When photo terrorists attack

PHOTO BOMBED: A collection of funny photo terrorist moments

PHOTO bombing is the art of ruining someone’s photograph by either jumping in at the last minute or by pulling a funny pose just at the right time. These artists are also known as photo terrorists and help to add that humorous touch to your picture perfect moment. Let me illustrate:

Silly seal - my personal favourite!

When in Rome ...

Making the news

You can't help but feel sorry for this guy

Dog Bomb! Bawr!

At Henry's Happy Bakery ...

Evil brother

At the nudist beach ...

Knock knock?

"Stop hogging the f*%#ing camera!"

More at www.spoiledphotos.com

Happy Friday !

Copy Compass: Best WordPress plugin

SEO: Best practice using Copy Compass!

HAVING used Copy Compass for a while now, I can honestly say that it is the best WordPress plugin released to date. The brainchild of Talooma’s Nick Duncan, Copy Compass is an easy-to-use plugin that analyses your posts for best SEO practice. It is an absolute breeze to use and a must-have for bloggers.

With a single click of your mouse, Copy Compass analyses a post, provides an overall score and offers suggestions for improving SEO for that post. Content analysis has never been this easy.

General SEO practice involves having between three and five keywords, including as many of these as possible in your title, having a meta description between 100 and 160 characters and ensuring that your main keywords are prominent throughout your post.

Copy Compass makes SEO practice far easier and exciting by analysing your posts for you – quickly and accurately. One is also able to analyse older posts and ensure that each one gets a high SEO score.

If you have minimal SEO experience, using Copy Compass essentially allows you to teach yourself SEO by learning to understand how search engines treat content on the web. Apart from the above, Copy Compass also uses text analysis and Reading Ease indexes to determine how readable and accessible your content is.

Nick really is an innovative machine that is super quick to fine-tune great plugins such as Copy Compass. You can download Copy Compass from the website or install it within your WordPress plugin directory. A simple search for “Copy Compass” will bring it up.

If you find any bugs or have any suggestions regarding how to improve Copy Compass, post a comment or drop Nick an email and I’m sure he get right on it!

Happy SEO-ing!

• Posted under Online Tips & Tricks

From post to PayPal

PAYPAL: No more need to expose your credit card or banking details

BUYING and selling goods and services online is fast becoming the preferred way to shop and conduct business this century, and it recently became easier with the introduction of PayPal to South Africa.

This enables South Africans to buy from and sell to PayPal’s global customer base of more than 81 million active accounts in 190 markets around the world in 21 different currencies. South Africa is the 190th country to get access to PayPal accounts and it’s about damn time too!

What is PayPal?

To put it simply, PayPal is a safe and easy way to perform online transactions without exposing your credit card or bank account number. It can be thought of as an extension of your bank account that allows you to send and receive money globally 24/7.

It has always been possible to make foreign payments, but now South Africans are getting a chance to cash in by being able to sell goods themselves within the global eCommerce marketplace. There are currently 200 million people that use PayPal to send and receive money today and for good reason.

You can use a PayPal account to:

• Receive payments in 190 countries.
• Checkout quickly at hundreds of online stores.
• Shop at online merchants or shops in 67 countries.
• Make or receive payments for goods and services online.
• Pay for things and send money without sharing your financial information.

How do I get a PayPal account?

To open a South African PayPal account, visit www.paypal.com and follow the instructions provided. You’ll be asked to fill in your details and link your credit or cheque card to your new PayPal account.

A small charge ($1,95) will then be debited from your account, which will be refunded (in two to three days) once you supply a four-digit reference number that is provided with this transaction to PayPal. This verification method is a security precaution that ensures that only you can access your PayPal account.

FNB’s Top Up and Withdraw service

Currently PayPal is exclusive to First National Bank customers, but no doubt it will soon be offered by other major banks as well. It is also likely that other PayPal options and services will become available once more South Africans get on board and become comfortable with using PayPal.

One particular offering is FNB’s exclusive Top Up and Withdraw service, which allows FNB customers to top up and withdraw funds from a PayPal account via a qualifying FNB account. FNB Customers can simply open a PayPal account and link it to a qualified FNB account and receive PayPal payments in 21 different currencies. FNB will then convert the currency to South African rands once the money is transferred into their accounts. No more lost cheques in the post.

How do I register for this?

To register for such PayPal services you’ll need a South African PayPal account, a qualifying FNB bank account and access to FNB Online Banking. (The following steps are specific to FNB and may differ for other banks offering PayPal services).

Step by step, you will need to:

1. Have a qualifying FNB bank account (FNB cheque, savings or transmission acc).
2. Have an FNB Online Banking profile.
3. Register a South African PayPal account on www.paypal.com
4. Verify your PayPal account on www.paypal.com
5. Login to your FNB Online Banking profile; register for this service and link your PayPal account to your FNB Online Banking profile.

Qualifying FNB accounts include most FNB savings, cheque and transmission accounts. When completing a FNB Top Up or Withdraw with PayPal, a list of all your qualifying FNB accounts that can be used for this service will be displayed.

Remember that they will have to be linked to your FNB Online Banking profile in order for them to be displayed. Also note that a credit card account is not a qualifying account for this service.

How do I withdraw and transfer money into my PayPal account?

FNB’s Top Up and Withdraw services allow you to transfer or withdraw funds from a qualifying FNB bank account into your PayPal account. To do this, simply login to FNB Online Banking and select the “PayPal Services” menu option.

Once you have registered for the service, you can transfer funds (in rands) from your qualifying FNB account into your PayPal account in United States dollars, which can then be used to make purchases from PayPal merchants worldwide.

Note that when completing the FNB Top Up service you will be required to disclose the purpose of your transaction and provide contact information to ensure that you comply with all South African Reserve Bank regulations. A Top Up of funds from FNB to a PayPal account may only be used for the specified reason.

It is also important to remember that according to South African Reserve Bank exchange-control regulations, all funds received into your PayPal account must be withdrawn within 30 days of receipt.

Fees: what does it cost?

FNB charges a transaction commission of 1,5% for each Top Up or Withdraw transaction using a PayPal account. This commission is calculated on the rand equivalent of the U.S. dollar amount requested.

An exchange rate is quoted by FNB on all rand/U.S. dollar transactions and may vary for Top Up and Withdraw transactions.

Certain PayPal transactions may also attract certain fees. Visit www.paypal.com for more information regarding any hidden costs.

MeetYourFriends: Anti-social networking

MEETYOURFRIENDS: The real deal or complete scam?

IT can be forcefully argued that Facebook has set the benchmark for new and emerging social networking sites. In fact, morsels of the Facebook phenomenon can be seen in several non- social networking websites too – usually ones that allow users to provide status updates, add ‘friends’, comment willy-nilly and “like” certain things by giving them a digital thumbs up.

It almost seems that the online giant that Facebook has become could never be rivaled or surpassed by any other social networking site – no matter how enticing they appear; but there are still some that try.

MeetYourFriends dot com is one of the latest social networking websites to reach our screens and feels confident that it will “bury their rivals within days.” With a healthy initial investment and the aim of tapping into an apparent emerging market of 30 and 40-somethings, time will only tell if MeetYourFriends will succeed or fail.

"MeetYourFriends.com is a back-to-basics social network that brings together new friends from across the globe. With simple sign-up and fast search, the website offers instant friendship using Direct Messages and Live Chat. Based on secure and powerful web technology, the social community brings the world to your front door for chat, fun, and friendship" - www.meetyourfriends.com

For those who wish to raise virtual cattle and throw sheep at their peers, MeetYourFriends will not satisfy. According to a popular MeetYourFriends press release published on Techcrunch, the site is a back-to-basics social networking site that will appeal to fans of The Beatles and sliced bread.

MeetYourFriends developer, Neil Bryant, explains that the service aims to target users who simply want to engage in casual chat. “We wanted to bring some fresh new ideas into the social networking sphere, and with a unique combination of email and live chat we think we may have just achieved that,” says Neil.

There have already been over a hundred comments from Internet users regarding MeetYourFriends – most of which were not favourable of the endeavour. There is a general feeling of “do we really need yet another social networking website that does the same things as Facebook?” as well as shared feelings that the entire venture is a scam.

One intrigued commenter tested the waters by signing up on MeetYourFriends only to find that he had to pay in order to chat to existing, high-profiled users. It was discovered that the ‘social networking’ service had a dating component to it whereby users had to pay if they wished to converse with the more exotic-looking users already on MeetYourFriends. He also found that many of the “models” on MeetYourFriends were Ukrainian and that he was unable to unsubscribe from the service.

A word of warning

Firstly, anything new in the social networking world needs to be different; different and easy to use. If legit, MeetYourFriends may win favour on the simplicity front, but I do not imagine it will become anything to write home or Facebook about.

It is also always important to consider the motives behind new social networking websites – especially ones that have invested so much into their creation. According the aforementioned press release, MeetYourFriends will not change its privacy policy or allow advertising once it’s settled on its laurels.

“We think Facebook is nervous, adds Neil. Global domination awaits.” Most will find that very hard to believe. As always, be cautious when handing over any personal information online; and if you dare enter, beware of being spammed by adware and spyware and the occasional Thai bride.

Some social networking humour: I leave you with the advert for Friend Face from that timeless episode of The IT crowd:

Related: The Future of Social Networking

The Buzz around Google Wave

GOOGLE WAVE: An analysis of its untimely downfall + Google Buzz

GOOGLE announced the closure of Google Wave on their blog after much hype from loyal Google followers. There has been much buzz as to why Google Wave was a failed project, but the pivotal reasons appear to be three-fold. Excessive hype and expectations, too many features for a single web application, and at the same time, not enough unique features to differentiate Google Wave from existing services (Facebook, Twitter), all ultimately lead to its untimely downfall.

The hype involved a handful of people being invited to test Google Wave and lead to several bloggers discussing it amongst themselves. After almost a year of testing and a plethora of blog entries, a lot was obviously expected of Google’s latest brainchild. However, there were still only a handful of people that actually knew how to make use of Google Wave and in an era of short attention spans and click-happy web-users, the buzz had just about fizzled entirely upon its release.

The problem was that for the average web-user to get to grips with Google Wave required setting aside a good period of time to learn how to use it, and for many, watching a video tutorial was essential. Google’s software developers even admitted that the service “takes a little getting used to” and that even they were still learning how to use it themselves.

Once Google Wave invitees got the hang of Wave they needed more people to be using it besides themselves in order to get a proper wave going. This proved to be difficult enough in itself, but perhaps the problem was not a lack of users, but rather a lack of appeal.

What exactly is Google Wave?
“Wave’s primary feature was to let users collaborate in real time, using an in-box-like interface that resembled a mix of Google’s Gmail Web mail service, and its Docs and Spreadsheets product. Each strand of messages, which could include text, links, and photos, was called a wave. Google launched the product with an API for developers to build extra functionality in the form of extensions that users could turn on and off” – Cnet News

I would argue that Google Wave had two other inherent problems. The first being that it did not offer enough unique features – i.e. things that web-users couldn’t already perform using existing Google and other services, and secondly that it tried to achieve too much at once. There also seemed to be a lack of focus with regards to what the product would primarily be used for.

To rope people into any new web service takes time and requires baby steps if you want to get enough people on board in order for the services to be worthwhile and developed further. The web-user trend is to stick with what’s foremost familiar and secondly to make use of the tried and tested. Although Google Wave offered several easy ways to perform familiar tasks online in real-time, the popularity of services such as Facebook and Twitter far outweighed its demand as a new web service.

Google has brought many great apps to the table that are worthy of praise and the Internet would not be the same without them; sadly Google Wave was not one of them. Until a viable market demand is found, the focus should be on improving existing Google services before unleashing something new to the online public.

A bit on Google Buzz

Google had another chance with Google Buzz – a web app released just prior to Google Wave. For those who are unfamiliar with Google Buzz, the service is an extension of one’s Gmail account – appearing below one’s inbox. It can be rightfully argued that Google Buzz is essentially a Twitter clone as it allows friends to provide status updates, embed photos and links, and to follow or be followed by other Buzz users. It now has a few Facebooky features too – these being the options of liking or commenting on other users’ posts and embedding photos and video.

The idea was to discuss “the buzz”, but from many users’ experience the service seems to be primarily used as a promotional tool for embedding links and directing peoples’ attention to them. Facebook remains the popular choice for status updating and the sharing of photos and videos and Twitter is still the first choice for posting something of real value.

I do not imagine that Google Buzz will ever become as popular (or perhaps more importantly – more popular) than Twitter or Facebook – least not until it offers something different to what exists already. Buzz needs to be able to stand on it’s own, which isn’t currently happening with the ability to Buzz on Facebook or Buzz on Twitter.

Perhaps bloggers and Google Wave testers are largely to blame for the excessive hype and ultimate disappointment of Google Wave. Perhaps it was the product itself that asked too much of web users by way of time and practical use. Or perhaps Google Wave simply did not fill a need in the World Wide Web by offering something entirely unique and different.

Google can surely be forgiven for the failure of Google Wave and hopefully learn from their mistakes. With a history of so many other great services and the downfall of only a few, support for future developments should by no means be tainted by their recent faults. Keep the services coming Google; you ultimately never know what will work on the web until you try.

Sources:

• RIP Google Wave
• The official Google blog
• Google pulls plug on Google Wave
• Lessons Google Can Learn From Wave’s Failure