(Credit:

memeticians.com
)

If you’re still cursing yourself for sleeping through Black Friday, you can still indulge your inner cheapskate today on Cyber Monday! No, it’s not what you’re thinking, dirty birdy- Cyber Monday is the first Monday after Thanksgiving when all the vendors come together to tempt you with online deals and take whatever coins are left in your bank account.

Since it’s our first day back, we take the first half to update each other on our holiday festivities: Jeff visited the Norman Rockwell Museum, Justin is missing an arm after shooting guns in the Garden State, and Wilson stuffed himself silly with a batch of be-deviled eggs. I also suffered through Twilight: New Moon and Ninja Assassin over the weekend as well. Which movie deserves the award for least entertaining flick of the year? Check out our full review!

And speaking of Cyber Monday, Wilson digs up a controversial story about an “Adult-only” app arriving on the Android marketplace. The steamy app is pseudo-cleverly called “MiKandi” and according to Phandroid, the app only works with the Android. Sorry, iPhone users, that Web browser will have to do.

We’re super excited to be back and ready to tackle the rest of 2009 with more giveaways, surprise guests, and a series of year-end wrap up episodes coming your way, so don’t miss an episode of CNET’s The 404 Podcast. While you’re listening, leave us a voice-mail at 1-866-404-CNET and give us your two cents. You can also send us an e-mail at the404(at)cnet[dot]com or just leave a comment on this blog!


EPISODE 476


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Video coming soon, check back later today!

Originally posted at The 404 Podcast


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CNET takes a look at the top-five LED-based monitors that we’ve reviewed.


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Surge is a sleek solar charger case for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Originally posted at 30 Days of Innovation


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If you’re looking for a rugged case that will keep your iPhone protected and will help it survive a drop unscathed, check out our list of highly protective iPhone cases.

Originally posted at Fully Equipped


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How a car-rental service lacking a smartphone app beat out the one that does.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas


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Today’s the day for shopping in your jammies. I’ve got killer deals on a 22-inch LCD, a 17-inch desktop replacement, a 10-inch Netbook, and even earbuds.

Originally posted at The Cheapskate


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If you drive a Toyota or Lexus of recent vintage, chances are you’ll be receiving a recall notice in the mail to address a serious and potentially dangerous problem in which your car’s floormat could interfere with the accelerator pedal, causing the latter to “stick,” producing unwanted and unexpected acceleration.

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This modern camera offers a dSLR-like experience in a compact package that evokes the stylish feel of a classic camera from the “Mad Men” era.

Originally posted at Design Review


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Today’s Crave Giveaway is a Vizio VOJ320F1A 32-inch 1080p LCD HDTV.


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B&N says the company will have the e-readers in some stores on December 7, a week later than expected, because the company is prioritizing delivery to customers who preordered.


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There are still some decent deals if you missed those hard-to-snag Black Friday doorbusters. We’ve handpicked a few Cyber Monday laptop sales to check out if you’re returning to work on Monday and looking to get in some online holiday shopping.


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If you’re looking to print out all those deals you’ve read about on CNET in the last few days, this isn’t a bad deal for a printer by a reputable maker.

Originally posted at The Cheapskate


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Enthusiasts wait in line overnight to get their hands on Apple’s iconic smartphone, whose arrival is expected to challenge homegrown giants Samsung and LG Electronics.

Originally posted at News – Apple


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December 20 is this year’s drop-dead date for on-time holiday shipping, but if you want to take advantage of free shipping offered by some online retailers, you need to act faster than that. We’ve looked at this year’s free-shipping offers and thrown them into a chart for your reference. In addition, hundreds of retailers are participating in Free Shipping Day on December 17, so if you order on that day, you can take advantage of free shipping and on-time standard delivery. The catch is that you have to order on that day.

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To celebrate Thanksgiving weekend, the prolific game developer is offering titles like Blades of Fury, NFL 2010, Real Tennis 2009, and Shrek Kart for just a buck apiece.

Originally posted at The Cheapskate


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Last time we learned building an optionless jQuery plugin. But without options, a plugin is nothing but a mere function. This time we are going to focus how to add options to a plugin and extend its functionality. Our sample plugin is going to be a tab navigation plugin. You can read the first part if you haven’t see the first part of this lesson.

For a printable reference guide to the jQuery API I suggest you to download this interesting jQuery Visual Cheat Sheet designed by Antonio Lupetti or take a look at the official jQuery documentation.

Now let’s start coding with our empty template.

(function($){
$.fn.woorkTabs = function(){
// all plugin stuff will be here
};
})(jQuery);

In a plugin, you can use options either with their predefined (default) values or with their newly assigned values. So for our default values, we need to add a definition part in our plugin.

(function($){
$.fn.woorkTabs = function(){
// all plugin stuff will be here
}; $.fn.woorkTabs.defaults = {
navigation: '#tabs a',
pages : '.page'
}
})(jQuery);

where $.fn.woorkTabs.defaults part is the default value for the options in the plugin. Each option can be defined as option_name : ‘option value’. For values like numbers or true false statements you do not need to use quotation marks e.g. option_name : true or option_name : 1500 There are two things to remember: you should always define a value with a semicolon ( : ) and every option should be separated by comma (,) from each other. But for our beloved internet explorer compatibility, you should remove comma after the last option.

After adding default option values, we need to call them in our plugin.

(function($){
$.fn.woorkTabs = function(options){
var $options = $.extend({}, $.fn.woorkTabs.defaults, options);
}; $.fn.woorkTabs.defaults = {
navigation: '#tabs a',
pages : '.page'
}
})(jQuery);

So we add a variable names $options to extend the plugin’s default options. This new extend() function merges the default settings with newly defined option values while calling the plugin. We can get this options by $options.option_name syntax for using them in the functions. Also notice that, we add a keyword options in the $.fn.woorkTabs = function(options) part to get the options new values while calling the plugin. After adding our return this.each(function(){}); statement, initial setup for the plugin is finished.

(function($){
$.fn.woorkTabs = function(options){
var $options = $.extend({}, $.fn.woorkTabs.defaults, options);
return this.each(function(){
});
}; $.fn.woorkTabs.defaults = {
navigation: '#tabs a',
pages : '.page'
}
})(jQuery);

In our page we can call this plugin either with defaults or with new values like

$(target1).woorkTabs(); $(target2).woorkTabs({
navigation : '#tabnav a',
pages : '#example .pages'
});

Many of you know what a tabbed navigation is. The main idea is by clicking the links in a navigation list, target content become visible in the page and others become invisible.

Start with getting options,

var $navigation = $options.navigation;
var $pages = $options.pages;

Since the main idea is clicking something, we need to use click() event. This function triggers anything you defined inside the function when mouse clicked the target. In our case, when user clicks the tab, first plugin finds the target content, then hides other contents and shows the target. But first of all, let’s see how our html will look like.

<div id="tabs"> <ul>
    <li><a href="#tabcontent1">Tab Content 01</a></li>
    <li><a href="#tabcontent2">Tab Content 02</a></li>
    <li><a href="#tabcontent3">Tab Content 03</a></li>
</ul> <div id="tabcontent1">
    <p>This the first tab page for example</p>
</div>
<div id="tabcontent2">
    <p>This the second tab page for example</p>
</div>
<div id="tabcontent3">
    <p>This the last tab page for example</p>
</div>
</div>

In the navigation list, all links represents our tabs and they are targeting the pages ids according to their href values. We can get the content’s id, which will be visible, easily by clicked tab’s href attribute.

$($navigation).click(function(){
var $e = $(this);
var $goingToShow = $e.attr('href');
});

As in the previous lesson $e variable is for calling freely the clicked element. With the attr() function we can get any attribute’s value from the element. In this case, we need the href attributes. Notice that, the href value is start with “#” which indicates id in jQuery selectors, we can directly use the $goingToShow variable in the process. The following step is, showing the clicked tab’s content and hiding the other tabs’ contents. show() and hide() effects are the most appropriate functions for this work. show() function shows the element by setting it’s css display property to “block” and hide() function hides the element by setting it’s css display property to “hidden”.

$($navigation).click(function(event){
event.preventDefault(); var $e = $(this);
var $goingToShow = $e.attr('href'); $pages.hide();
$goingToShow.show(); $($navigation).removeClass('active');
$e.addClass('active');
});

We hide the all tab pages by $pages.hide() then show the clicked tab’s page. Also we remove the ‘active’ class from the tabs add add ‘active’ class to clicked tab to be able to define visual properties in css for our active tab. And lastly, for prevent jumping the page due to link fragment in our tab’s href attribute. Overall plugin is as follows

(function($){
$.fn.woorkTabs = function(options){
var $options = $.extend({}, $.fn.woorkTabs.defaults, options); return this.each(function(){
var $navigation = $options.navigation;
var $pages = $options.pages; $($navigation).click(function(event){
event.preventDefault(); var $e = $(this);
var $goingToShow = $e.attr('href'); $pages.hide();
$goingToShow.show(); $($navigation).removeClass('active');
$e.addClass('active');
});
}; $.fn.woorkTabs.defaults = {
navigation: '#tabs a',
pages : '.page'
}
})(jQuery);

Example

Here is the HTML code:

<div id="tabs">
<ul>
    <li><a href="#tabcontent1">Tab Content 01</a></li>
    <li><a href="#tabcontent2">Tab Content 02</a></li>
    <li><a href="#tabcontent3">Tab Content 03</a></li>
</ul> <div id="tabcontent1">
    <p>This the first tab page for example</p>
</div> <div id="tabcontent2">
    <p>This the second tab page for example</p>
</div> <div id="tabcontent3">
    <p>This the last tab page for example</p>
</div> </div>

JavaScript

Here is the JavaScript code:

$(function(){
$("#tabs").woorkTabs({
navigation: "#tabnav a"
});
});

Take a look at the live example here.


I posted an article a few months ago regarding Revtwt. I was pretty positive in my review about using it as a way to generate revenue using your twitter account. As with everything else on the Internet, things change quickly so I am updating my thoughts concerning RevTwt.

I started using RevTwt a few months ago and immediately had some success with it. Their business model is to offer you a number of ads to post on your Twitter account. Each posts offers to pay anywhere from about 5 cents up to 20 cents whenever one of your followers clicks on the link embedded in the ad post. At first, it was typical for just about all of my ads to generate 1 to 2 dollars in revenue. Of course, you are only allowed to post 2 to 4 ads depending on your follower numbers, so you can see that you would get rich off of this medium but added to the multiple income streams that you should be using, it added up nicely.
Let me explain. Lets say you have 5 Twitter accounts.(You need multiple accounts if you want to make money on Twitter) If you post 3 ads per day to each of those accounts and you generate only $1 in revenue a day from RevTwt for each account, that will actually add up to $150 per month. Add that to Sponsored Tweets, Adsense on your blogs(You better have a blog that ties into your Twitter accounts), Clickbank affiliations, and other affiliate reviews that lead to sales, you can make a lot of money online. A few cents here and there really add up if you are willing to work for it.
Okay, back to this update. RevTwt worked well at first but then it did not really grow the way Sponsored Tweets has. There are only about 120 ads available for people to tweet so you can see that those ads get saturated quickly. If you post an ad when it is first added to the queue, you have a chance to make some money, but otherwise you simply will get very few clicks.
I pretty much have quit using RevTwt. I do check back occasionally looking for any ads that pay just for posting, called CPT ads. They pay over $1 or $2 for my largest account and I will post one of those every once in awhile.
If you really want to make money on Twitter, you need to check out Sponsored Tweets. I make a decent amount of money with it. Remember, using multiple accounts and working at those accounts will all add up. If you try making money with only one account, it will be difficult. You need to engage with others so that when an ad gets posted your account does not appear to be a spam account.
I hope this helps and I hope you will retweet the post by using the retweet button on the sidebar of the blog. Also, the link to go check out Sponsored Tweets is up on top. Give it a look.



I’d like to start by saying that there is nothing new regarding a retained fee structure. It’s been around forever. But to my surprise, very few web designers offer it or better yet, require it. It’s been almost 5 years since our firm left the billable hour/project based business model to adopt our current retainer structure. As far as I can tell, it’s been the best move we’ve ever made, especially in this recessionary economy. Unlike print or collateral design, web development is not something, I believe, that can ever be finished. A brochure can be finished. A print ad can be finished. A radio spot can be finished. But a website should be presented to the client as a living, breathing article that will require much ongoing attention beyond the “finished product.”

In order for our firm to take on a new client, the client must commit to at least a one year agreement beyond the “finish date” of the website project. That minimum one year agreement includes a monthly retainer fee that covers edits, additions of new technology and social media channels, as well as on-going consulting. Before we initiated this model, we would launch the finished product and usually that was it. The client got their product, they were happy and they left. This retainer model has had an immense impact on our bottom line. The first year after implementing the retained structure, our revenues increased by 35%, then 20% year two, then 23% year three and 15% years four and five.

What makes this growth pattern even more attractive to our firm is that we’ve reduced our new client outreach objectives by almost 75%.

Before initiating this retained fee structure, one of the busiest departments in our company was the combination of sales, SEO and outbound email marketing. We had to maintain a very high level of outbound marketing so that we were always cultivating new clients. With the retained model, we aren’t nearly as worried about new business as we are keeping our retained clients happy. And as anyone will tell you, it’s much cheaper to keep a client than to find a client.

So we’ve not only grown our revenues by 88% since initiating the retainer, we’ve cut our marketing costs by over $100K a year.

We also offer incentives to sign longer-term contracts as well. Many of our clients are on two and three year agreements. This has proven to be especially helpful in these tough economic times.

When the bottom fell out on the economy, clients weren’t abandoning us and we weren’t spending our time begging prospects to come on board with our firm. At most, we were adjusting our monthly retainer fees to make them more comfortable for our clients who may be struggling. In conclusion, being viewed more as a business partner and consultant who is highly trusted and relied upon, month after month, by the client, has more revenue generating potential than simply offering a fixed price for a fixed service.

Top 5 reasons to go retained

1. You need fewer clients to make the same amount of money.
2. Easier to forecast internal costs and budgets
3. Reduced need for costly outbound marketing
4. Longer-term relationships and potential for referrals
5. Adjusts more fluidly during economic downturns

If any of you would like to learn more or have access to our retained fee contract, email me and I’ll be glad to provide it to you and consult with you, for free, some of the ups and downs of going retained.


It looks easy to affiliate yourself with the thousands of companies who offer it. Just sign up, write a post about a product, or a group of products, drive traffic to the page and sit back and count your money from the commissions you earn. If it was that easy, everyone would do it. I am here to say that it simply is not that easy.

Sure, it is easy to find companies that will let you be an affiliate of theirs. It is also easy to make a webpage all about a product or products. It is fairly easy to drive traffic to your page too, but getting the sale and the commission is a whole different story. People may come to your site and read about how great the product is, but producing a sale from that visit is very difficult. Most likely, the customer will go check out other reviews or go to an actual store and purchase the item, thus leaving you out of the loop.
Unless you have the software and the know how to create a product comparison website, you will likely have a difficult time being an affiliate sales site. I do generate a few affiliate sales, but it is not where I make the bulk of my money. It is just one of a number of income streams, but I have found it to be somewhat frustrating. So, how do you make money being an affiliate?
I have found that the best way to make money as an affiliate site is to offer reviews that lead a person to click on a link to the company that ultimately pays you for the lead instead of a sale. For instance, you might create a site that gives people a great deal of terrific and free advice about how to avoid bankruptcy through bill consolidation and then you tell the reader about one or two great bill consolidation companies that are offering some information if they click on the site. if your reader clicks on the link and leaves their information for the bill consolidation company, you get a commission. You do not have to close a sale, you merely lead someone to it. These commissions can be very nice too.
Again, this is just my opinion, but it is one I have seen work time and time again. Check out cj.com or shareasale.com to find companies to affiliate with. if you are not registered, it takes just a few minutes to register and then you will have access to hundreds of companies to affiliate with. I have found shareasale to be the easier one to work with.


In a survey released this week by media law firm Olswang, iPhone users say they are prepared to spend more for exclusive digital content. As reported on 9to5Mac.com, 58% of survey respondents said they would pay to access a just-released movie on their mobile devices. But among iPhone owners, that figure jumps to 73%. There’s a similar split for TV. While 30% of those surveyed expressed interest in buying a subscription to a TV show they like, 41% of iPhone owners say they’d be interested. In the same vein, iPhone owners were more receptive to paying for mobile access to magazines and newspapers.

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