I know I haven’t blogged much but that will soon change. When I first started this blog I wanted to post about things that I had questions about.

Now I just want to share things that I am passionate about… books, gadgets, health, and more. I don’t have it all figured out yet but it’s only a matter of time!

I read a post on ProBlogger.net a while back that debated whether or not to have hyperlinks open in new windows. Up until that point I always set my links to open in new windows. A point was made in the article that we should let the visitor decide how they want to handle the hyperlink and set the link to open in the same window by default. If the visitor wanted to open the link in a new window, they could. At the time, this sounded rational but now I realize it isn’t.

Your goal should be to keep visitors on your site for as long as possible. In order to do this, you can’t take a chance that the visitor may not know how to handle the hyperlinks. All you have to do is set the link to open in a new window. Open links in new windows. Set the target to blank. Set the target=”_blank”. Do it.

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I have been meaning to post about the HBO Voyeur movie for a while now but obviously haven’t gotten around to it until now. I first came across it after reading one of Adobe Edge’s newsletters. In the newsletter they listed some of the most innovative and exciting sites they have have seen. All the sites happen to be created with Flash and this one stood out the most to me. I just love the fact that no matter what section of the building you are watching, the story doesn’t stop. It is fun to be nosy and see what is going on behind other people’s walls. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

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My site is worth $196.
How much is yours worth?

So, I strongly doubt the accuracy of this tool but I found it to be fun regardless.

This free tool will analyze your site, and let you know how well it’s being monetized, and what value you could sell it for.

Really???

American businessman was at a pier in a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow-fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied only a little while.

The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish?

The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked the Mexican how he spent the rest of his time.

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, senor.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and, with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution.

“You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senor, how long will this all take?”

The American replied, “15-20 years.”

“But what then, senor?” asked the Mexican.

The American laughed, and said, “That’s the best part! When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public. You’ll become very rich, you would make millions!”

“Millions, senor?” replied the Mexican. “Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

Finding a good domain name can be a difficult task, especially if your future website’s topic has a lot of competition. I have spent countless hours typing in different domain names only to find that they are already taken. Not to mention, what I think is a catchy and attractive domain name might not be so catchy and attractive to the rest of the world. So, here’s a tip… don’t rack your brain! There are several tools out there on the web that generate domain names for you based on keywords you specify.

To name a few, try NameBoy, DomainsBot, or Whois Source. These are all great tools and should provide you with some good options to choose from.

Today, I was introduced by ProBlogger who was introduced by LifeHacker of a new tool which is extremely powerful and fun! You’ve got to give this a try!

Bust a Name – Be sure to tell me what you think.

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Today I stumbled across a very interesting website. It is different from any website I have ever seen because it actually encourages the viewer not to click on anything. What did I just say? That’s right… don’t click it! In fact, if you do click, whether it is accidental or intentional, you will get a screen similar to the snowy screen on the old boob tube. Navigation, voting, options, reading, etc. are all controlled by hovering your cursor over objects. Now, I do think the site is very creative and neat, but what the heck are they thinking?

I have recently been bitten by the advertising bug and am trying to come up with some ideas to blog about to earn some extra pocket change. With that said, if a site discouraged clicks and had advertising on it, how the heck would one make money?

A peculiar site but an idea I would never pursue. Check it out for yourself www.dontclick.it.

A few weeks ago I got to hang out with a very good friend of mine and during that time I had him show me this cool camera trick. He set my camera up so the shutter would stay open for a certain amount of time then we goofed off with some light sources. Apparently, when the shutter opens the camera absorbs the light which creates the picture. A typical picture can open the shutter for approximately 1/60th of a second. Some shutter speeds can be as fast as 1/500th of a second. Now that is pretty fast! We opened the shutter for 15 seconds and the images we created turned out pretty cool. Enjoy!

I assumed turning on permalinks in WordPress would be as easy as selecting the radio button and clicking update. Little did I know I would be looking at 404 pages for 2 hours. After extensive research I came to the conclusion that there isn’t any known solution to this problem. I have read many posts that say different things. Having lost all hope of fixing this error I decided to close my browser window and start all over. I opened my browser again, went to www.joshstauffer.com, clicked on ‘About‘, and viola!… Permalinks now work! Why? I don’t know.

Solution: If you would like to use permalinks and you are using GoDaddy for hosting, all you must do is turn permalinks on and wait. I am not sure how long to wait but rest assured the permalinks will begin to work after a short period of time.

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