With the power of video to hold people’s attention, it’s always good to come across free sources of stock footage that doesn’t carry a royalty for use. These videos can be used for your marketing purposes, with nothing more than an acknowledgement of the creator. Sometimes not even that is required. While looking for a video to use in a special celebration next week, I found a blog post listing sources for royalty-free video clips. Some sites are free forever; others are free during an introductory period, with a purchase required to continue using the site. In all cases, the... [...]

Back in the 1960s, when I became a computer programmer, I recall an engineering manager commenting that the software is always at least a year behind the hardware. To a degree, that’s got to be true. If there is new hardware, with new capabilities, a programmer needs to have that hardware in hand before writing code to take advantage of it. Otherwise there would be no way to test the code and make sure it works. But “one year” is a wildly optimistic estimate. A case in point is 64-bit Intel processors. They have been available for about 5 years, and yet very few programs take... [...]

A big problem many self-employed people have is lack of focus, resulting in lack of forward movement. We get side-tracked and drop the ball on the important things. One CEO found that he could manage his business better (much better) if he made use of a simple, cheap tool. Buy it in any office products store for about $1. The story is published on : The Power of Positive Habits. Here are the details. You can take advantage of this tool to improve your own business: The CEO and the Yellow Pad.  [...]

I hate to have my phone’s battery run down in the middle of the day. It’s always at the most inconvenient time, it seems. Any ideas that will help avoid it are always welcome. Amazon has several emergency chargers that you plug into your phone for a quick boost. For example: Omaker Premium Dull Polish Finish Surface Brilliant 15600mAh(Dual 2.1A Output and 2.1A Input) Dual USB Portable Charger External Battery Pack Power bank (Orange+Grey) Anker® 2nd Gen Astro Mini 3200mAh Lipstick-Sized Portable Charger External Battery Power Bank with PowerIQTM Technology for iPhone, Samsung, HTC... [...]

Deiss says that while traffic matters, what matters more is conversions. What is at the heart of conversions is the quality of the offer being made. So, if you have been concerned about getting people to your site, take some time to make sure they find their visit worthwhile, once they get there.  [...]

Apple just announced their new iPhone 6 earlier this week. Samsung announced the Galaxy S5 not long ago. And Amazon also just announced the Amazon Fire Phone‎. Now Google is poised to enter this “battle of the titans”, too. While Google has the technical prowess and the marketing clout to match any of these companies, the question is whether this is the time when they get everything right. Microsoft also had plenty of technical prowess and marketing clout, but their first generation of the Microsoft Surface was widely viewed as not up to the standard set by their competitors.... [...]

It has been all over the TV news and reported by bloggers and news sites. The hacking onto Home Depot is potentially much bigger, more widespread, and most costly to the merchant, to the credit card companies, to banks (and to their insurance companies) than the Target break-in 8 months ago. This is a major crime event. If you haven’t become familiar with the incident, this story in ComputerWorld is a good, detailed overview of what seems to have happened: Data shows Home Depot breach could be largest ever. This is a cautionary tale for all marketers. If a corporate giant is not able... [...]

Outlook, Microsoft’s email management system, has been around for over 10 years, and is used by many of us to keep our email under control. Well, “control” is relative. I have had 500,000 emails in Outlook, and have only managed to whittle the number down to 390,000. And Outlook has many features to assist you in making your email easier to manage. But one man, David Gewirtz, decided that it wasn’t up to the task any longer. He has decided that Gmail is a better solution for him. Today, ZDNet.com published his story detailing why, after using Outlook from its early days... [...]

As you probably know, today is the day that Americans celebrate our freedom. On July 4, 1776, we declared ourselves free from British rule. In small towns across America, there will be parades, concerts and civic unity. It’s also going to be a great day of picnics, baseball, fireworks and fun as well. For example, we have our grandchildren visiting us, and they have helped Grandmother make a cake shaped and decorated like an American flag. Along with hot dogs and potato chips we have our lunch ready to go in an hour. For example, we have our grandchildren visiting us, and they have helped... [...]

There’s buzz about Heartbleed all around the web. It has the potential to damage the reputations and the bank accounts of millions of people. This is the biggest scare since the Java vulnerability that was announced a couple of yers ago. The issue is that OpenSSL, software used by thousands of commerce sites, has a bug, and a crook found out about it. With that knowledge, Heartbleed was created to steal userids, passwords, name and other personal information from sites running OpenSSL. This week, in Canada, a 19-Year-Old Canadian Arrested for hacking into government computers using the... [...]