Boomer eZine

The Blog for Boomer Online Entrepreneurs

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Volume 1 Issue 38 12-29-06

For those who would like to read this in HTML format, this issue of Boomer eZine is posted on the Boomer eZine website at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I38_122906.htm and on the Boomer eZine Blog at http://boomer-ezine.blogspot.com/.

Please pass Boomer eZine on to a friend. They will thank you for it.
Table of Contents for this issue.....

  1. Authors Comments

  2. Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

  3. Social Bookmarking Sites

  4. LAMP - What is it?
Author's Comments

Well, Christmas has come and gone. I am taking vacation most of this week. I go by the office for a few minutes each day to check on things, but for the most part I am a man of leisure.

On Tuesday, I went on my first quail hunt of the season with my friend Conley and my daughter Susanna. It was the usual “shake down hunt” where we discovered what equipment was not on the hunting car, what needed repair since last year, etc. Out of that first hunt, Conley and I spent Wednesday evening repairing the front locking hubs of his jeep.

We got in another hunt on Thursday morning and proved our repair had worked well. I have posted pictures of his jeep and our hunt on my
http://www.quail-hunter.com/ site.

Linda and I join to wish you a Happy New Year. May it be a great year for online entrepreneurs.

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

My thanks to Ana Young for this item.

“Sorry John, not a suggestion, a question (I was confused about where to post one): I recently heard in a teleseminar that in the end, Google and the other search engines really, really prefer websites built from scratch, because of something like extra coding often included in ready-made templates provided by FrontPage, Dreamweaver, and I guess that would include SBI. I've always thought this was true. Let's face it -- a site using some "form" template provided by someone could have God-knows-what built into it; it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Google had to sift through extra code with those "beginner" sites. Whereas, a site custom-built to an owner's specifications ... well, it's like anything else custom made, right? Like a custom-made suit, it just fits better and is classier. I realize now you're an affiliate of SBI, so I'm probably addressing this in the wrong place. But it's important.”

Reply from John Howe

Yes, Ana, I am an affiliate of SBI, but I will give you the most unbiased answer I can.

I do not know the intent of the teleseminar where you got the information about web page content, but I question it.

I do not use Dreamweaver so I cannot comment on it. However, a significant number of websites are built with it. I can comment on Microsoft Front Page since it is the WYSIWYG HTML editor that I use. The fact that all major web hosts have Front Page extensions as part of their offering indicates that Front Page is a major HTML editor on the Internet. Hence, I feel that Google has the programming to spider web pages built with it very well.

If you look at the code generated by Front Page, the only things that Front Page inserts is the following code (the XML tags are mine to make your browser print the HTML as text rather than execute it):

<XML>

<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">
<meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
<meta name="Microsoft Theme" content="sumipntg 011, default">
<meta name="Microsoft Border" content="tb, default">

</XML>

These tags are in the HEAD section at the top of the webpage and the rest of the page is only what I have created. These tags tell the browser that this is a Front Page developed page and how to handle the theme and borders of the page.

Obviously, I cannot speak for Google, but with so many Front Page sites out there, I expect that Google has the programming to handle them with no problems.

Your comments about a custom built site have merit when you consider the appearance of the site to the human viewer, but you must remember that the Google spider cannot not see your pictures or your fancy design. It studies your keyword content and page content structure. The fancy design with all the bells and whistles will please your human viewer, but the viewer will never see that beautiful website that you envision unless your site appears high on the first page of the search engine results. This is not done with fancy design and bells and whistles, but with basic, well written content pages that are search engine friendly.

On the subject of how Google handles SBI sites. I can only cite the success stories of SBI sites on the Net.

This data comes from an independent study that SBI commissioned. 35% of SBI sites are in the top one percent of Alexa rated sites, 53% are in the top two percent on Alexa, and 62% are in the top three percent on the Alexa site rating. You can see this information at
http://compare.sitesell.com/boomer.html.

If you want to study additional successful SBI sites, go to
http://results.sitesell.com/boomer.html.

Google may not like the construction of the SBI web pages as well as non-SBI sites. However, the fact that SBI sites consistently rank high on Alexa indicates that Google and the other search engines are ranking them high on search engine results pages since most of the traffic to the sites comes from the search engines.

In summary, my vote is to use SBI for your web hosting and site building assistance. (From my research and experience, I would make the same recommendation if I were not an SBI affiliate) To back up my vote, I am just starting my next SBI site which will be an affiliate site to sell a specific product.

The results that I have achieved with
http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com/ have convinced me that SBI delivers. You know that I have been an entrepreneur for 37 years. I would not embark on what will involve many hours of my work on this new site without being convinced that it will pay me an acceptable return for my efforts.

I feel that perhaps you are too deeply involved in the technical research of web hosting and site building. Your ultimate goal is to make money. The amount of solid, qualified traffic to your site will determine your success or failure. I suggest that you concentrate your research on which web site host will help you generate traffic more than the nuts and bolts of how to build web pages.

Ana, thanks again for your question. As usual, your questions are thoughtful, and I appreciate your participation.

If you have anything for this section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article, please go to
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm and give us your input. With your input, we can improve the Boomer Video eZine.

Social Bookmarking Sites

How many of you have an account on
http://del.icio.us?

What! You say to yourself, that is a crazy name and it does not even look like a valid name for a website. Well, it is a real site with an Alexa rank of 123 which is in the stratosphere for web site rankings.

Let’s use old, dependable Wikipedia for a definition of del.icio.us:

“The website del.icio.us (pronounced as "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site came online in late 2003 and was founded by Joshua Schachter, co-maintainer of Memepool. It is now part of Yahoo!”

A social bookmarking site is one where you can establish an account and store your favorites. You can make these bookmarks private for your own use, or make them available to anyone on the Web.

You have your favorites listed in folders on your browser, but that information is available only to you on your home computer. If you open a bookmark site (and there are many others in addition to del.icio.us), you can share these bookmarks with any reader on the Web.

Why do this? One reason is that you can access your bookmarks from any computer with an Internet connection so you can get to your bookmarks when you are traveling.

However, the major reason is to help build traffic to your websites. Use of bookmarking sites is a way to create links back to your websites and help generate traffic. There are numerous bookmark sites and you can set up bookmark files on as many as you want, all of which create the links back to your websites.

We will discuss social bookmarking more in our next issue. We will introduce “tagging” and talk about page rank (PR). In the meantime, I recommend that you go to
http://del.icio.us/about to learn about the site. Open an account so you can start playing with social bookmarking. You definitely need to know about it and how to use it to your advantage.

Here are a few sites to read about the subject:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_bookmarking_faceoff.php

http://www.consultantcommons.org/node/239

LAMP – What is it?

I do not know if you have run into the term “LAMP” on the Internet, but it stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP.

Let’s look at the Wikipedia definition:

“The acronym LAMP (or L.A.M.P.) refers to a set of free software programs commonly used together to run dynamic Web sites or servers:

Linux, (more precisely GNU/Linux) the operating system

Apache, the Web server

MySQL, the database management system (or database server)

PHP (Sometimes Perl or Python), the programming language.

The combination of these technologies is used primarily to define a web server infrastructure, define a programming paradigm of developing software, and establish a software distribution package.

Though the originators of these open source programs did not design them all to work specifically with each other, the combination has become popular because of its low acquisition cost and because of the ubiquity of its components (which come bundled with most current Linux distributions particularly as deployed by ISPs). When used in combination they represent a solution stack of technologies that support application servers. Other such stacks include unified application development environments such as Apple Computer's WebObjects, Java/Java EE, Grails, and Microsoft's .NET architecture.”

End of definition.

This is for your information so you will understand what is offered when you see that a web host offers LAMP hosting.

That wraps up our issue for this week. Until next week, stay tuned.

John and Linda Howe
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/
http://www.boomer-guru.com/
http://www.boomer-entrepreneur.com/
http://www.boomer-marketplace.com/
eBay Boomer Retirement Store
(http:/stores.ebay.com/BOOMER-RETIREMENT-STORE)
Boomer’s Amazon Store
(http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Amazon_Page.htm)


Administrative Details …………….

If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to:
boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want to remain in contact with you!

It is OK to go ahead and join our subscriber list with more than one email address. You never know when an email will be blocked by those tough SPAM filters. They are getting tighter and tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails.

If a friend sent you this newsletter and you would like to receive your own issue next time, send a blank email to
boomerezine001@aweber.com and we will send you your own copy on the next issue.

Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.

posted by John & Linda Howe at 4:56 AM 0 comments

Friday, December 22, 2006

Volume 1 Issue 37 12-22-06

For those who would like to read this in HTML format, this issue of Boomer eZine is posted on the Boomer eZine website at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I37_122206.htm and on the Boomer eZine Blog at http://boomer-ezine.blogspot.com/.

Please pass Boomer eZine on to a friend. They will thank you for it.
Table of Contents for this issue.....

  1. Authors Comments

  2. Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

  3. Late Christmas Shopping – HELP!

  4. Article Marketing

  5. Informative eBay Related Site
Author's Comments

Linda and I join in wishing you a very Merry Christmas. We are staying home for Christmas. Susanna, our daughter is coming home. Linda’s Mother will fly in to be with us. Our sons and their families will not be here for Christmas. It is hard to not have all the family together, but we understand that they need to start their own family traditions.

I plan to take some vacation and spend time working on my hunting car and doing some quail hunting. A little rest will be welcome after the last couple of weeks.

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

No Questions, Suggestions or Comments for this issue.

If you have anything for this section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article, please go to
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm and give us your input. With your input, we can improve the Boomer Video eZine.

Late Christmas Shopping – HELP!

If you are like I am, you will procrastinate on shopping for Christmas until the last minute. Several of my friends who own stores in Kingsville joke that if I do not show up on Christmas Eve to shop, they will notify the police to come to the house and check to see if I am OK. Since Christmas Eve is on Sunday this year, I am really in trouble!

If you still need help getting out of the shopping bind like I do, my suggestion is to send an Amazon gift certificate. Contrary to popular belief, Amazon sells much more than books. You can buy all kinds of electronics, jewelry. kitchen items, toys, home and garden items, the list goes on and on.

You can send an electronic gift certificate to the recipient via email. It is normally in HTML format, but if the recipient cannot receive HTML, it will be sent it text format. You have the option to send an e-card or e-mail with a personalized message. This will be delivered almost immediately so it will arrive before Christmas.

Just think, you can take care of the problem right now while you are sitting in that chair in front of your computer and not have to go and fight the crowds. Click
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/resources/amazon-gift-certificate.htm and get the weight off your shoulders.

My storekeeper friends may have to send the police to check on me this year since Amazon can solve my annual gift giving problems. And the recipient will get the perfect gift since they can buy exactly what they want.

Stop procrastinating and shop now
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/resources/amazon-gift-certificate.htm.

Article Marketing

Some of you remember from past issues how I stressed writing articles and getting them posted on article sites on the Internet. The last time I wrote about article marketing, I felt that the readers probably had seen enough about this and that my preaching was becoming boring. In my last article in V1 I24, I promised not to write about it for a while. Well, that “a while” is over.

SBI has very strong traffic analysis tools. One page will tell you the site from which each visitor came. When I was studying this information for retirement-jobs-online.com, I saw many entries for one or two referrals and I had never heard of the sites. I used the SBI tools and backtracked to the referring sites. All of these sites were either sites where I had my articles posted or sites that had picked up the article to publish on its site. The only requirement to use my articles is to not change the article or bio information. The bio contains links to retirement-jobs-online.com and to Boomer-eZine.com. These links in the bio are what brought the traffic to our sites.

Here are a few example sites.

http://tools.devshed.com/c/a/Affiliate-Promotion/Affiliate-Programs-How-to-Use-Commission-Junction/

http://www.alojateextra.com/how-pictures-appear-on-a1146.html

http://www.positivearticles.com/Article/A-Great-Retirement-Job---Infopreneur/5213

I am not going to go into all the info on publishing articles on the Internet, but I recommend that you use the search function on the Boomer eZine site and search for “article” or Ezine Articles.com. There articles will give you the necessary information to enable you to become a published author on the Internet. This is a first step in building traffic and building credibility. Publishing on the Net makes you an expert.

Informative eBay Related Site

I always read Jim Cockrum’s “Creative eBay Selling Newsletter”. If you are not a subscriber, you should subscribe now at
http://jvwh1.silentsale.hop.clickbank.net/.

In his last letter, he mentioned
http://www.topsellerlistlive.com/. This is a new site that lists the top sites on eBay. This is great intelligence since you can study the sites and see how the top sellers on eBay create their sites, what they sell, and how they sell. I recommend that you use this site as an eBay resource.

While you are at it, I recommend that you purchase Jim’s all time best selling book on eBay, “The Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay”. You can learn more about it at
http://jvwh1.silentsale.hop.clickbank.net/. While you are there, make certain that you sign up for Jim’s “Creative eBay Selling Newsletter”. It is always full of great information about eBay.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND YOURS!

That wraps up our issue for this week. Until next week, stay tuned.

John and Linda Howe
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/
http://www.boomer-guru.com/
http://www.boomer-entrepreneur.com/
http://www.boomer-marketplace.com/
eBay Boomer Retirement Store
(http:/stores.ebay.com/BOOMER-RETIREMENT-STORE)
Boomer’s Amazon Store
(http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Amazon_Page.htm)

Administrative Details …………….
If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to:
boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want to remain in contact with you!

It is OK to go ahead and join our subscriber list with more than one email address. You never know when an email will be blocked by those tough SPAM filters. They are getting tighter and tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails.

If a friend sent you this newsletter and you would like to receive your own issue next time, send a blank email to
boomerezine001@aweber.com and we will send you your own copy on the next issue.

Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.

posted by John & Linda Howe at 3:53 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

New Technorati Account

I have set up a new account at Technorati. This post is to communicate with Technorati.


Technorati Profile

posted by John & Linda Howe at 8:15 PM 0 comments

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Volume 1 Issue 36 12-15-06

For those who would like to read this in HTML format, this issue of Boomer eZine is posted on the Boomer eZine website at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I36_121506.htm and on the Boomer eZine Blog at http://boomer-ezine.blogspot.com/.

Please pass Boomer eZine on to a friend. They will thank you for it.
Table of Contents for this issue.....

  1. Authors Comments

  2. Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

  3. Site Build It (SBI) Revisited

  4. Remotely Accessing Your Home Computer
Author's Comments

Wow! A killer week. We put our friends on the plane back to England on Monday afternoon in San Antonio and drove back to Kingsville. I was in the office Tuesday till noon trying to do five days of work in four hours (did not get it done). Off to the airport in Corpus Christi and fly to Oakland, California for sales calls.

Drove from Oakland to meeting in the San Luis Obispo area (it was a beautiful drive). On the return drive, was able to tour the Hearst Castle at San Simeon, which was very impressive.

Sales call in Berkley, CA on Thursday. Up at 3:50AM Friday to catch the plane back to Texas. Plane was delayed. Missed my connection in DFW. Arrived home at 7:00PM Friday.

I wrote most of this issue in the DFW airport as I waited for my flight to Corpus Christi, TX. I do not need another one of these trips in my lifetime.

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

We received this email from a reader about being an affiliate.

I think that your ezine is such a great idea. Thank you being willing to help others like you do. My questions concerns affiliate marketing. I have only recently known about it, and although I am about 12 years from retirement, I would love to develop income from my computer now and through those years ahead.

I am wondering:

I have heard that only about 3 percent of people make decent money at it. Is that true?

I feel I would need a mentor who is successful - do you know of someone I can connect with? I see other books and ebooks on line, but I'm never sure if they are outdated or worthwhile.

Have you and John developed income through affiliate marketing? Is the effort worthwhile, or should other avenues be investigated? I do have spare time each week and am not afraid of hard work and a little risk if there is chance for reward down the road.

Again, I think that what you are doing is great, and I thank you for taking the time to correspond.

End of reader’s email...

First, thanks for the kind compliments. They are sincerely appreciated. Sometimes we wonder if we are connecting with our readers and your feedback is sincerely appreciated.

The statistic of 3% of the affiliates making decent income is one that I do not have. I expect that the number is a low percentage, but let’s look at why that may be. It is very easy to become an affiliate. If you go back to the article in Volume 1 Issue 11 06-23-06 about affiliates, you can see how easy it is to become an affiliate. Many people do this, build a website, and sit back and wait for the money to roll in. Guess what, nothing happens.

As I have said before, the Internet is not like the line from the movie “Field of Dreams” which said “build it and they will come”. Most people fail on the Internet because they do fully comprehend the concept that they have to plan ways to build traffic to the website so they can then sell the reader on the affiliate product. No traffic, no sales, failure.

Since so many people are still signed up for the affiliate programs who probably have tried to be affiliates and failed, the 3% number may not be far off. On the other hand, 3% (successful affiliates) of the total number of all affiliates is a very large number. If you do your homework and learn how to conduct business online, there is no reason for you to not be one of that successful number. With 12 years to go, you have the time to develop a plan, to work steadily implementing the plan, and to be successful. Hard work and tenacity will overcome most problems.

I do not think that you need a mentor if you will take the time to browse the Net and learn what you can without buying every ebook out there. A mentor will charge you a handsome consulting fee. Twelve years is plenty of time to learn, experiment, build and be successful. If you will go back and read the information about affiliate marketing in the past issues of this ezine (use the site search function on the home page), you can build a good base from which to start. I can recommend a couple of ebooks that I consider the bibles of affiliate marketing.

We have developed moderate income through affiliate marketing, but as I have said in previous issues, since we are not retired, we are not trying to maximize our affiliate income. We are trying to build our readership. If we were trying to maximize our affiliate income, you would see a lot more ads in this ezine for products that we were pushing. However, we do receive income from commissions on sales of Site Build It, Amazon, eBay, Click Bank, and others. These come from referrals in the ezine or on our websites.

I hope that answers the questions that you posed. If you want more info, please ask for additional clarification.

If you have anything for this section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article, please go to
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm and give us your input. With your input, we can improve the Boomer Video eZine.

Site Build It (SBI) Revisited

The mascot of Site Build It is the tortoise. It signifies “slow but steady progress”. When I first saw the tortoise was the mascot, I realized that the attitude for SBI was one of reality. I have said in a previous article that “Rome was not built in a day and neither is a great website”. Many “cookie cutter” websites are sold as being instant money makers, and that is just not true. The get rich quick mentality of the Internet is not the real world.

Linda and I started building our SBI site
http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com/ May 20, 2005. We followed the advice of the SBI system and built a site with 34 pages (currently). We used the SBI tool “Analyze It” to evaluate each page for its structure and content to make it be what the search engine spiders wanted.

It took a while and a lot of work to generate all the pages and get the final organization and structure established.

In May the site had one visitor and it was probably I when I was testing the site. Each month, I used the traffic analyzer in SBI to monitor the monthly traffic. It grew quickly for the first few months, but it was not listed high in the search engine results pages (SERP) for its Google keywords. The traffic started rising on the SERP on MSN.com, but the traffic growth was slower than we wanted.

This week, when I checked the traffic stats from Oakland, suddenly the visitor count had jumped considerably. I used the SBI traffic tools to see what had happened and when I went to the section, which showed the source of the visitors, Google was the top referrer. This was a radical change from previous months where Google was down the list. I went to Google and searched on the keyword “retirement jobs”. To my delight,
http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com/ was in sixth position on the first page of the SERP. This is the most searched term in the retirement jobs arena.

Time for celebration!

On checking for more keywords, I found that “jobs for retirees” was the tenth on the SERP. Several other keywords were in high positions on Google, MSN, Yahoo, and other search engines.

I have to admit that I was starting to doubt the SBI sales pitch about take your time, follow the system, build a good content site, and traffic will start to build. Ken Evoy, the developer of SBI, says that traffic builds on SBI sites like a slowly developing snowstorm. A few flakes at first. Then a few more, and soon you have a blizzard. I am still waiting for the blizzard, but being on the first page of the SERP for our major keywords is a great start of the snowstorm.

If you want to develop a true content site and then sell the traffic that comes to it, I highly recommend that you use SBI. The SBI process will lead you through the building of the site and help you build a great site that gets traffic to it. If you do not know anything about the Internet, SBI does most of the planning and structure for you. I am not saying that you do not have to put in hard work. You will, but you can work hard and fail with your own site or some “cookie cutter” site that you buy.

Keep in mind that to be successful, you must get traffic to your website. Without it, you are doomed to failure. I encourage you to use SBI for your site to guide you in selecting your keywords, in building your pages, and in creating the structure of your site. All this will contribute to your site being accepted by the search engines.

A great way to learn more about SBI is to sign up as an affiliate to sell SBI. When you do this, you will be able to access the SBI forums and see what the many people who make money on the Internet with SBI think, say, and do. You will be able to monitor the SBI forum, but you cannot post to it.


To sign up as an affiliate, follow this link http://buildit.sitesell.com/boomer.html. When the page loads, go to the top and click “Affiliates”. Read the affiliates page. The sign up form is about three quarters of the way down the page. Sign up as an affiliate. It costs you nothing and opens the door for you to learn about SBI. The commission structure is attractive and it is very easy to become a Five Pillar Affiliate of SBI.

To conclude this article, I recommend that you go back and read the previous articles in Boomer eZine about SBI. You can find them by using the search function on the home page of Boomer eZine and search for SBI.

Remotely Accessing Your Home Computer

While I was on the trip to California, I was able to continue business as usual by using the remote access features on Windows XP. This allowed me to access my home computer as though I was sitting in front of it.

In fact, Linda was working on our Christmas letter and had trouble printing the letter. I was able to log on to my computer, trouble shoot the problem, and print the letter for her at home.

This feature is included in Windows XP at no extra charge. I recommend that you consider installing it if you travel and need to access your home computer. I wrote an article about this in V1I5. It gives detailed instructions on how to set it up.

I am finishing a video to show how to do this and I will make it available to readers of Boomer eZine at no charge. I request that you view it and set up your computer for remote access. Then let me know if you have any problems in doing so. This will help me validate the video.

I will let all readers know when this video is available.

That wraps up our issue for this week. I wrote most of this issue in the DFW airport pounding on my laptop. The second flight left on time and I joined Linda at a party at a friend’s house when I got to Kingsville.

I will publish an issue next week. Remember, only 10 days till Christmas. Until next week, stay tuned.

John and Linda Howe
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/
http://www.boomer-guru.com/
http://www.boomer-entrepreneur.com/
http://www.boomer-marketplace.com/
eBay Boomer Retirement Store
(http:/stores.ebay.com/BOOMER-RETIREMENT-STORE)
Boomer’s Amazon Store
(http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Amazon_Page.htm)


Administrative Details …………….
If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to:
boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want to remain in contact with you!

It is OK to go ahead and join our subscriber list with more than one email address. You never know when an email will be blocked by those tough SPAM filters. They are getting tighter and tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails.

If a friend sent you this newsletter and you would like to receive your own issue next time, send a blank email to
boomerezine001@aweber.com and we will send you your own copy on the next issue.

Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.

posted by John & Linda Howe at 10:10 AM 0 comments

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Volume 1 Issue 35 12-8-06

For those who would like to read this in HTML format, this issue of Boomer eZine is posted on the Boomer eZine website at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I35_120806.htm and on the Boomer eZine Blog at http://boomer-ezine.blogspot.com/.

Please pass Boomer eZine on to a friend. They will thank you for it.
Table of Contents for this issue.....

  1. Authors Comments

  2. Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

  3. Understanding Numbering Systems

  4. Understanding HTML Color Codes
Author's Comments

We are hosting our friends from England right now. Diana (Di) is the lady who has let us housesit her house for three long visits to the UK over the last several years. She lives in a 400 year old mill house in a small village about 45 miles north of London. We have used “Mill Farm” as our home base for travels all over England, Scotland, and Wales.

We are showing her and her traveling companion all about South Texas and the Mexican border. We took them shopping to Mexico (two hour drive for us) on Thursday and had a great time. We are off to San Antonio for a few days to see the sights there. They will fly home from San Antonio on 12/11.

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

No input for this section this issue.

If you have anything for this section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article, please go to
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm and give us your input. With your input, we can improve the Boomer Video eZine.

Understanding Number Systems

This is a somewhat technical subject, but it is one that will come in handy when you are working with computers, so stick with me through this article and you will understand number systems. I taught this subject to Army officers when I was on active duty many years ago, and I still remember it well. I was able to get it across to my students, and I can do the same for you if you will concentrate on it with me. I recommend that you work the problems to fully understand the subject.

The number system we are taught and with which we deal daily in our lives is decimal. The base of this number system is 10. We are taught early that the positional values for this number system are ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, etc. We are taught this by rote, but we are not taught the rule on how to calculate them. But that is easy. Number systems always start with the ones position. The positional value to the left of one will be one times the base of the number system or ten (1 X 10 = 10). The next positional value to the left will be that positional value times the base of the system or 100 (10 X 10 = 100). This is how the ones, ten, hundreds, thousands are calculated.

Each number system has one character multiplier values in it that range from zero to one less than the base of the number system. In decimal, the multipliers are 0 – 9.

When we look at the number 123, we just accept it as the decimal value, but in number system theory, it is the sum of all multipliers times the positional value for the multiplier. Follow this example:

3 X 1 = 3
2 X 10 = 20
1 X 100 = 100

Add up the numbers to the right of the equal signs (3 + 20 + 100) and you get 123.

You have heard that computers use binary. This is because in electrical circuits there is an on or on off value (two possible values). The base for binary is two (2). Follow the rule for multipliers that they will be from 0 to one less than the base of the system so the multipliers for binary are zero and one.

Follow the rule for determining the positional values for the system. Start at one and multiply it by the base (two) so the position to the left of the one position is two (1 X 2). The next position to the left is the two position times the base (2) or 4 (2 X 2). The next position to the left is the four position times two (4 X 2) or 8. Here are the first few positional values in binary:

256 - 128 - 64 - 32 - 16 - 8 - 4 - 2 - 1

Notice that each position is doubled the value to its right. This makes sense since the base is two and we are multiplying each positional value by two to get the value of the next position to the left.

Let’s look at this binary number.

10011

To convert this to decimal, we multiply the positional value by the multiplier.

1 X 1 = 1
1 X 2 = 2
0 X 4 = 0
0 X 8 = 0
1 X 16 = 16

Now add up the values to the right of the equal sign and we get 19 decimal for the binary number 10011.

What is the decimal value of 111 binary? If you got 7 decimal then you understand how binary works.

1 X 1 = 1
1 X 2 = 2
1 X 4 = 4

1 + 2 + 4 = 7

Convert one more binary number – 1000000. If you got 64 decimal, you are right.

A weakness of binary is that it takes so many positions to express a large value. To get around this, the hexadecimal base system was devised. This is the base 16. We abbreviate hexadecimal as “hex”.

Since we said earlier that the multipliers for the system were zero to one less than the base of the system (16), how can we get one position multipliers when we only have 0 – 9 as numeric numbers? Well, we use the first six letters of the alphabet for the multipliers above nine. Here are the multipliers in hex.

0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
A=10
B=11
C=12
D=13
E=14
F=15

OK, now stick with me and remember the rules for number systems. The positional values start with one and are determined by multiplying the base by the number to get each succeeding positional value from right to left.

The first positional value is one. The next one to the left is 16 (1 X 16). The next one to the left is 256 (16 X 16). The next one to the left of 256 is 4,096 (256 X 16). The next one to the left of 4,096 is 65,536 (4,096 X 16).

The first few positional values of hex are:

1,048,576 – 65,536 – 4,096 – 256 – 16 – 1

You can see that we can express a very large number in hex with fewer positions than we can in our standard decimal numbering system.

Let’s convert a few hex numbers to decimal. Convert hex 1F to decimal. Just follow the rule and multiply the positional value by the multiplier.

F (=15) X 1 = 15
1 X 16 = 16

Add 15 and 16 and the number 1F in hex is 31 in decimal.

Convert 2AB hex to decimal. Just follow the rule. Remember, multiply each positional value by its multiplier.

B (=11) X 1 = 11
A (=10) X 16 = 160
2 X 256 = 512

Add up the values to the right of the equal signs and you find that 2AB in hex is 683 in decimal.

Why learn hex? In some instances when you are writing HTML for web pages, hex numbers are used. A two position hex number will express a number from 0 (hex 00) to 255 (hex FF). Since zero is a number, this will give 256 total values.

Another reason that hex is used is that each four positions of a binary number can be expressed in one hex position so it is much easier to write a large number in hex than in binary.

Let’s look at the binary value 1111. If you use the rules, this will be 1+2+4+8 = 15. This can be written as “F” in hex. (the multiplier “F” in hex is equal to decimal 15.

Let’s convert another number in binary to hex. Start at the ones position and break the binary number into four position groups. Express each four position group as its hex value

Binary 1011 1100 1001 0111
Hex B C 9 7

To double check that the two are equal follow the rules and convert both number systems to decimal. If you came up with 48,279 you are right.

Thank goodness, we do not have to keep our check books in hex or binary, but remember that the computer is using binary as its native language. Binary easily translates into hex. Be glad it does this and converts the answers to decimal for us.

There are times when we do have to use hex in working with computers. I went through this lesson to prepare you for the next article which talks about hex color codes used in HTML.

Understanding HTML Color Codes

Authors note: This article was sent to me by Fred Black who sells a course for making money online. I have not seen the course, so I will not make a recommendation about it. I thank Fred for sending this informative article for publication.

Guest article starts here.

I help people with web pages a lot and I usually encourage them to edit the HTML directly and not rely on GUI layout programs like Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe GoLive to layout their pages. A lot of people have trouble understanding what HTML Color Codes mean and how they work.

HTML Color Codes are 6 characters wide and look like this "#80FF12" and are really made up of 3 2-digit hex numbers that represent Red, Green, and Blue. Ok... I just lost a good portion of the crowd didn't I? Let's back up and explain a few things.

How do you describe a color with numbers? One of the ways that's used with computers is to specify the values of Red, Green, and Blue that are mixed together to achieve the desired color. As you vary the amounts of Red, Green, and Blue you can create most any color.

How does this relate to computers? Computer displays, TVs, and other "projected light" display devices use pixels to display what you see on the screen and the color value for those pixels is specified in a
RGB (Red, Green, Blue) value. For example if your monitor is set at 1024 x 768 resolution, then there are 768 lines (from top to bottom)on your screen, and each line has 1024 pixels or little dots in it. Each of those pixels or little dots is actually made of three smaller dots or light sources: a red one, a green one, and a blue one.

Ink is different. Printers that you use with your computer generally specify color as a four (or more) color "reflective" ink value made up of Yellow, Magenta, Cyan, and Black which is abbreviated as YMCK. Your computer uses formulas to convert the RGB values to CMYK values so that you can print what you see on your screen accurately.

How does the computer represent a RGB color value? RGB values are stored as 3 separate values (one for Red, one for Green, and one for Blue) between 0 and 255. If you count the 0 as a value, then that's a total of 256 possible values. When you combine the Red, Green, and Blue values together to represent a color you get a possibility of 16.7 million colors (256 x 256 x 256). That's a lot of colors and most people consider this to be "true" color because it can represent most photographs and images accurately and naturally.

OK then, what is a Hex value? I'm glad you asked! Your computer stores information as single ones and zeros. Each of these tiny single values is called a "bit". We then combine 8 of these "bits" to make a "byte". So a byte is 8 bits. If you recall from high school math, you can count in various "bases". We normally use base 10 or "decimal", which uses 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 to represent a number. Likewise, if we use the ones and zeros I just mentioned, we're talking about just two possible values for each digit, 0 or 1, and this is called base 2 or "binary". However, in computers, we also use base 16, or hexadecimal (hex for short) because it packs more values into a single space. Hex uses the following digits to represent a number: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F. To represent the number 128 in decimal or base 10 takes 3 digits (128), in binary it takes 8 digits (10000000), and in hex or base 16 it takes just 2 digits (80). So by using hex values we save storage space and gain efficiency.

How does this relate to HTML color codes? HTML colors codes are made up of 3 sets of hex numbers, one for Red, one for Green, and one for Blue. For example:

000000 is black (0's for all three colors)
FFFFFF is white (255's for all three colors)
FF0000 is all RED (255 for Red, 0 green, 0 blue)
00FF00 is all GREEN (0 Red, 255 green, 0 blue)
0000FF is all Blue (0 red, 0 green, 255 blue)
FFFF00 is Yellow (255 red, 255 green, and 0 blue)
808080 is a gray (128 red, 128 green, and 125 blue)

Generally in HTML, you also put a "#" in front of the color code, but this is not necessary if you specify all 6 digits, it's used as an abbreviation. If you ever make a profile for MySpace.com, leave off the "#" too because they filter them and won't display the color correctly if you use the "#".

You can use the calculator that comes with Microsoft Windows to convert between Decimal and Hex values. You need to select View and then Scientific from the calculator's menu. Once you do this, you'll see more buttons and controls on the calculator than before. To convert from Hex to Dec, click on "Hex", key in the number, and then click "Dec". Sometimes you'll get a color specification in Decimal, for example (128, 30, 80) and you can use this method to convert it to hex (80, 1E, 50) which would look like this for your HTML color #801E50.

I hope you understand more about HTML Color Codes and how colors are stored and specified in computers.


You can visit Fred Black's web site
http://www.internetmakemoneyonline.com/, Discover how to Make Money Online with internet marketing techniques and skills that are easy to master
- 100% Guaranteed.

That wraps up our issue for this week. Until next week, stay tuned.

John and Linda Howe
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/
http://www.boomer-guru.com/
http://www.boomer-entrepreneur.com/
http://www.boomer-marketplace.com/
eBay Boomer Retirement Store
(http:/stores.ebay.com/BOOMER-RETIREMENT-STORE)
Boomer’s Amazon Store
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Amazon_Page.htm


Administrative Details …………….
If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to:
boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want to remain in contact with you!

It is OK to go ahead and join our subscriber list with more than one email address. You never know when an email will be blocked by those tough SPAM filters. They are getting tighter and tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails.

If a friend sent you this newsletter and you would like to receive your own issue next time, send a blank email to boomerezine001@aweber.com and we will send you your own copy on the next issue.

Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.

posted by John & Linda Howe at 5:51 AM 0 comments

Friday, December 01, 2006

Volume1 Issue 34 12-1-06

For those who would like to read this in HTML format, this issue of Boomer eZine is posted on the Boomer eZine website at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I34_120106.htm and on the Boomer eZine Blog at http://boomer-ezine.blogspot.com/.

Please pass Boomer eZine on to a friend. They will thank you for it.
Table of Contents for this issue.....


  1. Authors Comments

  2. Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

  3. Choosing Your Web Host for the Type of Website

  4. Placing a Link on Your eBay Auction Page Pointing to Your About Me Page (Video)
Author's Comments

Thanksgiving was great and our stay at our friend’s lake house was relaxing. I did not touch a computer for a couple of days. It was like going through withdrawal.

Allison, our granddaughter turned one on November 28 and Susanna, our daughter, turned 25 on November 29. Time moves on.

We have some great info in this ezine. Some great questions prompted the articles and the expanded Q&A section. My thanks to our readers for having questioning minds.

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

One of our subscribers, Ana Young, is in the process of evaluating what web host to use and she has given us permission to reprint this email exchange in the Boomer eZine. This is a question and answer item, but it is long enough to be an article. This is based on an email dated November 19 in which I answered Ana’s questions.

Ana - I was just reading through some of your earlier
articles on SBI. You say you built your Retirement
Jobs site using them, but you used Front Page to build
the others?

JH – I am very impressed with SBI for the beginner. It does many things automatically that the average person does not consider. I learned a lot from building the SBI site, and I will still use it for large website projects where I want help with traffic promotion and SEO evaluation. I did not use it for Boomer eZine because I had already started the site before I found out about SBI.

Ana - I like the designs of your other sites, but Retirement
Jobs, while the content is superior, is the plainest.
So much white space. Did you not have much choice of
design with SBI?

JH – SBI has a basic beginning template. You can choose from some very basic “look and feel” selections. You can make it more complex as you learn more about it. SBI concentrates on what you say in your content more than sizzle and flash. The white space is for future monetization ads, etc. I have not monetized the site yet. Go to
www.pppretirementplans.com and take a look. That is an SBI site with a wider text area and monetization.

Ana - Also, SBI only allows one site for that big annual
fee. And, if you want a blog to go with it, as I do
for mine, you have to go with Blogger.com. Again, your
blog is plainer than others I've seen.

JH - On the subject of white space, I used to create pages that were as wide as the browser would accept, but Tim Knox recommended that I use 700 pixels as a column limit. The average surfer does not like to read wide pages since most web pages are scanned and not read. This will leave white space on the page, but it will be more accepted by the reader. Compare the boomer ezine issues before issue 27 with those after 27 and see the difference.

If you are referring to the boomer-ezine blog on blogger.com, it is a copy of the ezine posted on the website. This is to give Boomer eZine more exposure and get it to the Google search engine quicker than waiting for the Google spider to come to the website.

SBI has the ability to have your own blog on your site. There is also a blog on the retirement-jobs-online site. It is very easy to post and I enter a post each week announcing the posting of the Boomer eZine articles. Go to
http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com/retirement-jobs-online-blog.html and take a look at the site blog. This could serve your blogging needs. I do not have time to use it to its full advantage, but I will after retirement.

Ana - And, where are your ads? How does the site make money?

JH – I am not concentrating on making money now, but on building a reputation. SBI recommends that you not try to monetize your site until you have over 20 unique visitors per day. I am well past that number, but I have not bothered to go back and set up the monetization. I am enjoying what I am doing and since I am not retired and do not need the supplemental income, I feel that I will do better building traffic for free right now.

Ana - I've gone back to evaluating SBI. I could use that
kind of support but it's very important for my site
not to appear like a "beginner's site." It's far more
important for my site to be beautiful, unique looking
and easy to use, as well as content-rich, than for
this beginner to "get started quickly."

JH – I understand your feelings, but “Rome was not built in a day” and a great site usually is not either. You have to learn and grow. I do not know if you are aware of the tremendous support community there is within the SBI user group. Follow my link
http://buildit.sitesell.com/boomer.html to SBI. At the top of the page, click Affiliates and sign up as a member of the 5 Pillar Affiliate Program. This will give you access to view the forums. You will not be able to post until you are a paid SBI member. By browsing or searching the forums, you can see how SBI members support each other from the beginner to the most advanced. I am not aware of any web host that has such a powerful tool available. From the forums, you can see the site names for the users and you can study them to see if some of them match with what you envision your future site to look like.

Ana - Then, you say you use Hostexcellence to host your
sites (or some of them). Do you prefer them or Site
Build It?

JH – I use Hostexcellence for the following reasons: For Boomer-eZine and jhowe.com, they were started before I found out about SBI. Boomer-entrepreneur has a forum using phpBB software and SBI does not support that. Back Tracker is a small site of very limited, niche market and I use Google Adwords to direct traffic to it. I cannot justify the SBI cost for the potential return. Boomer Guru is a site for downloading videos and it is easier for me to upload videos to it as a conventional site rather than as an SBI site.

For a straight up, conventional content site, I recommend SBI. Especially if you are not familiar with site promotion, SEO principles, etc.

Editor’s note: This is the end of the email from Ana. Thanks, Ana, for such great questions. I am certain that other readers have some of the same questions.

Welcome to a Special Subscriber


I want to welcome Linda as a new subscriber this week. In the eighth grade, she was the girl behind whom I sat and played with her pigtails. She did not appreciate that and I am surprised that I am still alive after she got through with me. She is a scholar, and I am certainly under pressure to perform. We both had the same great English teacher which makes us “grammar police”. Welcome, Linda!

If you have anything for this section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article, please go to
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm and give us your input. With your input, we can improve the Boomer Video eZine.

Choosing Your Web Host for the Type of Website

I checked the suggestions database and from one of the comments, I apparently caused confusion because I did not fully explain why we use three different web hosts for our websites.

Let me clear up this confusion.

We use the following hosts for the named websites.

Site Build It (SBI) –
http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com/

Hostexcellence.com

http://www.jhowe.com/
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/
http://www.back-tracker.com/
http://www.boomer-entrepreneur.com/
http://www.boomer-guru.com

Hostmonster.com - 30 websites which are one page sites that point to similar named sites. The free domain site http://www.quail-hunter.com/ which is my “play” site has a few pages and pictures, but it is not intended to be a high traffic site and Hostmonster.com is OK for that.

Now why do we do this?

There is no one web host that is all things to all people. The SBI site is a content site and SBI provides site promotion and SEO support that the other hosts do not. Some of our other websites do not need this so we do not pay for it.

The explanation in the Q&A explained why we have the various sites with Hostexcellence.com. Our hosting account with Hostexcellence.com will allow us to host up to eight websites with them.

The sites that are hosted on Hostmonster.com are either “defensive” domain names or domain names that we feel might be good to develop in the future. Defensive names are names that are similar to our main site names so we reserve them so no one can buy them. We have 30 domains registered here since Hostmonster.com will allow unlimited add on domains.

Since we are paying for the service of unlimited websites, we create one page sites with links to our main sites. This gives us 30 additional links pointing to the main sites. These 30 additional in-pointing links will improve our search engine ranking.

In summary, we chose the web host based on the intent of the website. Shop around for the web host that will provide the service that compliments your specific site (or sites).

Placing a Link on Your Auction Page Pointing to Your About Me Page

Sue asked how to place a link on your eBay auction page that points to your eBay About Me page.

We will need some HTML tags to do this. In order to show the HTML tags as text and not have the browser execute them, I will use the XMP tag to start. Browsers are supposed to ignore HTML tags in the XMP tag range and not execute them. Unfortunately, not all browsers handle the XMP tag in the same way. I do not know how it will display on your browser so if you see XMP, that is the reason.

<XMP>

You place the link to your About Me Page in the Description box that you create when you post a sale on eBay. The eBay Description box has tabs in the top left that allow you to switch back and forth between Standard and HTML when you are creating it. Start writing your description in Standard mode until you get to the place where you want to insert the link to your About Me page. Here you click on HTML and the box will change to accept HTML code. You will also see the HTML for what you have already entered. Position your cursor where you want to insert the link and copy and paste the following HTML code. This will create the multicolor blue and red eBay icon for the About Me and link it to your own page.

Replace the “Your-eBay-Name” with your own eBay name.

<a href="http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/Your-eBay-Name"><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff"><b>About
</b></font><b><font color="#0000ff">M</font><font color="#ff0000">e</font></b></a>

</XMP>

Now switch back to Standard mode and you should see the red and blue About Me icon. Go ahead and finish writing your description. When you finish, click the Preview link at the bottom left of the Description box and a new window will open to show you how the auction listing will look. If you need to put spaces around the link, you can add the spaces in the Standard mode.

Good luck. I hope you get a ton of traffic to your About Me page and that you convert all of it.

I have posted a short video about how to do this at

http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Videos/V1I34Video/Click-to-Play.html

That wraps up our issue for this week. Until next week, stay tuned.

John and Linda Howe
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/
http://www.boomer-guru.com/
http://www.boomer-entrepreneur.com/
http://www.boomer-marketplace.com/
eBay Boomer Retirement Store
(http:/stores.ebay.com/BOOMER-RETIREMENT-STORE)
Boomer’s Amazon Store
(http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Amazon_Page.htm)


Administrative Details …………….
If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to:
boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want to remain in contact with you!

It is OK to go ahead and join our subscriber list with more than one email address. You never know when an email will be blocked by those tough SPAM filters. They are getting tighter and tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails.

If a friend sent you this newsletter and you would like to receive your own issue next time, send a blank email to
boomerezine001@aweber.com and we will send you your own copy on the next issue.

Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.

posted by John & Linda Howe at 4:59 PM 0 comments

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