The Web Surfer’s Guide to the Free Internet

Here be the first edition of the Web Surfer’s Guide.

Before the free parade, please read the following pointers about downloading free stuff online:

1. Be careful what you get. Most free stuff comes with a risk. This may mean its bad stuff (as in bad free music or movies) or that the product is not final (as in alpha and beta software releases full of bugs).

2. Stay as far as you can from Warez and Piracy sites. Even though you may be attracted to the lure of free (illegal) stuff, the risks are extremely high if you don’t know what you are doing.

3. If so inclined, donate, comment, provide feedback, report bugs, help with code, give ideas, promote the product. This will help those who give you for free and will give people a reason to keep supplying free stuff.

Now the good stuff. The free sources links (some here for now, more coming in future revisions of the guide):

Here be “Freeness”

www.frostclick.com/ – Free Music, free movies, free software… free all and very, very legal. How cool is that?

www.frostwire.com/- Free download software – Torrents and Peer to peer (like Limewire)

www.ubuntu.com – Free OS with a huge fanbase and support forum. Almost all issues can be solved there or you can post yours and get help. Try it with the software below.

www.virtualbox.org/ – This is like a computer within your computer. Allows you to safely test other OS without having to do a full hard disk install.

www.drupal.org/ – To build websites you can use this free content management system (CMS). Its all the rage with programmers. Not so user friendly though.

www.joomla.org/ – Same as Drupal, but easier for less skilled programmers. Excellent system for regular users without much programming skills (even without programming skills at all)

www.wordpress.org – A highly popular CMS for blogs. Use it in their site (www.wordpress.com) or install it in your server for more options, scalability and benefits for your site.

www.sourceforge.net/ – Open Source home. Programmers and developers post their newest work here and let you download it free. Search for a tool you’ve dreamed of, chances are, you may find it there.

www.iconpot.com/ – Free Icons for personal, commercial use without having to provide credit everywhere.

www.1001freefonts.com/ – Most of these fonts you can download and use in personal projects, some require permission or to be purchased for online use.

www.net-matrix.com/ – More free software. A huge collection of free software.

www.hulu.com – Free TV shows and some movies. Only available in the US.

www.archive.org – A very interesting initiative to create an archive of all human. There are free movies, cartoons, antique acetate records (music), home videos (yes, home videos). Want to see how a website started? You will find all its changes here too.

www.legaltorrents.com/ – Free legal torrents. Movies, music, animations, images, etc.

www.wikipedia.org – The world’s largest free encyclopedia. Ok, everybody knows it, I just felt I had to mention it.

www.translate.google.com/ – Free Google translator for almos any language. Very good, not as a real translator, but does the job for non important things.

http://code.google.com/p/live-android/downloads/list – Coming soon to a smartphone near you. Android is ready to take on the market if you have some basic skills in programming, this is an interesting way of testing sites in Android without having to get your own smartphone with ‘Droid.

This is a very, very short list of the wonders hidden on the web. I have a much larger collection of free legal stuff sites, but for the time being, this is the first edition… I will come back and work on this guide some more. If you ask for a source of free stuff for a particular subject, chances are, I’ve got it. Post in the comments what you would like to find out and I will add it to the guide on the next revision.

Ma Cualli Ohtli!

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

They say that the measure of your importance is in how many people copy you. Online, this may or may not be true.

I woke up this morning to find that I had a pingback to this blog. I thought, “Yey! I’m becoming someone as I get quoted”, but it turned out to be just a witless blogger who had copied a post I did in Article Base (see it here, note the date of Sept. 15) and had not bothered to remove any of the links I had in that article (this is fortunate as otherwise it might have taken some time before I found out). This person copied my article word by word in its entirety, which is part of the Article Base attributes, but he/she didn’t even gave credit (which is a requirement from Article Base).

I’m at a crossroad here. I feel annoyed because this person didn’t give credit to the article’s rightful author (me), worse still, the post has some links to my blog and site and all have a “nofollow” attribute (meaning they don’t count for Search Engine Optimization either).

The worst is I think this person has been stealing posts all over the place, most of his posts have duplicates or rather, are duplicates from other websites with absolutely no credit to its rightful owners. It is sad to see a such a cheap blogger.

I have asked this person to remove the post or give due credit and links. Doubt this will be the end of it though…

Will let you (my 3 or 4 readers) know more as news develop.

Ma Cualli Ohtli!

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

The Federal Trade Commission in the US has recently released new guidelines for endorsements. That usually makes no ping online, but as it is, the FTC has added that bloggers are also to be regulated and have now a duty to disclose any “material” connections with the products they recommend. They now consider blogger’s opinions that recommend a product an endorsement and when the blogger has received a gift or payment in cash for the endorsement, he/she is obliged to disclose this fact.

I don’t personally think this is bad, as transparency helps build confidence and trust. Many bloggers are concerned that the FTC will commence regulating online endorsements much more seriously, but as Michele Cuthbert questions in her baker creative blog, “how much does the government have a right to regulate and how [far] should this go?”

The FTC is watching!

My two cents, its good that the government steps in and begins regulating before things go out of proportion. My question here would be:

Who has the time and resources to be  reviewing so many blogs?

Many bloggers already disclose that they are paid to endorse but remain honest and only endorse products they believe in. This new regulation really doesn’t affect much.

Here’s the FTC news release.

Ma Cualli Ohtli!

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

Marketing is about exposure and being in the client’s mind when the need arises. That is why marketing gurus talk about “Brand Awareness” which is the knowledge a consumer/prospect/client has of a brand’s existence. This is specially important for products or services that have a high cost and require a long sales process. Examples of these are Real Estate, Cars, Mortgage Brokers. This also helps with services or products that are not a regular need, that are only needed in particular situations. Examples of these are some Translation Services, Lawyers and other situational services.

What’s this got to do with Search Engines and on top?

I was talking with a potential client about internet marketing services for his company. His company provides one of the services mentioned above and definitively can benefit from “brand awareness”. He wanted to know how being online and having internet marketing get him clients. My explanation is simple:

By creating Brand Awareness and having a permanent presence where most consumers are spending their spare time, can definitively help bring those clients when the need for his services arise. Lawyers in particular know this. That is why they invest in newspapers, radio ads, television ads, charities, having their firm’s name on the building their offices are located in and yes, a presence online. Specially now, being available online creates brand awareness. People who don’t necessarily need you now, can come in contact with your brand and when they need you, if your branding is good, they will remember your brand and call.

The question is, can I be on top and would it benefit me? Yes.

To be on top of search engines, there’s a couple of basic principles. When SEOs (Search Engine Optimization Experts) look at a website, this is what we do:

• Review of your site content or structure
  • Verify the code and the actual text
• Technical aspects of website development. For example:
  • Hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript, Flash animations, etc.
• Content development (content is king)
• Management of online business development campaigns
• Keyword research
• Quality of Incoming or inbound links

Additional to all those factors, it is even better if your SEO company is also an internet marketing agency that understands customer demographics and psychographics and focus on conversion (getting a visitor to take an action on your site).

Send me your questions below and I will answer directly or with a new post.

Ma Cualli Ohtli!

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.