Vladimir Prelovac

Announcing seamless Yahoo News integration with a new WordPress plugin

Vladimir — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:16:18 +0000

Did you know that Yahoo news actually support a news feed, very much similar to the Google News feed that can help your articles pop in Yahoo! News?

Well I didn't either until couple of days ago and that why I am soon releasing a WordPress plugin which will allow you to automatically create Yahoo! News compatible feed, and all you will have to do is add the feed to your Yahoo SiteExplorer account.

Yahoo and Bing Webmaster Tools

Vladimir — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:47:51 +0000

If you are a webmaster you probably heard of Google Webmaster Tools, a centralized solution for managing your sites in Google's index.

Did you know that both Yahoo and Bing have their own versions called Yahoo SiteExplorer and Bing Webmaster Central.

With about 30% of search queries going to these two it's a large portion of search market that you should not neglect. Besides you will gain new information about your sites from the perspective of these two giants.

Traffic is not valuable by itself says World’s most powerful Newsmaker

Vladimir — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:30:52 +0000

In a recent interview Rupert Murdoch, the owner of most of western-world's influential media, gave some interesting insights in how his media empire considers totally de-indexing their sites from Google in order to make more paid subscribers.

What caught my attention was his statement that there is not enough advertisement in the whole world to make all websites profitable, and that a subscription based model is much better source of revenue in the long run. RM is long enough in the business and the man behind world's most powerful media, so although not an Internet marketing expert he nails the point many fail to see.

I often hear that millions of visits are the prime goal for many webmasters, in contrast to websites which are able to monetize couple of visits a day into millions of yearly revenue.

To the reporter question 'isn't Google also helping the news website by sending free search visitors?' RM clearly says:

"What's the point of having someone coming occasionally after they see a headline in Google [...] we would rather have fewer people coming, but pay!"

Here is the link to the whole interview from Sky News.

The Venus Project

Vladimir — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:15:51 +0000

Spreading the word for Venus Project.

Jacque Fresco Lecture

Zeitgeist: Addenum and Zeitgeist Movement

Venus project raises the question about sustainability and offers a different view on the future.

Heard this the other day: doctors in ancient China very actually paid by the number of healthy patients they had, not the sick ones as it is today. Most important pillars of society are all upside down today. Military is paid for wars, not for sustaining peace. What if tomorrow fireman are paid by the number of fires they extinguish. What do you think will the number of fires go up or down?

33 years old – seems about right

Vladimir — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:00:29 +0000

Today I am turning 33, glad to say relaxed and happy. I am in my house on Island of Brac, making final preparations for the olive picking due probably on Wednesday. The weather is great for this time of the year, and I spent whole day yesterday swimming in the sea.

Ther are some more good things about this year:

I published the book on WordPress Plugin Development in February
Founded Cleveritics.com, the next generation web-analytics
Finished the training for the pilot license (PPL)

When I look ahead I see a year full of interesting things. My startups will either work or not and there are so many things I'd like to dedicate my energy to. Balancing the work with life, need for travel and sports will be a delicate challenge.

Office stress

Vladimir — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:11:09 +0000

You know the days when you are fed up with everything and are just ready to pop?

Are cubicles humane?

Tip for improving bounce rate: Ad-free homepage

Vladimir — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:13:17 +0000

Here is a tip for improving the bounce rate on all kind of sites, but I think one that online newspapers can use the most.

If you would like to improve bounce rate, have higher number of page-views, improved visitor engagement and thus increased advertising revenue the single most effective thing you can do is actually very easy to achieve.

Remove advertisements from your home page.

Think about it. Does a visitor coming to your home page want to see ads or what your site has to offer?

For most of the time home page is not a major source of revenue anyway, so why force ads on it? It's the inner pages where visitors land through search engines and referrals that earn most of the money. But if they ever go to your home page you better make it stand out.

This is true especially for online newspaper. If I go to a home page filled with ads (and not to mentioned the worse kind of all - animated ads) I will have trouble reading headlines and probably will not bother.

Ad free homepage will help your site look more professional and engage visitors with a minimal or no loss to revenue.

Online Startup Idea: A Worthy Photo Editor

Vladimir — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:55:16 +0000

I needed a simple photo manipulation the other day. Just to cut two parts of the image and bond them together.

It turns out that none of the seven (!) online photo editing tools I tried can perform this simple operation. And not to mention preserving transparency on the image.

Also while I am at it, it seems they all have a very serious issue with the business model. They are all free but then rotate ads as you work instead.

Which is totally counter-productive and annoying for the user, who is already annoyed buy the lack of basic operations like copy and paste.

Honestly, just make a worthy tool, with a small price tag and watch the money roll in.

How to get images from posts (and videos)

Vladimir — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:08:39 +0000

Post thumbs on your home page or category archives look very snazzy.

Here is a function you can put into your theme functions.php and call it in your index or archive templates, to show the thumbnail image extracted from the post.

This is a quick and simple hack. The function will just get the url of the image, or in case you use Smart Youtube plugin the representing image of the video. That means you still need to resize it with CSS or create and save thumbnail. WordPress 2.9 will include a function for this but it won't retrieve youtube thumbnails.

function get_image($text)
{
 
$imageurl="";
preg_match('/<\s*img [^\>]*src\s*=\s*[\""\']?([^\""\'>]*)/i' ,  $text, $matches);
$imageurl=$matches[1];
 
if (!$imageurl)
{
 preg_match("/([a-zA-Z0-9\-\_]+\.|)youtube\.com\/watch(\?v\=|\/v\/)([a-zA-Z0-9\-\_]{11})([^<\s]*)/", $text, $matches2);
 $youtubeurl = $matches2[0];
 if ($youtubeurl)
    $imageurl = "http://i.ytimg.com/vi/{$matches2[3]}/1.jpg"; 
 }
return $imageurl;
}

What can we learn from those 100 yrs old

Vladimir — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:59:11 +0000

Don't rely on medicine! I never ever heard a 100 yrs old claiming they did it because of medicine or drugs. Always without exception it will be something related to their lifestyle or food. And it took some time until that fact crystallized.

Today we are often convinced that no matter what kind of (unhealthy) lifestyle we live, there will be always some kind of miracle medicine to take care of no matter how badly messed up we are. Ironically or sarcastically these messages are sent by those who are selling the drugs.

Think about this. If you are in your twenties or thirties now, and you already have some kind of medical condition, what do you think that will look like by the time you reach your fifties? Sixties? Seventies?? That won't be pretty, unless you do something about it now.

Change your lifestyle. Eat healthier. Don't get angry over small things. Laugh. And don't delay any of those.

Selling my Car: Audi S2

Vladimir — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:26:59 +0000

It's been a fun and exciting ride (too exciting at moments) but it is time to let go if it.

I am selling a 1991 Audi S2, four wheel drive coupe, with leather interior and 350 BHP. It goes like crazy and is a real beauty on the streets.

Here are the details of the ad on mobile.de.

I am changing countries soon so I need to sell it by December. Hope it finds a good home.

How to get started with Internet marketing

Vladimir — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:28:27 +0000

'I want to try this whole Internet thing everyone is talking about. How do I get started ?' - I got asked this question by friends over and over again.

I have a ready answer so I thought I should put it down on paper.

Read How I Made a Successful Website in only 4 months a booklet by Randy Brown. Easy to follow information, my all time favorite first read about starting with Internet marketing.
Check out Thirty Day Challenge - Very informative, loaded with information, so be prepared to spend a lot of time there.
Get into the right mindset. Read some good books about understanding money handling skills. 'Richest Man in Babylon' and 'Rich dad, poor dad' come to mind.
Listen to this interview. It's between two successful Internet marketeers and helps understand the proper mindset. Disregard all other marketing talk and hype for now ;)
And most important of all - Stop reading, start doing!

WordPress Theme Flexibility with Dynamic Sidebars

Vladimir — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 06:42:00 +0000

Dynamic sidebar is a name for an area in your theme that can accept widgets.

Perhaps wrongfully called 'sidebar', it can be referenced anywhere allowing you great flexibility with your theme. Here is the example of available widget areas in a fully implemented dynamic sidebar setup.

Registering dynamic sidebars where you want them

The idea is to think of areas in your theme where you want to be able to easily use the functionality of widgets. Prime candidates are usually footer, single post (before and after), sometimes even header.

Next step is to register the sidebar. Let's say we want to create a dynamic widget area before your posts. Usually you will add something like this to your functions.php

register_sidebar(array(
 'name' => 'Single Top',
 'id' => 'single-top',
 'before_widget' => '',
 'after_widget' => "
",
 'before_title' => "",
 'after_title' => ",
 ));

Then open single.php and somewhere at the top of your post loop (before call to the_content() ) add:

 if ( is_sidebar_active('single-top') ) {
 echo '' ;
 dynamic_sidebar('single-top');
 echo '
' ;
} ?>

That's all !

Now you have a dynamic area at the beginning of your post, where you can add as many widgets as you'd like.

You can register any amount of dynamic sidebars in this way.

Life Lesson Quotes

Vladimir — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:36:48 +0000

Live not one's life as though one had a thousand years, but live each day as the last.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.
Oscar Wilde

The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
Robert Byrne

Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin.
Grace Hansen

Life is a long lesson in humility.
James M. Barrie

Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.
Will Rogers

There are no mistakes or failures, only lessons.
Denis Waitley

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
Bill Cosby

Whenever you can, trade money for time.
Vladimir Prelovac

Microsoft vs Google – Bing, LookingGlass, what’s next?

Vladimir — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:00:54 +0000

When people think about Internet they think about dominance of one company - Google. Like it or not, Google currently controls search, and with it the big portion of Internet revenue cake.

However, compared to Microsoft, Google is still relatively small, albeit growing at a faster pace. Here is the revenue chart of two companies.

Fact is that Microsoft has been relying on sales of it's two main products Windows and Office for too long time. Their attention finally shifted to Internet and the first major product launched this year was a new search engine, followed by a big Microsoft-Yahoo deal.

Today Microsoft announced LookingGlass, Social Media Analytics product which will aggregate feeds from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and other social media sites and provide analytics. Looking Glass will be browser-based and powered by Microsoft’s Silverlight, another web technology they are pushing. It shows how actively Microsoft engages with leading trends on the Internet establishing it's position ahead of the competition.

Google has some of the best web services around but they are not perfect, especially in those that bring most revenue. For example, Adwords and Adsense work almost as two independent companies withing Google and you can not transfer funds from one account to another. Adsense works only on CPC basis which leaves a lot of space for a strong CPM based content network, which many advertisers would prefer.

It will be very interesting watching the battle of two giants in the near future, Google having the advantage of home ground, and Microsoft with longer product experience and insane marketing and development budgets.