I was listening to the radio today and I heard a story about a women who used FaceBook to find her estranged brother that she hadn’t been in contact with for thirty years. This got me thinking about family members that you have lost contact with or even family members that you have never met but no they exist.

So, I headed over to FaceBook to have a look at whether any of the major ancestry web sites have an application for FaceBook. The only one I found (and the only one I really expected too find) was ancestry.com. I took a look and it doesn’t appear as if there isn’t much activity. Although, there appears to be no promotional elements of their web site on FaceBook, the application button directs you to their web site. So in affect, there is no application. This is a little disappointing from a major player in this field.

Geolocation is the identification of real world graphical location of computers, mobile devices and web site visitors connected to the Internet. Geolocation information can include Country, Region, City/Town, Postcode/Zipcode and latitude and longitute.

In the past couple of month two major players in the social networking arena have incorporating geolocation features and made this technology available to the end-user.

Last November Twitter introduced this feature for their mobile site as well their static web site. If you access Twitter from a mobile device not only are you tweets linked to your current location, but you can also view other users tweets that are in your surrounding location whether you follow them or not. The static Twitter web site allows users to add their location, and those tweets are also pinned to that location. You can read more at Twitter’s blog.

One of the most useful web sites I’ve seen to date that utilises this technology with a practical application is http://uksnow.benmarsh.co.uk. What Ben has done here is pull this information using a short hash tag and present peoples Tweets in a geographic layout plotting Tweeters who are reporting snow fall in real-time. I personally found this extremely useful in making decision whether to venture out or not. This real-time information far exceeds out dated, incorrect and national weather reports that simply where not local enough.

Last week we saw Google enter the social networking market with the launch of Google Buzz. Google Buzz can be access through your computer or mobile device and is pinned to your static location or uses the technology in your mobile device to pin-point your location much like Twitter when you are mobile.

So, what practical application does this new technology have for you and me other than the obvious? I’m sure we’ve all read the tweets or buzzes posted by our friends informing us what they’ve had for lunch. Now we will now where they’ve eaten lunch. But seriously this has mind blowing possibilities for marketing, real-time geographical information and practical application.

The possibilities are endless. For example, if you are a local business and you have a spontaneous promotion that you want local people know about it, tweeting and buzzing could be the answer in drawing people in. Perisable products that need to be sold at a discount is one example that springs to mind.

uksnow is an amazing example of this technology being put to practical use that incorporates real-time. Another idea is road traffic information: People reporting in real-time how traffic congestion, accidents and road works are hindering their journey and providing invaluable information to other road users.

I’m sure in the coming months their will be new web sites and applications being developed that incorporates this technology and providing real-time information. I wonder how long it will be before FaceBook jumps on board?

Google Buzz

I’ve been using Google Buzz for a couple of days. It would appear the UK didn’t get access until a couple of days after the American’s did. This isn’t surprising as Google is an American company and their headquarters is located in the United States.

To date, a couple of my friends and family have followed my on Buzz and I’ve followed them back. Also, several other people have followed me who I do not know and I think this is as a result of others I’ve followed, or comments I’ve made on Buzzes (not sure if the is the PC term) that I found through searching.  The immediate issue that struck me if you want to use Buzz as a means to communicate with friends, family or colleagues, every one needs to have a Google account. Needless to say some do and others don’t. I have attempted to convert a number of people to Gmail; however, to some people email is email regardless of what the logo is in the corner.

There are number of improvements I would love to see already, and it does appear Google have been quick to address on major concern of privacy. The issue of followers seeing who your Gmail contacts are is a concern for everyone and Google have addressed this and made it easier for the end user to find and amend this setting.

Like most social networking platforms there is usually a lot of noise and within that noise somewhere is the interesting information that you want to read and reply too. I find it irritating the there is no easy and quick means to delete or in Google Buzz language ‘mute’ posts that you don’t want to see. What I would like to see is a filter, where you can filter in or filter out tags or keywords that are relevant to your interest. Plus a big delete button or X that is easy to hit if you don’t want to see that post again.

I was hoping there would be more drag and drop functionality. Having to type or pasting links to other web pages, images or video is a pain. I want to be able to drop it into my post.

As there are so many social networking platforms available today, Buzz would have the edge if it became the one-stop-shop for all your social networking activity embedded in your email. I personally only use Twitter and FaceBook and what a wonderful place Buzz would become if I can read and post directly to any social networking site from Buzz.

As usual from Google, this a real sterling effort, and I hope that it’s developed into something that no one can do without. At the moment I do have an open mind, and wait with anticipation of how this will develop.

When ever I fly anywhere I always, where possible, fly with Virgin. When I saw this advertisement I had to pop it on here.

Unfortunately, there isn’t that many serious Virtuemart templates provider out there who are producing high quality Virtuemart themes. So I though I would share my experience and hopefully point you in the direction of finding the best of best. This article isn’t reviewing Virtuemart template providers, but more concerned with my experience of developing e-commerce websites using Joomla / Virtuemart templates.

Shape 5

I have personally used a number of Shape 5 templates for Joomla and Virtuemart. Currently, Shape 5 have three Virtuemart templates available. All three are not free but certainly worth the money. Shape 5 have utilised the demo sites for each template to provide guidance and instruction on setting up the template.

1. Your Store. This template is very customisable and has 21 module positions, and 20 colour variations.

2. eMerchantilism. This template has 19 module positions and various menu styles and colour variations.

3. Shopper Frenzy. This is my personal favourite of the three. I recently used this template to build www.gemmsdream.com. This template boasts 23 module positions and various menu styles.

VJ Templates

Probably the largest provider that I have found of Virtuemart templates. Currently, they have 30 templates covering many categories and theie design style can be observed in most of their templates. The only draw back is you can only use the template on one site; however, the documentation provided with the template is very comprehensive and their online forum is also very helpful.

I have only used one template from this site: www.homefurniturewarehouse.co.uk.

Template Monster

At the moment there are ten Virtuemart templates listed here covering a number of popular categories. They do offer a buy out fee of several thousand dollar, which I personally think it way too much to own the template outright. I haven’t personally used any templates from here, so if any has it would be great to hear your views.

Ice Theme

Ice Themes only have produced one Virtuemart template called The Store 2. I am unsure whether there ever was a Store 1, as it doesn’t appear on their site. The design of the template very much follows the Ice Theme styling of their Joomla templates. I personally have never used this template; however, I hope to get my hands dirty with this one in the near future.

Mall WP

I came across this website be chance whilst actually writing this article via Google Alert keyword Virtuemart. They predominantly provide Wordpress themes, and only have one Virtuemart template called Top Shop. Normally, this templates is sells for $40; however, at the moment they have it for $5. Bargin!

I know this never going to be an exclusive list, so if you do find other Virtuemart template providers, please let me know and I’ll take a look.

Have you ever been tempted to click on your own AdSense advertisements? I am not suggesting for monetary gain, but because you have been on your own site, checking your latest blog for example when you see an advertisement that actually interests you. If I was visiting a web site that didn’t belong to me, I would have certainly clicked on the ad.  But, because this ad is on your own site you run the risk of receiving a nasty gram from Google threatening to cancel your AdSense account. So what do you do? Do you take the risk of clicking on it, or Googling similar posts to yours and hoping the same ad appears elsewhere? What if you cannot find this ad?

There is one simple process that I find out by playing around with the ad link:

1. Place your mouse over the ad you want to check and RIGHT CLICK on the ad. Do NOT actually click the ad as you will link to it! Now, you will see an option to Copy link location.

2. Once you have copied the link location to your clipboard, paste the data into your Browsers address bar. Do Not click on Go or press Return.

3.  Being deleting the information in your address bar from left to right. Eventually towards the end of the long url you will see the web site address of where the ad would take you too. Once you have deleted all the Google information, press return or click go and you will be taken to that location.

I was browsing around the web the other day looking for some guidance, advice and tutorials on taking a web design from Photoshop and coding the design for Wordpress. Having spent a good hour of browsing I came across http://www.psd2cssonline.com. Basically, this web site automatically converts your Photoshop PSD file into css, xhtml or templates for Joomla or Wordpress once you have applied the relevant slices to the PSD design. I thought immediately, what a fantastic resource, and something that will save so many people a huge amount of time coding sites by hand (so to speak). Promptly, I booked mark this site and it into my list of ‘things to do’ for writing a blog, in the hope that this will add some further awareness of this fantastic resource.

As yet I haven’t tested the site, so I cannot write a review on how it works; however, I’m sure I will once I’ve had the opportunity to test it out. Certainly though, looking at the samples provided on the web site, it appears to work well.

I had to feature this video on my web site. The Police don’t often get good press and there lots of negativity around this video, but I think it shows the Police in a positive light. Here are a number of officers showing that they are after all human and can have like the rest of us.

Facebook blocked at work? You don’t need to worry any longer about keeping in touch with your contacts. The social media giant has introduced reply to comments via e-mail.

As long as your have not changed your settings to stop email notifications, it’s likely that you receive an email every time someone comments on your status updates, photos, videos and Wall posts. Before now, the email contained a link that you had to follow, which logged you into Facebook where you could reply. You’ll now notice that the email contains a line reading “New Feature: Reply to this email to comment on this link.”

Now you can reply to comments without login into Facebook.

E-mail marketing is one of the most effective and inexpensive ways to find and keep new customers.  E-mail Marketing is the process of sending e-mails to acquire new customers and convince existing customers to make additional purchases.  It can also be used to enhance the relationship of a business with its customers and prospects and encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.

By building a mailing list, a business can create an extremely valuable asset.

The advantages of e-mail:

• E-mail lets you send information to a wide range of existing and potential customers at a much lower cost than direct mail or printed newsletters.
• E-mail marketing allows you to track your return on investment exactly and is often reported as second only to search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic.
• The delivery time for an e-mail message is short (i.e., seconds or minutes) as compared to a mailed advertisement (i.e., one or more days).
• E-mail marketing is paper-free (i.e., “green)
• Once you have a large list, you can “rent” your list to 3^rd party marketing firms that will mail other offers to people on your list – this can be a significant additional source of revenue for your business.

How to build your email list:

Include an e-mail sign-up box on your web site.  Giving away a free report or “how-to” white  course is a great incentive for people to subscribe to your list.

You can also collect the e-mail addresses of people that drop-off of your cart page after entering their email address. You can then send them a follow up e-mail offering a discount to complete the sale.

Once a person submits their e-mail address to you they become an opt-in subscriber. Don’t just send e-mails that attempt to sell things but rather offer them information, free reports, and tidbits of news and advice. That way they will be more likely to purchase it as something you recommend to them, not just as something you are selling.

Key points:

The sending of unsolicited e-mail is forbidden by law in most western countries and can involve severe penalties for violators.

You should only send e-mail to a person when they have “opted-in” to receive it. When you collect a person’s email address, be sure that you explain how you intend to use their e-mail.  Include a privacy policy on your web site and place a link to it next to your e-mail.

Due to the large amount of spam email, it is getting harder to get legitimate commercial email delivered into people’s inbox.  Specialty software and service firms have emerged to help business manage their e-mail programs and ensure that their emails are not blocked as spam.

Although it takes time and effort to maintain and grow, a mailing list can end up being the most powerful tool in your internet marketing arsenal.

E-mail templates:

One of the difficulties with sending e-mails is you need to design a template which is ideally similar if not the same in design to your web site. Furthermore, due to some of the restrictions within the most common e-mail clients, the design process can be limited. However, there are a number of free resources and templates on the Internet that will help you do this.

Click on the banner below to find help getting started with your e-mail marketing efforts: