If you are new to the website, each week I run down some links I have found interesting, usually they are somehow related to web development or technology. So here we go, lets get started!

It’s Easy Being Green - great advice for creating a better environment in around and for your home.

Google Hacking & Anonymity - Great advice for those wishing to be anonymous while searching through pages.

So how big is this BizGift industry? (BizGifts are anything you can brand and sell) - A great article that breaks down the industries with a pie graph.

Google Universal Search Opt-out, Please! - News about ice cream? Really? Well, I might want to read that sometime.

Two great articles from winningtheweb.com:
- 4 Enhancements to Improve Your Blog’s Comments Section
- 9 Essential Copywriting Guidelines to Convert Your Readers

Does Your Blog Have a Voice or Are You Just a Mime, Mimicking the Shapes of Others?

Why The SEO World Is Full Of Shit - Part 2

We Got Owned By ZacJohnson.com - Come on Zac where is the T-Shirt?

5 Internet Marketing Strategies For 2008 - Some nice advice for 2008.

How To Find The Best Niche Market Anytime

Amazing Link Diagnosis Extension Revolutionizes Link Analysis

The Acid 3 Test is complete

If you follow the 5 tips we list below, you will not only create a successful business, but you will also find fame and fortune with your friends and family.

1. Do not plan anything. It’s always best to “wing it” when you’re beginning a new business that way you can change your strategies quickly. Planning never accomplishes anything. The gut instinct is one of the best tools you have available to you. If your instinct tells you that it’s time to buy a new office chair and desk, then that is exactly what you should be concentrating on. After all, the proper place to start in any business is what your office should look like.
2. Don’t use a brand. It doesn’t matter if people recognize your face or logo everywhere. Many of the top successful businesses have changed their logos so often, they would have been better off without one. By the time you develop a brand, people will only get irritated at seeing that picture or hearing that jingle over and over again. This causes jealousy in many people and they will never want to deal with you again. The other problem with brands is it locks you into one single way to present yourself. If you can change your clothes every day, then you should definitely be able to change the presentation of your business every day.
3. Do not bother with advertising. People will find you whether you advertise or not. It’s not important and it’s wasted money and effort. You didn’t bother with the brand; you don’t need to advertise it either. People are constantly looking for the next new thing, so since your business is new, they will find you. “If you build it, they will come.” That’s a great quote, and one you should always remember. Just being there is enough.
4. Don’t bother with a budget. Budgets only weigh you down. Budgets limit what you can do with your own money. Feel free to spend everything you have and mortgage all of your property to get your business going. After all, you’ll be raking in the dough very soon anyway. And after you make all of that money, you can spend it on whatever you want yet again. Remember, it’s your money, not anyone else’s. And even if it is someone else’s, they gave it to you so you can run the business as you see fit.
5. Do not, and I repeat, do not network. Don’t shake people’s hands or give out your business card. Do not contact other people in your business. Creating and running a business requires individuality. By contacting others and letting them know about your business, not only are you offering your own ideas for free that they will likely steal, but you’ll be influenced by the knowledge they give you. This could be detrimental to your business.

There you have it. Those are the top 5 tips to creating a successful business. Make sure you memorize them and follow them every day as you try to make it in this world. Maybe one day you’ll be the next Microsoft or Disney. And as long as you follow these tips, that day will be sooner than you could ever imagine. Either that or you’ll go bankrupt by tomorrow, in which case we claim no liability for any losses you may suffer while following this advice.

Entrecard was released a few months ago and is growing rapidly. The system has been said to be easily scammed, the users have been ridiculed, and the owner called names. But at the end of the day Entrecard comes down to one thing: member activity. If you own a website that receives 10,000 visitors/day but don’t drop cards, advertise, or participate in the forums, chances are your card worth is going to be far less than others who do.

If you are using Entrecard and are dissatisfied with your results thus far, try these 10 things

1. Host Contests. You don’t necessarily have to give out $100 or 10,000 credits, just give something out. Be it a new card design, a free ad on your website or even a website review, contests work and will get the Entrecard community active on your website.
2. Write about Entrecard. Every time someone writes about Entrecard it circles the community and is read. If it is good enough, people will comment and link to it.
3. Drop 300 cards daily – day starts at 5:00 GMT (Midnight EST). Although some call this ’scamming’ (although, really I have no clue how… it is just using the system to your advantage), this will greatly help out your site. Not only will there be a chance all 300 will see your site in their inbox, there’s a very good chance those same people will return the favor and drop their card on you. If you stop by for a few seconds and comment, chances are much greater and you might even receive a comment back – or even better, a new RSS subscriber. It also gives you 300 points/day.
4. Advertise on the cards within the recent tab. This is almost always overlooked. You never know how active a member on Entrecard will be after just recently joining. Your 2 credits might just turn into 40 or 50.
5. Check all stats available to you and advertise on the cheapest sites that receive the best traffic. There are many sites out there that have the visitors, but just aren’t active. These guys are what I like to call “the sleepers”. Since their drop numbers are usually low, the amount of people dropping on their site is less than someone else who is more active. Masters of SEO is a classic example of a sleeper. Nice traffic, a somewhat low credit cost (currently around 120 credits), yet when advertising on the site, tons of clicks.
6. Advertise an expensive sites. You might want to see how steady their credit cost is first as fluctuation means there might be disappointment ahead so keep a watch on the owner.
7. Offer something in exchange for credits; card design, website design, reviews, etc. This will gain awareness of other Entrecard users and allow you to gain credits without tediously dropping cards throughout the day.
8. Give credits in return for something in the shop. This is a great way to get something back that isn’t just Entrecard related. If you buy advertising for a month, a review or even a blog post you are expanding your horizon beyond that of Entrecard. Always have more than one basket when going fruit picking.
9. Participate in the community, on the forums, by giving recommendations, etc. The community is substantially under-rated. Being active in the forums will not only increase the amount of cards dropped on your site, but will also open your site up to other Entrecard activity such as comments, recommendations or even free links. Hell, the forums might even give you an idea for your next post.
10. Comment on other blogs. Like all social sites, Entrecard isn’t much without actual activity unrelated to Entrecard. Comment on others’ posts and you will likely get something in return. At the very least someone else will read your comment and click through to your site.

If you use Google Analytics or any other analytics program you have probably encountered a stat called bounce rate. Bounce rate is simply the percent of visitors coming to your site who view one page then leave.

(these are not stats for impNERD)

Reasons why bounce rate sucks

1. Someone who has visited your site in the past is likely to view a smaller amount of pages, not because he or she doesn’t find your site useful but because they have seen it before and want to view new information.
2. Much like the first, many RSS subscribers only want to view the newest post when clicking through.
3. Are you ranked in Google? Organic searches will have a high bounce rate. If the searcher finds what they are looking for, chances are they will leave your site after viewing just one page.
4. Are you a PPC publisher? When someone clicks on your ads and is taken away from your site, it will raise your bounce rate.
5. Do you sell products/services through PayPal or another service not located directly on your site? After clicking buy the user will leave your site, raising your bounce rate.

When bounce rate actually means something

• When you are checking out natural links pointing to a gateway page.
• When you have advertising pointing to a landing page which allows visitors to buy without leaving the site.

In most occasions, bounce rate is pointless. It depends on several factors and should only be used when viewing a specific type of visitor which depends solely on visiting more than one page.

OLEDs have gained much popularity throughout the past year, but what does it stand for, what does it do and what is to come of it?

What is OLED?

Organic Light-Emitting Diode is any light emitting diode (LED) which emissive electroluminescent layer is composed of a film of organic compounds. Usually, it contains a polymer substance that allows an organic compound to be deposited. The compounds are deposited in rows and columns onto a flat carrier by a printing process, resulting in a matrix of pixels that can emit light of different colors.

The system can then be used for television screens, computer displays, portable system screens, or simply be used as a light bulb.Typical OLEDs emit less light per area than inorganic solid-state LEDs that are designed as a point-light source.

History of OLED

Bernanose and co-workers produced the first electroluminescence in the early 1950s by applying high-voltage alternating current field to crystalline thin films of acridine orange and quinacrine. In 1960, researchers at Dow Chemical developed AC-driven electroluminescent cells using doped anthracene.

In 1963, Weiss et al. First reported high conductivity in iodine-doped oxidized polypyrrole with a conductivity of 1 S/cm. As of 1974, the discovery was called “lost” and a melanin-based bistable switch with a high conductivity “ON” state. The material emitted a flash of light when switched.

In a 1977 paper, Shirakawa et al. Reported high conductivity in similarly oxidized and iodine-doped polyacetylene. The group subsequently won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery and development of conductive organic polymers.

Future of OLED

• POLED – Patternable OLED. Uses a light or heat activated electroactive layer. A latent material is included in the layer so when it is activated, it becomes highly efficient as a hole injection layer, preparing LED and arbitrary patterns.
• FOLED – Flexible OLED. Any flexible OLED display. Thin enough to be rolled up like a poster and carried anywhere, even embedded in clothing.
• TOLED – Transparent OLED. A proprietary transparent contact to create displays that can be made to be top only emitting, bottom-only emitting, or both top and bottom emitting (transparent). TOLEDs can greatly improve contrast, making it easier to view displays in bright sunlight.
• SOLED – Stacked OLED. A novel pixel architecture that is based on stacking RGB subpixels on top of one another instead of next to one another—common in CRT and LCD. This improves display resolutions up to threefold and enhances full-color quality.
• IOLED – Inverted OLED. A bottom cathode that can be connected to the drain end of n-channel TFT especially for the low cost a-Si TFT backbone useful in manufacturing of AMOLED display, contrast to a conventional OLED which anode is placed on the substrate.
• WOLED – White OLED. White OLED has the potential to reach 150 lm/W. High powered, environmentally friendly, bright and uniform.
• PHOLED – Phosphorescent OLED. Phosphorescent OLED uses the principle of electrophosphorescence to convert up to 100% of the electrical energy in an OLED into light.

Advantages

• Can be printed onto any suitable substrate using an inkjet printer.
• Will cost significantly lower than LCD or plasma displays.
• A greater range of colors, brightness and viewing angle than LCDs, because OLED directly emits light. Colors appear correct and unshifted, even as the viewing angle approaches 90 degrees from normal. LCDs use a backlight and cannot show true black, while an “off” OLED element produces no light and consumes no power.
• Energy is wasted in LCDs because they require polarizers that filter out half of the light emitted by the backlight. Color filters in color LCDs filter out two-thirds of the light.
• OLEDs also have a faster response time than standard LCD screens. LCDs currently have a response time of 8-12 milliseconds whereas OLEDs can have less than 0.01ms.

Disadvantages

• Limited lifetime of organic materials.
• Blue OLED has a lifetime of 5,000 hours – lower than typical LCD, LED or PDP, currently around 60,000 hours. Nevertheless, Green PLEDs have been tested for 198,000 and Blue PLEDs 62,000 hours.
• Water in displays can damage or destroy the organic materials. Improved sealing is a must, and may limit longevity of the more flexible displays.
• Commercial developments have been limited by patents held by Eastman Kodak and other firms, requiring companies to acquire licenses.