General Articles

Building Your Own Gaming PC

If you’re a gaming enthusiast but are somewhat hesitant about improving the specifications of your current PC, then you should consider the information that I’ve outlined to help you in building your gaming machine. It is possible for you to get a value for money and high performance machine if you purchase the components from the correct places. In order to build your own system, you’ll need at least basic computer knowledge, a budget and the free time. This can be a satisfyingly fun task to carry out.

Your first task is to choose components that you personally need. In order for you to carry out this task you’ll need at least basic computer knowledge. To put it simply, you’ll need to know the difference between standard hardware and hardware designed for gaming. For a gaming machine, there are specific components that are most important such as the motherboard, video card, CPU, Ram and hard drive. Other components that you should also consider are a gaming keyboard, gaming mouse and monitor. You may also want to consider purchasing a high performance cooler for your CPU.

You can find and purchase these components online or at your local PC hardware store. You can purchase these components brand new or second hand; personally I recommend new components for optimal performance. Obviously the brand new components will cost much more, but it’s well worth it. When building your gaming machine, it’s important that you consider future upgrades for your system. Technology is always moving, so you may find that you need faster components to play a specific game. Another thing you should consider is the system requirements for each game, as they do vary. Make sure you’re fully aware of the capabilities of every component that you decide to put into your system.

When you build your gaming system you gain experience while saving money. You will also have a machine that is designed specifically to meet your gaming requirements. Before you begin building your system, it’s important that you carry out thorough research on each individual component. There are many places you can go online to find computer hardware gaming tips.…

3 Guidelines to Make Sense of Social Media Measurement

Social promotions can be fruitful only when you are doing it the right way. But the catch is somewhere else. As the social networking sphere is open and free, whatever we do might just seem useful. And quite naturally, some actions might eventually turn out to be more harmful to your business than doing any good. This is why every digital media marketing manager must make an effort to use a series of analytical tools to calculate the success quotient of the strategies that he has deployed, and also to ensure that the level of engagement is not being damaged at any point in time.

Social media measurement can’t be treated as a secondary activity in any digital media strategy. Instead, it must be treated as one of the most important aspects of any online marketing plan. However, when into social media measurement, care must be take that you aren’t doing it the wrong way. If social media efforts aren’t measured accurately, quite naturally, you will get wrong results. And these misinterpreted results might trigger misguided social actions. Either the overall reputation of a brand can be damaged almost overnight, or it will become impossible to make any good with whatever is socially done in the future. Quite interestingly, damage control measures seem to be useless in most cases, as the level of damage is rather profound.

Social media monitoring and measurement of success ratio is possible if you are getting a few basics right. Though, there aren’t any prefixed guidelines for the procedure, yet experts believe most of us can get it right if we are doing 3 simple things simultaneously. And believe me folks, I did it their way, and was pretty satisfied with the results.

So I thought it will be good if I can share these 3 pointers with you guys today. They are given below.

When measuring social media activities, make sure you are not pulling out old records and analyzing the same. This will be a wastage of time. You need to work on recent data, and create fresh results. The same reports could be further analyzed to draw a variety of important conclusions.

Double-check each data from at least two different sources. This will provide insurance to the results that come out.

Use at least a couple of social media measurement tools together, to develop a more comprehensive report.

Follow these 3 pointers, and I guess you can create a pretty useful social media activity report.…

Different Strategies Offered By Social Media Optimization Packages

In every business, different forms of marketing strategy should be used. Different search engine optimization packages should be offered by an SEO company, depending on the kind of business to promote. These packages are made available for every business, affordable and customizable social media optimzation packages.

After fully setting up an online business, promoting is the next thing that needs to be done which it requires a lot of maintenance work. A maintenance work that is necessary in order to get traffic, it is a way of staying ahead from competitors. Getting traffic increases sales, by using promotional tools or getting SEO packages. This helps forming good reputation in the online world of business.

As mentioned earlier, there are different promotional needs for each business. It is best to follow different forms of promotional strategies. The best and needed package should be chosen in promoting the business.

A few SEO companies’ offers packages suited for small businesses that are very much affordable.

Getting a niche on the market, a useful promotional strategy for websites are those SEO packages. Major services offered are generally reviewing analysis, on and off page optimization and generating reports. SEO packages allow increased traffic, ranking and website social media exposure.

Using of media is also one way of promoting a website. Media Optimization includes giving updates through discussion boards, submitting site to social bookmarking sites, submission of articles or blogs, giving of news rolls increases also traffic on a website. Generally, it provides website owners greater social media exposure to certain specific surfers, allowing an increase number of visitors visiting the site.

Link building is another marketing strategy being used in promoting a website. Its concept has become recently important as it automatically increases traffic rates on a website. That means when a surfers search for something more likely similar to a site’s product or services, there is a big chance that the site will be visited, thus giving the possibility of increasing sales.

A fastest growing form of promotional strategy is through pay-per-click or PPC, its concept is placing a banner, or link on a host site. These host sites are being paid when the website being promoted gets a number of clicks. A website can get pertinent traffic in a short period of time when using this form of strategy.

Furthermore, there is another form of social media optimization, building readership by providing a user-friendly content. This makes way for content writing and submission of articles service package. It also gives general social media exposure not only just building readership to surfers.

Directory submission gives utmost social media exposure. This includes submitting site to niche directories. This is one way of taking full advantage of the resources on the web.

Therefore, selecting the best social media optimization package in promoting business should deliver the exact outcome that is expected to be. The latest and the most effective way of business promotion is through social media optimization. …

Are Blogging Sites Threatened by Social Media?

It seems that recent past indicates a decrease in the number of blogging sites found on the internet. Many reports infer that the increase in social media use is an indication that people are replacing their blogging efforts and visits with social media use. The questions are raised as to whether in fact the blog platform itself is being pushed aside in favor of social media sites. On the surface it seems these questions may be valid but a closer look reveals that comparisons between blogs and social media sites may not be entirely justifiable or accurate.

Current claims are that social media use is ‘siphoning’ away blog traffic thereby leading to the eventual demise of blogs as we know them. The question here is how can this be true when it appears that blogs and social sites serve fundamentally different purposes? True enough these sites both are social gathering spots however comparisons end at that point.

Here are 3 fundamental differences that can be found when comparing the purpose and characteristics of the blog platform to that of online social sites.

Focus

Blogs are highly focused where social sites has little or no focus other than to exchange casual chit chat. Now this is not to belittle social media sites but their purpose is for simply socializing with no major focus towards any one theme or topic.

On the other hand blogs are created around a particular topic upon which the focus is maintained. In fact if the blog was to alter or lose its focus it would also lose its readers. People are attracted to a blog platform for what it is all about and if the information they find there is of use they will continue to return.

Purpose

The purpose of a blog is to educate and/or inform its readers. To do so a blog platform must maintain a strict adherence to the subject matter it has identified itself with. Social sites have no such constraints insofar as any subject matter.

The purpose of social sites is to make available a location for people to gather. The content found on most social media sites is not set but rather it is chosen by participants and subject to immediate change all the time.

Educational Value

Sure you can pick up helpful tidbits from social media sites but that occurs incidentally. The main intent of a blog is to share useful information with readers who in turn also contribute their own by leaving comments at the site.

Claims that online blogging sites are falling by the wayside in favor of an increase in social media use may not be entirely accurate. Although a blog platform and a social media site both function as online social gathering spots they appear to serve different purposes. The fundamental differences between these 2 sites as discussed above indicate a mutually exclusive and ongoing need for both.…

How Does an LCD TV Work?

In recent years, televisions and electronic devices have gotten smaller and more energy efficient. This trend has much to do with the LCD (liquid crystal display) technology that powers the pictures on the screens of televisions and other electronic equipment. Not so long ago, a 32 inch television could be several tens of kilograms in weight and very thick, taking up a lot of room. Now, the same 32 inch LCD TV weighs a mere fraction of its older counterpart and can be in less than 2 centimetres thin. LCD screens are everywhere in the modern world such as in an LCD TV, DVD player, GPS systems, mobile phones, media players, and in almost any other electronic device that has a display screen. But how do LCD’s actually work?

At the heart of LCD technology are liquid crystals. Although the term suggests that the crystals are liquid in form, this is a bit of a misnomer. Instead, liquid crystals are really groups of solid crystals that display the properties of liquids when grouped together in large numbers. Sand is a similar substance. Each grain of sand is solid, but when a large amount of sand is placed into a bucket, it can flow and be poured like water. These liquid crystals also have the ability to polarize light. Polarization is the ability of a substance to filter out light. When exposed to an electrical current or source of radiation, the liquid crystals inside of an LCD display filter out various amounts of light to produce the difference hues and pictures on the TV screen.

In an LCD television, the liquid crystals are housed between two sheets of material, which can conduct electricity. There are various forms of liquid crystals available, but most LCD televisions use twisted nematic crystals, which are liquid crystals that have a structure that is twisted in shape. These crystals and their twisting, which affects the amount of light that is filtered is controlled by an electromagnetic current that is applied over one of the plates holding in the liquid crystal. This plate has very small grooves in it that can influence the orientation of the crystals and thus how and when they polarize light. On the other side of the crystals sits another surface that has polarization filters oriented at 90 degrees to the surface with the grooves. When light passes from the backlight through the layer with the grid, it will then pass through the liquid crystal layer and twist to various degrees. Depending on the amount of twisting that takes place, the amount of polarization will change.

Each LCD screen will have millions of tiny holes that the light can shine through, called pixels. Furthermore, each pixel is divided into three smaller pixels called subpixels, which are coloured red, green, and blue respectively. When light is allowed to pass through each pixel, different pixels will turn on. The light from the red, green, and blue pixels blend with …

7 Proven Ways to Boost Your LinkedIn Social Influence

With 85+ million users and a new member every second, LinkedIn brags its status as the number one social networking destination for business professionals.

In order to maximize your LinkedIn social influence, let’s discuss 7 proven ways to help you out.

1. Share Your Blog Content on LinkedIn

WordPress LinkedIn, Blog Link, alongside other applications enable you to share your blog content with your LinkedIn network. More and more social sharing tools are being created every day to make viral content marketing drop dead simple and certainly LinkedIn is no exception.

2. Leverage Direct Ads Campaigns

LinkedIn simplifies targeted advertising by allowing you to reach networks based on location, industry, gender, age, you name it! LinkedIn Ads are similar to Google AdSense as they are the PPC (pay-per-click) type and you can stop them anytime you wish. You can choose between banner, text hyperlink, or media box Ads. (LinkedIn also supports CPI, cost-per-impression. Ads).

3. Promote Your Business Events

Thanks to LinkedIn Events application, you can promote your business events and browse the events of others. LinkedIn allows you to share your events with your network. You still can share them with external LinkedIn users via paid advertising. (You may follow “LinkedInEvents” on Twitter to keep with up with the latest events)

4. Follow Your Competition

LinkedIn Company follow feature allows you to keep an eye on events taking place on any business of interest, including your key competition.

5. Go For LinkedIn third-party Applications

Based on my most recent readings, you have 19 LinkedIn applications to choose from in order to enrich your profile. For example, amazon offers a reading list application (the blog link application discussed in point 1 is another example). My personal prediction is that many more applications will be developed on the near future! Why not? LinkedIn is Hot!

6. Showcase Your Products on Company Pages

“Company Pages” is an enhancement to LinkedIn company profiles. Thanks to this valuable feature, you can now showcase more information about your business, including products and services. You are also allowed to embed one YouTube video for every product/service. Currently, almost 20,000 companies are using company pages. Once your product is recommended by a LinkedIn user, his/her recommendation can be shared with his/her entire network. That’s viral marketing in action!

7. Check Out Your Network Statistics

LinkedIn network statistics feature allows you to track the number of new users you can reach through your existing connections. With every new connection you make, your potential users outreach will grow depending on the size of the new user’s network.

As you can see, LinkedIn still maintains its reputation as the number one place-to-be for business professionals and it’s constantly evolving to help you maximize your visibility and social influence. Way to go, LinkedIn!…

Gaming Laptops – Can The Razer Blade Re-Define Portable Gaming?

Rarely has a gaming laptop caused so much buzz as the Razer Blade. The marketing hype surrounding this newly launched lightweight thinly designed gaming notebook was so great, the first batch sold out within minutes. Of course, all this sales hype and promotion, is a great way to introduce any new product, but it is almost essential when this product is coming from a company which is not known for creating laptops of any kind.

Actually, the Razer company was founded in 1998 and is based in California. Razer, in the past, has been mainly known for its gaming accessories such as mouses and keyboards. The Blade is its first gaming laptop and marks the company’s entry into this lucrative segment of the computer notebook market.

The Razer Blade’s overall feature would have to be its thin “less than an inch” thick all aluminum chassis. For a high-performance gaming laptop that’s a major feat in itself, but when your machine only weights 6.4 pounds – you are offering something different. For example, Alienware’s M17x is around 10 pounds by comparison, a big difference.

Sleek looks and low poundage is one thing but how does the Blade’s gaming specs measure up? Well, this gaming notebook comes with a fast Intel Core i7-2640M processor which is 2.8GHz (Base mode) and 3.5GHz (Turbo mode). It has 8 Gigs of DDR3 RAM and the Nvidia GeForce GT 555M graphics card, which is a mid-range GPU and not the best in this regards. The Alienware M14x has this same GT 555M card so nothing new here. The Blade also sports a true 1080p HD 17.3 inch display. All this is rounded out by a rather small 256GB SATA III SSD or solid state drive.

Perhaps, one of the most unique features of the Blade is its keyboard design and Switchblade User Interface Panel. It has switched out or changed the regular numeric keypad for a “10 Dynamic Tactile Adaptive Keys” to be used for hot-key commands in gaming. When a gamer is using an external mouse, this keypad turns into a LCD displaying game information or even be used as a web browser, to view YouTube… and so on.

According to the Razer website the Switchblade User Interface is “an all-new innovative user interface designed from the ground up to make your gaming experience more efficient, intuitive and exciting. You can bind an infinite number of commands, skills and macros to the 10 Dynamic Adaptive Tactile Keys, both with user created icons and custom icons from Star Wars: The Old Republic! The Razer Switchblade UI is fully customizable for users who prefer to define their own keysets and macros.”

It is this unique interface which makes the Blade worth considering if you’re in the market for a portable gaming laptop. While this interface is somewhat interesting and convenient to have, (and not just for gamers) calling the Blade the first true gaming laptop is somewhat …

Gaming Laptops That Offer Power and Speed

For those who are seriously into gaming these days, it’s important to purchase the most powerful gaming system they can afford. Knowing which units are the top gaming laptops can be difficult, however. Every website and every unit’s packaging are going to tell you that their particular type of machine is the best on the market, but they obviously can’t all be the best. Therefore, you need to be able to narrow down the playing field, so to speak, in order to choose the best gaming laptop that is available. This article will give you a list of suggestions as to which models fall into this top category.

If you’ve always loved your HP computer but thought that the company’s laptops were more geared to business than they were to gaming, you need to give them another look. HP now offers the ENVY series which will give you everything you’re looking for. This system includes a base configuration made up of a 2.0 GHz 2nd generation Intel Core i7 processor, 6 GB RAM, a 750 GB hard drive, and a turbo boost system with speeds up to 2.9 GHz. Additional features which will help you play your best include a 17.3″ HD 3D screen, 1 GB Radeon HD 6850M graphics, and a backlit keyboard. You can expect to pay around $1,600 for an ENVY machine.

Dell has been offering great gaming laptops for quite a while now. In fact, they have been producing the most popular gaming systems of all brands. A model which it launched in recent months, the Dell Alienware M18x, is often considered to be the best gaming laptop of 2011. It has a 2 GHZ Intel Core i7 2630QM processor that has 4 GB of RAM, a huge 18.4″ 3D HD display screen, and a 1.5 GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX460M video card making it one of the most powerful units on the market. Prices for these machines start around $2,000.

For reliability you might want to consider the Toshiba Qosmio X505-Q8104X. Experts believe that this model contains the ultimate configuration which can be mounted on a gaming laptop. It has a 2.0 GHz Intel Core i7-2630QM processor, an 18.4″ widescreen, 1 TB of hard drive space, 8 GM RAM, and 1.5 GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX460M graphics. Starting around $1,900, you can get the power of a Dell M18x for a slightly lower price.

Of course, in the end the decision is up to you. If you have an opportunity to play on any of these models prior to making a purchase, you can get the feel of what you’re working with and what you’ll be getting for your gaming bucks which will help you narrow the field down to the top gaming laptop for you.…

PlayStation 3 – Seventh Generation Gaming Experience

The PlayStation 3 is the third installment of Video gaming consoles manufactured by Sony Computer Entertainment, and is the successor of the PlayStation2. Major competitors for the PS3 in the market are the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 as the seventh generation of gaming consoles.

One of the major features distinguishing the PlayStation 3 from earlier version and predecessors is its unique online gaming through the PlayStation Network, rather than relying on game developers for providing online game play in their games. The other major features which this consoles offers are use of the high optical Blu-ray disc format as its primary medium, connectivity with the PlayStation portable along with excellent multimedia capabilities.

The PS3 was launched in Japan in November 11, 2006, followed by launch in North America on November 17, 2006 and March 2007 in Europe and Oceania. Two versions of the PS3 were available at the time of launch i.e. a basic 20GB hard drive model and another 60GB hard drive model with some additional features. The 20 GB model was not launched in Europe and Oceania. The launch of the PS3 led to various cases of violence among the buyers due to low availability on its opening.

Today there are five versions of the PS3 available today which are referred to by the sizes of their hard disk drives i.e. the 20GB version, 40GB version, 60GB version, 80 GB version and 160GB version. All packages include one Dualshock 3 controller or one or two sixaxis controllers, a mini USB and USB cable, video/audio output, one Ethernet cable and one power cable. The models support the formats for the earlier versions of PlayStation like the PS and the PS2, but this has diminished with launch of newer versions.…

Back From Thailand, Back To Work

Spending money is SO EASY!

So I’ve just come back from a long break in Thailand, where my friends and I travelled to Bangkok, Phuket, Phi Phi, Krabi, Koh Phangan and back to Bangkok. There were a few places we missed that we would’ve liked to have gone to but we plan on getting them next time! We travelled there because my best friend’s girlfriend is from Bangkok and since moving to the UK 3 years ago hadn’t been back to see her family. We saw this as the perfect opportunity to have a local show us around the hotspots. Even though it was supposedly the monsoon season, the weather was largely beautiful and hot. If you have been to Thailand (and I know a fair few of my associates have) you will have experienced how damned CHEAP everything is out there! We hired a car, the fuel is ridiculously cheap compared to the UK prices! The food, drink, hotels, hostels – EVERYTHING is silly money, the good kind of silly!

Having said this, although we set ourselves a budget, it ended up being considerably UNDER what we spent! The reason for this? We ATE MORE, DRANK MORE, BOUGHT MORE CLOTHES etc because we felt, in a way, that it would be RUDE not to! When everything is so cheap, you feel compelled to make the most of it! Over indulgence was key to our was it greed?!

A few highlights of the holiday include taking a boat to the island where the Danny Boyle movie, ‘The Beach’ was filmed! That was very surreal. We visited the King’s Palace in Bangkok and spent a few crazy days in Koh Phangan, home of the monthly Full Moon Parties that people talk about all over the world. We also got to make friends with people from all over; Australia, USA, Brazil, Germany, Poland – I love meeting new people so this was a major plus for me. I met a girl from Sao Paulo who knew Brazilian superstar footballers, Ronaldinho and Kaka!

So, two credit card withdrawals and a couple of hundred quid later, we get back to the UK with bills to pay and money to transfer (not to mention the fact I ran up a A�127 mobile phone bill – NOT IMPRESSED!). But what was the first thing I did when I got home? I BOOKED ANOTHER HOLIDAY! I’m going to Crete with my girlfriend in August. In just over 2 months time I’ll be out of this crappy weather again (as I write this, the rainfall in Hereford, UK is so bad the roads are flooding!).

WHY AM I TELLING YOU THIS?!

I’ve been involved in Internet Marketing for almost 2 years now and I’m really enjoying it. I speak to people on a daily basis who get to live this lifestyle where they can shoot off on holiday pretty much anytime they like. If you want to put yourself in a position …