One-hundred specially branded, promotional Simpsons Movie branded Xbox 360s are due to hit our high-streets in the next few weeks, in promotion of the July 27th launch of the Simpsons Movie. The limited-edition, bright yellow consoles are expected to be placed in shopping malls and other major outlets, hyping up the movie’s launch. It’s unclear what kind of agreement has been worked out between 20th Century Fox and Microsoft, but we’re guessing there’s been quite alot of moolah involved. I’m open to speculation on how many weeks it’ll be before one of these yellow beauties/beasts ends up for sale on eBay. Care to place your bets? via Reg.

‘Just’ browsing around the Sedo marketplace today proved more eventful than usual, with the discovery of a couple of golden domains that are worth more bang than they look. My top few picks?

NewbieBlogging.com (ProBlogger killer? Darren - watch out!)

FashionSho.ws (Fancy domain, with an almost certain long-lasting value for only $250!)

VD3.com (Not a clue what it stands for, but heck. We all know just how rare 4-character domains are, so a sub-$200 3-character domain can’t be all that bad, can it?)

Sold.TV (The online TV market is booming, especially with the recent popularity of Joost. This could be one domain to watch out for!)

Li.com (LI is the most populated Island in the USA, and also the world’s most common surname, with 8% of the Chinese population registered under it! Averaging over 12,000 unique, direct visitors a month, this site is one heck of an opportunity. Don’t expect it to come cheap though, with over 111 bids having already been decined. Two-letter domains, aside from being practically extinct, are worth more money than the road you live on. The net is one wild place.)

Bit random and off-topic, but I like to keep you posted.

Related Sites: BizWiki UK

It’s great to see something nice coming out of the Sony HQ for once. Hidden beneath mounds of unwatned PS3s, unsold Blu-Ray players, and stacks of over-priced Blu-Ray discs, it appears that Sony haven’t completely abandoned their ‘quality’ brand name, with news of the Sony Ericsson P1. The P1 is reportedly set to be Sony’s new flagship business mobile handset with wider keys than previous models (less strain on big thumbs and tired eyes), a nicely specced 3.2-megapixel camera and support for not only UMTS, but WiFi 802.11b high speed connectivity aswell, in amongst a whole range of new features.

So what are these flash new gizmos packed into the P1 which makes it worth my while, to write about? To begin with, the Sony P1 gets a sleek brand-new 2.6″ QVGA ‘transflective TFT display’ which will make both low-light and bright-light conditions much easier to work in (a must for the travelling businessman). The 3.2-megapixel camer has a new built-in auto-focus feature that can conveniently be used to scan and collect information from anything from business cards, to name-badges, and import the collected data straight into the ‘contacts application’, presumably designed to sync seamlessly with computer contact management programs, too. A whole bunch of music file formats are supported, along with TV streaming and a built-in RDS capable FM receiver, making the P1 one heck of a fancy ‘business toy’. A single pair of wired headphones are included too, wrapping up the package nicely. Luckily, (unlike many other bundled headphones) the P1 seems to have kept in-line with it’s current feature-set by promising a good quality set of headphones as opposed to the usual bundled plastic-crap that’s so popular amongst the big manufacturers nowadays.

Highlights
- Microsoft Office file format support
- VoIP calling
- Jog-dial (navigation aid).
- Opera 8 & RSS reader pre-installed.
- Freely downloadable picture blogging application available.

The Sony Ericsson P1 is set to go on sale during Q3 of this year in selected marketets, but pricing remains unconfirmed as of yet. Hardly an iPhone killer just yet, but I’d put money on this baby to go far.

You guys know me by now… I’m a bit of an interview freak. Having only just been accepted into both ReviewMe and Text-Link-Ads, I jumped at the chance to get a hold of Patrcik Gavin and managed to squeeze an interview with him. Having spoken to Patrick a few times - I can tell you that he’s a really cool guy, who sure as anything knows his stuff. But then again - I’d be worried if he didn’t… So here it is!

Hey Patrick, it’s an honour to have you with me today at TechZi. Can you introduce yourself to everyone out there, who might not know you at present?

- David, thanks for the opportunity. Sure, my name is Patrick Gavin and I am the President of Text-Link-Ads.com and ReviewMe.com

Great - so how long have you been in SEO, and when specifically, did you start Text-Link-Ads?

- I got into pay per click management and SEO in 2001 and it morphed into Text-Link-Ads.com in 2003 and that became my sole focus.

What are some of the more creative uses of TLA? For example, have you seen any buyers of adverts using them to promote their affiliate links in order to get higher rankings in the search engines for a specific product phrase?

- TLA is used to promote a very wide range of products and services. That is the great thing about the product, there is no limit to what keywords you can focus on. Some of the more successful campaigns I have seen is when our advertisers deep link into specific sub pages on their websites with very specific keywords.

What do you have to say to people who consider the buying and selling of links ‘blackhat’? For example, Matt Cutts, a Google employee recently stated on his blog that Google would be cracking down on the buying and selling of links. Do you think in the long-run, that sites using this method of promotion might be eventually blacklisted entirely from Google’s rankings? Will we perhaps see other search engine companies follow suit? Has Google perhaps gone too far? The way I see it, Google is asking webmasters to stab their mates in the back and become informants of paid links. Asking site-owners to rat each other out. But enough of my speculation… What are your thoughts?

- At TLA we have always pushed our ads a dual benefit product. An ad that can send targeted traffic and help your natural search engine rankings. Our publishers have full editorial control and we encourage them to only accept relevant advertisers. Our advertisers want to buy from relevant sites so the marketplace seems to police itself nicely. At the end of they day if our publishers are selling links that are relevant to their audience and
sending our advertisers targeted traffic then we feel we are providing a great service. My opinion is the search engines are looking to devalue sites selling ads for PageRank benefit only, ie links to unrelated sites. That is not our goal here at TLA.

In recent months, you launched popular sponsored reviews service for bloggers, ReviewMe.com. Since then, the service has been a massive success. What do you think the main reasons for this have been? The fact that TLA is already a strong franchise for which the service can be associated with, or simply because ReviewMe offers a more unique twist to Sponsored Blog Reviews than the other services, like PayPerPost, currently competing for the No. 1 spot?

- There is not doubt we had a nice head start because of the great blogs that were already participating in TLA. ReviewMe.com also got some great press out of the gate that really fueled growth. We did launch with a unique twist of a premium only marketplace of blogs that advertisers could browse to purchase a review off specific relevant sites. This was different from our competitor’s marketplace of advertiser offers at the time. We have since launched an advertiser offer based marketplace in addition to our premium blog marketplace.

What have you got planned for the future? Will expanding existing ventures be important in your long-term success online, or is the net changing so rapdily, that we need to be on constant watch, looking for new innovations?

- We are always innovating here. That is the only path to continued growth that we see. Just in the last two weeks we launched Post Level TLA’s so our advertisers could sponsor single popular posts on our publisher’s blogs and we launched our new ReviewMe advertiser offer marketplace. Stay tuned for more new products and features in 2007 for sure.

Some would say that you ‘reinvented the wheel’ when it comes to SEO. Have you got any top-tips for anyone hoping to achieve higher search engine rankings?

- Well links are still the key to top rankings but no one should rely solely on buying links as their strategy to achieve this. Buying links is a great supplement but creating great content is still the best bet for a continual stream of inbound links.

What do you have to say on the ‘Quality Vs. Quantity’ linkback theory? For example… What would be more important to you? A single PR5 linkback or 5 PR1s?

- I prefer a higher number of links from unique domains versus a single higher quality link.

I actually find that very interesting, considering the past research dug up my algorithm diggers that hints towards a single quality link boost rankings more. Anyhow… It just goes to show what a complex business SEO is. What challenges do you expect the SEO industry will have to face in these coming years?

- I think it’s the same challenge the SEO industry has faced the last few years… it gets more and more competitive every year. There are new websites created every day but still the same number of results on page one
of the search engines.

Has Text-Link-Ads ever been forced to reject advertiser’s placements? Have people ever attempted to ‘game’ the system - and bought phrases unrelated to the website they’re linking to?

- Definitely but it is usually our publishers who police this for us as they have editorial control to approve or deny any link before it is publisher on their website.

Outside of SEO, have you ever really had much success on earning an online income? Affiliate programs perhaps? If so, could you tell us a little more about how you went about doing that and what it took you to achieve that?

- Yes. I have personally had success with some e commerce sites on the side. My tip would be focus on a niche.

Finally - before you go… Will you be buying a Text-Link-Ad from TechZi.net?

- I will have our sales team push your site a little harder to our advertisers, will that work?

Great stuff, Patrick! Anyhow - that just about wraps it up. Thanks again for the opportunity!

Stocks. Dull? Definitely. Worth it? If you know how to play the game right… Thr problem? I for one, haven’t the foggiest ideas which stocks will boom and which will plummet. Others seem to get it all right. For example, just this morning, Nate was telling me how earlier last week, his business partner (who’s a professional money-man by trade) told Nate to go and invest in Delta Airlines. What did Nate do? Like most of us out there, he let the opportunity pass. Six days, and 2000% later, Nate is wishing he HAD invested. The solution?

Stock-predicting robots! If you thought you sucked… It’s official - you do now! Developed by the Lehman Brothers and created using a “top-secret” artificial intelligence system, these robots are set to hit the stock world by storm. The rich get richer. Us guys? Well - it makes a good read. But these robots - they go one step futher, ‘taking into account the emotions of the traders’. Scary stuff. Can you imagine it? “Greed 2.0″

According to the Lehman Bros, trading will be made easier and the market more stable, with computers ruling are money-markets too. Each and everytime I read something like this, my mind casts back to the film ‘i,ROBOT‘, based on the short novels by Isaac Asimov. Still - one less job for humans, one more for robots. Stock brokers? You’re broke - pack your bags and head downtown. What job will be next? I can easily see electronic postmen whizzing down my road - thought admittedly, I’d hope something a bit more glamorous could be created…

via Raw Feed.

Sidenote - In the coming days I’ll be posting a hack on how you can customize your Feedburner side-button beyond recognition. Okay, maybe not that much, but enough to make a great read! Soon as I figure out how I can insert code into posts without WP formatting it as code and publishing the end-result, anyhow. The ‘code’ button in the plain text editor (not the WYSIWYG editor) doesn’t seem to work.

I’ll get back to posting REAL content soon - honest!

But in the meantime, I’ve been changing alot of things around the Zi Media HQ (desk under bed) and we’ll be tackling some new issues head on, and beating down the old existing ones (like only 1/4 of our archive being imported from the previous blog) with a rubber fish. We’ve also gone ahead and implemented a few new features (some of which were mentioned yesterday).

- Full feeds available! Go subscribe now!

- Text-Link-Ads on! Private text-link deals off!

- AdVolcano will be removed over the coming few days!

- ReviewMe has arrived in place of the old (very infrequent) review system.

Alongside the afformentioned features, there are a whole lot more coming these next few days. I’m tinkering with the idea of skipping right past AdSense again, and leaving it to rot on the old blogspot site (neither makes me anything anyway).

ReviewMe values my blog at a whopping $100 per review - though the service has grossly mis-judged my ‘estimated RSS’ subscribers, giving me only one star! Surely the 275 of you are worth more than one measley star? I’m sending an e-mail off to RM customer support later today. Anyhow - till May 14th, I’ll be offering half-price reviews with ReviewMe (Just $50)!

Just $50 per review till May 14th!

DISCLAIMER - All reviews on this blog (though I have already stated it before), will be completely honest and of as good a quality as the non-sponsored posts. The fact that someone is paying me to write it (whether it be $10 or $100) makesno difference to what I feel. Claim what you want - rave what you want. This is the way I’m doing things and you have my word. I won’t stand for dis-honest behaviour, and I for one hate reading reviews and posts which are so obviously biased. This is my policy. This is what I believe, and this is the way things will be done.

PS - You know you wanna help out! Sign up to the service today and purchase a review from any blog and I receive $25. No jazz, no fluff. Or just sign up to the service with the link below and take it at your leisure. If you see a review opportunity you’d like to purchase (maybe on yours truly?), then go ahead and purchase it. There is no rush. Other than the fact that the half-price review offer I’m running ends on May 14th.

Remember - for a limited time only, you can get a sponsored review for just $50 as opposed to the standard $100! I for one love half price deals, and this is looking pretty nifty…

The best news of all for me, today? It’s a bank holiday!

It’s about time too… Full feeds for all! I’ve been promising in for weeks now and at last, I found the switch in my dashboard. Simple, huh? As stated earlier though, full feeds will mean monetized feeds. The ads we plan on having running will be small little text-ads at the end of every article. In addition, we plan to run a second feed which is not monetized, but only includes snippets of the text and will require you to click through to read the whole thing.

In other news - Text-Link-Ads will be replacing our old privatised Text-Links, with more and more people signing up, it’s got to the point where it’s time for a 3rd party to manage payments for effectiveness. That and the fact that I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Patrick Gavin, Text-Link-Ads & ReviewMe founder, and we had a little chat. In short - I’m convinced that TLA is the way to go… A little persausion goes a long way!

Anyhow - I might do a post later on, comparing my earnings and effectiveness with TLA as opposed to my own private deals. It’ll sure save me time - maybe even the odd headache, and being in the marketplace should bring in even more sponsors!

And for those of you who e-mailed me telling me that the site was down earlier today, yes, I know… We’re still looking into why it happened, but rest assured, we’re just as confused as you are. We think it was my less than admirable theme editting though. On that comforting note, it’s time for my bed.

PS - If you’re not already signed up with TLA, you should be, because now you can get $100 in free TechZi advertising by just signing up below. Wicked, huh?

And if you’re just a blogger, looking to make a little bit of extra cash… Clicky!

Featured Sites: Broadband Internet

Why use complicated tools like Frappr, Mappr and Crappr, when you can use a pen and paper? Here’s an excellent map of Web 2.0 - All mapped out.

Click on the picture for a better view. Thanks Mark for the tip! Who sees Numa Island? (It’s North-East of Reddit Shores!) Hidden away, you’ll also find “Google’s Volcano Fortress”.

I’m a sucker for contests - you all know that… I’m also fanatical about Rick Uyesugi’s 500 Days To Fame project - something that I think is a brilliant idea. Recently though, Rick started up a brand new blog, branded the ‘Bento Box Review‘. The site covers all things cool, geeky and fashionable and also incorporates the odd video podcast which can be viewed directly from the site or from the iTunes music store. As it happens, Rick reviewed my blog a while back, so we already know that this guy can spot quality when he sees it. (That was a joke… )

Using his superior design skills, Rick has created an incredibly clean, simple and easy to navigate design for the website, based on an existing FamFam theme. The video podcast is integrated within the sidebar for easy-access and is uber-professional, with fancy tid-bits being shown off, reviewed and rated throughout the show. The site is also holding a competition, these next few weeks - cool stuff.

Blog Highlights

- Unique Design (iPod Sushi? Genius!)
- Great Content (Random and wonderful)
- Individual Quality (No-one else writes like Rick!)
- Great RSS Button ( )

Blog Low-points

- Quiet Community (Not for long though!)
- Video-casts aren’t frequent (I’d love to see more!)
- Posting is infrequent (Just timestamp posts to go out at intervals. )

Featured Sites: Robotmag Gaming and Gadgets

I’ve been hovering in the background of the Internet Marketing scheme for months now (fast approahcing a year!), yet I’ve never actually done anything myself product wise. Sure - I’ve been helping Michael Cheney pull together some things in the past. Just recently, I’ve even started a little bit of work with Paulie Sabol. I’ve been making quite a nice figure with affiliate programs too. (Maybe even a little bit more than ‘quite’.) Anyhow, it was almost two months ago when I said to myself that I’d start work on building my own information product/report, and that I wasn’t going to let it end up like 99% of the other products out there. Over-hyped, over-claiming scam products which hold very little quality content. Anyhow, more on that later - I just wanted to share these FANTASTIC free reports with you. By free, I mean free. Enjoy!

Magic Marketing Words
From my mate ‘Million Dollar’ Mike Morgan, for a limited time only, you can grab his ‘Emotional Thesaurus’ report, for… Free! If you’re a budding blogger tryign to get yoru point across, or even another ‘million-dollar copywriter’, Mike’s book packs that punch that’s needed.

Overall score - 5/5

AdSense Videos - Free Video Mini-Course
Direct from over the shoulder of Michael Cheney, you learn how Michael constantly pulls $20,000 a month from AdSense. A fuller version of the videos is available for a modest price, but the mini-course is absolutely free, and stuffed full of useful content which can be used to maximize your profits with Google’s AdSense.

Overall score - 5/5

John Reese - Rebirth Report
A stunning read, from John Reese. The master himself explains exactly why within just a few years, almost EVERYONE on the net will be doomed to eternal misery. Bright and cheery, from John, as usual.

Overall score - 4.5/5

I’ll probably post some more great reports here soon, but I’m trying to keep standards of quality here as high as possible. I urge you to take a look at all of these and to act on what you read here - making your move is 1000 times more important than just ‘knowing’ how to theoretically make a million online. Go make me proud!

UPDATE: This isn’t strictly Internet Marketing realted - but it’s an interesting read nevertheless… PageRank Algorithm - Proof Of Concept!