A lot of people right now are tired of their old BlackBerry storms because of the bugs that they have. So users, myself included, started to wonder “Is upgrading to the Storm 2 worth it?” My answer now is a big no!

I am now a big fan of the BlackBerry Storm vs. the iPhone for 2 reasons:

1. They now have support for BlackBerry Manager on Mac, which updates the system and Syncs it with your computer. (This has always been available for PC)

2. BlackBerry Storm updates are free!

Not to mention a lot of other functionality that the iPhone doesn’t have such as an actual pop-up menu and a back button.

So to get updated 5 for Storm, you just have to connect it to your computer and it works exactly like a Storm 2 would!

No purchase necessary. The only thing that is different from your old updated storm and the new Storm 2 is that yours does not have WiFi capabilities. Instead, you can just use the data plan that is included for all BlackBerry plans for internet, email, and other cool stuff.

To download the software, which includes updating and syncronizing capabilites, just visit the following link:

http://worldwide.blackberry.com/update/blackberrystorm.jsp

*Important: Make sure you write down the applications that you downloaded from app world first – those do not get backed up! You will also need to reinstall “App world” and you can back up information from applications individually (such as BlackBerry Messenger contacts)

Today is a happy day for me bacause I can finally sync Blackberry storm with mac and update to 5.0, getting rid of many glitches and bugs

Feel free to share your stories by replying below…

It seems what Kindle is now trying to do is completely blow away the competition, mainly the sony reader. Doing so is obviously the goal of any product launch, but in this case I think the unit itself will be the best of its kind. The only problem is the price – $489 to pre-order today, which seems a little pricey for me. For someone who reads all the time though, this may be a good investment.

Some of my favorite features are:

1. It’s looks great. At around 1/3 of an inch thick and a 9.7 inch screen, it is as close to reading a magazine as a device has been yet.
2. Global 3G wireless for free. Not only can you get instant access to books, but now you can get it in over 100 countries without having to seek out a wifi area or pay a monthly fee. (click here to see the coverage map)
3. Lots of Books wherever you go. This baby can carry up to 3,500 books now and you can read for up to 1 week without having to charge it.
4. Huge selection, little limitations. Because Amazon wants to promote the kindle, they will be constantly adding to their library of available books, magazines, and newpapers, currently nearing 400,000.

If you want to see more details and see the kindle dx pre-order page, click on the image below:

(or click here)

What do you think about the Kindle DX 9.7″? Comment below. Like the review? Please share…

So, there is a great solution, which lets you hide your email address in the form of a url, and its called src.im:

What scr.im does is create a page where it checks if the user is human before revealing the email address, therefore protecting against bots and many hackers.

See an example here to email me: http://scr.im/thewebleap (notice they give you a custom URL)

The best part about it is that its free, and it works well.
Just go to http://src.im to create your page and start protecting your email when you want to make it available for real humans online.

Enjoy!

An early web scoop claims that the following criteria will most likely be the major factors that will affect search engine rankings:

• Website speed: most websites that are indexed in Google’s search pages are quick in delivering content/images, so it’s no surprise that page load speed will be a deciding factor if your page will make it to the top of Google’s first-round draft picks.
• Broken links: just like the web is interconnected and interweaved, the Google crawler makes sure that the website is not only content rich, but also intact when it comes to links. It is a plus factor that all links are working properly, because not only do they affect your potential surge in search rankings, but also do they affect your visitors’ impression of the site.
• Bad neighborhoods: reputation is all-the-more important when it comes to getting Google’s attention. If your website is part of a spamming syndicate or hosts a few links that lead to those spam sites, don’t expect too much positive net reputation & site optimization. We do not know for a fact if a barrage of back links promoting your website would still work on the soon-to-be implemented algorithm Google has in store for its users. But just to be safe, regularly check the comments you receive on your website and make sure you’re not doing something dastardly, say for example posting useless content on a high-ranking website without taking into consideration the potential effect this will have on your website.
• The over-all quality of your website: Content is everything, experts say. If there’s one commonality we notice on high-ranking websites – it’s the overall content and layout of the website, which pleases our senses, that makes it stand out among others. Original content and SEO-optimized articles are the key factors that make a huge impact on search engine rankings. Too much clutter or widgets will only worsen the status of your site. The idea is as simple as this: write rich content, get rich results.

To be sure that you’re Caffeine-ready, make a checklist if you’ve accomplished the following tasks:

1. Check your comments and linkbacks for spam content/urls. Google does not like when one website promotes a spam site. Clean up on the content a make sure not a trace a of spam is in your website.
2. Refurbish the design if necessary. If your website is lacking the snazzy appeal top-ranking websites have, invigorate it by applying a neat-looking, fast-loading and user-friendly template. People like the minimalist and intuitive features of Twitter and Facebook – that’s the reason why they flock into these sites.
3. Google favors social bookmarking. If you’ve been missing out on the fact that most websites get much of their traffic driven by social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, Delicious, and Furl, guess what – it’s time to take the leap by using these bookmarking sites to your advantage. Not only will you get loads of traffic if the content your produce catches their attention, but also will you get to know more about how the web community works. There’s no end to the massive community social bookmarking sites produce.
4. If you’ve already done all of those listed above, remember that it is not enough that you follow protocol, don’t stop there… innovate. If there’s one thing both the average user and Google like about a website, it is always authentic and most often offbeat content.

What are your thoughts on Google Caffeine? Please reply below.

Also, I will be giving away a google wave invitation to a reader very soon, so keep your eyes out. (Subscribe if you’d like)
I will make a post for people with information.

So, now to the real content – how to add HTML to google wave posts.
I used this handy feature to add youtube video to a google wave.

What you do is…

1. Once you are in a wave blip, click the “add gadget by URL” button:
   
2. Than, in the popup window, type in the following URL:

   http://wave-ide.appspot.com/html.xml

   and click “Add”

3. Next, you should see a box in your wave that looks like:
   
4. Simply click on the “Edit” link and it will reveal an html editor:
   
5. Put in your HTML and click “view” – and you are done!
6. *For youtube videos, copy the “embed code” from the youtube page
   and than paste it into the HTML editor.

The one thing I don’t like about this that google should fix is that you have to remember and type in the widget URL every time.
To fix it, they can simply have a “recent widgets” in the popup for “Add widget by URL”.

What do you think? Any other good ideas for Me, Google and/or Wave specifically? Drop a comment.

P.S. For all the wavers out there who want to add me, just shoot me an email: kyle@thewebleap.com

Inbound marketing, for those who don’t know the term yet, is basically a way of marketing to have customers come to you instead of going out and bothering them. Folks, this is really big stuff. The book “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media)” (by the same people) goes into this much, much deeper. I am enjoying reading the book now and will post a review when I finish reading it. For all the notes I’m taking, who knows when I’ll finish. Its got great concepts, but also great practical tips and actions to take.

Because we are all becoming increasingly skilled at tuning out the old forms of outbound marketing, inbound marketing is a new spin on a timeless concept that is now more relevant because of all the new forms of information on the web.

Hub Sport, who is the company behind IMU (Inbound Marketing University) have a couple great videos on youtube, but here is one that I saw and loved. If anyone from Hubspot is reading this, much love you guys from a fellow massachussian (?) Great job.

P.S. For people interested in the IMU, just check out InboundMarketing.com and sign up for the free video courses. I also highly reccomend reading the book (click here to get it on Amazon). Also, the woman singing in this, Hubspot’s Rebecca Corliss, is the host for all of the videos in IMU, so its even funnier seeing her in both completely different modes.

So what did you think of the video? the book? Inbound marketing in general?
Please leave a reply below, I wanna hear what you have to say! (and answer any questions you have)

Here is a screenshot of the slider: (pretty nice eh?)

I created a slightly modified version (free, of course) with notes in the code to guide you in different ways.

Some of the features you will find:

1. A cleaned up scripts.js file
2. Easy-to-understand notes in various files to guide in customization.
3. I changed some the css id names, etc for increased integrability for an html or blog page
   (f.e. removing the body css and dispersing necessary attributes to other classes)
4. 2 different folders: 1 for the default slider with notes, the other is ready to integrate into a page.

Big credit and a shout-out goes to Ravindra from dream css for making the original slider. We love it! I just wanted to answer some of the questions in the files and clean it up a bit to make it easier to use for people.

In the notes, I answer questions like:

1. How to change the dimensions of the slider without loosing any functionality i.e. gaps, etc.
2. How to adjust the black navigation bar properly and change its size
3. How to change the delay between transitions
4. How to change the speed of the transitions

And I made it all much easier to understand!

Download Kyle’s Beautiful jQuery Slider

So, If you have any other insight on this, or comments, etc.
Please reply below, because I wanna hear it!

These timeless “laws” are proven principles in business, and can serve you as a stepping stool to success. This post is inspired by a post by Stephen Pierce, an inspirational internet marketer with a decade or more under his belt.

So, without further ado, here are 18 laws of business success:
Law #1: Always target a niche market. (If you want to get rich target a niche, if you want to go broke, market to all the folks.)
Law #2: Identifying a problem in that niche market is priority #1.
Law #3: Creating a desired solution for that problem is priority #2.
Law #4: Delivering that solution for a profit to your niche market is priority #3 (therefore being authentic and different)
Law #5: Gain confidence by delivering the solution you promised.
Law #6: Establish your authority and brand through originality i.e. “what are you best in the world at?”
Law #7: Innovation surpasses imitation (as they say, “imitation is the greatest form of flattery,” not success
Law #8: Give what you have– then give some more. (Prove yourself)
Law #9: Never greet a new lead/user/subscriber with a message asking for money.
Law #10: Don’t be deceitful, devious or dishonest as it only leads to disaster. Be truthful to be received as trustworthy.
Law #11: Boldness and brilliance will break your income records by using the freshness of your individuality.
Law #12: It’s about the targeted traffic conversion, not the targeted traffic collecting.
Law #13: Implementation is everything. If you don’t implement what you know, it’s like you never knew it all. (Knowing is not proven in what you say, but proven in what you do)
Law #14: Without relationships, there are no exchanges of products or services for money.
Law #15: All success, accomplishments and achievements are found on roads that travel through other people.
Law #16: When you screw other people, you have screwed yourself.
Law #17: Never quit on something that you believe is worth it. (Evaluate if something is worth doing, than see it through.)
Law #18: Take the time to nurture leads, but also take time to nurture new customers, and always follow up.

So do you have a “Law #19″ to add to the list?

…Or do you have your own laws that govern how you live and do business? Maybe you have a success story or related insight.

If so, I would simple love to hear it from you.