Topic: human

GTA IV wins game of the year at VGAs

December 15, 2008 by evl

I just got the game on friday but I see they have won the 2008 at this year's video game awards.

Check out the winners:

Best Shooter: Gears of War 2 (Epic Games)

Best Xbox 360 Game: Gears of War 2 (Epic Games)

Best Indie Game (voted by fans): World of Goo (2D Boy)

Big Name in a Game: Kiefer Sutherland (Call of Duty: World at War)

Gamer God Inductee: Will Wright

Best RPG: Fallout 3 (Bethesda)

Best Music Game: Rock Band 2 (Harmonix)

Best Soundtrack in a Game: Rock Band 2 (Harmonix)

Studio of the Year: Media Molecule (LittleBigPlanet)

Best PS3 Game: LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)

Best Driving Game: Burnout Paradise (Criterion)

Best Game Based on a Movie or TV Show: Lego Indiana Jones (Traveller's Tales)

Best Fighting Game: Soul Calibur 4 (Project Soul)

Best Multiplayer Game: Left 4 Dead (Valve)

Best PC Game: Left 4 Dead (Valve)

Best Portable Game: Professor Layton (Level 5)

Best Wii Game: Boom Blox (EA Casual)

Best Individual Sports Game: Shaun White Snowboarding (Ubi Montreal)

Best Female in a Game: Jenny McCarthy as Tanya in Red Alert 3 (EA Westwood)

Best Performance by a Human Male: Michael Hollick as Niko Bellic (Grand Theft Auto IV)

Best Performance by a Human Female: Debbie Mae West as Meryl Silverburgh (Metal Gear Solid 4)

Best Graphics: Metal Gear Solid 4 (Kojima Productions)

Best Original Score: Metal Gear Solid 4 (Kojima Productions)

Best Action Adventure Game: Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar Games)

Game of the Year: Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar Games)  

Congress of the people releases their policies

December 8, 2008 by evl

Blogging Essentials

September 30, 2008 by evl

The other day I had a post on HOW TO START BLOGGING and i thought it would be great to ad this post to that one. Today I would like to show you some blogging essentials. Blogging is fun but at the same time blogging can teach you a lot of great stuff. One of those things is management. A blog has to be managed, almost like a business. If you dont do certain things a blog will just go dry. And soon the blog that is left to survive on its own will just become more search engine clutter with no real humans behind the box. The Blogging essentials that I am writing about today are not all needed but they are great tools to have. And if you dont know about them all you might find a treasure between all these things. If you know of everything that is listed here, feel free to add something I have missed. Rank Rank is important both for advertisers and for your blog to grow. While you or I dont really care much about rank, it still is a factor when trying to get your blog to the point where you can make a living from blogging. As some of you might of notice, its not a as you imagined before you started blogging. Blogging is tough. At least that is what I think. Ranking also enables you to make more money. For instance: People with a Pagerank of 6 could easily ask a nice price for advertisers whereas blogs that have a pr1 or 2 would not make that much money. Ranks reflect your blog's community and traffic. Most of the time. One thing about blogging is that the better your rank the more traffic you get and the more traffic you get the better you will rank. Here are some places to check your rank or status: Alexa Old, belongs to Amazon if I am correct. Alexa is not as accurate as some would claim, nevertheless people still use it and if you rate very high (low) on Alexa you can get more money for advertising space. Some companies use Alexa ranks to choose if they want to buy or sell domains. Alexa rank is important for your blog even with it's inaccuracy. Pagerank Pagerank used to be the biggest way people would rank a site. But in recent months no one really cares about Pagerank, or at least know one I know including me. That is because they have changed the old realiable way it worked. I am guess it was a good thing since they are improving their search, but for me, watching my PR go up and down every month is just to annoying. Technorati Technorati is also a great ranking tool. Technorati is also well known, they trace a few million blogs all over the internet. If you make it to the top 100, you've basically made it as a blogger. I would'nt mind. But recently technorati removed all Wordpress 2.3.3 blog. Maybe not removed but they stopped indexing them because of the vulnerability in Wordpress 2.3.3. I think I lost my technorati rank as well. But they did it so people's blogs wont get hacked. Amatomu The reason I am putting in Amatomu is because I am a South African. Amatomu matters for South African bloggers because it shows you where and how you rate between South African bloggers. Compete Another ranking system. Wordpress Adman Adman is a great plugin for Wordpress. Adman enables you to insert Google Adsense or other code generated by PPC or affiliates into your blog posts and on the frontpage. Adman has three options, paste it in on the top of your posts in the middle and below. There is also a setting that enables you to have a ad in the first post of your blog on the front page as well. Adman works great with Wordpress 2.5 Related Posts The related Posts plugin is great to enable your readers to explore your blog more. Using it underneath your post or below the comments where they can see it will also increase your pageviews because they might just read more posts. Related Posts works great in Wordpress 2.5 Popularity Contest Many Wordpress themes need this plugin to display the popular posts on the right hand side of the blog. It enables your readers to see which posts are nice and those that other people have liked. Money Adsense Adsense is well known. You can make a lot of money using Adsense if you use it correctly. Adsense was started a few years ago by another guy and got bought by Google. That is why we now know it as Google Adsense. Just a bit of info. The most famous adsense format is the 300x250, it is said that is the adsense format people make the most money with. I have to agree. Although many bloggers do not like seeing Adsense on other blogs, it is still widely used. Some people might disagree. Chitika Chtiika is one of my favourite ways to make money online. They offer a lot of formats and things that you can use to make money. I think the most famous one is the linx code. Linx code is the one I like the most. They also have a referral program where you can refer people and friends to them. You get paid for everyone you refer to them. Smorty Smorty offers a lot of different affiliate banners to choose from. Smorty is another way of blogging and posting payed blog posts. A nice way to make some more money. Linkworth Linkworth has many, many options and ad formats to choose from. you can also do payed posts for Linkworth to earn extra cash from your blog. Seo Headspace2 Traffic Entrecard Entrecard is a great way to get people to come to your site. You will just have to use more methods of attraction than the Entrecard widget itself. Entrecard is great for sites that first start out. But one thing you have to keep in mind if you are using entrecard is Adsense. Adsense and Entrecard does not work well together. That is because a lot of people come to your site just to click, but that brings your revenue from Adsense down. Feedburner The reason this is under traffic is because I first wrote it. I guess feedburner can go under tools or community. Feedburner is a way to keep track of your feed statisctics and helps you optimize your content. You can also make money with your feed by embedding Adsense in your feed through Feedburner. Community Blogcatalog Blogcataglog is the bussiest blog community site I have found so far. On Blogcatalog you can get a widget to embed in your blog. You can also get a lot of traffic from Blogcatalog if used correctly. Mybloglog Mybloglog is also a blogging community site. Theme Getting a unique theme or making your own theme unique is very important for branding purposes. A great theme will help you make more money while giving your viewers some eye candy. This is obvious. Your blog has to stand out from the crowd and be unique. It should reflect the blogger's taste. Firefox Scribefire or Deepest Sender Stragedy Having a blogging stragedy (plan or whatever its called) will enable you to work towards a certain goal. Here are some stragedies in blogging: Linking and networking with other bloggers This is really important. Since most people reading blogs are bloggers themselves. We as bloggers need to network and help each other. Networking is the most important thing that will keep your blog going. After all, remember when you did your first blog, it felt so stupid because it felt like you were speaking to yourself. That's how I felt. Not networking would mean you basically blog on your own. Commenting Commenting to show others that you actually read their blogs and participate is actually part of networking. Commenting is participating in the blogging community. Commenting should be done with caution. You can delete a crap post but you cant delete a crap comment. Comment on as many blogs as you can BUT do it sincere and not just to get people over to your blog. Competition Running competitions on your blog is a great idea to get your blog out there. Read more here Learn Wikipedia You can learn a lot of blogging terms at wikipedia. Although you cant trust everything you read its still worth something. Problogger.net I guess everyone knows problogger but I have learned a few things on his site and its worth including. So there it is. A few things that could help you start with blogging or further your blogging career / hobby. If you liked this post please consider bookmarking this on Sphinn / Stumbleupon / Digg or any other site you use.

Things you need to make money online

September 8, 2008 by evl

I just thought of a few things needed to make money online and would like to share it. Patience Working on the internet takes time, you have to wait for affiliates to come back to you, you have to wait once you've signed up at a place for them to approve you, you have to wait for search engines to scan your site and then you even have to wait for the search engines to send traffic. (if you dont socialize). You have to wait for Google to give you a pagerank and then you have to wait for a Alexa rating to get more advertisers to make you wait more for the money you will get in 3 months time after you waited for the advertisers Waiting is part of the daily internet life. Especially in a country like South Africa where we have the worst internet connections in the world. Having a fast connection might help you a bit but you still need a lot of patience to be a full time money making blogger because things just dont happen overnight. Anyone can make money online if they have enough of this thing called patience. Most blogs only last 3 months because people dont have patience. There are so many examples why you need patience to make money online. Traffic Without traffic you might as well write a decent post on a piece of toilet paper and keep if for when you really need the toilet. Traffic is what drives money on the internet. The more traffic a site gets the more the site is worth. No traffic, no money. No matter what you have on your site, if you get traffic you can make money. Traffic is humans visiting your site. Not those nice people who leave you random links in your comment sections. No they are called bots. What you want is humans reading your content. And for that you need great content which I will come to later. Time Apart from patience you need time to write, socialize, comment, learn, research and once more write again, seo, analyze, get motivated. Domain Please get your own domain. Read this post why:------ Plan If you dont have a plan, you wont know what to do next. Where you are going with your blog is a important thing to know. If you dont know where you are going how can you get there? What is your target or if you plan making a living online, how do you plan on getting there? Stragedy Stragedy is different from plan. Stragedy involves planning with a roadmap, how will this be done? The plan is the path to the end result but you still need a stragedy to get there. Niche Having a niche gives you something to target as well as a reason to advertise. If you have no niche you cant really advertise and get your blog branded. You need a slogan that says: this is what I do and what this blog is about. Other bloggers Without other bloggers you will not make any money online. Networking with other bloggers helps your blog grow as well as their blogs. Networking is what makes blogging work, without this one thing blogging would be kind of dull. Content This will determine if you have a great blog or not. How you write it, how much time you put into your articles. Is it original? You need to make your content stand out from the rest. Having ordinary content will not give you a job on the internet. Having ordinary content will make your blog melt in with the rest of the crowd. It's not a bad thing but if you want to make a living from your blog you really do need original content. Endurance This is different than patience. To make money online you might have to struggle sometimes and even make no money at all. The thing that might make it work at the end is endurance. Keeping on when things are not going well with your blog is always a good idea. Design The design of your site matters. Are your ads well integrated? Can people find your rss button easy? Another thing that matters is how well your ads are camouflaged to not make your site cluttered. Your logo is also important for branding your site. Rankings Rankings do matter, this is because most affiliate companies use rankings to choose who they would go with. The better your rankings the more work you will get SEO Search engine optimization matter because that might be the only way people will find your site and also the only way to turn those visits in clicks on your ads. Knowledge and Passion I would love to write about Tech stuff because I really like gadgets and stuff like that. But the problem is my knowledge of certain things that I like is not enough to write articles about the certain topic that would stand out. Thus I would be able to blog about it but not make a living of it. So there might be more things, maybe I missed something. Feel free to add it in the comments. Thank you for reading.