Justin Germino Ramblings

After months of testing and my post being 2140 words in length I have finally completed my comparison of the Giveaway Platforms which include Punchtab, Rafflecopter, GiveawayTools and PromoSimple and will be showcasing the article in an upcoming post on DragonBlogger next week.

I like all the platforms for different reasons, but you will have to read the article to see which is my favorite and why.  In the meantime the giveaways keep coming and we have even more giveaways and greater prizes coming of the next few months.

I did an article a while back showcasing how to market your giveaways or contests online which can prove to be of value to others who run sweepstakes as well http://www.dragonblogger.com/promote-contests-online/

I am able to write fewer articles myself as of late because the product testing and review articles consume so much more time it reduces the amount of articles I produce but still I am hoping the time and effort in doing the quality reviews and testing of products to showcase to readers will prove to be of interest to them.

I am going to potentially hire more freelance writers to join the team at the end of summer as well.

There are cycles of articles about Google Authorship for blogs and lately a new round of articles is going on in the Internet on how you should be leveraging and implementing Google Authorship for your blog or site.  Now Matt Cutts from Google does a video discussing it and the benefits and reasons why it should be leveraged, rather than embed the video here I am going to direct you to the iBlogZone article which was one of the most recent ones that I read and encourage you to read after reading my own point of view having implemented Google Authorship on DragonBlogger several months ago.

I used the Fanciest Author Box plugin for WordPress which not only gives you a clean author summary profile box at the bottom or top of an article, but also does the necessary tag elements to be compatible with Google Authorship.  It is a highly recommended plugin for WordPress and is only $10 for an unlimited site license which is far cheaper than most WordPress plugins.

The Google Authorship adds your profile picture from Google as well as “author byline” to articles posted on your site.

The theory is that it looks more professional and will increase your CTR ratio, and combined with a plugin like Author hReview you can have a completely optimized SERP listing for one of your articles.

One advantage of using a plugin like Fanciest Author Box is it gives site writers who list themselves as authors for your site a listing for their own articles so that your profile isn’t listed as the author byline for all articles (even the ones you haven’t written).

Now, my own experience since implementing Google Authorship several months ago is that I haven’t really seen any traffic increase or benefit at all from implementing Google Authorship.  In fact I have seen an average decrease in traffic to my site by 25%+ over the past several months since implementing Google Authorship but this could be coincidence and I don’t have enough data or proof to show that Google Authorship is related to my site traffic decrease, it could be caused by ranking in the SERP going down for some of my former popular articles or simply the search traffic going away for those articles, or it could be caused by some Penguin penalty that I am unaware of.

So whether you take the plunge or have already in implementing Google Authorship for your own site, I would be curious to hear if you specifically noticed any higher CTR or traffic volumes just from implementing this change alone, or if you also had a negative traffic loss within 30-60 days of implementing the change which may or may not be coincidental.

Read iBlogZone’s article on Google Authorship Here: http://www.iblogzone.com/2013/06/google-authorship-improve-search-quality.html

Now, in one of the best articles I have ever read about a case study and comparing the effects and conclusions of Google Authorship showing that it has benefit, but not on SERP rankings I would highly recommend you read this article on Jeffalytics which is one of the best articles I have read on Google Authorship so far and a study of it’s effects http://www.jeffalytics.com/google-plus-search-authorship/

Share your thoughts on Google Authorship!

It is ironic that I had a discussion with my wife last week about what people choose to spend on and consider their “luxury” items, I myself found that if I had excessive amounts of cash that I could squander on luxury items, then the Emperor 1510 LX computer station would be something I would probably consider.

Image Credit: MWE Labs

This $21,500 chair that is coming soon holds up to 5 monitors (3 27” and 2 19”) has a Bose sound system built in, Italian leather, reclining seat, cup holder and basically replaces your entire office cubicle with 1 seating system.

It weighs about 275 pounds and that doesn’t include the optional rotating pedestal if you want the chair to be able to rotate around your room.  I doubt I could get my hands on one to review, I don’t even have the space for it.

Read more on Ars Technica [source].

So I implemented a new form where guest authors can submit their articles as an attachment and I would be able to read and review before I publish it, but I ran into a quirky WordPress issue that I didn’t run into before.  Formidable Pro when it allows attachment uploads puts them in the wp-content/uploads/formidable folder by default, but these also get recognized and seen by the WordPress media editor

When the title of the word document say called How-To-Be-A-Blogger.docx was uploaded, remember it turns spaces into dashes by default in file names, and then I did the article title How to Be a Blogger, with the slug sitename.com/how-to-be-a-blogger well the article publishes but when anyone tries to hit the article it auto redirected to the attachment .docx URL instead of displaying the article.

This is because WordPress by default looks for a physical name match of the URI slug before it pulls from the WordPress Post Database, since that exact slug matched except for the .docx it just redirected to the attachment, and the article was not able to be seen.

If you manually delete the .docx file from your WordPress uploads via FTP or your hosting provider this won’t solve the problem, the only solution is to manually remove the attachment from your WordPress Media Screen.

Word to the wise, never accidentally use the same name for a post slug as a document or attachment upload.

Communities were originally a good idea, and it was one of the things I first networked on with Social Spark back in 2008 but in the end communities are hard and distracting for companies that broker promotion campaigns and relationships between bloggers and advertisers.  This is because they take staff time and resources just to keep up with the blogging community as they network with each other and this can distract from finding more advertisers for bloggers and vice versa.

So I wasn’t surprised when I saw Tap Influence which is the re-branded The Blog Frog send out the announcement that communities are being shut down on May 31st 2013.  Tap Influence and The Blog Frog have been a brand that I have worked with for over a year and have earned enough that I received a 1099-MISC from them which means you had to have earned more than $600 in income from a party in the United States.

Now Tap Influence is still growing and there are some things about the system that are still manual and haven’t matured yet, one is the payment system which is still based on the blogger receiving a paper check in the mail.  The good news is with photo deposit you get the check and you can deposit it without leaving your house and rest assured the team told me they are in the process of a rebranding and re-work and have online payment method which I hope include Paypal or Direct Deposit at least in the works.

Secondly the system is very passive as in you sign up as a blogger and you wait for an opportunity to be offered to you.  You don’t have a marketplace where you can apply for opportunities and they don’t have a lead system yet where you can get a notification of advertiser interest and volunteer or offer to accept it, but they do a fine job of content matching the advertiser campaign with their network of bloggers to make sure only high quality advertisers are endorsed and that the advertiser gets a great ROI from their investment in Tap Influence.

Tap Influence goes way above and beyond simple blog posts for advertisers and they already broker a whole social media promotional package, this is something no other system does that I have used.  Tap Influence is the only one that in a single campaign can work with an advertiser and bloggers to have some bloggers do blog posts, others do YouTube videos and still others run Pinterest boards, and all of them showcase on Facebook and Twitter as well.  The want to show that the advertiser and blogger are a partnership and it doesn’t just end with a single blog post but it encourages engagement with the advertisers, sharing experience, feedback and being more than simple static review.

Tap Influence caters strongly to personal bloggers and personality bloggers, and honestly I myself run campaigns for them here on my personal blog far more often than on my Dragon Blogger Technology blog because the advertiser content is more family and home centric.  They have high name brands like Walmart, Quaker, Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Redbox and more, and they do occasionally have a software company like Microsoft or Intuit which makes the occasional match for my technology blog.

The thing about Tap Influence is they want bloggers who have engagement with their audiences, it isn’t all about the numbers of your site specifically it is about your engagement, professionalism and your personality.  Personality shines here, you have to love what you do, enjoy brands, enjoy promoting brands you enjoy and you never are asked or assigned something that you don’t have a choice.  You choose to participate in any opportunity that comes your way, or you simply choose not to participate.

Once you get an opportunity it shows up in your Opportunity Inbox and you get to see when the campaign runs, each opportunity has a publishing calendar and only a few bloggers are allowed to grab slots to publish on the same day.   This prevents 100+ posts from going out the same day and spaces comfortably a campaign over weeks or months so that it is a constant stream of information and awareness.  The cool thing is if you like doing media reviews, you can volunteer for doing the YouTube campaigns to accompany the blog post, if you are Pinterest junkie you can volunteer for the Pinterest board requirements.  All advertiser campaigns are different, some you get coupons to purchase and try the products you review, others are showcases.

All of the opps so far on Tap Influence I have partaken in pay a fair rate for your time and the compensation is better per opp than any other program except on rare cases Social Spark has an occasionally higher opp payout.

There is no referral or affiliate program for Tap Influence formerly known as The Blog Frog, so you will see it mentioned and I link to it but I get no referral benefits for sharing this information.  I wish they had a referral program at some point the future actually.

Bottom line if you are an advertiser know that you get some quality attention and careful pairing with bloggers who would best connect with and market your brand.  If you are a blogger you get paired with quality advertisers who fit in with your category and genre of blog and match your persona well, you get the freedom to choose which advertisers you want to work with and are passionate about and this is a win/win for all involved.

It was natural for Plants vs. Zombies to meet the typical Farmville type of games where you have a home territory and purchase/grow plants that you use in your battles against the seemingly endless hordes of zombies that come out to defile your mobile RV’s and neighbors.

So when Plants vs. Zombies Adventures came out as a free social game it was only natural that I gave it a try as I was a huge fan of the original and bought copies for Kindle Fire and the PC for my boys and helped them through some of the final levels and played myself quite a bit.

Plants vs. Zombies Adventures is much more tower defense like than the original game in that now each plant has a square radius of defense, so the strategy of lining up your plants in specific rows isn’t there anymore.  Instead the Zombies themselves can take winding paths and soon more than 1 to find ways to your RV.

The typical fun of collecting the sunlight as well as defending your RV from the waves of zombies has the same satisfying relaxing fun as the original Plants vs. Zombies in my opinion. 

You win by simply defeating all the waves of Zombies and your plants that are left turn into coins for you to get a little bit of recoup of your expenditure on the plants in the first place.  One thing you have to do is make sure you grow enough plants to make sure you can defeat the next incoming battle and I was left with only 2 pea shooters and 3 sunflowers to defeat a rather hard horde later.

You unlock achievements, new plants, stars, cash based on the various tactics used in each mission.  There are some 35 secret ones to unlock and I never got more than 8 or 9 on a single mission.  Unlocking new plants is fun, and the wait for growing new plants isn’t too painful though it does slow your rate of play if you want to just blast out a ton of missions in a row and will cost you gems to skip ahead, re-grow dead plants and you are prompted to purchase more if you run out so you will encounter micro-transactions like other games of this type if you want to go faster than the pace it sets.

The fact that you get extra quests to go and help neighbors as well as can help other players in the social game is the real fun aspect of Plants vs. Zombies Adventures.  It is still relatively simplistic but a great fun if you are a Plants vs. Zombies fan and I don’t think you will be disappointed, the new angles and directions to defend against, the new types of zombies and the spray bottles which can temporarily increase your plants range of defense or freeze zombies that are absorbing too much damage are a way to help win even when you don’t have enough pea shooters and plants in the ground.

I had fun playing the game and recommend it.

So in the UK, we all know that the weather isn’t the most reliable of things. When you have a large family, or even when you just need one outfit for a night out and it’s dirty, you want things to dry quickly. You can put clothes on the line, just for it to start raining as soon as you get back inside. What you need is a fast, reliable way to dry your clothes.

When considering buying a tumble dryer you need to look carefully at all of your options. Which type of tumble dryer do you want or need? How large a load does it need to take? How energy efficient do you want it to be? These are all questions best answering before you start to look, however you might need to know a little more about the options before you decide.

[easyazon-image align=”center” asin=”B005R597HA” locale=”us” height=”500″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41cnGNvRdGL.jpg” width=”468″]

Types of Dryer

There are a lot of differences when it comes to types of dryers. The main difference you will want to consider from the start is whether you wish to purchase a washer dryer combination or a dedicated dryer. Dedicated dryers tend to have larger load sizes and be more cost effective as they are usually cheaper than combinations.

The second difference in types of dryer is the ventilation type. A condenser dryer has a section where the damp air from the drum of the dryer and is converted into water. The water is then drained via a water pipe or is collected in a tray and manually removed once the drying process is over. With vented dryers the moisture is removed by heated air blown into the drum. This air dries the clothes and the humid air that is left over is passed through a vent, usually via a hose which is fed through an external wall.

Vented dryers are usually the cheaper options, however having a vent for the hose to feed into can be an additional expense and can be difficult. The vent will need to be installed into a wall or a window and pumping out the humid air is not very environmentally friendly.

Dryer capacity

Capacity, expressed in kilograms, is important when choosing your tumble dryer. The larger the capacity the more clothes you will be able to dry, however it is not advised to have too large a drum size if it will not be being used effectively.

Due to the air that is needed to dry the clothes tumble dryers need a larger drum size than washing machines, so if you have a 3KG washer which has been filled, you will need around 5KG dryer drum to dry the clothes efficiently. A dryer with a capacity of around 8KG should be effective for an average family.

Energy and cost

Obviously you wish to keep the running cost of your tumble dryer down, and do your bit for the environment in the process. Tumble Dryers come with energy ratings between A+ – G, with A+ being the most energy efficient. The higher up the alphabet, the more your dryer will cost, but it will be more effective both cost and environmentally in the long run. Keeping the load sizes to the same as the capacity or slightly lower and drying similar fabrics together will also keep running costs down.

With a combination washer dryer the running costs are remarkably higher than dedicated dryers as they use water during the drying process. Remember, spending a little more now and making the right choices will work for you in the long run.

About the Author

This article was written by Gus Christopherson, who spent way to much time looking for a new dryer to accompany the washing machine purchased a few  years ago.

If you use Google Chrome there is a cool little extension called Super Mario Flash 1 that you can install from the Google Chrome Extensions library for your kids (or yourself) that lets you play a copied version of Super Mario Bros 3 (I think).

Really when you download the extension it adds a box to your Google Chrome home screen which opens up the website to play Super Mario Flash 1.

The game opens and has basic arrow key support with space bar being the select or button to fireball your opponents.  The game features a ton of levels and even lets you create your own too.

If you are looking to play a simple little Mario game or install something to entertain your younger kids then the Google Chrome Super Mario Flash 1 should help kill some time.  The level editor is pretty fun, not only can you create your own levels or levels to challenge your kids, but you can share your levels with others.  This adds some replay value if your kids want new levels or you can make easier levels without falls for littler kids.

You can download Super Mario Flash 1 here https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/super-mario-flash-1-game/oomnbhaoelhidhnicmacemkkipipngnm

So I have hitched 2014 onto some new goals and that would be to get an in-ground pool installed in the backyard for the house.  This is a lofty goal but I am excited for the challenge to be able to meet the goal, some of the goal can only be met if I can bring in enough blogging income to offset some of the costs so will be causing me to divert some of my surplus blog funds into this new goal.

This doesn’t stop me from having my gadget giveaways, but I will be doing a little less experimentation with paid services and trimming down blogging services that aren’t absolutely essential to bringing in growth opportunities for my blogging.  This means I will be cancelling my Alexa subscription which I have confirmed after less than 60 days does almost nothing to increase your blog traffic nor benefit your actual Alexa ranking, in fact the certified Alexa rankings are worse than the non-certified ones in my case for some of my blogs.

Hopefully this time next year a new pool will be installed, will I be able to make my goal?

Okay so my son and I decided to play some multiplayer games in Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm last weekend, and there is something most frustrating and humbling when you realize that you can rock the single player campaign and have a great time but you epically suck at multi-player.  The skill and insane effort of strategy almost ruin the fun of multiplayer as instead of being able to just explore and build, there is literally like a series of keystrokes, movements and order of events that you must follow or you lose every time.  It is like the opening match of a chess game except in real time, there is a set amount of moves, always the same ones, always the same order and if you are seconds too late, hit a wrong key, get distracted, you are on the losing end of a match.

The worst part is even playing against 1 medium AI beat the living crap out of us and we managed to keep ourselves alive originally on the offensive for almost 2 years in one of our longest multi-player matches that still ended in our defeat.

Starcraft 2 is just not for me on multi-player, casual at best, but I don’t have the time to become very good at it, it is too hard and way too much of an exact order of events type of thing.  I much prefer turn based strategy with finite number of movements/actions per turn instead of real time it would seem, it is getting harder to keep up with the gamers who can play 23 hours a day for a week and become experts when I barely have 2 to 3 hours per week to play.

The campaign however is better than ever, and I actually only buy the Starcraft 2 games for the campaign missions, and some quick easy AI co-op with my son.  I wish Star Craft 2 offered co-op campaign like Warhammer 40K Dawn of War 2 games did.