Justin Germino Ramblings

I have owned and used an iPad 2 since June 2011 but I can honestly tell my readers that I grab and try to borrow my son’s Kindle Fire’s nearly as often as I use my own iPad.  The size of device makes it ideal to hold in one hand while you are standing and doesn’t cause hand fatigue as quickly as the iPad 2.

It fits in a purse so much easier than an iPad 2 (for ladies) and can just slide in the door of your car so it’s hidden from view easier if you need to leave it in the car.  The Amazon Android app store is among the best app stores and the 1 free paid app per day they giveaway really is something I wish iTunes app store offered.  There were 4,895 apps added for the Kindle Fire in just the last 90 days not counting all the Android apps that work on the Kindle Fire that were there earlier than that.  2,165 were just added in the last 30 days.

The Kindle Fire at $199 is about 40% the cost of the cheapest iPad, so it isn’t hard on the wallet and you get about 65% of the functionality for that cost.  Some say it has an easier to browse interface that just works.  Over 3 million of the tablets were sold and there are nearly 400,000 fans of the Kindle Fire on Facebook and don’t forget the device is less than 3 months old!

Right now I am giving away a Kindle Fire Tablet to 1 lucky reader, this will be my 3rd Kindle Fire I will have given away.  I plan on giving away more in the future.

I have also started a Kindle Fire Owners Facebook group to help connect with other Kindle Fire owners and help share information and get idea’s for articles.

Here are some helpful articles for Kindle Fire owners:

Transfer Word Docs to Kindle Fire

Install Dropbox on Kindle Fire

Borrow eBooks for Kindle Fire from Library

Convert ePub books to Kindle Format

Setup Kindle Fire for Kids (so they can’t charge your accounts for apps)

As you can see I have been vesting quite a number of articles lately on the Kindle Fire and next to the iPad 2.  If you have kids under 13, I would say the Kindle Fire is a better gift than the iPad 2 if you want to cut down cost and is just slightly more than a Nintendo 3DS and has way more capability (minus the camera part).

Enter to win a Kindle Fire from DragonBlogger.com in my latest contest, and even if you don’t win one you should consider possibly getting a Kindle Fire if you don’t own a tablet in your family and see what a difference it makes for replacing books, magazines, and having that mobile media streaming at your disposal.

-Justin Germino

I am nearly at my 100 recorded audio poems and intend to package them up and offer them to my poetry fans on my poetry blog.  I am going to finish cleaning them up and adding a playlist.  Probably will be listing them for sale as a zip file on e-Junkie for like $3.99.  This would be around 45 minutes of audio poetry for the price which I think is a fair deal.

I don’t have nearly as large a poetry following as I do for my tech blog, but there are several dozen people who follow me for my Twitter poetry game and engage with me on a regular basis.  I also participate regularly in the Creative Copy Challenge where I contribute two poems per week and an occasional story to their interactive poetry challenge.

I will be following up with a poetry book and offering for the Kindle (especially since I am promoting the Kindle Fire so heavily) I can include it for my Kindle Fire fans.  I just need to find the time to put about 150 poems into a volume, package it up, find some nice images that I can use royalty free and then publish it.

In the meantime, what do you think of offering a 100 audio recording poetry volume for $3.99?  Do you think this is a good price point for 45 minutes of audio or would this be something of interest?

-Justin Germino

Rafflecopter which is the best service for creating contests on your website or blog that collects entries and selects a random draw winner is looking for a name for their helicopter mascot.  They are kicking off a name the mascot contest where a Kindle Fire and an iPad 2 are being given away as the grand prizes!

Just get your entries in below and make sure you mention this blog as the one that referred you in the contest.  They are also letting bloggers host the contest widget on their own blogs and provide the code for the widget.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 I am entering and if I were to win either of the prizes I will give them away to readers on my own blog!

Also don’t forget, you can win a Kindle Fire in my DragonBlogger Kindle Fire Giveaway too, so enter there as well.

-Justin Germino

Unfortunately there isn’t any dim sum restaurants for 50 miles from where I live and when the craving hits then it is an hour drive to have some dim sum. The best dim sum restaurant I know of is C-Fu Gourmet which is in Chandler and we have been there a few dozen times over the years. My son loves the place and he voted to go even though he hates long car rides.

Since we were in the valley anyway we decided to hit the mall and see a movie. Not very many good options and we had already seen all of the current films that were good. Chipwrecked was the movie seen and the kids liked it. I of course could have I waited until it came to DVD or never have seen it.

Meanwhile, I unfortunately came down with another cold. I had to organize the garage and put away all the Xmas decorations which took hours too. My wife meanwhile helped my son with his report on good old Abe Lincoln while I worked on the garage.

It was a busy weekend and all that happened on just Sunday.

Back to work and this will be a very busy week for me as a manager.

-Justin Germino

So back on New Years day we kicked off the Kindle Fire Giveaway on DragonBlogger.com and will be giving 1 Kindle Fire tablet with New Trent Leather Case and Screen protectors to 1 lucky reader.  This contest started on 1/1 and ends on 2/1/2012.

But in learning from my previous Kindle Fire Giveaway I am finding new and additional means of promotion.  These included leveraging a Facebook event invite and mass inviting over 1900+ friends which actually led to many thanking me for letting them know instead of hating me for spamming them.

I also posted event listings on Craigslist, Oodle and other blogs to help spur maybe people searching for one on a classified and trying to enter the contest.

I also went to the official Kindle Fire fanpage with over 300k fans and post there occasionally which catches some attention (don’t want to get banned though).

The only thing I haven’t done is purchase banner advertisements as though these would bring in traffic, I wouldn’t likely see a return on the money investment.  If I had received more sponsor dollars, I would have invested some into more advertising and I need to perform more of this in the future.  Facebook ads only let you direct a user toward  fan page, but Google AdWords ads may not be a bad idea to try.

I also have been finding blogs that allow free McLinky listings and other cross promotions as well.  So far things were going really well and I am amassing entries much faster than the previous contest.  This is shaping up to be one great giveaway and you can enter by joining the contest from the banner or link.

Note, unlike the previous contest which was U.S. residents only, this contest I am allowing anyone to enter, but I will only ship to U.S.  So if an International reader wins, they can choose to give it to a friend or family member in the states, sell it or pay the shipping if they want me to ship overseas.

-Justin Germino

Without a doubt, eating healthy will certainly entail several benefits. Most people want to eat healthy in order to lose weight or promote his overall health condition. However, the benefits of eating healthy go beyond these two reasons. Here are some of the more reasons why one should start eating healthy.

Maintain a Healthy Body Weight

Eating healthy can promote weight loss. Numerous diet plans have approached weight loss by modifying a person’s eating habits. Although extreme changes in one’s diet can prove detrimental to his health, making positive changes to can prove to be beneficial in losing weight.

Eating health will help a person get all the nutrients and minerals he needs for him to function at an optimum level and prevent stress from affecting his performance. A healthy diet can increase energy levels and make a person more productive in his work. A person who receives the required daily intake of minerals and vitamins will have more energy to accomplish the demands of his work. This can, in turn, affect a person’s family life. A person who has more energy can spend more time with his family even after a long day of work in the office.

Look and Feel Younger

Having a healthy and well-balanced diet can also make a person feel and look younger. Certain type of food will help in production of amino acids that promote cell re-growth and eliminate toxins and free radicals in the body. This, in turn, can cause the skin to naturally glow and give a look of freshness.

Obviously, eating healthy will prevent onset of illnesses such as high blood pressure, type-2 diabetes, heart diseases and even certain types of cancer. There are a lot more illnesses that can be prevented because of eating healthy and you can make your own pharmacy on your plate. There are specific food items that can strengthen the immune system, boost mood and prevent depression. There are also specific food items that can help cure common ailments such as constipation (food rich in fiber such as avocado or artichokes) or colds and flu (food rich in vitamin C such as orange juice or grapefruit juice).

Reduce Healthcare Costs

Lastly, eating healthy will reduce healthcare costs. A person who lives a healthy lifestyle is less likely to seek medical attention rather than a person who engages in unhealthy eating habits. Fro instance, people who abuse their bodies and go on food binges can be more susceptible to stomach aches, constipation and digestive problems. Additionally, people who eat healthy and are in top physical condition are less likely to have health problems once they age such as hypertension and heart diseases.

These are just some of the benefits that healthy eating can give a person and this can very with individual circumstances. But one fact remains, there no a single disadvantage that can be found in eating healthy. Although doing away with unhealthy eating habits can be a challenge, one can stay motivated and continue on this path of healthy living by bearing in mind these benefits that a healthy diet can give.

Dean Nason enjoys writing about health topics ranging from the best iPhone fitness apps to other weight loss tips.  You can read more articles by Dean at the health news blog, Hive Health Media.

December 2011 was by far my highest earning Amazon Affiliate month to date with making over 100 referral sales and receiving more than $220 in earnings in a single month. While this may only be an average of $2 commission a sale, I do promote a lot of Android apps and such for the Kindle Fire which leads to cross sells and many of the sales were on cases, or accessories for iPad or Kindle Fire this month.

I actually did sell a total of 21 Kindle Fires from my affiliate over the past two months which netted about $150 in referral income just from those devices. I still find that most of my affiliate sales come from DragonBlogger.com but I am gaining increased amount of affiliate earnings from social media broadcasts on Twitter and Facebook.

I need to implement some new tracking ID’s and separate out Twitter/Facebook traffic from Dragonblogger as a whole to help determine which is actually the most effective. Currently I use the same dragonblogger tracking ID on everything related to DragonBlogger, Site, Facebook and twitter so I can’t determine which method of promotions are most effective.

The only problem is when getting affiliate links you have to constantly switch tracking ID’s which is a bit annoying and time consuming, when you switch tracking ID’s it reloads the website and reset’s your search which is also annoying. I really like the way the EasyAZON plugin provides you with an very friendly tracking URL, and this make it very easy to set them up for the blog but isn’t the easiest way to get a friendly affiliate URL for Social Media.

In some cases where it is a major product I promote I simply build a redirect into the .htaccess of my site, for example http://www.dragonblogger.com/go/fire is a link to my Kindle Fire affiliate page on Amazon since I heavily promote and talk about it and is just easier to have a static URL right off my site.

So far though ever since I installed EasyAzon my affiliate earnings have increased and overall with my traffic growing my Amazon Affiliate income is growing as well. Between Amazon Affiliate and Google Adsense alone (just those 2 programs) I netted over $500 in December 2011. Not bad for passive earning programs in my opinion.

I am convinced though that unlike AdSense which you can only monetize from a site, you really can leverage social media to help boost affiliate earnings from Amazon. I have seen several Facebook fanpages with tens of thousands of followers broadcast affiliate links and I am sure they must bring in some great cross sales.

A simply thing like broadcasting the free Android App of the day with my affiliate link can lead to sales, since even though the app is free the cookie is set in the users browser and they may purchase something else in the next few days and I earn the referral income from it.

If you are looking to augment your site income or social media income, don’t rule becoming an Amazon affiliate out. Even if you are International you can take advantage of Amazon affiliate UK, Canada…etc just know your primary audience and use affiliate links for where the source visit is most likely to come from.

-Justin Germino

When I do short vacations or trips like the one I did last weekend to escape for New Years I often only bring my iPad 2, iPod Touch and leave the laptop at home. Generally for most things I can use an iPad 2 to cover just fine. I have a wireless bluetooth keyboard which is the best out of 5 I have reviewed, this is the Targus Bluetooth Keyboard.

Unfortunately, a crisis occurred where I had an account hacked and money charged to my Paypal. I quickly realized that I needed to double check security on many online accounts and found this to be a pain on the iPad 2 as compared to the PC. The lack of multi-tasking and being able to have multiple items like email and bounce back and forth between email and a web page without going to the home screen first was a bit of an annoyance.

[easyazon-image-link asin=”B001I907I2″ alt=”Apple iPad 2 MC770LL/A Tablet (32GB, Wifi, Black) NEWEST MODEL” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31mRJLNfKlL.jpg” align=”center” width=”361″ height=”500″]

I also found that most mobile versions of websites make it very difficult to find your settings and make account changes on mobile versions. Good luck trying to find your Twitter account settings from a mobile device, there is no link for it in your profile area.

Overall I just didn’t have the efficiency and speed I needed that I had with a PC when multitasking, though I think this comes mostly from being more comfortable with a mouse and having icons/items to click on, open up and a task bar to have multiple open things to select. This was the first trip where I felt handicapped by not having my PC.

Ironically when I was on a 12 day cruise in Italy, I had only my iPad 2 and didn’t really feel the need for a laptop. This time however, not having my files and information that is only stored on my PC was felt. Also I don’t want to put my sensitive documents in Dropbox, that would be an option to have the files available to my iPad.

One other option is you can’t easily use images in written content, I miss being able to drag/drop or simply insert images into posts or into media with ease. The WordPress app for iPad doesn’t let you insert/place images and nothing like Live Writer exists. Facebook through Safari on mobile doesn’t let you select images when you try to upload from computer, no websites I know of let you select files on your iPad to upload at all actually.

These are minor limitations but hard to get around when you are using only an iPad 2, I think an Android tablet has a little less because it allows full access to files and has a file explorer and acts more like a Unix OS filesystem.

Meanwhile, overall I was able to do everything I needed to, just didn’t have the efficiency to do it all. I do think the next generation of kids will find no trouble adjusting and using a touch screen device to navigate to everything as a primary method, but I am rooted to wishing for a mouse/keyboard combo fairly often. Curse Windows for drilling the point/click concept into a habit that is needed.

[az_easel item=”B001I907I2″]

Most computer-savvy people have heard of toolbars. They are one of the most polarizing topics, and there is a very vocal group of people who downright hate them. But nothing is ever as one-sided as it seems.

I posit there is a time and place for toolbars, and they can benefit both the toolbar company and the computer user.

Image Courtesy of Flickr

What Is a Toolbar?

For those who don’t know, a toolbar is an add-on feature to a browser. The purpose of the toolbar is to add functionality and a one-click access to popular online sites and services. Microsoft and Yahoo offer toolbars, and before they got into the business of browsers with Chrome, Google had (and still has) toolbars for both Microsoft’s IE and Mozilla’s Firefox.

Using their toolbar meant you didn’t have to visit the Google home page when you wanted to look something up. You could search directly from the toolbar, no matter what webpage you were on. It was a nice add-on and stated as a very popular and useful piece of software.

Image via Flickr

Then the Bad Guys Came

The problems with toolbars started when some unscrupulous companies started to bundle toolbars into popular downloads without giving people the option to not include the toolbar. Soon many low-life companies created their own toolbars which would hijack people’s browsers, start pages and even skew search results just to add fraudulent ad clicks to fill the pockets of evil programmers. These toolbars were hard to uninstall, kept reappearing and eventually tarnished the reputation of all toolbars.

A Delicate Balancing Act

Not that they every went away, but toolbars are back and are looking to regain some goodwill. In order to become worthwhile, a toolbar has to have a benefit for both the company and the user. If it’s too one-sided for the company, then it won’t offer a valuable service to the user and will be uninstalled. If it’s too one-sided for the user, it’s a waste of resources for the company and won’t be maintained.

Trying to walk that equality line are toolbars from Zugo Bing. They offer companies the ability to create a free (to them and the user) branded toolbar and start page they can customize. The company benefits by keeping their name in front of their users and not having to compete with the likes of Yahoo and Google. And the customer benefits by accessing top search functionality from engines like Microsoft’s Bing. They get one-click access to popular sites like Facebook and Twitter, as well as quick weather and news feeds. Best of all, customers get access to special offers and services from a company they already support.

Since there is no longer an incentive for click fraud, the days of the evil toolbar are starting to be over. But the fear and anger that toolbars created still remain fresh in many minds. As more companies embrace custom toolbars, the more the bad memories will fade.

Unfortunately on New Years Eve my Windows Live / Xbox Live account was hacked and the perpetrator managed to charge over $80 in points from my linked Paypal account. I woke up to an email saying that a new email address had been added to my account, and saw several emails about points being purchased.

My immediate actions were to remove the offending email, change password and remove all payment methods from my Xbox Live account. I then called Microsoft support who opened a ticket and said it will take up to 16 days to resolve the issue and refund the money.

Meanwhile, my account is frozen until this is resolved which I don’t mind I just want my money back. It is ironic that Microsoft has no 2-factor authentication or additional level of security, I would prefer to be paged if a purchase is made requiring confirmation or to allow a 2nd email to be added to an account.

This was the 2nd time I had one of my accounts (Facebook in early December and Xbox Live) now in 30 days. It just turns out that I was using the same password for Facebook and Windows Live which is something I rarely do but didn’t even remember because I hadn’t actually logged into my Xbox Live account in about 6 months.

I didn’t follow my own advice which is to never use the same password on multiple services and you can bet I got bit for it.

The only good news is that the account that was charged is my blogging account and not my personal checking accounts, so it doesn’t affect my day to day but the money I have to purchase the Kindle Fire for the Kindle Fire Giveaway was what was stolen so I have to have this case resolved before I pick a winner in early February or else I will have to come out of pocket for the Kindle Fire Giveaway.

Microsoft was quick and responsive on the phone and I think they provided good support, collected the information they needed and helped assist with any questions and answers. I think it should be a little faster to refund money than 16 days though.