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Bill Gates was asked what one product they (microsoft) have released in that last 5 years, that he wishes they could have actually polished better “Ask me AFTER we ship the next version of Windows…. then I will be more open to give you a blunt answer”.

I don’t really need to go on a “I love mac” rant- on the opposite side, I actually wonder how well Microsoft is actually going to learn their lesson when they release the next Windows version. . . I will probably always have an Apple portable, but I would be open to a solid desktop actually running some solid Window’s action, depending on how much they can learn from the annoying Vista platform.

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Last summer, my roommate had a website for “do it yourself” lifestyle projects, DIYHAPPY.COM. He was invited out to Oreilly Media’s publication Make Magazine’s Maker Faire (yes they spell it like that). I tagged along and had a great time hanging out, and enjoyed looking at all the home-made and D.I.Y. projects which so many people had devoted a lot of time and money to.

One of my favorite places at the Maker Faire was the surprisingly store. Make Magazine’s best of the best projects had something to sell there, including some Do It Yourself kits for various popular projects. I bought an LED based kit called a “Mini POV”. The only other project I really wanted, was a TV B Gone kit that helps you build an infra-red TV remote with one function: Turning off all TV’s in a full infra red spectrum (able to turn off pretty much any and all TV’s that uses an IR remote). This awesome little guy is small- and can be hidden in your hat or…. beard if you so please. Regardless, it could be turned into quite the annoying business disruption device if some evil prankster decided to use it at let say… CES? The one place hundreds of booths and company displays s rely heavily on their TV’s to help convey their business/products/services.

Enter Gizmodo. Get over to see the video while it’s hot, but the Gizmodo CES 2008 TV Prank is one hilarious way of keeping yourself entertained while walking around the mass conference center conglomeration that the Consumer Electronic Show has become. Gizmodo video recorded themselves pulling this prank on various booths, and the video can be seen on their website at the post which I linked to above. I say get it while it’s hot- because if I can imagine that if any of these disgruntled companies catch wind- they very well might take legal action considering the investment they potentially lost. Let’s also not forget that CES is somewhat- a mass display and distribution of electronics companies products: Lots of TV’s to promote and lots of TV’s used to prmote - pretty much anyones who’s mass line of TV’s gets turned off randomly, then looses credibility pretty quick. It’s an Electronics industry trade show, when the electronics malfunction…… it was probably Gizmodo.

Side Note: I really considered going this year to C.E.S.- but ran into one major drawback; how unbelievably sick I got from going from booth to booth and seeing mass horde’s of iPod Accessory companies. Everyone; their dog; and their dog’s previous owner’s best friends aunt started an iPod accessory company and got a booth at CES in the hopes to stand out and offer something new. “But we’re different than the other guys” like every MLM up and down I-15 in Utah county says. Stupid “reverse funnel” system is still a pyramid scheme.

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According to a CNN Money article, 2006 online retail grossed an all time high of $102 Billion dollars, which is a 24% increase from 2005.

Most medium and large businesses have fairly large budgets to spend online. Search Engine Optimization, and Pay Per Click advertising accounting for two large portions of where that spend goes which is why many of them get their portion of that $102 Billion dollars. Internet Marketing is still a fairly new industry though, and there are a few reasons small and some medium size businesses haven’t had the opportunity to have a very strong presence in this arena despite having a competitive if not better service than large businesses.

Generally, the small business owner can’t meet the minimum spend of Internet Marketing Agencies. If they want to optimize for more search engine traffic such as Google and Yahoo, or manage a pay per click advertising on those engines, they often have to resort to a less than effective means of getting it done. It usually comes down to them having to business owners having to learn Search Engine Marketing themselves. This is never as effective as the expertise and technology that large ad agencies have so competing against larger companies who have hired an agency is really rough. Many small businesses deserve their fair share of the pie, and trying to manage a business and its many tedious aspects, along with learning how to optimize their site and market online can take years and waste a lot of time and money.

OrangeSoda Inc. is a company focused on providing Internet Marketing for Small businesses. They offer onsite and external Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as well as Pay Per Click Advertising for these small businesses with budgets both small and large. A business can get highly relevant traffic from a locally targeted area, or nationally for just $100 and up. Obviously the more a company spends, the more an ad campaign can accomplish, but lower spends can help small businesses test and get a feel for potential success through online retail, and potentially grow out of the small business arena.

Orange Soda also provides all of their clients a single reporting interface for both SEO and PPC. They have their own analytics solution which ties into the same simple and easy to use Pay Per Click reporting. Their reporting interface also provides a keyword position tool, which allows business owners and webmasters to watch the progress and growth of their websites position for keywords day by day, all along side the daily visitors, conversions by source, top PPC keywords and more.

Contact a representative at Orange Soda.

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The next day after the long day and a half in Rome and trying to make it way out to the Villa the previous night, we weren’t in for too much running around but we still had a pretty strong desire to get out and see the country side, possibly see a little more of the real Italy. The Villa had 6 full bathrooms, so the twelve of us really didn’t take too long getting ready each day. My parents ran into one of the nearby, extremely small villages and grab some pastries and a few different juices. They really aren’t terribly into breakfast in a big way like many American’s are, but they go crazy with lunch and dinner. Many just have a small pastry and some coffee or something. So finding something for breakfast wasn’t the easiest. We all went out to the veranda (as seen in the top picture, just above the pool) which I mentioned in the first post about our Vacation in Italy.

We headed to a small town named Gubbio. When we found public parking, there was a small Roman theater, which is the second-largest surviving in the world. Many villages and towns were built on high ground (easy to defend), like mountainsides and hilltops. Gubbio was build on the fairly steep mountainside of Mt. Ingino, and it well represented the medieval period. All the buildings and roads were made from large cut, grey and red stones. It had skinny streets, and most of them were very steep.

The shops here were pretty amazing, people were really nice, and this towns specialty was pottery, clay work, and attractive waitresses. The small pizzeria we ate lunch at probably had the most attractive Italians I saw on my whole trip. Just walking around in these streets was quite breath taking because most of the people that live in the main section of town, live in homes which are still hundreds of years older than the Declaration of Independence. The majority of historical events in this town occurred between 1000 A.D and the 1300’s- and it still clings to it’s gothic architecture.

Another pretty awesome thing about this second day in Italy, was the plan we had to just randomly stop in at any castle we saw on the drive home since we were sticking to back country roads. We got lucky, and the owner of one gave us a quick tour. The Castle was complete with a watchtower, huge iron gate, creepy black cat, creepy old man and had been converted into a hotel and restaurant (and it still looked like people hadn’t been there since the 1400’s.)

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This is just an update on the first few days of my recent trip to Italy. We flew into Rome and headed over to our hotel called Hotel Colombo and then bounced out to hit up the night scene around the Colosseum area. We sat down to a pretty jive little street restaurant and I got an amazing olive oil, chicken and ham calzone, and also had my first Gelato (lemon and raspberry).

These are all original pictures I took while I was there from Oct. 3rd to Oct 14th.

We headed back to the hotel and got some needed rest. The time change was a little rough but we had somewhat of a big day coming up so we did our best. First thing (7:00 am) the next morning we headed out to The Vatican for a tour. We hired a Vatican tour guide, which gets you past the long lines and get early admittance compared the 4 hour wait for general admission. I was quite amazed at how amazingly huge The Vatican is. They ransacked all of Italy for ancient greek statues, and even confiscated some pretty priceless works of art, as well as commissioned many to be created specifically for The Vatican. I did snag some good pictures when guards were other wise occupied of an original painting of DaVinci, one of their halls of art, and The Sistine Chapel, The Laocoon, The Pieta and more- and I swear we didn’t mess with any holy water. The Vatican has it’s own post office (being it’s own country-state) and I sent a postcard to myself from that post office and received it the day I got back.

After the Vatican, the 12 of us (it was a ridiculously large group) headed back to the airport just to pick up our three rental cars. My dad, me, and my sister carol and her husband James took off first to head up to the Villa we rented for the rest of our duration. The manager had been waiting for us, and we were already going to be late. The other 2/3 of our group had to wait for a few items to be recovered back at the hotel before they came up an hour behind us. One of those items was a GPS. Since we didn’t have one, we tried our best to follow maps, and written directions to get the Villa. Which was ridiculous and quite stressful. Luckily, we all made it there (2 and 1/2 hours north of Rome) that night with out any snags. Italians drive wicked fast (140 kph was quite slow)- and getting used the street signs at night weren’t the best way to initially be exposed.

The Villa is pretty stinking old. But has been updated and restored in many ways. It had a separate private veranda which we ate breakfast on each day, a fairly large pool, and pretty much the compliment of a normal house. Laundry was nice, and used by all because we packed light. The bottom right as seen in the picture was originally a stable; apparently a few hundred years ago the animals lived under the house to help produce heat in colder times. We hardly had any neighbors, and most of the time you could only hear church bells randomly donging through out the day from the different villages and towns in the far distance on hill-tops all around.

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Coming tomorrow night.

Tuscany is pretty alright.

I need to bring my Daewoo over here to be more appreciated. There are tons of em and they work. If I wasn’t worried about the security issues, I would bring home a new A/C for my Hoggle.

The villa is gorgeous.

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It’s finally that time and I am leaving Utah for just under two weeks to go to Italy.

Why our trip will be awesome:

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Monday night, Sept 24th, 11:30 PM. For many, this is the time where you are either in bed, or preparing to go to bed soon. All so you can wake up, hit your 8-5 job the next day with plenty of rest. But since you are in line at a local game store, waiting for the release of Halo 3. You are thinking; “I won’t have it in my hands for another hour with this long line, and the only reason I am staying up late to get one of the first copies is so I can play it all night.”

So you stayed up all Tuesday morning playing the game. Campaign mode, xBox live, system link with all your friends that have a 360 and a new copy of the game too. 6:00 AM rolls around. You might be able to get an hour of sleep in before heading to work, maybe just little more since your dedication to the game means sacrifices; no morning shower, no breakfast unless it’s packed with caffeine, wear the same clothes you have been for the last 24 hours. You don’t care if you look like crap, aren’t productive for a day. The only light at the end of the tunnel is a power nap on your lunch break, and the feeling that you can just go home and crash for a few hours before you meet up with your friends online yet again night.

Not.

That was a not joke. I told a story about the scenario you too were planning on likely, but that’s not how it ended up right? You played hookie, you snuffed work, called in sick, or in the thick of trying to memorize the new maps, and the new button set up for reloading your weapons and switching between your arsenal of mine variations you totally forgot you had a job.

Halo 3 wasn’t released in secret. It’s been all over the news for weeks. Commercial spots on TV are prolific, and it’s pretty hard to buy a slurpee (which you know your boss buys daily) with out seeing Halo 3 and the release date all over it. I really enjoy this more than v.1 and v.2, ( though my idea for Halo 3 Features wasn’t implemented), I still will probably play it quite a bit for the next little while, (making sure it doesn’t affect my performance at work like you didn’t).

Update.exe: Halo 3 broke the single day entertainment releases of all time. The previous was held by Spider Man 3, with 151 million dollars. Halo 3 took in $170,000,000.

Question: Have you been reprimanded, written up, or even fired basically because of your dedication for Halo 3? Was it traumatic? Lets hear your story in a comment. Share your gamer pain.

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The big Halo 3 release is just around the corner.

Here it is. What I demand be in the new game.

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Prep now: save lots of trouble later.

Before you take it out again, double check all the fluids, check the battery, and just everything common sense tells you might not be in great condition after not being used for 4 or 5 months. Ride safe.

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