ProfitBrite

The Scoop on Firefox 4

Mozilla Firefox 4 Features

Fastest Firefox Version to Date:

Speed and performance, Firefox is more than six times faster previous releases. With improved start-up and page load times, quick and improved web applications performance with hardware accelerated graphics, Firefox is totally optimized for interactive websites

New Streamlined Interface:

App Tabs Provides a permanent place to keep all your frequently visited sites, like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Web Mail, Flickr, etc.

Panorama:

Drag and drop Tabs into much more manageable groups to save lots of time while navigating with multiple open Tabs.

Switch to Tab: Find and switch easily to any open Tab from your Browser Bar without needing to open duplicate Tabs.

Secure Synchronization:

Firefox Sync: Access your Browser Bar history, Bookmarks, Passwords Open Tabs and Form Data across multiple computers and Mobile Devices.

New Add-ons Manager:

Easily discover and install well over 200,000 add-ons to fully customize all features and functionality of your Firefox Browser.

Privacy and Security:

Firefox is taking the lead for the Web towards a universal standard. The Do Not Track feature allows users to opt out of tracking used for personal behavioral advertising.

Firefox puts your privacy as priority, fixing many of the flaws for some Web standards to prevent anyone from accessing your browser history.

HTTP Strict Transport Security:

Firefox automatically establishes secure connections to stop the man-in-the-middle attacks to keep your sensitive files and data safe from interception during the login process.

Content Security Policy:

Prevents cross scripting attacks by allowing sites to explicitly instruct the browser whether the content you're trying to access is legitimate or not.

Web Developers Tools:

Firefox gives you uninterrupted browsing when there is a crash with the Adobe Flash Player, Apple QuickTime Player and MS Silverlight plug-ins. If one of these plug-ins freezes or crashes, it won't affect the rest of Firefox. just reload the page to restart the plug-in.

The HTML5 support in Firefox includes hardware accelerated, high-def video WebM, 3D graphics, with off-line data storage, true professional typography, touch-screen interfaces and the Mozilla Audio API for creating exciting visual experiences for sound or music.

Firefox 4 also improves existing tools such as CSS, SVG and Canvas to enable developers to make feature rich Web pages easily.

The JavaScript engine incorporates the new JagerMonkey JIT compiler, with many enhancements to the existing TraceMonkey JIT, as well as SpiderMonkey's interpreter for much faster page loading speed and better performance of Games and Web Apps.

Note:

Firefox 4 is many times Javascript user-friendly than previous versions. Firefox gives you Mozilla Sync, which can provide faster speed for browser usage. Allowing you to save the data on your browser then transfer it to any other computer or Mobile Device. Hands down a much better way than the old methods of sending passwords to yourself via email or text messages, or even writing it down somewhere.

Since Firefox 4 official release, and as of the date and time this article was published, Mozilla claims it has already been downloaded well over 7,000,000 times. With 4.7 million downloads alone in the first 24 hours!

A Leyva, serves as senior editor and staff writer for MobileDevicesPlus.com.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Scoop-on-Firefox-4&id=6110726] The Scoop on Firefox 4

Make Money From Photos That Are Just Lying Around On Your Computer

Galleries

Introducing yourself as a professional photographer is one of the most common, yet best ways in order to earn a good payday and make money from photos. People who go to galleries typically appreciate photographs being displayed on their walls. This is the reason why the Wild West photographs of Hansel Adams have now turned into classic pieces of art. Some could now even run up to thousands of dollars!

Online World

The online world now is one of the best places for money making opportunities and it goes the same for photographs. There are sites that allow you to earn royalty per download on your photographs. Though some run $1 per download, there are also those sites that offer around $2.50 per download. The only thing that you need to ensure is the ownership of the photographs. Just make sure you haven't posted it anywhere in Flickr, your blog or in any place online which it could be downloaded for free.

Publications

If you are planning to get your photographs published, one of the things that you need to do is to first create a theme. Perhaps, if you love traveling, make sure that all your photographs are all about traveling different parts of the world. You could even narrow down these themes and choose between film format and digital format, or you could also choose between black and white and colored photographs.

There are great numbers of free software online that allows you to format your photo book and from there, you could now find a good publication group that would be interested with your work. If in case you are someone new in the field, you could even sell these photo books online.

Commercial Photography

If you are going to tryout commercial photography, might as well study the things that may interest your target market. If you are targeting a client with a site meant for construction materials and industrial machines, it would be useful if you will show them something related to the products they are selling. With these photographs, your client makes your photographs useful for their web home page or for other advertising purpose.

In summary, if you want to make money from photos, the number one thing that you need to do is to take a lot of photographs throughout the week. Be reminded that shots worth a buck would be rare, which should prompt you to shoot some more.

Chris Matthews is a professional photo journalist who has written numerous articles on ways to [http://www.makemoneyfromphotos.net]make money from photos and his [http://www.makemoneyfromphotos.net]ebook is currently one of the most sought after resources on the subject.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Make-Money-From-Photos-That-Are-Just-Lying-Around-O...] Make Money From Photos That Are Just Lying Around On Your Computer

Is the Cloud Right for Me?

With many people, startups, and media raving about the Cloud, as an Information Engineer I find it is important to weigh both the advantages and disadvantages of any technical solution. There are a number of disadvantages as well as excellent advantages to Cloud based solutions. Some of the disadvantages being privacy, security, and performance (network). Some of the advantages being initial startup cost, manageability and speed.

What is the Cloud?

Everyone's definition of the Cloud is different, and I do not to intend to define it, but rather note a few commonalities I have seen in the wild about what the cloud is, and what it means to the average individual, business, and engineer respectively. For the purposes of this article, we will consider the cloud to be any hosted application, API, or server which is managed by a third party, and often times run on a virtualized infrastructure.

What make the Cloud great

The Cloud is an excellent resource for many companies and organizations looking to implement a low-overhead IT infrastructure in a short amount of time, with a small amount of initial investment. One thing that many companies don't realize; however, is that the cloud is by no means a silver bullet to all of their IT problems, and can in fact be more expensive in the long-term.

Cloud computing allows many companies to test new products and services in a short period of time, without having to lease data center space, set up a network infrastructure, get an IP netblock from their Regional Internet Registry (which is even harder now that the IPv4 pool has run out), set up a virtualization infrastructure, and configure their servers; which is what is required to get the equivalent of simply entering your credit card information and spinning up a cloud-based server instance or application.

However, for many companies having a dedicated set of hardware and IT staff or consultants to manage it will often times be less expensive in the long term, and their data will in fact be safer and perform better, depending on their business needs.

Auto-scaling? Is it real or a myth?

Real Cloud Costs

If you rely solely on the Cloud, all of your intellectual property is in another organization's control (companies go bankrupt, mistakes do happen even for the big guys, etc ). We have seen problems with this such as when Flickr lost a user's account. Everyone makes mistakes, even cloud providers, although unlikely. The simple fact is that when your information is on a third party system, you have much less control over your data.

The costs of the Cloud have a breaking point, an average high-end Web or app server is about $4,000 including the hardware and software required to run it, not taking into account leasing a space at a data center, purchasing the networking equipment and paying for bandwidth, which contrary to popular belief, can be done relatively cheaply. The cost of a reserved high-CPU instance is $1,820 per year. If you replace your hardware every three years, then Amazon's EC2, for example ends up costing $5,460, and there is no equity in the equipment which can be sold when it's decommissioned. For most businesses purposes, the hardware likely won't need to be replaced after 3 years, but every business's hardware refresh policy is different. The bottom line is, although EC2 has a much lower start-up cost in the first year, over the long term it is actually more expensive, without taking the cost of hiring IT staff or consultants on to manage the system, which can drive up the management cost.

Cloud Performance Concerns

Many servers and services hosted in the cloud are shared resources. Although many cloud providers do know what they are doing in terms of balancing resources, there is the possibility that other tenants on a shared host could consume resources affecting your machines performance. Also, for most cloud instances, the network bandwidth speeds are painfully slow, so if you have to transfer a large amount of data, it can take a long time. Whereas if you have your own network and AS number, you can get extremely high rates of transfer between multiple sites where your systems reside.

Another concern is security. Although many cloud providers offer SSL for managing instances, it can be difficult to manage something like a directory infrastructure using the cloud. Typically, authentication systems such as LDAP, even though it can be ran over SSL, is not something that you want exposed to the public Internet. SSL is still susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks [1].

Benefits of the Cloud

The cloud is an excellent resource and advancement in computing. It allows companies and individuals alike to spin up servers and application platforms in a heartbeat, without all of the overhead and complexity of managing the service themselves. Although the cloud is not a be-all-end-all solution to IT problems. Like any technical solution, it has to make sense for the business or organizational goals at hand, and depending on the projected lifetime of a project, product, or service, the cloud may or may not be the right solution. For small projects, test launches, and small business, it may make sense; because the entry to market is much lower.

Even Github.com, a large source code hosting service built on cloud computing technology utilizes dedicated servers in combination with cloud-based servers. Many organization may find that a hybrid solution such as Github's works well for them, but one must weigh the benefits and needs of the business against performance, cost, security, and lifespan of a project before making a decision. Generally, long-term projects and core infrastructure is best hosted on dedicated servers, and short-term projects, for startups, or projects that are testing a new product or service are well suited for the cloud, but extra measures must be taken into account for the security of the service or platform.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Is-the-Cloud-Right-for-Me?&id=5938022] Is the Cloud Right for Me?

Are Yahoo and Bing a Threat to Google Search Yet?

Lets first start with the aesthetics. Google has never been known for their great design as anyone who has ever seen their multi coloured logo will obviously know. But what they have done very successfully now for many years is kept the Google search page clean and minimal. The plain white page with a search box has seen no feature creep thanks to Google's policy of strictly limiting the amount of text that they have on the page. Any addition means something else has to be removed. This has meant that the page loads fast and there is never any confusion about where to yep in your search query.

Bing on the other hand is cluttered with short cuts to other Microsoft products in typical Microsoft style and the huge photographic backgrounds may be very pretty but if they are not to your taste then they are just bandwidth hog and on a slow connection they may considerably slow page load time. Yahoo is the most egregious in this aspect and the Yahoo search page also serves as the home page for the Yahoo portal so it is crowded with links advertising, headlines, the weather and the works as Yahoo tries to entice you to stay on Yahoo.com sites and partners rather than make an actual search.

When it comes to features once again Google has the cleanest presentation of the results with a few ad words thrown in. They recently have added the ability to customise you searches by date and location and they auto detect your location. Microsoft's Bing goes one step further with mouse roll over previews of the links that they present in their results and video previews as well. Yahoo search works best when the results you are looking for are on one of Yahoo's properties lie Flickr or Yahoo Music. If you are searching a music artiste for instance Yahoo works best because it pulls up the bio, discography, videos and other data straight out of Yahoo music.

Yahoo and Bing may have some features that Google does not have right now and may not ever have but for most people the best all round search engine will still reaming the ubiquitous Google.com.

Amit Sinha works with gogi.in, Read more articles on [http://www.gogi.in/internet]Internet or visit gogi [http://www.gogi.in]technology blog.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Are-Yahoo-and-Bing-a-Threat-to-Google-Search-Yet?&id=5708790] Are Yahoo and Bing a Threat to Google Search Yet?

Want to Make Your Web App More Successful? Do Less

It makes sense - if you're entering a crowded space with a bunch of competitors, having more features seems like a sure-fire way to win. But it rarely works that way.

The truth is that for most applications, doing less is better than doing more.

The Minimum Viable Product

Coined by Venture Hacks, the Minimum Viable Product is the smallest set of features that you need to build in order to get customers to pay you. For most web or mobile applications, their Minimum Viable Product (or MVP) is considerably smaller than the product they set out to build.

The reality is that most users of your site will only care about a couple of features. If you think about the sites you use most frequently, they usually do one or two things really well. They may have a ton of extras built in, but you probably find yourself using them for one purpose.

For Facebook, I check out updates on my friends. LinkedIn is my personal rolodex. I use Flickr to manage my photos. I use Yelp to find restaurants when I'm at a loss.

Your usage habits on sites you frequent is probably very similar.

What is your MVP?

So what's your equivalent of that? There are a couple of questions you can ask to figure out your MVP:

If you were only able to build one of the features in your spec document, which would you build?Which you tell others about your product, which feature do you tell them about first?
When you tell others about your product, which feature do they gravitate toward the most?
Which feature do you think will your customer be most likely to pay for?
Which feature do you think your users will use most frequently?

Armed with the answer to those questions, take your spec document and pare it down to the one or two features that are most important. Build them first and get feedback. Continue to devote the majority of your resources on them. And pay very close attention to how changes to those features improve user conversion.

Don't waste your time building 50 mediocre features. Build one or two great ones instead.

Sean Johnson is a partner at Digital Intent, a rapid web and mobile product strategy and development firm in Chicago. Learn more about Digital Intent's services at [http://www.digintent.com]www.digintent.com.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Want-to-Make-Your-Web-App-More-Successful?-Do-Less&id=5695925] Want to Make Your Web App More Successful? Do Less

Copyright and Using Images on Your Website and Blog Posts

You can't just use any image you find and like in blog posts, on your web site or in printed material. The law automatically grants full "copyright" over any creative work a person makes. This includes any creative work such as drawings, photos and text. Copyrights are applied to all intellectual property such as books, websites, blogs, photographs, audio and video recordings, e.g. songs, music and YouTube videos too. When choosing a creative work to use, make sure that it has a creative common license, a full-usage, licensed or granted usage, or is royalty-free. All have limitations and, except for full-usage, rarely grant complete usage rights. Ask for a copy of the usage license rights and restrictions before purchasing or using an image. Many places like Fotosearch.com and PhotoDisc.com have the licenses they use posted on their sites.

Images marked as "All Rights Reserved" are copyrighted and require permission from their creator. Images marked as "Some Rights Reserved" have a creative commons license applied. There are several types of creative commons licenses. Each license imposes different restrictions on how you use the images. There are four main types of creative common licenses, "Attribution," "Share Alike," "Noncommercial," "No Derivative Works." Each of the four categories has a variety of license types for different usages, visit rel=nofollow http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ to learn more.

Creative Commons is an organization that provides free content licenses that the person developing the creative piece can apply to their work. ( rel=nofollow http://creativecommons.org/license/ ) The artists that choose to use this license are giving people permission to use the licensed piece without having to ask permission, provided they use it in the manner stated in the Creative Common License. Read each Creative Common License carefully as they do vary.

When using an image with a creative commons license, it is important to note the attribution with the image; e.g., Photo by John Smith licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic. Check with the creator of the image or the website that you get the image from, e.g. Flickr, for guidelines. This will ensure you are compliant with copyright requirements and give credit where credit is due.

This article is not meant to be legal advice and you are encouraged to further educate yourself about copyright and the implications to your site. Copyright laws vary internationally.

Sharon Sayler shows people simple, powerful, easy to learn ways they can gain the nonverbal advantage in important situations such as court appearances, job interviews, negotiations... anywhere where the outcome is critical. Signup to get your Communications Success Package including: -- Her popular Tips, Scripts and Must Do's To Create Instant Rapport with Just About Anyone -- A free chapter from What Your Body Says (and how to master the message) -- A special report on How to Avoid the 3 Biggest Body Language Mistakes - in under 10 Minutes! Plus weekly bonus how-to videos and tips to immediately increase your impact and influence.Run over to http://www.WhatYourBodySays.com to get yours now.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Copyright-and-Using-Images-on-Your-Website-and-Blog...] Copyright and Using Images on Your Website and Blog Posts

How To Earn Cash With Stock Photographs

In the old days, the word stock referred to images that were part of a photographers collection or archive. Photographers would license these stock photos to interested parties for specific uses, for which they would be paid in return. This also gave them an additional income stream for their photographs, beyond the original assignment. Today, these images are stocked on virtual shelves on the internet for immediate downloads to interested buyers. There are millions upon millions of stock images available for downloads from a variety of websites.

Who Uses These Stock Images?

Stock images are used everyday by website builders, bloggers, in magazines & promotional flyers, and widely in advertising. It is not unusual to see the same image used in different ads. If you are a contributor, you may even see some of your own images one day.

What Makes A Stock Photo?

A stock photo is generally one that communicates a message in a simple, clear way. It can be black and white or color. Buyers looking for stock photos usually want high quality images that will reproduce well.

How Do You Make Money With Stock Photos?

With the invention of the digital camera, most of us have large collections of photos in our personal libraries. Mine are in several libraries including iPhoto, Picasa, and Flickr. Amongst the hundreds of photos that I have, there are many that would qualify as stock photos. The photos that I have identified as stock, can be uploaded to a number of different photo stock sites. Once there, they are made available for purchase, and download to an interested buyer.

Several popular photo stock sites are:

iStockPhoto.com
BigStockPhoto.com
Shutterstock.com
Fotolia.com
Dreamstime.com

Each of these stock sites offer millions of photos for download, at a price. Photographers are paid a commission on their images when they are purchased at these sites. The amount of commission paid depends on the size of the picture and the price paid. The larger the picture, the more it costs, and, the larger the commission. Commissions can be as high as 63% of the purchase price.

How Do I Get Started?

To begin with, take stock of the photos you already have in your collection. Separate the highest quality photos, and put them into a folder. Then review these photos and pick the best ones from this collection.

Sign up with a few of the micro stock sites mentioned above. It's free. Apply to be a contributor. Each site has different requirements. Some will require you to answer a few questions and upload some sample photos. This is why it is important to upload only high quality photos.
So, sit back. Wait for your approval. Start making money.

Gary Denali is an amateur photographer who uses his Canon digital camera to make money online. Want to learn more about how you can earn cash with your digital camera? Click here: http://stockphotoprofits.com

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?How-To-Earn-Cash-With-Stock-Photographs&id=5401918] How To Earn Cash With Stock Photographs

Do Your Private Investigations On Internet With A People Search

You can see if a person has any criminal background. You can find birth, death, marriage, divorce. You can search the most popular networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, Friendster and more with one click and get for example their social network profile links. You can actually get the data from thousands of sources, public and private, quickly and conveniently right to your screen. Home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, carriers, business and more.

People who contact private detective or a companies often need discretion. And if you use a people search and use their premium services online they will only ask for the required information and the method of payment. After payment you will have the information right on your screen.

Of course there is a problem if you want to solve a case like a cheating husband. For that you need to pay a private investigation agency. But if you want to find out about a persons criminal records, a business, a persons property records, mortgage records, court records, someones email, home address, phone number, cell phone number, SSN records, a list of relatives, address and phone number history and more, you can use a good people search and accomplish that all by yourself.

The idea behind a private investigation is to come out successful. In order to achieve success, you need all the resources you can get. And today you can almost find all the resources you need online, depending on what kind of investigation you want to do.

Some people think that to do an investigation is a waste of time. But lets say some of are you planning to hire a new nanny or babysitter. Many of you want to make sure you know who is taking care of your child. And with one click you can see a persons, criminal records, arrests, warrants and convictions.

Online private investigation shows how much technology has changed our lives. Private investigation is a business. But instead of hiring some private investigation company and pay $1000's of dollars for their services. Do the investigation yourself for about $10-$30 / year. Why are internet private investigation services important now? It is because more and more people are putting all their information on the Internet.

Do your private investigation yourself. See how you can [http://www.people-search-find-usa.com]find people by using a [http://www.people-search-find-usa.com]people search. Head online and investigate today.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Do-Your-Private-Investigations-On-Internet-With-A-P...] Do Your Private Investigations On Internet With A People Search

10 Tips to Effectively and Proactively Manage Your Online Reputation

But, with the recent "democratization" of communication, linked with the development of the Internet and the emergence of a number of online tools and applications, the way companies and people interact, collaborate, communicate, play, work, share information, buy and sell products or services has changed. And that change is profound.

Nowadays, anyone with internet access and a willingness to be proactive and to put some passion into learning how these tools work is able to gain a voice, add visibility to the outside world and to create, share, distribute and publicize his or her own ideas, preferences, opinions, successes, experiences, and knowledge. At the same time, it became an alternate method for promoting who we are and to "influence" the way we want others to perceive us as individuals and as professionals.

It also facilitated the process of establishing informal relations and dialogues with people who we may or may not know, or who were once inapproachable owing to that fact that they were reserved or perhaps shrouded by influence games and secret contacts.

Because of the ultra-competitive world in which we live today, it became increasingly important for each of us to try to find and use creative ways to create buzz about ourselves, and that can help us to differentiate and stand out from the crowd and the competition while communicating those factors, qualities, characteristics that make us unique and valuable. Obviously, part of the solution lies in effectively managing and monitoring the online reputation for our own personal brand.

Simultaneously, we should also be careful and check whether the information that exists online and what others are saying about us is correct and represents a clear, positive and relevant image of who we really are. Especially when there is a greater likelihood that someone, such former colleagues, recruitment companies, friends, family, ex-boyfriends, teachers, consultants and others, would use Google to try to discover things about us.

Even when it continues to be impossible to fully control what others say about us, we can and should try to at least be better prepared to respond, minimize and possibly prevent the effects and confusion that might follow from misinformation. There is nothing worse than having incorrect, embarrassing or negative information associated with our name, particularly at a time when reputations can be created and destroyed online in less than seconds and at the speed of 140 characters.

For all this, I would like to ask you if you ever Googled your name between quotes on Google.com? If yes, did you like what you found? If you haven't done this yet, what are you waiting for?

Make sure you do it and then read the 10 practical tips below on how to better manage your online reputation.

Contrary to what many people think, it's no longer enough to simply create profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. You have to go a little further and complement this with other types of proactive and well structured tactics

1. Register your name: For less than $10 a year, it's possible to reserve and register your name as an online domain through services such as GoDaddy.com; DomainsInSeconds.com; Joker.com; Registera.com; IWantMyName.com; Register.com; etc. Preferably select one that ends with.com or. net (or. co,. tv) since they are the ones that search engines respect most. If your name is quite common and is no longer available consider using your middle initial or a shorter version of your name or even an invented word that can be easily associated with your own brand. Thing about also buying a "hosting" service that lets you build a website where you can put up your credentials. Then make sure that you list your website or blog on relevant websites, search engines and directories such as technorati, blogcatalog and mybloglog

2. Build your own "window:" create a website or a blog that connects your online domain with your name using WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, BuddyPress, LiveJournal, Tumblr, etc. This will allow you to have a online location where you can not only write and share your ideas, stories, experiences, wisdom and knowledge on a particular subject, but also increase your credibility, reputation and authority with search engines, especially if your articles and comments start being shared by others in other social networks and thereby obtain "back links" (links that point and connect directly to your website). Be sure to include your name in the description and title of your blog, as well as relevant tags in the titles of your articles and remember that "ideas are worth nothing until other people know about them" - Bo Fishback

3. Become a member: create, claim and secure your brand name on several social networks that are highly indexed in Google. Make sure that you fill out your profile form completely to increase your visibility, even if you don't become a very active member.

Start by examining "List_of_social_networking_websites" on Wikipedia to familiarize yourself with the many tools and social networks that are available. It's essential that you devote time investigating how to highlight your brand. For example, the most important ones in Brazil are Orkut and Orca but in the United States the top are Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, and Portugal is the Hi5.

Then go to KnowEm.com or checkusernames.com - to learn in which popular social networks (there are currently over 400) your name is still available and to claim, reserve and protect it.

Facebook Username and fanpage - a social network that already has more than 50 million members worldwide and where it's possible to use a multitude of applications associated with your personal profile. It also allows you to start creating our own and your preferences.

Twitter - a social network that offers a micro-blogging service where users are allowed to send, share and read messages known as "tweets" with a maximum of 140 characters. Users are also able to ask and answer questions and reply to comments.

LinkedIn - a business-oriented social network that's mostly used for establishing contacts and for networking on a professional level.

Flickr - allows the integration and sharing of personal photos and videos that can be embedded in blogs or other social networks.

Google Profiles - a free service that makes personal profiles available on Google's search engines and facilitates the control of some type of information that can appear associated with your name.

Digg - a social news website where users can discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and at the same time, it offers the ability to vote and comment on those.

Hi5 - a social network where users can find, interact and stay in touch with friends while having fun with them.

MySpace - a social network that became quite popular in the United States in June 2006 and where users can meet friends/colleagues/new people, listen and create music playlists for free, share photos, watch videos, etc.

Naymz - a professional social networking platform that allows its users to relate with other professionals that belong to specific networks.

StumbleUpon - an online community that allows its members to discover, classify and recommend personalized Web pages, photos and video.

Friendfeed - a real time feeds aggregator that consolidates news, social networks, blogs & micro-blogging updates, and RSS feeds.

Ping.fm - a simple and free micro-blogging service that allows members to update content from/to their various social networks in the blink of an eye.

Tube Mongul - a free service that provides a single place to upload video to any of the major video sharing websites.

YouTube - a free service that lets you store, view, comment and share online video. Alternatively there are others like rel=nofollow http://www.vimeo.com and Ustream.tv - rel=nofollow http://www.Ustream.tv - a network of diverse channels providing a platform for video and online events.

Skype - a software that allows users to make voice calls, including video conferencing, over the Internet. Calls to other users inside the service are free, but, for example, calls to landlines can be made after paying a user fee.

eBay - a shopping website where people and businesses buy and sell a wide variety of products and services worldwide through an auction system.

Friendster - a social networking service that allows users to get in touch with other members while maintaining contacts and sharing content, including videos, photos, messages and comments.

Friendfeed - allows you to create a source of personalized content (articles, photos, etc.) that can be shared with friends.

Ning - an online platform that allows people to create their own social networks. The service can be tried for free during 30 days, but after that, a small monthly fee applies.

Include a short biographies about yourself on websites, such as Wikipedia.org; knol.Google.com/ke and Squidoo.com.

And since the first impression is always the one that everyone will have of you, make sure to:
- Fill out your profile completely and carefully on each social network
- Use a photograph that shows you in a professional and consistent way across all the social networks... don't forget that "a picture still is worth a thousand words".
- Include links and addresses from the major social networks in all contacts that you make, including on your email signature.

4. Get involved: Do not be online by just creating a simple online profile. It's necessary to be involved and to participate in discussions in groups, fan pages, and forums that are related to your topics and interests by posting comments, answering questions, disseminating and sharing interesting content, establishing relationships, and interacting with others.

All of these activities are necessary and can help us get the attention of our target audience and make them interested in getting connected and interacting with us. If this happens, the likelihood of being followed and the probability of seeing our views and messages being broadcasted beyond our own network of contacts (networking) will gradually increase.

The secret also involves being excellent storytellers - someone who is interesting and is able to inspire, motivate and capture the attention, heart, mind and interest of others. We should try to offer something for free that can bring added value. Use titles or subjects in our own blogs or from other websites for reference that are relevant, innovative, and controversial.

Consider writing books and opinion articles for magazines, blogs, newsletters or influential websites on current or relevant topics for your target audience. And then, spread those via links to your own website or blog.
Also, try to be quoted in specialty articles and consider providing consultancy services.

Prepare a PowerPoint presentation on a specific topic and try to book yourself into seminars, conferences, television programs and other events where you can be a guest speaker. Make yourself available to answer questions and talk about your own views and experiences. Equate to make that same presentation available on websites like slideshare.com since, according to Gary Vaynerchuck, every conversation that you start is another opportunity to talk about your passions.

5. Monitor: Learn to read (between the lines), listen, and observe what others are saying about you, your personal brand, and the issues that are relevant to you. Try to identify which blogs, forums and personalities are the most important in a particular field and/or deserve to be followed. This type of monitoring allows us to become better informed about new trends, potential threats and better prepared to respond, innovate, adjust, change and adapt to new realities and situations if necessary. Here are some tools that can help:

- Google alerts - allows the creation of email alerts for your choice of query or topic and based on the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.). It is advisable to create alerts for your own name, your website/blog, your "competitors" and the topics that are relevant to you.

- Google reader - is a service that lets you add and access content from your favorite websites in one place.

- Search.twitter.com - allows you to see what is happening or being said in real time on the topic that you want search about - consider using it for your own name/brand.

- Backtype.com - is a social analysis platform that helps companies better understand their social impact, and provides warnings when a specific name is mentioned on blogs' comments.

- Socialmention.com - is a real time search engine for all social networks user-generated content: blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, etc.

- Boardtracker.com - provides notifications when a specific name or topic appears mentioned in discussions, in forums and IMs alerts. Cost: 39 USD per month but the first 30 days are free.

- Blogsearch.google.com - is a technology that helps the user search and explore the blogging universe more effectively in order to discover what is being said about any subject of interest.

- Tweetbackup - is a tool that allows to free up our twitter account. They recently started offering a monthly premium subscription for $1/month.

- Collecta.com - is a real time search engine time that includes results from blogs, micro blogs, news feeds and photo sharing services on a particular topic, name or website.

And if you ever need to provide or analyze statistical data on your website or audiences from other sites, use compete.com; alexa.com; pagerank.net; quantcast.com and googlerankings.com

6. Be real: behave online just as you do every day. Act with good manners, respect, professionalism, honesty, friendliness, consistency, dedication, adaptability, reciprocity, etc. Be a leader by being authentic and by showing that you care, respect, and are interested in learning more about the opinions, ideas, values, dreams, vision of others. That way you will be able to capture their interest and their willingness to interact with your own brand.

7. Be careful: do not put anything online that you would not want your mother to see about you or your brand. Remember that Google never forgets and it's virtually impossible to remove content from it. Therefore, think and be careful with the words and the comments you post online. One day, you might regret having done it. Also, be cautious with those you meet and talk to online. Try to disassociate yourself from any person that may have a negative impact on your image. Clean up your profile from spammers and questionable websites - and don't take sides in heated discussions, unless you are prepared to defend your position today or even tomorrow. Finally, review the privacy settings of each of the social networks you use so that you can stay in control of the public information that appears with your online profile. Example: use the application PrivacyDefender for a graphic image of the type of information to share online.

8. Take action - follow the maxim of not leaving for tomorrow what you can and should be doing today. Don't forget that the way we act in relation to situations makes a big difference, especially if it is a less desirable situation. For example, when one makes a comment that is misinterpreted, the best thing to do is to act immediately and clarify the situation. Don't forget what happened recently with BP CEO's comments that created a mini-crisis for that company that has been considered by many a study case in PR.

If there is less worthy content, try to use the "rule of thumb" to remove those. An alternative is to directly contact the author of the blog or website and ask to have the information corrected (example: Correction: we got confirmation that xx was not fired but fired up to take on new roles as the zz at company zz).

9. Plan - Establish, in your daily life, a time to read, participate, comment that can help others remember you and your name/brand. Make time for your desired objectives and list ways to achieve them. Invest in consistent messaging and relevant content that is updated regularly. Never stop trying to evolve and improve what you do and know (even when you succeed). Don't let success blind you, and be willing to continue to strive to improve and to try new things.

10. Do not give up - Be patient and persistent because these steps require commitment, dedication, and it takes time to get the desired results. Be prepared to repeat all these tips over and over again and as often as needed.

But sooner or latter, you will see that your effort will be rewarded. All you need to do is to simply live up to your passion and do what you believe in. Start managing your reputation today, dare to risk, and be prepared because you might be contacted by someone out of the blue. It happened to me already and it will happen to you. (Just let me know when.)

Copyright (c) 2010 Miguel Carvalho

Miguel Carvalho holds a Masters in Business Administration from Universidade Catolica Portuguesa and a MS in Organizational Leadership from Mercy College. Having more than 14 years experience in marketing, he's works as a Public Relations Manager in New York for the past six years. His interests include marketing, social networking, branding, organizational leadership, public relations and strategic communications. More detailed information is available at his personal website http://miguelcarvalho.co

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?10-Tips-to-Effectively-and-Proactively-Manage-Your-...] 10 Tips to Effectively and Proactively Manage Your Online Reputation

Creative Commons Explained

Creative Commons, founded in 2001, is a non-profit organization located in San Francisco striving to make it easier for people to share and promote their own work and the work of others. They have developed a set of free copyright licenses to show how a work can be altered or distributed, if at all.

There are four licenses offered by Creative Commons -

Attribution: which allows others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and any derivative works, but only if properly attributed,

Non-Commercial: which allows others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and any derivative works, but only for non-commercial purposes,

No Derivative Works: which allows others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the original work, but not any works derived from it,

and Share Alike: which allows others distribute derivative works as long as the licenses associated with the original work stay intact.

While these four licenses technically provide 16 different potential combinations, only six combinations are used with any regularity -

Attribution: which allows people to share and make money off your work as long as you are properly attributed,

Attribution Share Alike: which adds to Attribution that all new works must keep the original licenses,

Attribution No Derivates: which adds to Attribution that the work must remain unchanged,

Attribution Non-Commercial: which allows people to share - but not make money off of - your work as long as you are properly attributed,

Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike: which adds to Attribution Non-Commercial that all new works will keep the original licenses,

and Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives: which adds to Attribution Non-Commercial that the work must remain unchanged.

There are various applications for this in music, software, art, and more. A creator just needs to decide if they want credit, if they want people to be able to make money off their original work, if they want people to be able to change the work, and if someone does change it, whether or not that person can change the licensing.

Anyone interested in apply for a free license can search online to apply and find out more about the organization.

Scott Spjut is a writer and editor who has been featured in various magazines, newspapers and websites, including Newsweek, the Washington Post, CBS News and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. With a B.A. in Communications, he continues to write on a wealth of topics - politics, health and fitness, business, marketing and more. Scott currently works with [http://pmicoachingblog.com/blog]Professional Marketing International helping people change their lives.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Creative-Commons-Explained&id=4886993] Creative Commons Explained