of this and still chose to buy the router besides the point as many other router models were also vulnerable and it had already been patched.

The ASUS RT-N56U actually has the most four and five star reviews out of any other router listed on NewEgg and happened to be on sale for less than $90, so this was 1/2 the price of the latest Linksys EA6500 when I bought it so I decided to pick it up and see if it would be more stable than the Netgear N900.

The setup was a breeze, and was even able to be done all over Wi-Fi without requiring you to have an Ethernet cable plugged in to configure it first.  The guide walks you through the setup pretty easily, which involves you hitting the router, establishing it to your Internet, setting up your SSID and 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz wireless bands.  It allows you to quickly set either auto for DNS, or put static DNS entries in which I typically will use Google DNS entries of 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as my DNS since they tend to be faster than my ISP DNS.  I did use OpenDNS prior but they blacklisted a few email providers that I use, so I had to switch to Google DNS.

So far it has only been a few days, but it is looking pretty good for the ASUS RT-N56U and I will say it is about 40% of the size of the Netgear N900 so it takes up way less room on a shelf.

By the way, if you need to find the latest firmware for the ASUS RT-N56U you can get it here, you won’t find it in the auto-update of the router http://support.asus.com/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&m=rt-n56u

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I spend my time mostly in two states Arizona and California and there are vast differences in the driving situations.  In Arizona everything is spread out more, there is more space generally and less cars cluttering the road though you wouldn’t think so during rush hour downtown.  But then when I am in the San Diego county area and you are stuck in one hour traffic on the I-5 between LA and San Diego you know that the traffic life here is much worse than anywhere else.  Even more so the limited parking anywhere up and down the 101 mean that only really compact vehicles area an ideal fit for a city area that is already focused on energy efficiency, going green and being eco friendly.

To address the ever frustrating transport and parking problem in crowded cities and regions, Toyota did a demonstration of it’s new i-ROAD EV which is something like I have never seen before.

The i-ROAD is a three wheeled EV that is designed to be extremely ECO friendly while also providing rapid and convenient transport, parking in a crowded urban area.  It has a unique turning and adaptive response system which allows it to hug corners and have exceptional response navigating the roads and makes for being able to parallel park in the smallest of spaces.

Now I love technology and believe the future in vehicles lies in what is being labeled Smart Mobility, these are vehicles that not only will monitor the drivers and be able to adapt to changes in driver health patterns (sleepy, distress, panic) but also cars that detect proximity, health and status of cars around them.  This is already just starting to be mainstream and cars will automatically know the proximity of cars around them and be able to make minor corrections, automatic braking, warning and more.

I personally would never ride a motorcycle, have no interest in them and consider them too dangerous not because you are driving them but because of everything else on the road with you.  The Toyota i-Road however having 3 wheels and the system that it does appears much safer and you don’t have the worry about falling over.  It is definitely lean, small and compact and not designed to travel with passengers.  This is the vehicle for someone who simply needs a quick transport to and from a location and lives in an extremely crowded area.  I see this being a great EV for really urban cities where you never really are going to get to 60mph or higher.  I see so many Hybrids, EV’s and smaller and smaller vehicles coming to California though Arizona still has far more trucks and SUV’s and adoption of this new line of extremely small, efficient vehicles is slower here in the U.S. than in Europe and Japan.

I encourage readers to see and learn more about the Toyota i-Road which has some amazing technology in it, you can also drill down and see some other upcoming and new technology from Toyota and in particular the idea of a vehicle that not only charges at your home, but helps charge your home and offset some power costs was very interesting to me read more here: 

http://www.toyota-global.com/innovation/smart_mobility_society/news_and_events/t_i-road/

What do you think, do you see something like the Toyota i-ROAD coming to the states and becoming mainstream, or will it remain niche for more European and urban cities around the world?

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Toyota. The opinions and text are all mine.

Statistics suggest that video content spreads faster than any other kind of content on the internet, and given that the media of the web is the media of the people, the people spread what they want to when they want to. Your job is to make your corporate video one that people want to share, as this is your best means of promotion.

Corporate video can really benefit a business, by building brand association, promoting services and endearing potential customers to, well, you.

It’s also a difficult line to walk, and promoting corporate videos can be very tricky but humor, video editing and cats can all play an important part. Here are a few ways to get the ball rolling.

1. Don’t push your service

Web users respond so well to corporate video editing because it humanizes a company. It shows you giving something back to the people: so it’s important that you don’t push a hard sell. People will roll their eyes immediately. Nobody wants to share an advert, after all.

2. Don’t be afraid to shock (But not too much!)

It seems obvious to say that controversial content gets shared the most, but this doesn’t mean you want to build brand associations between your business and some completely indefensible political position.

Instead, engage with your customers. When Bodyform responded to a poster on their Facebook wall with this brilliant viral video

Their audience was shocked, but in a positive and humorous manner.

3. Catvertising!

This will sound completely mad, but cats do better online than just about anything else. In this sense, cat appearances seem to possess a kind of "share compulsion" property i.e. people see a cat in a video and are compelled to share said video. Besides, in what way will your corporate video be negatively affected by a cat appearance?

4. Consult the experts and get a professional finish

As with most video content, a corporate video is not finished until it’s been edited. Consult professional video editors to sharpen up your message, keep it concise and compelling, and really give your video that slick edge. Good video editing will keep your video entertaining and share-worthy, without compromising your message.

5. Capitalize on trending topics

The most successful corporate videos are those that focus on the topical: they tell the world that your business is in touch with the world, and your customers will find you and share you with other potential customers as a by-product of reading about something #topical.

This brings me to my next, and final, tip…

6. Keywords, keywords, keywords

Keywords make the internet go around and if you want people to find you, then you’ve got to help them get to the right place. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the practice of adding keywords to all of your content so that search engines are better placed to deliver them when somebody uses those search terms. Keywords really are the key (no pun intended) to promoting your corporate video.

Now it’s time to get your video out there, and let it promote itself: good luck!

About the Author

This was a guest post by Maxwell who doesn’t spend nearly enough time doing SEO for his online video content and should practice more of what he preaches!

So as it turns out DragonBlogger was due for a disaster and the years of testing so many plugins that you uninstall but they leave orphaned database tables behind left not only my database severely bloated but by adding Broken Link Checker in December and having it scan through over 3,500+ posts for broken links was the straw that broke the camels back on the site causing a flow of 502 errors on my Nginx site all over the place randomly for several weeks.

Honestly, I would have had it resolved sooner had I the time to work on it, my day job has been consuming 11 hours per day and I just haven’t had the energy to keep up with my technology blog lately so though I kept running some new information articles and kicked off a new giveaway I just hadn’t the time to give the WordPress site the tender loving care it deserved.

Fortunately I pared down many of my plugins, removed Broken Link Checker, and P3 Performance Profiler is looking pretty good now.

I went from nearly 60 plugins, to so far 35 active ones and my MySQL queries which were as high as 400+ on single posts are down to 84 per visit.  I don’t have social share buttons restored yet at this time, and adding 1 plugin at a time and doing full regression tests to see where I would start seeing a jump in pageload performance issues.

This is what I will be doing on my spare time over the next few days until I can get the functionality I need back in and keep the site performance in tip top shape.

Was testing out the new WordPress iOS application over the past few days, and it has a much more minimalist feel to it, in a good way but it took some getting used to. First I didn’t realize they moved post options to the very bottom of your article, and you can’t see them until you scroll down.

This made it hard for me to find where I could schedule my posts instead of letting them publish immediately, I wish they put this option up near the save/update/publish button instead so it was always in plain view. The featured image support is a really nice touch, it will let you pick or take a photo off of iOS and set it as your featured image.

Overall though typing blog posts on the newer version of the WordPress application is faster than previous but adding tags, and doing some scheduling is still a bit of an extra step. I think having access to the italics, bold, underline, strike through and quote buttons as well as the read more right at the bottom is a plus however.

As many of my followers know I have been playing Elemental Kingdoms on my spare time and have finally reached Level 67, I am trying to conquer the Swamp Hinterland which is the new 11th land opened up and the map is the toughest yet, opponents with almost all 5 star cards many that are immune to all abilities are hard enough but add in the new runes that were added to Elemental Kingdoms and this becomes impossible for me to collect those last 3 stars.

In just one example battle below against a level 73 Lich I am trounced rapidly with little hope of defeating my opponent.

Unfortunately I don’t have very many cards that are immune to abilities nor do I have many of the runes that could help me defeat these battles, so I keep trying.  I did however finally get 2 Draconian Elders, which can help somewhat turn the tides once I get them to Level 10, as you can see most of the cards in this battle don’t have immunity to abilities, so having many cards that can teleport or destroy enemy cards may be the key to winning.

Who else is playing Elemental Kingdoms, what level are you and what is the furthest map and how many stars have you achieved?

Today my flight will arrive in San Fran and my wife and I decided to take some time to visit Alcatraz before it becomes all work for my CA Conference tomorrow. My wife hasn’t been to San Fran yet and all the times I have went I have always been confined to office locations or hotel conferences, so this will be the first time out and exploring a bit and after Alcatraz, we will spend some time at Fisherman’s Wharf and then it’s off to Farallon’s for dinner which was booked through Open Table.

It was nice to spend a day in Encinitas yesterday where my wife treated me to getting a mani-pedi, no pictures unfortunately. Then just walked and bussed back to our cottage to enjoy some leisurely time together. We kind of made this 3 day weekend our Valentine’s Day celebration since I had to go for a work trip anyway.

It is important for married people, actually any couples who are together and have kids to remember to take some time out and spend it alone together. You can lose sight of things when you aren’t spending quality time alone with your partner, after all when the kids grow up and you are left with an empty nest you have to have that close bond with your partner who now becomes your 24×7 with less distractions.

Back to the grind this week however, after conference I won’t be staying for RSA World as I am too swamped with work, but I would like to attend in the future at some point. The only conference I probably will be able to make it this year is CA World in November which I normally attend for business reasons.

I almost can’t think of a hamburger or order a hamburger without having the Hamburger song from Teen Titans playing in my head where Cyborg is promoting his hamburger in a showdown between Burrito vs. Hamburger.

Watch song here and see if it gets stuck in your head before moving onto rest of article.

Now, I was at Red Robin the other night and I created the ultimate burger by modifying their Whiskey River BBQ Burger and I tell you, every bite was like eating meat poetry to me.

You just add a fried egg to the top of a Whiskey River BBQ burger and the burger gets cooked medium rare (you want it some pink and not overcooked and dry).  The juices work together so well and when you bite into the burger and the egg yolk runs and drenches over the bun to mix with the meat and BBQ sauce it truly makes your taste buds sing the burger song.

I swear, this burger was as good as any $20+ Kobe beef burger I have ever eaten.  The unlimited fries with the Thai Chili Sauce are an extra bonus.  I am usually never disappointed by the burgers at Red Robin and if you have the chance to stop by a Red Robin and want to play Russian roulette with your arteries, try ordering a Whiskey River BBQ Burger with a Fried Egg on top.

What’s your favorite burger at Red Robin or any other burger joint?