Thor's Archive
The past three days have been a media whirlwind as I have given four media interviews and done more than an hour of radio time on the Next Internet Millionaire competition.
I want to send a very special thanks out to the staff and employees at Bryan LGH - I think you guys have the whole hospital voting for me - Lincoln's Lighthouse, and The Lincoln Crisis Pregnancy center for supporting me through the audition process.
Over 2,000 Schrock Innovations customers have voted for my video since last Thursday, and I have been recruiting voters from the Digital Point forums all week.
All the effort is beginning to payoff, as I have moved up to second at the moment with just over 4,000 votes and a 8.8 average score. Please help me win $25,000 for some great Lincoln charities by voting my video a '10' at http://www.nextinternetmillionaire.com/show.php?id=1249.
If you have the time, here are some things you can do to help me do well in the first cut (they are cutting over 200 auditions down to 50 tomorrow night):
1) Set my video page as your browser's home page and vote for me every time you open your browser window.
2) Send a quick email message to your friends and family explaining what I am trying to do and asking them to vote for me as well
3) Post some words of encouragement for me in the Next Internet Millionaire Forum.
I will post again Wednesday night/Thursday morning and let you know if I made it.
Here is the official Monday Next Internet Millionaire update. I narrowly missed my goal of 2,000 votes by Monday morning. At daybreak I had about 1,650 votes, up from 740 on Friday night.
In the overall standings I have slipped to 6th place at the time of this post. It seems that there are some late comers to the competition who are gaining vote totals rapidly.
I need your help to stay in the top 10! Please visit http://www.nextinternetmillionaire.com/show.php?id=1249 and vote me a '10'. There are good people counting on my ability to compete and should I win, the $25,000 prize will be going to various charities.
We had another awesome show on Saturday, but due to an error on the KFOR web stream, we were not able to record the show for the archives.
If you missed the program, you missed out on calls about what to do when you are confronted with the dreaded blue screen of death and yet another reason to ditch AOL.
I also teased a new service that Schrock will be offering this month called the "Schrock Desk." This new service will be a subscription service that offers people an avenue to get real-time help when they are confronted with a help-desk type problem like how to do a mail merge or how to create a bulleted list in Microsoft Word.
This service is not geared toward technical help - rather it is intended for everyday people who need everyday help to complete whatever task they are working on.
Please don't forget to help me raise $25,000 for the Lincoln Crisis Pregnancy Center, The Bryan LGH Foundation, and Lincoln's Lighthouse by voting me a '10' on the Next Internet Millionaire website.
I has a great time going on the Blaze this morning. FM radio is such a different beast than the AM I do every week. I was actually a little nervous at the start!
If you have not heard or read about what the Next Internet Millionaire competition is, take a moment to learn about it.
You can listen to the audio from my appearance on the Blaze in Lincoln, NE this morning, courtesy of Tim and the Animal.
After the show I checked my stats and was thrilled to see that more than 200 additional people had voted for me! I had set a goal for myself to have at least 600 votes by the end of the day today, and at this moment I have 676, with an average of 8.03/10 (10 being the best).
My goal for the weekend is to have more than 2,000 votes by Monday morning. Obviously I will be talking about this on Compute This tomorrow morning.
I need your help to meet my goal and earn a set on the show! Please vote my audition video a '10'. There is a $25,000 prize for the person who wins the competition, and if I win I will be donating the money to local charities.
Thank you all for your support, and please remember that you can vote every few hours. As they say in Chicago; vote early and vote often!
I will be appearing briefly on 104.1 the Blaze in Lincoln, NE tomorrow at about 8:45. I will be talking about the Next Internet Millionaire competition, my audition video, and my plans for any prize money I might win.
I spent some time today nailing down the particulars about the charities I will be donating to if I should win the competition. Thanks to all of the folks at the Bryan LGH Foundation, Lincoln's Lighthouse, and The Lincoln Crisis Pregnancy Center for generating nearly 300 '10' votes in a single day alone!
Many of you have emailed me asking how I am doing in the competition. The only barometer they give me is a top-50 list that measures the average of the votes on your audition video.
At this moment, I am in 5th place with a 7.54/10 average. Please help me keep my average up by voting for me as often as you can. You can vote every few hours if you like at: http://www.nextinternetmillionaire.com/show.php?id=1249.
It is pretty obvious that some of the contestants are using software programs to inflate their totals. I am not going to risk disqualification by manipulating the vote count, so I am depending on you to vote my audition video a '10' and vote for it often.
The first "cut" will happen next Wednesday at Midnight. The field of about 165 entrants will be narrowed to the top 50. Help me make the cut and move on to the next round. Thank you!
Over the past week, our software engineers and our in-shop technicians have been working together to identify real-world spyware infections and then test to see if the Maintenance Checkup Home Edition (MCHE) can remove them.
We were happy to find that the adjustments that were made earlier this month to reduce false detections worked VERY well. However, during its first test spyware removal trials last week, the MCHE was detecting and removing only 15% of the malware it encountered.
After some database tweaks and some modifications to the detection engine, we have increased the rate of positive detections to over 50%. While this is a stunning improvement, it is still not high enough that I am comfortable releasing the software. Adam and Bob have assured me that we can get these numbers up in the 90th percentile quickly, so I am going to hold for that.
As soon as we hit that 90th percentile, this software will be released to our current subscribers and will be avilable on the maintenance checkup website for 90-day trials. Shortly after that it will be available on Download.com as well.
Thank you all so much for your patience throughout this process. Many of you contact me every week and ask me for status reports and the like because you are excited to try out the new application. Thank you for your help, support and advice. This application is MUCH better because of it!
After much talk, I have finally done it. I have posted my audition video for the "Next Internet Millionaire" contest on the contest website and now I need your help.
Should I win this competition, I will be donating the $25,000 in prize money to various charities in and around Lincoln, NE, as well as families seeking to adopt children from within the United States. I would benefit greatly from the instruction of the industry-leading judges, which is reward enough for me.
How You Can Help a Local Charity
Please help me make the first audition cut by
watching my audition video and rating me a '10'.
I will compete hard and represent Lincoln, Schrock Innovations, and my customers with professionalism and class. It only takes a second to vote, and you could be making a $25,000 difference to a local charity with just two mouse clicks.
Help Spread the Word!
If you are comfortable doing so, please send a link to this post or my audition video to your friends so they can vote as well. Thank you for your help and keep watching my blog for updates on the contest.
The first cut happens around June 6, 2007! There is no time to lose!
Every year right before storm season I do a radio show on the need to have a good surge protector. I tell my listeners about surge protector myths and how to know if your surge protector is actually doing its job.
Last week a customer brought in a computer complaining about a burning smell after the last big thunderstorm. We opened up the computer to take a look and this is what we saw.
The molex adapter had completely fused itself to the plastic on the computer's hard drive and the black power wires leading to it had become so hot that the shielding melted completely off in some places.
When we told our customer what had happened, he was surprised to say the least. His computer was plugged into not one, but two surge protectors! He thought surely 2 was better than one, so why did the computer get fried?
His computer got toasted primarily because he was plugged into a non-grounded outlet using an adapter. without a grounded outlet, no surge protector can function properly. In fact, the 3000 Joule protectors that we sell will sound an audible alarm if they are plugged into a non-grounded outlet.
Remember that surge protectors only have a finite ability to protect your equipment. They wear out quicker than you think. Inexpensive protectors (like the ones for under $25 at Wal-Mart) are typically good for about a year. Don't trust the "protected" lights unless the instructions say the surge protector will turn off the light when it is dead. Most of the time the lights stay on for ever.
If your surge protector is more than a year old, has a flickering power light, a dim power light, or no power/protected light it s time to replace it.
I have a couple surge protectors that were returned because our customers do not have grounded outlets in their home. The packages are open so I can not sell them. Post a comment below and I will mail you a FREE surge protector. I have two to give away, so first come first serve!
Schrock Innovations is closed today so that our employees can spend quality time with their families and observe the sacrifices of those who have fallen (and continue to fall) protecting our country and its ideals. Because of these sacrifices we experience freedom and opportunity on a level unparalleled anywhere else in the world.
Unless you work at Google. Once again this year, Google gives veterans and military service members the shaft by not honoring Memorial Day with a variation of the Google logo.
Google celebrates multiple holidays by displaying a variation of the Google logo on their home page. While dates like Edvard Munch's Birthday and Earth Day go recognized, the day that honors the Americans who gave their lives to protect the rights that Google is founded upon don't even get a thank you.
Without the right to free speech Google would not be able to rank websites by their perceived relevance. People who complain that Google ranks other junked up websites higher than content-rich website are given a cold, "that's just our opinion" from Google. Of course, they have a First Amendment right to it.
That is, in fact, they ONLY thing protecting their right, which was and is defended every day by the people who sacrifice their time, opportunity, and in some cases life and limb.
If there was a search engine out there that could compete with Google, I would recommend you use them today as a symbolic protest. But unfortunately no one comes close to Google in search. So I, like many others, will hold my nose and click the "I feel lucky" button when in fact Google should be the one feeling lucky.
Thank you veterans for your service. Know that while some may believe that freedom is inherent in a society, there are just as many of us that know we owe it all to you and the jobs that you do every day.
The latest Compute This has been posted on the Schrock Innovations radio page. The last three weeks of shows are archived there, commercial free for your enjoyment.
This week's show was another call-in fest. We took wall to wall calls throughout the program and tackled issues like how to secure your wireless network and how to cut time off your Windows boot up.
I also mentioned that I will be entering the Next Internet Millionaire $25,000 contest. *If* I win a spot on the show and *If* I win the competition, I will be donating the prize money to an assortment of charities.
You can call into the radio program every Saturday between 10 and 11 on KFOR 1240 in Lincoln Nebraska by dialing 489-1240 locally, or 1-800-talk-unl from anywhere in the US. The show is also webcast live on our radio page.
I know it has been a long time in the coming (a lot longer than we anticipated) but the Maintenance Checkup Home Edition Version 2 is almost ready for prime time.
We have reduced false detections to ZERO, but in the process of tightening the detection filters, some actual spyware is getting missed. We are currently sorting that problem out and in the process, collecting even more information on the spyware files we are removing.
By far, the MCHE V2 is more accurate, more useful, and MUCH FASTER an the 2005 version. Stay tuned for next week's update!
I just received the July Issue of Smart computing Magazine in the mail. In this issue I have a 3-page spread on how to defragment your computer completely and properly.
Before you yawn too loudly, there are a lot of things that you can do to tweak a defragmentation to squeeze some extra performance out of your hard drive.
To get all of the tips you have to be a subscriber or buy the magazine on the news stand, but in my article I talk about defragmenting your virtual memory page file, using third party defrag utilities that can be more thorough than the Windows Disk Defragmenter, and address the question of how often you should defragment your drive.
How Often Should I Defragment My Hard Drive?
In the article, I break computer users into three categories - Minimal, Moderate, and Advanced Users. Depending on your usage, you should defragment your drive anywhere from daily to once a month.
If there is an article you would like to see in Smart computing Magazine, let me know and I would be happy to get it in front of the editors there.
Sorry it is so late folks, but if you missed last Saturday's Compute This Radio show on KFOR1240, you missed a great show. I have posted the archive on the Compute This page the Schrock website.
One caller raised the ghost of the Schrock Innovations computer ambulance, we revealed a top secret Vista hidden command for audiophiles, and Chris went nuts with the Bon Jovi.
We will be back on the air today at 10:00 CST with this week's show. We will be giving away a free surge protector as well as a free thorschrock.com padfolio. These things are sweet! Leather bound, complete with a pad and a Schrock pen.
All you have to do is call the show at 402-489-1240 and ask a question to win! If you are outside of Lincoln or Omaha, we will ship the price to you!
In an apparent rush to scoop the blogosphere, the blog Engadget managed to strip $4 billion of market capitalization off of Apple's stock price in a mere 15 minutes - with a single blog post.
Engadget published what appeared to be a legitimate internal email memo from Apple stating that the release of the iPhone and the new Leopard OS were going to be delayed. The post read:
we have it on authority that as of today, the iPhone launch is being pushed back from June to… October, and Leopard is again seeing a delay, this time being pushed all the way back to January. Of 2008. The latest WWDC Leopard beta will still be handed out, but it looks like Apple-quality takes time, and we’re sure Jobs would remind everyone that it’s not always about “writing a check”, but just how much time are these two products really going to take?
Engadget elected to publish the email's details, despite the fact no one was available from Apple to officially confirm or deny the message. A short time later, Apple brass launched a second message stating to employees that the first email was a hoax and was not a genuine corporate communication.
This means that someone with significant insider knowledge of what an internal Apple memo looks like, was able to penetrate the *awesome* inherent security (note sarcasm) of not just one Mac, but multiple macs to plant a fake corporate email message that was SO realistic that Apple's own employees believed it and leaked it to a blog.
Forget hacking into people's online brokerage accounts - all you need to do is plant the right email on the right corporate network at the right time, and a hacker can make millions on perfectly legitimate stock purchases.
There are so many lapses in security and judgement in this story from start to finish - both on Apple's end and on Engadget (who is defending their decision to release the information). There is no evidence that Engadget profited from the post in any way, but they just as easily could have been were the unwitting tool of someone else who did.
Incidents like this from a blog as highly respected as Engadget serve to cement the old media's claim that the uncontrolled, unregulated, and in the end unaccountable blogosphere is about as reliable as a sundial in a dark room.
ReviewME was the biggest waste of marketing dollars I have EVER spent on an online promotion.
Sorry folks, this gonna be a long one... After Shoemoney posted his $50 ReviewME Marketplace experiment and extolled the performance of the online marketplace, I decided to give it a whirl.
I was sorely disappointed both as a blogger and as an advertiser with the ReviewME marketplace, the availability of support, and the soundness of its internal systems.
REVIEWME DIDN'T PAY ME FOR MY COMPLETED REVIEWS.
Before I spent money on ReviewME, I thought I would write a couple reviews first. I logged into the Marketplace and found that there were 6 potential reviews available ranging from $12.50 payouts to $5 payouts. I accepted all six, and started the review process.
First I wrote a review on Apogee . I finished the review, posted the URL to the marketplace, and was credited for my work with an official ReviewME email, as well as with an alert on their website.
But after completing my second paid review on SoloSEO I followed the same procedure but did not receive a confirmation email, nor credit in the alert log for completing the review.
In fact, the ReviewME databases seemed to be going nuts. My blog was listed twice in my account interface, and all of a sudden all of my reviews that I had accepted disappeared, preventing me from completing any more of them.
As you can see below, the ReviewME database was not working properly. The name of my blog and the name of the reviewed blog were missing from both the notification email and from the alert. I reported the problem to support, but never heard anything back.
Since there is no place to view your to-date earnings on the ReviewME website, I will update my readers next month if I actually get paid for one review at least. Maybe the database will lose that information as well...
ReviewME Poorly Screens its Bloggers.
Despite the signs that something was amiss, I decided to jump in on the advertiser side. I dropped $150 on 15 $10 ReviewME reviews. While I knew I wasn't going to get any high caliber blogs for $15, I did not expect 30% of my advertising investment to be wasted on crap splogs.
My mistake was assuming that since ReviewME initially rejected my blog and than later accepted me, that there was some sort of screening process in place. Of the fifteen reviews I paid for on the 9th of May, I am STILL waiting for one of them to be completed. Here are the base URL's for the 14 blogs where my reviews appeared:
http://techreckoner.com/ (Computer Related - Valid blog with readership)
http://www.broadband-voip.net/ (MFA Splog with no readership)
http://www.bsnl-broadband.com/ (Clone of broadband-viop.net Splog)
http://techstuff.goboardz.com/forum.asp (Decent site, Good PR and Related to topic)
http://www.softwaredriverdownload.com/ (MFA download site, no readership)
http://dazeee.i.ph/ (Brand new site, not related and no apparent readership)
http://pinvader.blogspot.com/ (Decent Blog, good related content)
http://ishawn.net/ (Made for ReviewME - all paid posts, some in Chinese)
http://www.techtreak.com/ (Good related content - legitimate blog)
http://neverblog.net/ (legitimate blog, loosely related)
http://www.5zcool.com/ (Legitimate Blog, related and well written)
http://starsdigital.blogspot.com/ (Legitimate Blog, related content)
http://woip.blogspot.com/ (Legitimate blog, related content)
http://www.selaplana.com/ (Legitimate blog, related content)
As you can see, nearly 1/3 of my total reviews are from worthless websites that are either not related to the tag I selected, devoid of readership, or just a pure splog, plain and simple.
If you are an advertiser that is interested in generating any kind of buzz or bringing any real traffic to your website, forget about the ReviewME marketplace. It may work great for A-list blogs, but for anything under $200 a review, your money is better spent on toilet paper.
The web's first apprentice-style reality TV show is holding an online casting call, and I need your help. I want your input on whether I should send in an audition video, and what charity could best use all or part of the $25,000 I would get if I were to win a place on the show.
Help Me Pick a Charity
In the past I have donated to Junior Achievement, Heartland Big Brothers & Big Sisters, Make a Wish, The Lincoln Food Bank, the LIBA Foundation, and the Teammates program, but I am open to any other charities you might suggest that could put the money to good use. I would be giving ALL of the $25,000 away.
What is This all About?
Joel Comm, one of the world's leading authorities on making money online, has the man behind the nextinternetmillionaire.com competition.
He is looking for 12 entrepreneurs to attend a 2-week hyper-intense online marketing competition. The 12 winners will be coached by some of the best and brightest Internet marketing minds in the world today.
The winners will be selected in July and will win $25,000 and the trip to Colorado to compete for a spot on a $1 Million dollar online venture with Comm.
What Do You Need Me To Do?
To be competitive, I would need at least 2,000 people to rate my audition video highly over the next three weeks. If I enter he competition and do not win a spot on the show, there will not be any money for the selected charity or charities.
Leave me a comment and let me know if you think I should send in an audition, and if so, what charity you would like to see some or all of the $25,000 prize money go to.
I received an email from GoDaddy that says I will be getting a refund of .03 for each domain I registered with them from July of 2006 to present. Its not a ton of cash (only about $12) but how often does GoDaddy pay you for registering domains?
Could this be considered making money online? LOL
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN®) recently agreed to reduce their Registrar Transaction Fee from $.25 to $.22. What does this mean for you?
Good news. You have been credited $.03/yr for each domain name you registered or renewed dating back to July 1, 2006* -- $11.34 has been placed into your Go Daddy® account with this customer number: XXXXXXX.
Your in-store credit will be applied to your purchases at GoDaddy.com® until it's gone or for up to 12 months, whichever comes sooner. If you have any questions, please contact a customer service representative at 480-505-8877.
As always, thank you for being a Go Daddy customer.
Sincerely,
Bob Parsons
CEO and Founder
GoDaddy.com
Webmasters who sell links on their blogs, forums, and websites to keep the lights on need to find another way to monetize their sites, or they will risk an all-new form of the "Google Death Penalty."
A couple weeks ago Matt Cutts informed his readers that Google was looking for a way to differentiate paid links from non-paid links. He asked his readers to help Google grow a dataset for testing purposes.
I’d like to get a few paid link reports anyway because I’m excited about trying some ideas here at Google to augment our existing algorithms.
This short post on Matt's blog sparked a 500+ comment storm accusing Google of doing everything from attempting to corner the advertising market to creating a reincarnation of the Communist "inform on your neighbor" doctrine.
What is Google Doing?
Apparently Google might be developing a new algorithm that will devalue websites that post paid links without disclosing that those links were sponsored by labeling them with a machine-readable attribute. This would include forums, blogs, corporate websites, news websites, and the like.
The idea is that one webmaster with deep pockets can buy enough backlinks to outrank a poorly financed webmaster who might have better content.
Under the new system, a webmaster who posts paid links on a website without a rel="paidlink" tag could have ALL links from their website devalued in Google's algorithms.
What This Means to Webmasters
This new development means that the days of buying links to boost your website's PageRank and search engine results position ranking are numbered. In addition, if your website is labeled as a paid link spamming website as Google "collects data," the value of all links from your website could be devalued.
Right now, Google is asking people to report websites that sell text-based links manually. However, the dataset Google is manually building will undoubtedly be used to perfect an algorithm that will detect and devalue links from websites on an automated basis.
Obviously, many advertisers buy link ads for their websites to influence search engine results, and webmasters use that revenue fund the ongoing development of their websites and maybe even make some money.
If a website that sells text ads suddenly starts labeling those ads so as "paidlink" so Google can pass over them for indexing purposes, that website's revenue will drop faster than a lead balloon on Jupiter.
However, if the webmaster of that website fails to comply with Google's request, then Google may devalue ALL of the links coming from the website to achieve the same result. Either way, the hey days of selling text-based ads to influence SERPs is coming to a close.
How Can You Protect Your "Link Juice"
That is not exactly clear at this point. In reading the 500+ comments on Matt Cutt's blog and his responses, he seems to carefully avoid talking about what Google will do with the data it collects.
Because no one really knows what will happen to a website that gets included in Google's experimental "dataset," there is no 100% guaranteed way to work within this system yet.
Technically, ReviewMe, TextLinkAds, and even Alexa's website reviewing system could be considered as dealing in paid text links. Will they be devalued, will Google exempt them for some reason, or will they comply with any new rules that Google puts out there?
If Google implements this new algorithm successfully it will be the biggest development in the SEO community since the introduction of the rel="nofollow" tag. Except this new rule will touch almost EVERY website on the Internet and compliance might not be optional.
Maybe I should rethink my top commentator plugin... Am I paying people to comment by rewarding them with a high-value backlink?
There are TONS of free SEO tools available on the web, and each one offers some important functionality. The tedious thing is that there are no free tools that offer all of the functionality a webmaster needs to track the ascension of their web pages from creation to a top search engine ranking.
That is one of the reasons that SoloSEO Review is such a breath of fresh air. Although it is not free (a free trial is available) SoloSEO is a one-stop shop for the SEO junkie!
With this single website you can track the following statistics for pages across 5 domains for only $29.99 a month:
- Keyword Generator
- Keyword Ranking
- Backlink Tracker
- Link Building
- Backlink Tester
- Statistic Tracker
- SEO Checklists
- Competitor Tracker
In addition to all of these tools, the best thing about SoloSEO is that they archive all of your data so you can run period-based reports and make accurate comparisons about your SEO progress against your competition.
SEO is a time-intensive process, and I like the fact that they are not advertising a "quick fix" to get your pages ranked highly. They stress the fact that you still have to do the work. SoloSEO simply provides some great tools to help you better organize and execute your efforts for the maximum results.
The latest installment of Compute This from Saturday has been posted to the Schrock Innovations Radio page for your listening enjoyment.
As requested by the comments on my GorB rating, I have backed off on the promotional marketing during the program and spent time taking more calls.
I thought we had an awesome show on Saturday with a ton of calls and a great interview with Leonard Boord, founder of The GorB. I am interested in what you thought of the interview with Leonard. If you missed the interview, you can listen to it by itself here.
If there is someone else you would like to hear from on the show and they are a player on the technology scene, let me know and we will look into getting them on the air.
Right now I have an invitation out with the PR people at one of the hottest online television websites on the web, Joost.com (pronounced juiced). You can only use their AWESOME high-definition online TV software by invitation right now, so maybe we can talk them into giving us some invitations to hand out on the show!
Every Spring we talk about how severe weather beats on your computers and other electronics, and the last few days of severe weather is the perfect backdrop to have that conversation again.
Schrock Innovations has their high-end 3000 joule surge protectors on sale for 50% off, this week only through the 12th. These surge protectors are equipped with an audible failure alarm, seven outlets, and satellite, telephone, and network protection for only $24.99 while supplies last!
Everybody knows that computers and other expensive electronic equipment should be protected by a surge protector. What many people do not know is that not every surge protector is the same, and that ALL surge protectors, regardless of their price, wear out after a period of time.
What Kind of Surge Protector Should I Buy?
Surge protectors tend to fall into two categories - inexpensive (less than $20) and expensive (more than $20). While there is usually some difference in the features offered between these two classes, most of the differentiation comes from the number of joules of protection the device offers.
As a general rule, the more you spend the better off you will be. Of course there are exceptions, but typically you should buy a more expensive surge protector to protect more expensive electronics. However, after you cross the $50 threshold, surge protectors are pretty much all the same. Optional offerings like power conditioning and battery backup are available in the more expensive models, but are not necessary for most home and small business users.
How Do Surge Protectors Wear Out?
Cheaper surge protectors offer fewer joules of protection than the more expensive models do. When a surge hits your surge protector, the impact of the surge is measured in joules. If you have a 1,000 joule surge protector and you take an 800 joule surge, you only have 200 joules of protection left.
When your surge protector has no joules left, all surges are allowed to pass through to your equipment.
How Do I Know When to Replace my Surge Protector?
Some sure protectors have a "protected" light, but often times this light is just a plain old LED that will remain lit as long as power flows through the strip. In Nebraska surge protectors with 2,000 joules of protection or less usually last around a year to two years before they should be replaced.
Keep in mind that even if your surge protector has shielded you from one surge, the protector is now damaged slightly. This is the purpose of a surge protector - to take the electrical beating so your $3,000 plasma TV doesn't have to. You should have surge protectors on any piece of electronic equipment you don't want to have to replace any time soon.
How Can I Buy a Surge Protector on Sale?
Through this coming Saturday (the 12th) Schrock Innovations has their high-end $50 surge protectors on sale for only $24.99. There is no quantity limit, but there are only a total of 84 units available during this sale. If you can't remember the last time you replaced your surge protector, it is probably time to do so.
You can call either of our Service Centers to order by phone, or stop in and pick one up while supplies last.
One of biggest challenges for someone who wants to start making money online is figuring out what all of the industry jargon means.
I learned most of it by pouring oer blogs and forums, but thanks to Apogee Search you can cut a few hours off the learning curve with their handy SEO Glossary.
In the world of online marketing it seems like everything has an acronym, a funny nickname, or something that looks like it was spelled by Doogie Houser, M.D.
The Apogee Search glossary has almost all of the most common online marketing terms. If you have read about things like you should have a "landing page" and you don't know what that is, Apogee has the reference to help you!
There are some interesting terms like the "Google Death Penalty" and a "Link Condom". These are sure to be good "Link Bait".
Apogee Search is one of the 25 largest SEM (Search Engine Marketing) companies in he world. They specialize in connecting web-based customers to businesses through paid search, natural search, affiliate marketing, and pay-per-call methods.
I make the majority of my online money by ranking certain web pages highly for specific keywords in Google's search engine results. This is called natural search. While I am certainly not as successful as the guys over at Apogee are, if I ever need some industrial strength online marketing, they have earned a valued place in my Rolodex.
Just in case you had not noticed, I am working on perfecting a new theme for the blog. I liked the background on the old one, but it just did not offer enough options for what I wanted to do with it.
I would appreciate any feedback you might have about the new theme. Suggestions are welcome!
If you receive an email with the above images in it, do not click on the image!
There is no such thing as Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, and clicking on the image will infect your computer. The image links to http://raturas.hk/update.exe.
If you receive any emails that look suspicious, forward them to me or post a comment here and I will look into them for you.
Tomorrow's show is going to be one of the busiest we have had in some time! We are launching our annual surge protector sale and we will be joined live by Leonard Boord, the Founder of TheGorB.com.
We put our high-end surge protectors on sale once a year, so don't miss out on this opportunity. We are offering our 3000 joule surge protectors equipped with an audible alarm for 50% off their retail price this week only while supplies last.
The surge protectors will be on sale in the Service Centers starting at 12:00 tomorrow (Saturday) and will be priced at $24.99 instead of their normal $50 price tag. There is no limit on quantity, so feel free to buy as many as you need.
**Early Bird Offer for Blog Readers**
If you would like to beat the crowd tomorrow you can email jpearson@schrockinnovations.com or contact a Service Center and buy your surge protector at the sale price RIGHT NOW!. If we are closed, let us know in your email / voicemail that you heard about it on my blog and leave your phone number so we can call you back for payment.
We have 44 surge protectors in stock, with another 40 on the way, so supplies are definitely limited!
** Interview With the Founder of The GorB **
For those of you who are not familiar with The GorB, it is an online community where you can anonymously rate any individual based on their email address. The person you rate will never know who you are, and you can also leave comments about the person you are rating to help explain how you feel about them.
At the time I am writing this, my personal GORB ranting is 9.15 out of 10 and professionally I am rated 8.94 out of 10. You can click here to leave your opinion about me at The GorB.
We will talk about my ranking, as well as what The GorB hopes to accomplish through its website. Have your questions ready!
Don't miss Compute This Saturday morning from 10-11 on KFOR 1240 in Lincoln Ne. You can also listen live online, or listen to our show archives.
** Contest Details **
OK, so you are still with me about the contest, right? Here's the deal. go to The Gorb and rate me personally, professionally, or both. Once you have rated me, drop me a comment below and let me know that you completed a rating. You don't have to tell me what you rated me, and I will not be able to find out, so be honest!
Tomorrow on the radio show I will pick from one of the commentators below and read your name on-air. Call in to the station at 402-489-1240 when I read your name, and you win the surge protector! Now isn't that easy :-)
I came across a business story a couple days ago on MSN.com that claimed that Circuit City, Sears, and Best Buy's flat panel television profits are all being destroyed by Wal-Mart.
The story states that beginning during the last holiday season, Wal-Mart dramatically cut the prices of it flat panel televisions (some as much as 50%), which forced other retail giants to follow suit if they wanted the holiday flat panel business.
But that is where the MSN story stopped making sense and became a bash Wal-Mart tirade that pinned every electronics profit woe directly on the retail giant's big blue star.
The story states that despite the fact that Wal-Mart is the second largest seller of electronics (behind Best Buy) in the US, the Arkansas-based company is only a "bit player" in the flat panel television market. The story points out that when Wal-Mart dropped its price on its Panasonic televisions, they sold out almost instantly.
If I am piecing this together correctly, Wal-Mart drops the price on a name brand flat panel TV for the holidays and immediately sells out. Therefore, all of the other retailers must also drop their prices to compete? Seriously, if you were planning on buying a flat panel TV for Christmas, and Wal-Mart was out, you would go somewhere else, right?
I don't see how you can pin the shrinking profit margins on a product to the fact that Wally World sold a few thousand TVs around the nation at a roll-back price. There is a natural product life-cycle at work here, that has little to do with Wal-Mart.
Aside from what appears to be an obvious contradiction in the text of the story, I thought it was comical that retailers like Sears, Best Buy, and Circuit City were COMPLAINING about a larger retailer infringing on their turf.
The funny thing is that you didn't hear locally owned Shaffer's TV and Appliance store in Lincoln, NE squawk when Best Buy parachuted a box store one block from their location (or even when a Circuit City was installed 10 blocks from them as well).
Shaffer's simply adjusted their business model to deal with the new environment and has now successfully competed there for years. In fact, that is where I bought my 42" Panasonic big screen because they had a better selection than Best Buy!
I think it is time for the big-box retailers to take a dose of the medicine they have been handing out for years. Just like the rest of the "small guys" but there, Circuit City, Sears, and Best Buy are going to have to find a way to compete - or be assimilated.
I'm sorry that it took me so long to post last Saturday's show on the Schrock Innovations Radio Page, but I finally got it done.
This week we took calls wall to wall in a futile attempt to make up for three weeks worth of recorded shows (I will try not to let that happen again).
This is a 13-post series of all of the 'Get a Mac' commercials that have been released by Apple. Two new commercials will be posted each day at 12 noon.
Surgery
In this commercial, PC is going in for major surgery before he is upgraded to Vista.
Security
In this commercial, PC is being protected by Vista's security guy.
Be sure to come back tomorrow to see the commercials 'Sabotage' and 'Angel / Devil'.
First, I will apologize in advance that it has been so long since my last MCHE. This are going very well on the MCHE development, albeit a bit past due. The program was set for a February release, but on the eve of that release some advanced testing revealed that in certain conditions, the MCHE was deleting valid files and data from our test computers.
What Was The Problem
We could not let the MCHE out the door in that condition. With some work we found that the program was doing what it was supposed to do, it’s just that so many spyware infections have files that are named the same as Windows files, that it can be hard to tell them apart. Obviously we want to delete an explorer.exe that is a spyware file, but not explorer.exe the Windows file.
What Caused the Problem
Initially we hoped to maintain a "whitelist" of hashes for files we knew were legitimate, therefore ensuring that they would never be deleted by the MCHE. We are still using this approach as a component of our false detection prevention, however alone it was simply not enough.
In a mere 24 hours, one of our cron computers (set up to download every conceivable update automatically and add them to the hash database) received more than 50 new program hashes.
Because there are so many whitelisted programs out there that happen to bear the same file names as spyware infections, the algorithm we were using (name on spyware list + name not on whitelist + name not on local exclusions list = remove infection) was not cutting it.
What Did You Do to Fix The Problem
We had to retool the scanning algorithm to be more picky about the pattern matching for spyware detections. We modified the formula to - file name on blacklist + file hash on blacklist + hash NOT on whitelist + hash not on local exclusions list = remove spyware.
Obviously building a list of hashes for known malware infections is a LOT more time consuming than building a list of safe hashes. and we are now testing that new matching algorithm. If it passes testing OK, we are ready to go. If not, then that is exactly why I have stopped posting firm release dates.
Stay tuned for additional updates this week as the program progresses through testing.
I will start this post off with a disclaimer. If you are a scammer who is looking for a way to steal money from Google's advertisers by clicking on your own ads, don't read any further.
Disclaimer #2. If you are a scammer who clicked on your own ads and are now banned by Google for life, don't read any further. Your chances of reversing a Google ban for invalid clicks is nil.
OK, with that out of the way, I should only have panicked people left who accidentally clicked on their own Google AdSense ad for some reason. Stop panicking - its not the end of the world. Here is a real-life example of how to handle an accidental click that should have never happened.
Step #1. Record the date and time of your click as well as the website the ad was presented on and the advertiser that you were directed to.
Step #2. Log into your AdSense account and click on "Help" in the top right corner of the screen. Next, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "Contact Us."
Step #3. Place a dot next to "Invalid Clicks or Unusual Account Activity" and then a dot next to "I accidentally clicked on my ads" and click Continue. Fill out the form with your contact information as well as a polite, and detailed explanation of what happened, when it happened, and where it happened.
Step #4. Submit your explanation and then wait for the email from the AdSense team (usually arrives within 2 days).
Why do I know so much about this process? Because I have been through it. I saw an ad on my blog that genuinely interested me, and before my brain could catch up with my mouse, I had clicked the link and was taken to the advertiser's website.
Here is what I sent to Google:
From: thor_schrock@hotmail.com
Subject: Can't log in
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 06:38:18 -0700I accidentally clicked on one of my own ads from www.thorschrock.com at
about 8:34 AM.The Ad was titled "I was scammed 37 times." Please do not credit my
account for this click and please do not charge the advertiser for the
impression/click.I am sorry for any trouble this may have caused. Thank you.
And here is what Google sent back to me within 24 hours:
Hi,
Thanks for letting us know about the clicks on your ads. We appreciate
your honesty and your efforts to keep your account in good standing.
Although publishers are not permitted to click on their own ads for any
reason, we do understand that accidental clicks may occur, so we don't
require that you contact us every time you click on your ads.For your reference, you can find tips and guidelines for keeping your
account in good standing by visiting
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=23921.If you were clicking your ads out of interest or to see who was
advertising on your site, we suggest the AdSense preview tool as an
alternative. This tool will allow you to check the destination of ads on
your page without the risk of generating invalid clicks. For more
information, please visit our Help Center at
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/topic.py?topic=160.Lastly, you can learn more about viewing the URLs of your Google ads by
visiting https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=9876.Thanks again for your email. We look forward to working with you in the
future.For additional questions, I'd encourage you to visit the AdSense Help
Center (http://www.google.com/adsense_help), our complete resource center
for all AdSense topics. Alternatively, feel free to post your question on
the forum just for AdSense publishers: the AdSense Help Group
(http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help).Sincerely,
Max
The Google AdSense Team
Obviously, if you don't install the tools Google recommends to handle situations like this in the future, repeated "I'm sorry" emails will eventually fall on deaf ears. But for those of us who are honest publishers that made an isolated mistake, The Mighty G is a forgiving beast.