Philip Nicosia

Another one of my sites is Resources.eu.com. The site is a hand edited directory for various resources that can be found on the internet.

A few years ago it seemed that Google used to list a lot of directories high in the serps so I thought I would go about making one. Quite honestly its not worth the bother. Now that the site is somewhat established it gets about 10 - 20 submissions a day which can take a lot of time to manually review. Out of these 10 - 20 submissions it isn’t unusual for only 1 or 2 to actually be approved and entered into the directory.

Anyone thinking about starting up a directory to make money with I would personally think again. Its not worth the effort.

If a had to pick my favourite gadget of all time it would have to be the Apple Newton Messagepad.  For those of you that don’t know what a Newton Messagepad is it was at the time a state of the art PDA far ahead of anything else on the market.

My first Messagepad was the MP100 which I bought way back in 1994. I used this continuously until my next purchase which was a vastly improved MP130 which came with an all important backlight so I could now use it happily in the dark.

In 1996 they then brought out the MP2000 which I immediately purchased. This again was a vast improvement over the previous the model with a speed increase from 20MHz to a whopping 162MHz. Everything on it just worked so much better and it was fast. To this day I have never come across a PDA with handwriting technology that worked as well as this did. Bearing in mind it was launched 10 years ago you can see how way ahead of its time it really was.

Sadly Apple canned Newton in 1998.

I used my MP2000 which I later sent off to Apple to be upgraded to a MP2100 right up until the day it finally died only a couple of years ago. I’ve since bought a second-hand MP2100 off Ebay for nostalgias sake but confess since I lost all the info on the one that died I have never got round to using it.

So now at home I have my collection sitting in a drawer consisting of:

1 x MP100
1 x Dead MP2000
1 x MP2100
1 x Sharp branded MP
1 x eMate 300

I wonder if they will be worth anything in time to come?

For anyone who wants to know more of the ins and outs of the Messagepad there is a good page of information here.

If you want your website to rank within the search engines one of the most important things to do is get links to your site. Without these then search engines will either not find you or think your site isn’t important enough to rank for anything worthwhile.

Once your site gets better known if its good enough it will attract links from other sites without you even asking but when your starting out it doesn’t matter how good it is if no-one can find it in the first place.

A good way to start gaining these all important links is to submit your site to as many relevant directories as possible. This needn’t cost you anything other than your time as there are literally 100’s of free web directories available and one site which lists quite a few is DirectoryList.org. There you will find plenty of directories to get you started.

If you don’t have enough time on your hands to do it then again there are plenty of places where you can find people you can pay to do it for you. One such site is RCPlinks.com which offers an affordable directory submission service.

Even though Lotty our cat and Bugs our rabbit were very wary of each other over time they did get used to one another and we were hopeful that one day they would become friends. Since Bugs’ arrival Lotty tended not to stay in the garden too long and would generally be found wandering around the lake. On the afternoon of Bugs’ passing away I think she knew that something was wrong. She spent a few hours in the garden looking all around for Bugs and couldn’t understand why she couldn’t see her.

Watching Lotty I noticed that she kept staring at where we laid Bugs to rest. After a while I think she realised where she was as she walked over and just laid there staring at the flowers we had put out for her.

We’ve never seen Lotty lay in this piece of garden before and over the last few days she has been there several times.

I guess Lotty misses Bugs as much as we do. She was a very special rabbit with a lovely personality and temperament and will be sorely missed.

Another one of my sites I have is Podcastblaster.com.

Podcasting is a new way of distributing audio broadcasts using the Internet. Using this method, people can subscribe to a variety of content in a certain file format (usually as MP3s). These files are then downloaded to a PC or a portable media player and can then be listened to at any convenient time. Podcasting is a new word that combines “broadcasting” and “iPod”.

A definite distinction of podcasting from other media delivery methods online is its subscription component – which basically defines the whole podcasting experience. Podcasters usually use a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) or Atom feed to push their content to subscribers. It also allows independent producers and “broadcasters” to create and self-publish their own syndicated “radio shows” – whether it be talk radio, poetry readings or even comedy shows. Podcasting also gives traditional radio programs another distribution method for their shows – one that is not confined to the airwaves and available on demand. All that a listener needs to get the podcasts is “podcatching” software that is designed to check for and download new content at a given time. Other podcatching software are even designed to synchronize the downloaded files to the listener’s portable digital player.

PodcastBlaster.com was setup to sell a unique podcasting package for beginners who wanted to enter the world of Podcasting. Everything needed to get started is included with step by step instructions, professional quality recording software for creating your podcasts together with ready to use professionally produced voice-overs, loops, background effects, stingers and Podcast-safe music.

The whole package costs only $39.95 and come with a no risk 30 day money back guarantee. In the year or so that I have been selling this software I have only had 1 refund request. That must say something for how useful people have found it.