APOD in use

Having using NASA's astrology picture of day since 12 years ago. It seems quite updated with small but handy widgets and now have android live wallpaper. One good thing is that you can click on the picture and see description. Trying today and see how good is it.

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Almost every second German Internet users visiting online gaming sites - comScore, Inc.

Almost every second German Internet users visiting online gaming sites - comScore, Inc.

Top 10 Online gaming sites on the number of total hours per month * June 2011 Total Germany, Age 6 + Source: comScore Media Metrix
	Total hours per month (in thousands)	Visitors Total (in thousands)	% Reach
Games - Online Gaming	44 440	25 180	45.5%
Bigpoint	7422	2449	4.4%
InnoGames GmbH	4110	1050	1.9%
Imperial Games Ltd.	2532	3554	6.4%
Gameforge Sites	2065	1693	3.1%
Midasplayer.com Ltd..	2045	990	1.8%
Spil Games	1893	3503	6.3%
GameDuell	1512	626	1.1%
upjers GmbH & Co. KG	1423	1367	2.5%
EA Online	1347	2243	4.1%
Playa Games GmbH	1343	413	0.7%

* Does not include access from public computers - such as Internet cafes - or access via mobile phones or PDAs.

Share of online gaming via Mobile users monthly average Q2 / 2011 Total Germany, Age 13 + Source: comScore MobiLens
	% Of all mobile phone users	% Of smartphone users
Used mobile device for playing	25.1%	38.7%
Play preinstalled games	16.1%	17.1%
Downloading a game played	11.1%	24.8%
Browser used to play	1.3%	2.8%

Virtual Goods Purchases Rise for Certain Gamers - eMarketer

Virtual Goods Purchases Rise for Certain Gamers - eMarketer

Social games, which initially drove this trend, have stalled in 2011, at least from the standpoint of median spending on virtual goods. PlaySpan and VGMarket estimated that median spending in player-to-player transactions dropped to $20 in July 2011 from $50 a year earlier, and to $20 in third-party transactions from $30 in 2010.

Although these drops are significant, they do not necessarily indicate that overall virtual goods spending is declining. eMarketer estimates that US virtual goods spending in social games will grow to $792 million in 2012, from $653 million in 2011.

10 AdWords Tips to Improve CTR, Improve Conversion and Drive Down Cost 68

10 AdWords Tips to Improve CTR, Improve Conversion and Drive Down Cost
By R P Chapman

In the current economy the pressure’s on to make our marketing budgets go further. You’ve already cut back everywhere you can think, but those sales targets aren’t getting any smaller. What else can you do to improve the ROI on your spend?

It’s time to look again at your AdWords campaign. The search market is competitive, ever changing, and your best opportunity for maximising the limited budget you have left to get the most sales you possibly can.

Considering the volatility of search, there’s always something you can do to improve your AdWords campaigns so you should consider these tips not only as a project to help you through a tough economic climate, but as an ongoing strategy for improving your budget ROI.

Top 10 AdWords Tips

• Create Narrowly Focussed Ad Groups
  Particularly relevant when working on long tail terms, make sure your ad groups are narrowly focussed with each one being variations on a single keyword.

• Test Conversion Before Making Volume Changes
  Use split testing (where you run the changed copy and the original in parallel) to make sure changes you’ve made are effective before rolling the change out where you have high volumes.

• Keep Relevance High Through the Journey
  Make sure the Keyword searched for is highly relevant throughout the journey from search, to Ad, to Landing page so that the visitor feels more like they’ve found specifically what they were searching for, improving the possibility that they’ll convert greatly.

• Don’t Follow the Crowd
  Just because everyone else is using the same tactic, doesn’t mean they’re right. If everyone else is advertising on price (as an example), test something different. Using something like a discount percentage or offer of free delivery will make your ad stick out from the crowd. Try a few variables (including a priced one in this example) and see which is really the most effective for you.

• Continually Develop and Test New Ideas
  Even if you’ve found the perfect Ad for today doesn’t mean it will still be tomorrow. The market moves on, competitors copy each other, change their tactics, and so do the searchers. A good example of this might be the very poorly distributed Nintendo WII games. When there’s stock everywhere you’ll find these games advertised on price. When they’re scarce they’re advertised on availability. And so it follows with all products that are subject to supply and demand.

• Use Negative Keywords Effectively
  Not used anywhere near as much as they should be, negative keywords can really push up your CTR by getting non customer searchers out of the mix right from the outset. An example here might be setting a negative on “free” if you’re trying to sell an e-book, getting rid of all those people looking for free e-books who were never going to buy your product anyway.

• Keep Your AdWords Account Clean
  You really need to analyse and monitor your AdWords account on an ongoing basis to get the best performance out of it. If it’s awash with thousands of redundant keywords, spotting the things you need to concentrate on is harder. Get rid of zero impression keywords regularly to ensure you stay focussed on the data that matters.

• The Misspelled Gold Mine
  Misspelled words can be a dream to your CTR scores. The competitive index of misspelled words is almost always lower than the correctly spelled version so you should really try and get every variant you can find. Look out for easy tricks like no spacing between words, common keyboard typos, etc.

• Consider the Total Cost of Your Ad
  You should never forget your ad spend contributes directly to your cost of sale and if you’re forced to bid too much to get in the position you want to be, then it’s time to cut that ad and try some different strategies. Don’t lose sight of the profitability.

• Continually Optimise Your Ad Copy
  How your ads are written is vitally important to how well they’ll convert and is a topic in its own right. See the related Writing Killer Adwords Ads for much more detail on this subject.

These AdWords tips should be used regularly to keep on top of your AdWords campaigns, so it’s worth revisiting them often to make sure you’re really getting the very most you can from your work here.

Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites

Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites

Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites on the Web

Source: www.articleforfree.com

What are social bookmarking sites? Basically, these are sites that allow users to post their favorite sites, using tags (or keywords) to categorize and organize them, then other users can take these bookmarks and add them to their own collection or share them with even more users. Here are top 10 social bookmarking sites on the Web - the sites that consistently deliver some of the best content you'll want to share, discover, and store.

1. del.icio.us

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site that has rapidly taken off even more in popularity since being purchased by Yahoo. I use del.icio.us probably the most out of all these top picks, particularly to post interesting sites that I've found around the Web. I also subscribe to quite a few del.icio.us tags, such as popular and reference, and I get all the sites tagged with these keywords in my RSS reader of choice, Bloglines.

2. Digg.com

Digg is social bookmarking and social networking gone a little crazy due to the fact that anyone can submit a Digg (site), and then anyone can comment on those same Diggs. For me the most interesting feature of Digg has to actually be the comments on the sites and stories, since the Digg community is not shy about letting folks know how they feel about a particular Digg. Primarily focussed on geeky, technology-type items.

3. Reddit

Reddit is a social bookmarking Web site that works much like Furl and del.icio.us: you register a username and password, and then start submitting and sharing your bookmarks. Reddit is similar to del.icio.us in that users are encouraged to vote on the links and stories that they feel are deserving of being in the top dog spot: it’s kind of a popularity contest, so to speak.

4. Furl

Furl gives users the ability to save copies of any Web page, search within your own personal archive of Web pages, and share what you find. People use Furl to create their own personal shopping lists, real estate directories, job searches, student research papers, etc. This may just sound like a fancy way of saying bookmarks; but the thing about Furl is that you can access it from any computer, which means that your Favorites will go with you.

5. Clipmarks

With Clipmarks, you can clip the best parts of web pages. Whether it's a paragraph, sentence, image or video, you can capture just the pieces you want without having to bookmark the entire page.

6. StumbleUpon

The beauty of StumbleUpon, to my mind: you are able to take advantage of a vast network of dedicated Web searchers who are finding utterly brilliant sites and sharing them with you. I do have to warn you, though – StumbleUpon is an incredibly addicting way to search the Web. I found myself up till 1:30 AM one weekend, blearily clicking the Stumble! Button over and over again, because the quality of the sites are just so amazing; you just keep on coming across stuff that instantly merits a bookmark of your own.

7. Newsvine

At Newsvine, you can read stories from established media organizations like the Associated Press as well as individual contributors from all around the world. Placement of stories is determined by a multitude of factors including freshness, popularity, and reputation. Contribution is open to all, and editorial judgement is in the hands of the community.

8. Mixx

Mixx offers up an eclectic mix of all sorts of bookmarkable content; anything from videos to news to popular stories can be found here. Just pick a category and you'll be able to find lots of stuff that might merit a bookmark of your own.

9. Diigo

Diigo is one of my newest favorite Web tools. Not only can you use Diigo to save your favorite Web bookmarks, yalso ou can use Diigo to put sticky notes on websites, highlight stuff you like, comment, and more.

10. Propeller

The way Propeller works is very similar to other social bookmarking sites such as Digg or del.icio.us. Users find stories, submit them, and other Propeller users can vote and comment on those stories, with the most popular stories rising to the top.

CHART OF THE DAY: Lunchtime Is The New Primetime

CHART OF THE DAY: Lunchtime Is The New Primetime

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What is Social Enterprises

Instead of establishing a NGO, my friend Boom build a social enterprises easily.

What is Social Enterprises? Wikipedia rocks again:

Social enterprises are social mission driven organizations which trade in goods or services for a social purpose. Their aim to accomplish targets that are social and environmental as well as financial is often referred to as having a triple bottom line. Social enterprises are profit-making businesses set up to tackle a social or environmental need. They often use blended value business models that combine a revenue-generating business with a social-value-generating structure or component.

Rather than maximising shareholder value, their main aim is to generate profit to further their social and environmental goals. Therefore some commentators describe them as 'not-for-profit' as their profits are not (at least primarily) distributed to financial investors. Others dislike the term as it suggests they have an unbusinesslike attitude.

about TBL triple bottome line: people, planet, profit
In John Elkington 's 1998 book Cannibals with Forks: the Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business, TBL means economic, ecological and social.