Desiarticles

10 New Ways to Make Money Online

2007-11-28T20:14:00.000-08:00

So you want to ditch your corporate cubicle and join the ranks of web workers? But you have a mortgage, maybe a dependent or two, and a taste for Venti Mochas from Starbucks? You can make money in the new economy, though it might not be as easy or cushy as keeping your old economy job.

I’m not talking about advertising or affiliate marketing or selling your junk on eBay. Those are so last millennium! I’m talking about the new new economy.

1. Offer your professional expertise in an online marketplace.These days, you can do more than just sell your old books via Amazon and your old Coach handbags via eBay—now you can sell your professional capabilities in a marketplace. No longer are you limited to looking for a permanent or contract job on Web 1.0 style job sites like Monster or CareerBuilder. The new breed of freelancing and project-oriented sites let companies needing help describe their projects. Then freelancers and small businesses offer bids or ideas or proposals from which those buyers can choose.

Elance covers everything from programming and writing to consulting and design, while RentACoder focuses on software, natch. If you’re a graphic designer, check out options like Design Outpost or LogoWorks–you don’t have to find the customers, they’ll come to you. Wannabe industry analysts might sign up for TechDirt’s Insight Community, a marketplace for ideas about technology marketing.

2. Sell photos on stock photography sites. If people regularly oooo and aaaaah over your Flickr pics, maybe you’re destined for photographic greatness or maybe just for a few extra dollars. It’s easier than ever to get your photos out in front of the public, which of course means a tremendous amount of competition, but also means it might be an convenient way for you to build up a secondary income stream. Where can you upload and market your photos? Try Fotolia, Dreamstime, Shutterstock, and Big Stock Photo.

3. Blog for pay. Despite the explosion of blogs, it’s hard to find good writers who can turn around a solidly-written post on an interesting topic quickly. GigaOM is always looking for bloggers with great content ideas and solid writing skills. How do you get noticed? Comment and link to blogging network sites. Write blog posts that are polished and not overly personal (although showing some personality is a plus).

4. Or start your own blog network. If you like the business side of things–selling advertising, hiring and managing employees, attracting investors–and have the stomach to go up against the likes of Weblogs, Inc., GigaOmniMedia, b5media, maybe you should make an entire business out of blogs. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’ll get a lot of time to write yourself though.

5. Provide service and support for open source software. Just because the software is free doesn’t mean you can’t make money on it–just ask Red Hat, a well-known distributor of Linux that sports a market cap of more than four billion dollars. As a solo web worker, you might not want to jump in and compete with big companies offering Linux support, but how about offering support for web content management systems like WordPress or Drupal? After getting comfortable with your own installation, you can pretty easily jump into helping other people set them up and configure them.

6. Online life coaching. Who has time to go meet a personal coach at an office? And don’t the new generation of web workers need to be met by their coaches in the same way that they work: via email, IM, and VoIP? You could, of course, go through some life coaching certification program, but on the web, reputation is more important than credentials. I bet Tony Robbins isn’t certified as a life coach–and no one can argue with his success. For an example of someone building up their profile and business online as a coach, check out Pamela Slim of Ganas Consulting and the Escape from Cubicle Nation blog.

7. Virtually assist other web workers. Freelancers and small businesses desperately need help running their businesses, but they’re not about to hire a secretary to come sit in the family room and answer phone calls. As a virtual assistant, you might do anything from making travel reservations to handling expense reimbursements to paying bills to arranging for a dog sitter. And you do it all from your own home office, interacting with your clients online and by phone. You can make $20 and up an hour doing this sort of work, depending on your expertise.

8. Build services atop Amazon Web Services. Elastic computing on AWS is so cool… and so incredibly primitive right now. Did you know that you can’t even count on your virtual hard drive on EC2 to store your data permanently? That’s why people are making money right now by offering services on top of AWS. Make it easier for people to use Amazon’s scalability web infrastructure like Enomaly has with elasticlive, a scalable web hosting platform built on AWS.

9. Write reviews for pay or perks. If you blog for any length of time on a particular topic–parenting, mobile phones, or PCs, for example–you will likely be approached to do book or product reviews. You can get free stuff this way, but are you selling your soul? Is there any such thing as a free laptop? These are decisions you’ll have to make for yourself, because no one agrees upon what ethical rules apply to bloggers. Even less do people agree on services like PayPerPost that pay you to write reviews on your blog. Check out disclosure rules closely and see whether such a gig would meet your own personal standards or not.

10. Become a virtual gold farmer. A half million Chinese now earn income by acquiring and selling World of Warcraft gold to gamers in other countries. If you’re not a young person living in China, this probably isn’t a viable option for you. But what’s intriguing about it is the opportunity to make real money working in a virtual economy. People are making real-world money in Second Life too.

Emergency Phone Charger for Real Optimists

2007-08-09T11:22:00.001-07:00

Murphy's Law is an adage in Western culture that broadly states that things will go wrong in any given situation, if you give them a chance. The book " Murphy's law " issued in 1977 had stunning success. I think that the reason for that is that the world is full of such pessimistic people, as the man, whose name this gloomy law inherited. Serving at Air Force Base, the captain Edward Murphy, investigated the reasons why the planes crash. He came to pessimistic conclusion that if there was only one way to do something wrong, the technologists would find it.

One more of Murphy's laws asserts that if four reasons of possible troubles are eliminated beforehand, there will always be fifth. Certainly, these laws are basically created for pessimists. But I hope you would agree that when you get in a trouble, and you can's find a way out no matter how hard you try, you start to believe that Murphy was somehow right.

I do not offer you to join a special club for pessimists. I just hope it is still possible to avoid such situation, when your telephone with its death breaks your connection with the world right at that moment when you need it the most. Such small portable gadget like Emergency Phone Charger gives you an opportunity to charge the telephone for 2 hours of extra talking time. Thus, if your telephone ran out of charge and interrupted an important conversation when you find yourself far from home, using a single AA battery, you can return it to life and continue the talk.

Different things happen and every day we have to face a lot of difficult situations. After some unpleasant incidents it is difficult to be sure that everything will finally be fine. Still you may use the chance and carry with you Emergency Phone Charger which size is approximately 7cm (H) x 2cm (W) x 2cm (D). It is necessary to be always on the check! It is better to believe in good, and then the laws of Murphy will be left behind!

DigiBank

2007-08-09T11:16:00.000-07:00

DigiBank is the intelligent piggy bank from KEIAN. It is capable of recognizing every coin you give it and can indicate on its screen the amount of the money you just inserted and the total amount of your treasure. It is powered by AAA batteries and measures 15 x 12.2 x 13.2cm.

Increasing the performance of Windows Vista

2007-08-07T11:07:00.000-07:00

My first impression of Windows Vista was that it was a very shiny operating system with lots of useless stuff (for me) that wasted lots of valuable ram on my system. Things like the sidebar which may be useful for some are absolutely useless to me. Besides that they use ram. I have decided to remove everything that I would not need to increase performance on the system.

This tips might also be useful to those users who use an old computer with Windows Vista. My Vista installation is using about 430 megabytes of Ram in default state with only one instance of Internet Explorer 7 running as well. The following paragraphs contain a list of changes that I made and their effect on the system.

* Disabling the Sidebar
* Changing the Design to Windows Classic
* Changing the Background image to one color
* Disabling the Windows Firewall and Bitdefender

Those changes alone dropped the ram usage by 60 megabytes to 370 with one Internet Explorer window open. There are many settings that can still be tweaked to gain even more performance, for instance removing unnecessary services and indexing. I will take a look at those in the coming days.

The question of course remains why you would like to change to Vista if you disable everything “new” that Vista offers. I personally think that it introduces lots of gimmicks that freeware on XP offered for years. And if it is security that you want you should take a look at Linux instead.

The Blow Table Lamp

2007-08-07T02:28:00.000-07:00

Studio Italia Design has designed a rather useless but nice looking gadget. The Blow Table Lamp is unusual with two features. It is situated in a glass globe that protects it from any weather conditions and its magnet system.

You can control the direction of light beam with a magnet placed outside the glass globe. When you place it on the globe, the magnet attached to the lamp will be attracted this is how you can control it. This may be also fun and good because you do not have those banding lamp legs that tend to break.

However, what do you protect it from with a glass globe around it? From getting broken? More questions come when you want to replace the bulb inside it. How do you do that? Just break the glass globe? Maneuvering this gadget is fun but this is it.

The most outrageous thing about blow table lamp is its cost. It retails for $ 1,200 and this is what makes this lamp so unlike all other. Pay 1,200 dollars for this lamp and you won't have to replace the bulb for years; you won't just use the lamp every day, because it is so expensive.

Gadget to Turn Old Vinyls into CDs

2007-08-07T02:23:00.000-07:00

Music reflects the essence of human soul. If you pay attention to what kind of music a person listens to, it is possible to understand his way of thinking, and his features of character. Music will tell you much about the person you want to know better.

The taste of a person is reflected in everything - in clothes he wears, in books he reads, in meals he prefers, and certainly, in music. For some people music is an integral part of their life, and their favorite singers are idols and examples for imitation. Specially for the people, who collect all about the favorite singers, including old vinyl's, as the best kind of their creativity, it will be interesting to find out more about the opportunity of getting Ion iTTUSB Turntable with USB Record.

First of all, this gadget can be used to convert your old vinyl collection directly to CD or MP3 without any clumsy adapters or mismatched software when transferring formats.

Requiring no special drivers, the turntable comes with Audacity, a recording application that works with both PCs and Macs, as well as a trial version of Bias Soundsoap 2 to clean and restore vinyl recordings.

As an alternative, the Turntable also works with any other software that supports USB audio input sound cards. Once connected, the Turntable transfers both 33-1/3 rpm albums and 45 rpm singles to digital formats in a few minutes. For increased stereo balancing, the iTTUSB offers a few hardware extras, such as an adjustable anti-skating control. It also includes an adjustable pitch control (+ /- 8 percent), and support for high-speed vinyl recording. Ion iTTUSB Turntable with USB Record is a display of evolution of technologies. It is a link between old times and modernity. It is an unique opportunity to create the bridge between retro music and reliable way of its storage.

* USB 1.1 turntable that makes it a snap to convert vinyl collection to CD or MP3 formats
* Includes Audacity PC/Mac recording software and trial version of Bias Soundsoap 2
* Adjustable anti-skating control for increased stereo balancing
* Support for high-speed vinyl recording; works with both 33-1/3 and 45 rpm speeds
* Line-level outputs for easy stereo connection; 1/8-inch line-level input; weighs 7.7 pounds

In the Box

* Turntable
* tonearm counterweight
* Platter with belt
* Slipmat
* Cartridge premounted on headshell
* RCA cable
* USB cable
* Software CD-ROM
* 45 adapter
* Quick-start guide
* User’s manual

BODiBEAT Matches Music to Your Exercise

2007-08-05T23:51:00.000-07:00

Yamaha has come up with a music player specially for sportive people. What this gadget does that not other player does? It matches music to the pace of your workout.

They claim their <>player to be "the first music playback device that synchronizes your music to the movement of your workout." How it does that? Easy, it monitors your pulse and then selects a song that matches the pace of your exercise.

The wonderful toy will cost you $ 300 and it has a 512 MB on flash memory built in. Not much for $ 300, I would expect it to recognize what exercise I am doing and have a month record on that for such price. Or maybe the technology of pace meter and a song matching is so darn expensive.

I wonder what happens if it does not really find the song to your pace.

Digital Watch with Dual-LCD

2007-08-05T23:43:00.001-07:00

Traveling is a big part of a businessmen's lives and you do not want to get frustrated adjusting your watch time every time you travel from the East Coast to the West Coast. Of course you could use your PDA or cell phone that adjust themselves, however I would better have a quick look on my watch to see what time it is. For such situations a new gadget watch comes in.

THiX RE watch has two displays that can show you different times in different time zones. The LCD displays will tell you time and date and other information. This way you will always know what the time is in the other zone and make a decision on whether to call them up or not.

Besides, the two displays that look really cool its body has a steel color. In order to fulfill the classy modern look it has a black band and will fit any business suit.

When you don't need another zone's time you can set the watch to show you the time on one display and date on the other one. There are some additional features like: stopwatch, multiple alarm settings that is a must have feature of a businessman's watch. Besides, ThiX RE watch is water resistant up to 100 feet.

You can get this gadget for about $ 140 on the web.

Bullet Mouse

2007-08-05T23:37:00.000-07:00

Another PC accessory for those who like unusual gadgets has arrived. Bullet mouse does not mean it is as small, but it definitely looks like a bullet.

It has a shiny chromed metal surface just like a bullet. It is even colored like one. I wander if it is made out of metal, because if it is then this would be another indestructible mouse. About the buttons: it has two buttons and a scroll which makes it a pretty basic one.

It looks unusual and will attract people's attention however I wonder how handy this mouse will be. And it will cost you about $ 25 if you really decide to buy one.

source : gadgets-reviews.com

DriPod will Keep Your iPod Safe and Dry

2007-08-05T23:32:00.000-07:00

Everybody knows that the best way to keep your iPod dry and safe you shouldn't bring it neat to water, pool or beach parties. However, sometimes you really need to break this rule. What you do then? The answer is simple get an Allsop Splash Pack DriPod. A waterproof gadget has been designed to be used in such situations.

This thing provides full waterproof protection up to 10 feet, not speaking of several drops that can get on it when you are partying. Its air tight soft case will be also able to protect any similar sized device from getting wet.

In order to fully protect the iPod from water it has a heat-sealed headphone jack, which will allow you to listen to your music around the pool and will not allow any water into the case.

Additional features: it will also protect you iPod from getting scratched, from getting sand inside it when you are on a beach, and it will allow you to see the iPod and to control it when it is in the case. All these features should make you want to buy this gadget.

Source : gadgets-reviews.com

Sony Ericsson K850

2007-08-02T04:27:00.000-07:00

Phonescoop show us a hands-on video of Sony Ericsson K850, which features a 5.0-megapixel camera, HSDPA, 2.2-inch display, and a host of multimedia application.

Sony Ericsson K850 Video Preview

Sony Ericsson W580

2007-08-02T04:22:00.001-07:00

Phone Arena provides us a hands-on video preview of Sony Ericsson W580. It features a 2.0-inch QVGA screen, 2.0-megapixel camera, M2 card slot, EDGE, Bluetooth 2.0, USB connectivity, built-in FM tuner and music illumination effects.

NeatReceipts Business Cards Scanner

2007-08-02T04:19:00.001-07:00

NeatReceipts annouced its NEAT Business Cards scanner which is a mini-size scanner that can scans all your name cards and transfers them to computer. It also allow you to import new contacts into Outlook or other address book. Too bad, NeatReceipts scanner doesn’t support Mac platform yet. So, Windows users have the advantage here. The NeatReceipts scanner will cost you for $200.

Source: Ubergizmo

Digital Cube M43 iStation PMP

2007-08-02T04:13:00.000-07:00

Digital Cube M43 iStation PMP comes with a 4.3-inch touchscreen display, photo viewer, ebook Reader, built-in DMB digital TV receiver and audio and video playback. It is currently available in South Korea in black or white 30GB (approx £163) and 60GB (apprx £217) models.

Sony Ericsson W660

2007-08-02T04:07:00.000-07:00

Sony Ericsson W660 features a 2-megapixel camera, LCD display screen and 512MB of memory storage. Here is a video preview of Sony Ericsson W660 from Phone Arena.

Sony Ericsson W660 Video Preview

iPhone tool: Talking iPhone Translator

2007-08-02T01:04:00.000-07:00

Software developer Coolgorilla and travel retailer lastminute.com today launched a Talking iPhone Translator, which is a free service that provides travellers with text and audio translations in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German, with a Greek version to be available soon.

The way it works, you select your required language and phrase, while the iPhone translator will display a written translation on screen along with a native audio translation provided by a professional voice-over artist.

Fairly simple to use, the Talking iPhone Translator asks the user to select the required target language and then provides a structured menu system much like a standard phrase book. Simply find your required phrase, press select, and then the iPhone “speaks” the phrase using the recordings of real, native voice-over artists and also supplies a text translation on screen.

This is a rather useful tool, as it makes use of iPhone’s multimedia capabilities to help one communicate with locals wherever you are. With Google Maps and this translator tool you surely won’t be lost next time you’re going abroad. To access the Talking iPhone Translator point your browser over to www.coolgorilla.com/iphone.

Top 5 Harry Potter Gadgets We Want (and Where You Can Find Them)

2007-08-02T00:58:00.000-07:00

This weekend, millions of Harry Potter fans worldwide learned the fate of their favorite boy wizard as the final installment of J.K. Rowling’s epic novels, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, debuted Saturday morning. We’ll miss Harry—not only for his spellbinding adventures, but for all the cool gadgets holstered by he and his Hogwarts pals. Here’s the technology that us Muggles (Potter-speak for the nonmagical) want to get our hands on, plus when (or if) we’ll be able to. —Erin McCarthy

1. Invisibility Cloak (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)

Why We Want It Besides the fact that it would be supercool—and supereasy—to scare people? There are endless spy applications.

Can We Get It? Cloaking technology does exist—but it’s more like a shed than a cloak. A team of scientists from Duke University and Imperial Co]llege London created a “cloak” that deflects microwaves around an object and restores them on the other side. It can’t make an object vanish before a person’s eyes, but it’s a start. Researchers in Japan and DIYers have made inroads as well.

2. Flying Ford Anglia (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

Why We Want It Who wouldn’t want to rise above rush-hour traffic?

Can We Get It? You can own a flying car in just four short years—if you have $500,000 to spare and room in your backyard for a 35-ft. runway. The Moller M400 SkyCar is half-car, half-jet: At 8.5 ft wide, it’s road-worthy for short distances, and its 770-hp engine allows it to climb 6400 ft. per minute and go as fast as 365 mph—all while getting 20 mpg. Once the government certifies it as airworthy, the vehicle will head for commercial production, dropping the price tag 60 to 80 thousand and putting a headache-free commute within reach.

3. Apparition (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

Why We Want It It’s the magical way to teleport, and teleportation makes life easier.

Can We Get It? Scientists have been working on teleportation for decades, but disassembling matter and then reassembling it correctly in a different place is more complicated than it sounds; the most they’ve managed to teleport is a few photons over short distances. But a team at the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Quantum-Atom Optics has recently proposed a new technique that could teleport as many as 50,000 atoms. Their method disregards quantum entanglement—wherein two particles are linked, and any change to the state of one changes its twin—and instead uses what they call “classical teleportation,” where particles disappear entirely from one place and then appear somewhere else. The method is promising but, sadly, isn’t for Muggle or wizard use—it will only be used for transporting ultracold atoms. “We would like to market it—for teleporting Harry Potter’s magic, ultracold poison into the body of the enemy!” team leader Dr. Ashton Bradley says cheekily. “More seriously, commercialization is possible, probably in 10 to 20 years.”

4. Wand (All Potter Books)

Why We Want It To create something from nothing; to command things to come to us; to levitate our foes; the list goes on and on...

Can We Get It? Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as if we’ll be getting anything with the flick of a wand anytime soon. The slender, magical pieces of wood seem to be strictly science fiction. About the closest we’ll get is the WiiMote, which can be hacked to control things other than games, such as robots and DJ equipment. The only catch? Objects you’re trying to control need to be ready to receive the signal, which often means writing computer scripts and integrating Bluetooth. Plus, you can’t really shout out spells, which is half the fun of having a wand, anyway.

5. Time-Turner (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

Why We Want It Often there’s just not enough time in the day, and a time-turner would change that!

Can We Get It? Everyone from Einstein to Carl Sagan has weighed in on the possibility of time travel. Some scientists theorize that traveling faster than the speed of light could transport us to the past or the future, because time slows as it reaches the speed of light. Others see black holes, cosmic strings and wormholes (if they exist) as potential means of time travel. One thing’s for sure: A fashionable hourglass necklace isn’t going to do the trick. Regardless of how you slice it, we’re far from taking trips through time—if we can ever do it at all.