Today ReadScriptures.com released its long awaited application which ads scriptures to the iPhone. The Scriptures app has all the LDS standard works, some General Conference proceedings, the Book of Mormon Study Guide, and the Teachings of Joseph Smith manual. They say that more content will be coming soon. The application is $14.99 but is well worth it, and with the funds they generate the creators of the application say they will soon be adding bookmarking, footnotes, highlighting, notes, etc. Click here to download.
Posted on August 1st, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Faith, Gadgets, iPhone | No Comments »
A little over a year ago Facebook empowered web developers to create applications that could run on the Facebook platform. This simple decision has propelled Facebook to become one of the most popular sites on the Internet. Now, Facebook is expanding that vision and hopes to allow web developers to use their platform to develop applications that can be used throughout the Internet and almost anywhere else developers want to use them. If Facebook is successful in this strategy, I believe Facebook will create and own an essential piece of the next generation of the Internet. This could be one of the biggest announcements in the history of the Internet. For more information, see this article.
Posted on July 28th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Innovation, Internet Marketing, Online Communities, Open Source, Social Networking, e-Business | No Comments »
For years the Adoption.com website tried to provide its own site search, yet we always struggled with the quality of search results and keeping the search index current. Then, Google launched its SiteSearch technology allowing website owners to leverage the powerful, industry-leading Google search quality and add premium features to their search such as synonyms (For example, someone searching for the keyword “Arizona” will also be shown results for synonym keywords such as “AZ”).
Adoption.com and thousands of other websites have migrated their site search to Google SiteSearch, which is a free solution providing much higher quality search results. (To test this technology, do a search in the search box on the upper right of the Adoption.com website.) However, the biggest problem has been that Google SiteSearch will only show pages in the results that are contained in the Google search index. For example, Google does not index all of the “deep” content on the Adoption.com website, such as all of the records in the Adoption.com Reunion Registry or the posts in the Adoption.com Forums. As a result, the websites which use Google SiteSearch are usually not allowing their site visitors to search all of the website content.
Also, Google SiteSearch has not allowed any preferencing of content if a website owner wanted a certain section of content to show up higher in search results than another section. However, Google SiteSearch has been the best option available, so website owners have continued to use it. Read more…
Posted on June 4th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Google, User Experience & Usability, e-Business | No Comments »
Through years of Sunday School, I have been taught many lessons about the basic steps of repentance (feeling remorse, confessing to God, asking forgiveness, rectifying the problem, forsaking the sin and receiving forgiveness). However, I don’t remember ever hearing a lesson about the steps of forgiveness.
I clearly understand the importance of forgiving and I want to forgive. I know that Jesus Christ expects us to forgive everyone, whether or not they have repented, and if I do not forgive others, a greater sin is upon me than whatever the other person did (D&C 54:8-9). I know I need to keep forgiving others even if they keep hurting me (Matthew 18:21). I know I will receive forgiveness only to the extent I forgive others (Matthew 6:12) and that to become worthy of the atonement of Jesus Christ and to be forgiven of my sins, I must forgive others (Matthew 18:23-35).
I know that holding on to offense and not forgiving can rob me of happiness and the light of Christ, and that the path to the greatest joy and peace in life includes frankly and immediately forgiving others. However, I don’t remember any Sunday School lessons teaching me how to forgive. Read more…
Posted on June 2nd, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Faith, Jesus Christ, Life Lessons, Relationships, Self Improvement | No Comments »
I just watch an online video clip of a speech given by Paul Collier, an economist and the author of “The Bottom Billion”. Paul advocates four steps that we can take to help the one billion people who are trapped in poor or failing countries. He calls this group the “bottom billion” and is working to close the gap between this group and the richest nations on earth. Read more…
Posted on June 1st, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Charity, Giving Back, Global Orphan Crisis, Innovation, Microlending, Poverty | No Comments »
Ward Andrews recently asked me which ad networks are the best to maximize revenues for website publishers. The following blog entry is a modified version of my email to him.
First, selecting the best ad network often depends on the niche of your site. For example, if you have developed a classic cars site that caters to men, Gorilla Nation (which focuses on selling ads for men’s websites), might be a great place to start. I’ve heard of niche ad networks for health, dating, travel, blogs, women’s websites, financial services, social networks, mobile devices, etc. Search engine ad networks (such as Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network and Microsoft adCenter) provide targeted advertising generally related to the content of the page. Targeted ads generally sell for a lot more than untargeted ads, and it can be difficult to break into new niches, so finding an ad network that is already selling ads targeted in your niche is very important. Read more…
Posted on May 28th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Advertising, Internet Marketing, Mergers & Acquisitions, e-Business | 1 Comment »
Paul Allen recently asked me to identify the best solution for accepting micro-payments. The problem is that websites like LDSaudio.com, which sell a large number of products for a small amount, are charged very high minimum credit card processing fees. This makes the transactions almost impossible. For example, if LDSaudio.com sold a digital song for $1 through PayPal, PayPal would charge them $0.30 plus 2.9%, or 33.29% of the purchase price. For a site like LDSaudio.com that also has to pay royalties, this transaction fee makes the $1 micro-transaction cost-prohibitive, and so LDSaudio.com has implemented a $5 minimum purchase. However, the $5 minimum purchase has driven away customers who only want to buy one song.
So, today I detailed for Paul some of the solutions available to solve this problem of micro-transactions. I am posting a modified version of this email to share with others, and to get your feedback about micro-transactional solutions.
At the end of this blog entry I also recommend a new online financial service called Revolution Money Exchange which allows members to register, add money, share money and withdraw money FREE. They are even providing a $25 sign up bonus for all new members. Revolution Money is backed by heavy hitters, and I believe it is superior to PayPal and has a legitimate chance to replace PayPal if it can achieve critical mass. Read more…
Posted on May 17th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: e-Business, e-Commerce | No Comments »
It appears that as investors have pulled their money out of the stock market that Internet acquisitions have become popular again. We’ve been inundated with news Microsoft’s attempted purchase of Yahoo, Yahoo’s bluff, Microsoft walking away, and most recently billionaire Carl Icahn’s purchase of 50 million Yahoo shares in an attempted hostile takeover of the Yahoo board of directors. I think that Microsoft’s purchase of Yahoo is inevitable. Microsoft has made it very clear they want to win on the Internet. They have not been successful on their own and there are very few acquisitions of the magnitude sufficient to get the reach they need to succeed with their advertising platform. No acquisition is a better fit than Yahoo in helping Microsoft to win with its Internet strategy, and the value of that victory far surpasses what Microsoft will need to pay to acquire Yahoo.
Over the past day or two, several new acquisitions have been announced to help illustrate this trend; some are a lot wiser than others: Read more…
Posted on May 15th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Mergers & Acquisitions | No Comments »
Recently ABC News ran a story in which it featured the reporter using the ParentConnect.com website. Humorously, ParentConnect.com is not a real website. It is a domain name “parking page” that the domain name owner is using to generate income from his or her domain name which has not yet been used to build a traditional website. This example illustrates how parking pages have attained such a higher level of quality that they can easily be mistaken for a destination website.
I have used several domain parking services over the years to help monetize unused domain names. Recently, I read an article about Sedo winning the Domain Name Wire survey as the best parking service, for the second year in a row. In the survey, about 48% percent of the responding domainers voted that Sedo is the best domain name parking program. That percentage is up from 32% last year. Read more…
Posted on May 14th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Domain Names | No Comments »
Bill Gross is the founder of the IdeaLab business incubator, with sales exceeding $435 million. It is one only tech incubator that survived the dotcom crash in its original form. IdeaLab has built many different ventures, such as:
· GoTo/Overture (became Yahoo Search Marketing) – paid inclusion search engine that was renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing after it was purchased by Yahoo to compete with Google AdSense.
· CitySearch – local city guides, acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp. Read more…
Posted on May 7th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Business Management, Entrepreneurship, Giving Back, Innovation, Leadership, Social Enterprise, Web Content, e-Business | No Comments »
