This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of LeapFish Inc. All opinions are 100% mine.

When the internet first started making its rounds, websites were horrible things. Bright colors, bad lo-res images and static content made up the bulk of what we could view online. I’m a guilty as the next guy as some of my first websites were terrible.

As is the natural progression of technology though, things changed. Sites became more fluid. Database driven. Code progressed to the point where a website will tell you the weather in your location with out you having to do anything other then open the web page. News is streamed from media sites and iReporters like you and I every second of every minute. Often times, thanks to facebook and twitter, news of a tragedy (or a triumph) hits the web and is widely known before traditional media can get it out there.

The net has gone from being a static, immovable object to a fluid work of art (some times a train wreck) that we’re constantly plugged in to. Search engines like google and leapfish have a harder and harder time coming up with ways to track and catalog twitter updates, facebook streams, youtube videos. Things that are constantly changing and in a lot of ways the challenges of the new web presented in the video are harder to over come as the web becomes more real time and less, this is what was.

How are you going to adapt? How are you going to become realtime?

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It intrigues me that when I check my stats for the site, the post I did on the coolest trophy ever when I talked about the trophy I won when my little silver piece of wood took first at the District Pinewood Derby. There wasn’t much to it, and we never were able to repeat the magic we had with that car. Maybe it was because it was our first attempt at a pinewood derby car, or maybe the countless hours spent shining the finishing nails used as axles.

When it came to building the car, we chose a shape that we thought would work well. Kind of a wedge shape with a concave back end to it. The bottom was flat, working its way up. I can remember spending hours (ok, maybe not hours, but to this seven year old it seemed like forever) sanding the wood, drilling holes for the fishing weights, painting and sanding again until the car was smooth. Almost magic like.

We added the wheels with their polished nail axles and added graphite to them so they’d spin even faster. One of my favorite things to do was put the nail in the drill with the wheel on and hold the wheel as we spun the nail adding graphite to help it run fast and smooth.

The finished product wasn’t like the car the boy makes in the Subaru commercial which is rather box like, but like something out of speed racer. I placed second in the Pack, which was good enough to go to the District race where I finished first. It was fun and I still have that trophy, the car is somewhere too, though its missing the wheels.

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I talked about earning with Sponsored Tweets back in November and I’ve been using their site for a while. Through it I’ve made about $35 just by tweeting, something I do anyways every day. I can’t tell you how nice it is to make money doing something I was going to do anyways and I still want to urge you to SIGN UP WITH SPONSORED TWEETS. Its a good way to generate revenue (or if you’re an advertiser to reach a new market) online and its easy.

Today, I wanted to let you know about some of the new “enhancements” that have been made to the sponsored tweets site. Most are for advertisers like the use of ClickForensics to make sure that the click thru’s you’re seeing are legit or the new ability to “Bench” a certain member if you don’t like the results (or if they’ve tweeted too much for you lately). Also added for the Advertisers are some new reports. Advertisers now get a great high level overview of their clicks. This will detail when the clicks happened, how many were considered invalid and more. Invalid clicks won’t show up on the graph, and won’t count towards the total clicks for this opportunity. Advertisers can even drill down and see the referrer for clicks on their offers.

Don’t fret though, Tweeters are also going to see some of the benefits such as a change to the user dashboard that now shows you revenue generated, missed and from referrals right above available posts. They’ve also made a ton of improvements behind the scenes that iron out a ton of bugs and other creepy crawly’s that were bogging the system down.

If you haven’t had the chance yet, stop by SPONSORED TWEETS and sign up today, it costs you nothing as a tweeter and you have everything to gain. If you’re already using Sponsored Tweets, let me know how you’re doing with the program and what you like about it (or hate about it) and we’ll see if we can’t get some more improvements made!

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I realize I’m about a week behind the curve with this post about buzz, but I wanted a little time to get to know the newest of the big G’s “enhancements” before I wrote about it. Google Buzz (not to be confused with BuzzD) aims to be a sort of Facebook/Picasa/Flickr/Twitter/Gmail mashup in one (what google thinks is) tidy package. Unfortunately, it falls short of the mark.

Currently, you can link Youtube, Twitter, flickr, picasa, google reader, google talk status, a web site and what appears to be buzz itself to your buzz account (which is really just a tab in your gmail in box). This is ok, but it doesn’t allow me to add facebook or myspace or any of the other social networking sites I can access through Tweetdeck or socialscope or any number of other apps. Plus, you HAVE to have a gmail account in order to use buzz. So if you’re tied you your ISP’s email, or your ancient hotmail/yahoo email address, unless you sign up for gmail you won’t be buzzing.

One of the other aspects that truly annoys me about buzz is the fact that I get an email for EVERY BUZZ. This is ok, except that it sends me emails about my own buzz’s as well as those I follow. If buzz catches on, I’ll soon be receiving more email from buzz then from anyone else on my contact list. I haven’t found a way to stop this yet, though it seems my mail program is filtering most of the buzz emails out as spam any how.

Unfortunately, I fear Google may have jumped the shark with Buzz like they did with Wave. When wave hit, it was all people could talk about (there were wars over getting invites!) and now, people hardly check their wave inbox at all. Buzz generated a lot of initial interest, until people realized that it was pretty much another service along the same lines of what we already have. True, it does allow for a little quicker response then traditional email, and its a little easier to use then google wave, but is it really needed in this time of twitter, facebook, buzzd and all the others?

If you want to follow me on buzz, check out my Google Profile and let me know what you think about buzz.

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In case you missed it this past weekend, Hawaii was THE ONLY STATE in the US to not have snow in some form. That’s right, we finally got a decent dusting of snow here in Atlanta. The picture is of a bottle of wine I put out on my deck, when I put it out, the snow barely came up to the bottom of the label, by the time the snow stopped, the label was covered.

We ended up having around three inches of the white stuff on the ground by Midnight, not bad for Atlanta, where most of our frozen precip is in the form of ice. The kids were able to make a decent snowman, go sledding on our street and play out in the snow for about half a day before it was almost all gone.

The sad thing is that it was all gone by Sunday evening (though a few spots remain…) and there was little left other then hats and scarves that had once adorned snowmen everywhere. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. There are more photos in the Gallery

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People hate Change. At least if the outrage over Facebook’s layout change this past week is any indication that is. I know for a fact that users generally dislike change when it comes to the user interface they’re used to. Website layout, software, magazines, it doesn’t matter. You get used to looking in one place for a button to access your inbox and now its not there. Its now easier to access your notifications, but its no longer on the bottom of the screen. Browsing images, posts, news, events and more makes more sense with the new layout, but its not the way you were conditioned to clicking, so you complain.

I saw it when I redesigned Linuxtracker last year even though most of the layout stayed the same it was the images that changed. I complained at first when my account was moved to the new Facebook layout. After all, I had heard so much about it on twitter and from my friends on FB that how could I not be offended by the new layout, until I realized that it didn’t suck at all and was in fact much better.

A nice young programmer at Facebook, Jing Chen, actually BLOGGED about it on the facebook blog (did you know they had a blog?) and after reading her post, it all makes sense. Too much sense!

For instance, the last change that brought the News Feed and the Live Feed to your home page was more or less done away with and now there’s one news feed. Yes, it’s still segmented in to two sections, Top News and Most Recent, but its all back under news. Right where it should be.

If you look under your photo, you’ll see the menu for the other sections. Go ahead, click on photos. I dare you. Woah! Look at that! That makes way more sense doesn’t it? The news feed is replaced by photos. Click on events or messages and you get the pages for that. Its much easier to browse now.

Another change for the better is moving the notifications to the top by the Facebook logo. Under the old style, everything was in the bar on the bottom. If you clicked the notifications, it shot to the top of the page (and I was NEVER) able to see all of the notifications unless I managed to click see all before it was gone. Not any more. Its a better layout as it keeps the important stuff above the fold and it doesn’t place a bar at the bottom of the screen. Yes, the chat is still down there, but then thats a good, out of the way place for it. After all, how much content is in the bottom right corner of the page?

The other change that you Farmville fans will love is the easier access to the games and other applications in facebook. Now they function in almost the same manner as the photos and other items at the top. Its all around easier.

For more information on the changes to Facebook, check out the Post on them and let me know what you think (or what you would have done differently.

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So with Valentines day right around the corner (as in SUNDAY) the geek in all of us is busy trying to find something other then the usual Flowers or chocolates to give our love. Well, thankfully ThinkGeekhas us covered. With things like their Cthulhu In Love Perfume (an amorphous mix of oppressive, piceous ritual incense, macerated kelp, sea salt, sticky dark ocean plants, and . . . mixed chocolates) to the DIY – I LOVE YOU BEAN (after all, why give flowers when you can give a whole plant) you can find the perfect gift for the geek in your life. Heck, you could even pick them up a Tauntaun Sleeping Bag if you really wanted to show them how much you care.

The cool thing? Timmy the monkey wants to help you save! If you use code XOXOTIMMY thru 2/11 11:59pm EST you get $5 off orders of $25 or more and $10 off orders of $40 or more. So what are you waiting for? Show your love you care by giving the scent of the Cthulhu today and pick up something nice for yourself while you’re at it.

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Ok, so this is an amazing deal I have available to the 5 of you who visit the site regularly. For a limited time (I don’t know how long, so really, don’t ask) EContent Magazine is available FOR FREE!! That’s a savings of over $100 on this magazine!

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Each issue of EContent provides:

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EContent is a trusted resource for businesses that buy, sell, manage, and deploy content. Its editorial focus is uniquely confined to the digital content industry. EContent reports on electronic content, the content industry infrastructure, and the business of digital content.

And right now you can get a FREE 12 Month Subscription! All you have to do is check out The info page and submit your information to find out if you’re eligible to receive THE hottest Digital content magazine in the biz. So what are you waiting for? Also, check out Linuxtracker’s TradePub Site for other valuable Trade Magazines and whitepapers.

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Ok, so I haven’t written about politics in a while (have I?) as the current state of everything seems to be speaking volumes for itself. However, several (ok a lot) of the people I follow on twitter were going on and on and on last night and even this morning about Demon Sheep. I had to find out what was up, so I googled it this morning.

Imagine my surprise when I came across a youtube video (you can see it below) of some sheep, and a guy name Tom Campbell from California. The ad itself was apparently put out by the Carly Fiorina campaign in an effort to offend sheep. Why else would the sheep who rose on the pedistial fall so far amidst the storm? Also, whats with the creepy guy dressed like a sheep? Did california loosen their laws regarding animal love?

Its hard to imagine that those responsible on the campaign sat around a table and came up with this ad and NO ONE had the guts to say “hey, this ad sucks” or even, “maybe we want to rethink this ad”. It certainly isn’t the kind of ad I would want my candidate to run, nor would I support anyone who ran this ad. Unfortunately, the press Fiorina has received from the Demon Sheep has been nothing but bad for her so far as even hard core conservatives are mocking the Demon Sheep…

Check the ad out and let me know what you think….

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Anyone who has seen my desk, my office, my tool box, car (need I go on?) could tell you that I am opposed to order. When things are too neatly arranged, it bothers me. However, when I came across Mark Foo, author of The 77 Traits of Highly Successful People and his post over at Litemind today I was intrigued. It doesn’t hurt every once in a while to have some order and most (if not all) of the things on this list of 50 will actually help out in the long run. Such as number 1. Recycling Old Papers that are cluttering your house.

We’re bad about saving things like that. School work of the girls that doesn’t really matter (we must have at least a zillion different version of Emma’s same scribble), mail we don’t need, instructions for devices that have long been broken and forgotten. Why not recycle them? We don’t need them and the paper can be reused saving trees. Right?

Then there’s number 13. Go through cabinets and throw out expired medications or food items. I have to do this weekly with the fridge or I don’t have any room to put leftovers, but I bet if I went through the pantry or under my bathroom counter, I’d find things that are long past the expiration date.

If you’re like me though, number 21 is hard to do. Spend time with yourself each day. I can understand why and how this would help, but being the father of three little girls and having to take care of them, plus the duties I have at work (and outside activities) my down time comes mostly as I’m hitting the pillow at night. Of course, thats where number 31. Take more naps comes in to play. If I can find a way to take more naps, I bet I would be a happier person.

Take a look at all of the 50 ways to get your life in order and see what ones you’re already doing and what ones would help make you a happier, if not more orderly, person.

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