Use of the program has a number of “cons”:

1. it’s a bit “Black Hat” in that the reader is unaware of it,
2. does it provide benefit to you or does it just slow the website,
3. is it fair to the visitor to possibly usurp an affiliate link from someone whom the reader would like to support?

On the positive side, however, there are some solid reasons to use it:

1. every browser has the ability to block cookies or tell the reader when a cookie is being written,
2. large businesses and websites of every size write cookies to visitor’s machines on a routine basis so it is a routine practice,
3. chances are that you have done some marketing to bring these visitors to your site – why should you not get the benefit of their affiliate purchases.

I’d like to know your opinion on this so please comment below. What I will do is on the 14th of March, I’ll draw a random commentator and send them a free license for this $27 WodPress plugin.

WordPress Unique (WP Unique) is a plugin for the open source blogging software available at WordPress.org. The normal sales price is $37 USD but you can get it off the Warrior Forum for $10 less. It installs with ease and has a number of options that give it a lot of flexibility. Its value to me, however, lies in its ability to make your content differ from that of others using the same materials (or even within your website or websites). WP Unique takes content and changes the letters to ASCII codes which show up to Google or other search engines as valid characters. The screenshots below show what I mean. The image on the left shows the text as it would appear to the reader. The one on the right shows a search engine view.

I have played with WP Unique on another site and was impressed with the content changing ability *but* was more impressed with how quickly the content was indexed by Google after I published. I got the article, rewrote portions of it, added it to the blog, selected the settings I wanted to have for the text and within 33 *minutes* of being published, the post was showing on Google.

There are two other features that make this plugin valuable:

• it contains an auto-spinner for your content which you can tailor for your needs and can spin content added to your site with “autoblogging” software
• and it gives you the ability to auto link certain keywords to your affiliate links, both in the posts and in the comments!

WP Unique is a pretty good deal for a wide range of users. The programmer has several videos showing what he has done with it on a couple of sites that are informative and will help you decide whether or not to add it to your blogging arsenal.

When the iPad was first announced, I wrote an email to my daughter (an illustrator whose husband is an illustrator and both of whom are rabid Mac-ites) and asked what market they were aiming at. I had hoped to start a conversation about it but my daughter just responded, “Kindle.” That’s where I think Apple’s problem with the iPad lies.

Remember the LISA? I do, it was among the first generation of graphically based interface machines. After selling only 100,000 units, Apple dropped the line in favor of the Mac XL. This was a wise move on Apple’s part but I have always wondered how that LISA community felt.

I owned one of the original iPod Shuffles. Actually, I owned three of them. The first two I owned (one of which was sent directly from Apple) were returned because they would not charge through a high speed USB port, which was on of their design features. On the third try, I got one that behaved about 90% of the time and the remainder of the time liked to crash and laugh at me. My wife finally broke down and bought me one of the next generation Shuffles that were in the inch-square format. I have to say that one finally lived up to the Apple billing.

And this is why I look at the iPad and scratch my head. Yeah, it looks neat and you can do finger-foo magic with it, but it only runs *one* app at a time? And the promo ads involved Apple engineers touting how it is going to change the face of computing? Hmm… I’ve heard that before.

Anyone own a Segway outside of DisneyWorld? Their designers were just as adamant about the ecological, people enhancing, gotta buy it goodness of the Segway (and it is a slick piece of gadgetry as I did get to ride one of the few I have seen – at DisneyWorld). But what else does the iPad do that will make it so much better than the other things in the Kindle market? Beats me….

I think the iPad should probably have been named the meToo….

When you run Instant Eyedropper it shows up in the system tray as a multi color target cursor. Move the pointer to the icon, press and hold the left mouse button, then move the cursor to the spot you want and you’ll get an enlarged view of the colors as seen below.

Release the mouse button and the color is copied to the clipboard. You can set the value returned to a number of formats although I find the hex value is all I use. Simple, free, run as you need it – what a deal!

One of the great things about WordPress is its flexibility. If you need it to do something (other than the dishes) chances are that there is a plugin to do it or somone that can write it. This flexibility is what turns it into a CMS.

Or, how many times have you had to ask for support and said “If I could just show them what it looks like!”

Or, how many times have you thought “Let me show someone what this program looks like”?