Inside the Growth Engine, A guide to China's regions, provinces and cities

Thanks to Thomas Morffew  for linking on Google Buzz

Inside the growth engine, A guide to China's regions, provinces and cities

Clemencia, Rain at Candy Cane Lane

We visited Seattle's neighborhood famous for Christmas decorations and were caught in a downpour!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

 

Local Resource for All of Your Web Needs

Seattle Designers Directory



MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

Fun, Free Help and Happiness Starting Google AdWords

Launching my AdWords campaign has been an easy and satisfying experience, starting with a coupon for $75.00, which was boosted to $100.00 when used by a certain date. These are the paid advertisements above and to the right of results in Google Search.


I pay only when an ad is clicked and I bid on search terms to trigger my ad, about $3.00 to $5.00 per click. I set a daily maximum to spend and pre-pay status will help me to monitor the cost. 


The best thing is that a Google staff member built a half-dozen ads for me at no charge. He advised me on content for the landing page. We have had a few phone calls where my questions were answered. Now I have two campaigns and can easily create or revise ad groups in them.


Here's a picture of my keywords at the start. The quality score on the right reflects the web spiders' ability to find relevant content on the landing page. Note that the performance graph is a flat blue line as we start. It will be fun to see which of the ads Sam created rotate to the top.

My first Google search for web development found my ad in second place on the first page. Success!

Search for web design showed my ad above the fold on the first page as in the lower right here.

Happiness! 

There is a lot more detail to discuss. For this post, I'll end with a big 

Thank You to Sam Schulstad, Google AdWords Technician

MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

Instant Previews in Google Search

From the Google Code Blog --

"If you’ve used Google Search recently, you may have noticed a new feature that we’re calling Instant Previews. By clicking on the (sprited) magnifying glass icon next to a search result you see a preview of that page, often with the relevant content highlighted. Once activated, you can mouse over the rest of the results and quickly (instantly!) see previews of those search results, too."


Click to try it!          Click to read more     


MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

Groovy Fish

When it's late at night, we may be more casual about what we post.
This blog has some good Flash toys for Android.



MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

Google TV

Google TV looks great, it will let you watch both TV and Web at the same time, and lots more.

MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

Video for our Website Client

Here us a first cut video by Matalasco for one of our new web development clients, love-danitra.com. Next cut will have a more polished script and tighter production.


First we created Danitra's brochure, then the handbill and website were easy. Actually, first we made her business cards. What a joy to see a small business obtain new contracts! 

MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

Back to the (SEO) Basics, and Music

www.matalasco.com has been reviewed and every planned link has content, whereas before some were just stubs. So it's time to go back to the basics Google's Search Engine Optimization
Starter Guide. Wow that's a lot of pages to meta-ize.


Glad to be using Pandora Radio and hear stations that only play music I like, while working. I've been shaping an Elvis Costello station with more Stones and Beatles and some Rihanna and Eminem. If you have created a Pandora station that you really like, go ahead and share it with me. :- ) Let me know if you want to try this Elvis.  Latest: Leon Russell / Elton John.  Oh yeah, my Blind Faith station is wow, good stuff.   :-)


MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

China Dreams

Up and coming on strong, the Chinese people dream as we all dream. What do their dreams look like today?
www.chinasmack.com one of my favorite websites for fun and variety. 


"This film may be a little difficult for to understand if you have very different life experiences but many Chinese men have said this film made them cry. The English subtitles have many mistakes but it should still be understandable. At this time (of translating), the film has been viewed nearly 41 million times on Youku"


MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

New Brochure for Matalasco!

MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

A New Client Website

Ancient Turtle Island Creations displays jewelry by Betty Jo Williamson.

MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

Best China News Sources Online?

My Friend recommended CNTV -- do you know of any others? Are there representatives of types such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Mother Jones? 

MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

*Flock Adopts the Open Source Chromium Platform*

+ 

Flock Taps Google's Chromium to Bring Speed and Social to the Browser

Remember Flock? I played with it a few years ago but it failed to woo me away from Firefox.


Chris Crum's report, headline linked above, is actually more interesting to me as a Chrome OS market-share update. 


But I may just have to give Flock another spin. Are you interested in Flock? Have you been using it lately? How do you like the new compared with the old?

MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

*Google Gravity*

Click here:  Re-share from Google Buzz

MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

*Learn About HTML5 and the Future of the Web*

Search result from Google Buzz for HTML5
Google Developers on YouTube present:



MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

*Where to Put Your Internet Finds*

As new blogger I'm interested in how to organize my Internet discoveries for posting when I want. This looks like an easy, workable solution. 

Use Evernote & Google RSS Reader to Create Your Own Knowledge Base

There is a lot more good stuff at Joe's blog!

Linda Lawrey is always sharing good tips on Google Buzz! Hey, Linda! 

--And thanks, Joe Mezzanini!


MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

Remotely Access Another Computer

http://www.gbridge.com/

Our laptop can now view our desktop pc's monitor and control the pc. A selected folder will be synched every 24 hours. I can log in to my pc from any computer. Gbridge was so easy to set up and use--less than 30 minutes. 
MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

Expo 2010 Shanghai China USA Pavilion

USA Pavilion

Here in Seattle, we're not hearing much about the Expo, not even on National Public Radio.

Glad to learn about it from Google Buzz. 

See Google Maps in Gmail

Google Maps previews in Gmail and Google Buzz

Monday, June 07, 2010 | 4:05 PM

Posted by Mark Knichel, Software Engineer

I often receive emails containing addresses in them — where to meet for dinner, the location of my friend's new apartment, etc. To find out where these places actually are, I have to copy the address, open up Google Maps, and paste it in. Today, we're making it easier to see maps of all the addresses you receive in Gmail and Google Buzz.

Enable "Google Maps previews in mail" from the Gmail Labs tab under Settings, and any time you receive an address or a Google Maps link in an email, a preview will appear containing an interactive Google Map of that location. Any Google Maps URL will work, but we currently only extract US addresses (we're working on making addresses around the world work).

MatalasCo -- Web development with a sharper idea for your online presence

repost--HTC EVO 4G REPORTEDLY SOLD OUT

HTC EVO 4G REPORTEDLY SOLD OUT

June 11, 2010: The HTC EVO 4G smartphone just launched, and reports are circulating that it's sold out nationwide. Sprint has reported that the EVO is breaking all its previous sales records -- although it inadvertently inflated -- and quickly corrected -- figures for first-day sales on Monday.

The EVO has a 4.3-inch screen, dual cameras -- an 8.0 megapixel primary and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera -- GPS, stereo Bluetooth, video sharing over Qik, Google mobile services, social media integration with Twitter, Flickr, and other services -- and a built- kickstand, to make watching video easier.

Though it's designed for 4G, the EVO is also doing well in non-4G markets, Sprint Nextel CFO Bob Brust told the Kansas City Business Journal. He also said the company is working hard to remedy the shortages. The Sprint 4G network, set up with partner Clearwire Corp., is in markets covering about 44 million people and may nearly triple by the end of this year.

source

Symbaloo

This innovation gives you 52 bookmarks at-a-glance, great for a browser home page. Since you can save and share sets, it's also useful for collaborating about a topic. 

Click on the title of this post or the image for a link to the whole story. 

Thanks to Louis Gray on Google Buzz!

Happy 4-Month Birthday Google Buzz!

Thanks, Buzz Team

What U Say? -- an animated gif here in Blogger

is also a great early Buzz thread for chat, 

including this "Magic" and even Blonde Jokes -- 

TY Payal Sharma

To learn more and have more fun with it

consider Trigonometry Success in 20 Minutes a Day

and the Flash 8 Cookbook from OReilly

Follow on Buzz

xRez Studio--extreme resolution gigapixel photography

xRez Gigapixel Images -- another frontier in the world of images

Enjoy exploring this site!

Thanks to Hamish W for posting on Google Buzz

  

Learning about China; chinaSMACK

Last weekend I became friends with an articulate Chinese man who kept returning our conversation to classical China. China today is a complex conversation! It's changing faster than most developing nations, with arguably the greatest impact on the world community.

A Bitter Revolution was a great read, describing cultural, political and economic events in the 20th century in broad strokes.

China had to learn how to learn technology after being closed for so long. Consider how the Family exists within the State and its course of change. The Party and its authority are controversial and Chinese people I've met are mostly fatalistic about government. Like a lot of Americans. A Bitter Revolution was a great primer and created empathy.

Today I discovered chinaSMACK "Popular Chinese internet news, stories, pictures, videos, bloggers, memes & trends translated into English along with real Chinese netizen reactions " It's fun and very pop-culture.

Having read The Marcos Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave, I just started The Soong Dynasty, another account of the United States' capricious influence, this time in China. It is investigative journalism at its most entertaining. Feeling kind of worn out by the Tea Party nonsense, Obama's struggles and our military burdens always in the news -- it's more fun to follow China.

Billboard Illusion

Click on the picture to visit the web site for more

Every Grain of Rice Counts

Take a few minutes to relax with vocabulary challenges and create a donation of rice here.

Create HTML Signatures Right Inside Gmail

Using an email sig in GMail is something I had researched and kind of given up on, content to insert an image sig for fun when I wanted, like the one above.

Then I found this blog post. Now I can easily store and use a variety of signatures appropriate for different purposes. It's easy and versatile.

Create it once, save it as a canned response and insert it whenever.

xxx-xxx-xxxx

Extend the Range of Your Wireless Network

This is a comprehensive article on the subject.

Talk City

Talk City

Anybody have experience here?

621 people chatting in 180 rooms when I came across it. Quite a range of conversations.

I usually don't take much time to chat with relatives and friends, much less this, but I may.

TTYL -- Peter

Zoom for Windows, free

Somebody on Google Buzz asked about zooming in Windows and I found ZoomIt.

"ZoomIt runs unobtrusively in the tray and activates with customizable hotkeys to zoom in on an area of the screen, move around while zoomed, and draw on the zoomed image. -- from Microsoft"

It was a quick download which didn't even have to install -- just use it. :-)

Mozilla and Chrome

Check out Matt Asay's CNET News update on Mozilla and what happened to it.

I surely did appreciate it back when it was my browser.

Mozilla

A Feast of Web Tools, Web Science and Discussions

Click on the title of this post or the Webwhompers link below and browse the Share menu item and the Blog. For sure I will return to read more and you may, too!

Boston University Teacher Bruce Hoppe writes at connectedness

"I have just unveiled Webwhompers, which bears the fruit of four years of my teaching Web science at Boston University. The site features a few interests of mine:

• A solid layman's introduction to Web science, focusing on the intersection of mathematics, sociology, and the Web as it is used and built by regular people. It is all presented as an online textbook you can read here.
• A case study in educational methodology. Unlike the online textbook, which is meant to be read, the rest of Webwhompers is meant to be experienced."

A Tool to Become Comfortable with the Habits of Blogging

Hi Larry, my bro'

You have a blog, but you haven't used it. It's burdensome to write two paragraphs of wisdom for each post.

It seems impossible that you would do this weekly or post daily. You don't want to pollute the channels with a lot of redundant filler. If you did, you know that people would not come back. You're too intelligent to do that.

How to leave behind these feelings and just start blogging? You know that you want to, that it's to your benefit.

Buzz is in my GMail because I turned it on. From it I'm learning to blog. I came across a good comment by this one who is in your professional area.

If you decide to take time, this is an engaging way to learn to blog. It's kind of like doodling on the piano. A lot it's about cultivating the ephemeral events of your day and sharing them, along with x-number of people of your choice doing the same. After reading each previous issue of the Atlantic Monthly, I shared an article which I thought particularly good.

Yesterday I got a follower from Ahmedabad, India.

There's a developer in Texas now in my GMail Chat and another

in Vancouver BC with whom I've spoken on the phone

has an interesting cloud software suite

generates discussions of Tesla, global warming, Ayn Rand, etc

There are two in China, one who offers a daily YouTube selection

these guys' Buzz is really refreshing with photos and architecture

they're not connected and I'm not familiar with either of their locations,

though I Wikipedia'd the cities

It all started when a Buzz user from India started following me on Buzz and I saw that I could learn from her. I think she's an IT student learning the technologies, really posting a lot of BBC-type stuff and the lovely Bollywood actresses, but in good taste. I commented to ask where she got a Flash image that I particularly like, then questions about AdSense, etc.

I started two blogs, a blog for my company with a theme of tech discoveries that I like and of course, company news -- and one for working through the Tagalog language book with my fellow-student, where I put some music, Philippine election news and such. I don't want to distract you with visits to these right now.

In order to learn, I put AdSense ads on one and also learned how to use AdWords, which I recommend for you to use so you will be there when someone searches like "counselor, Pasadena." You don't pay until they click, you set the amount you pay, the how-to is here

You can set your blog to go into Buzz automatically and you can blog via email.

If you want to get comfortable with creating your blog, give Buzz a try.

How to Save the News - Magazine - The Atlantic

Last night I enjoyed reading this article. It is composed of interviews with Google staff members and describes their formidable contributions to preserving the best of journalism as it leaves behind the printed-on-paper news business model. "Bundling" is the key concept, contrasting the printed newspaper and its revenue streams with what Google does -- some of which I didn't know in detail. Enjoy!

How to Save the News - Magazine - The Atlantic

Even if you have only a few minutes to read the highlighted parts, this is a valuable reflection and reminder.

Tim Ferriss - The Difference: Living Well vs. Doing Well

---

The Difference: Living Well vs. Doing Well Posted: 12 May 2010 01:20 AM PDT

from The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss

The Semantic Web: What It Is and Why It Matters [VIDEO]

The Semantic Web: What It Is and Why It Matters [VIDEO]

Posted using ShareThis

First Summer Picnic with Friends

Test: posting by email

Haven't seen Dilbert for a while :-)

URL's now available in various alphabets

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10100108.stm
Truly a milestone.

Blogging is so easy: here's how

http://www.blogger.com/features

Color Scheme Designer

This one!

The most helpful design tool on the Web,

if you ask me! :-)

Let readers click to share your blog post or page on Facebook

"If you have tried adding Facebook plugins to your website before but then skipped thinking the implementation was getting too geeky for you, I suggest that you explore the option again.

"That’s because Facebook has now made it extremely easy for anyone to integrate Facebook social elements into their website or blog – just copy-paste a single line of HTML code and your site will instantly become Facebook-ready.

"It all starts with a Like button that you need to add at the bottom of every post (or any other location) on your blog."

Thanks to Digital Inspiration for this guide. Click on the link above for more.

Matalasco Brochure, first draft

Song Embedded in Web Page

surf to here

www.mounttotumas.com by Matalasco

Gmail Adds Drag-and-Drop to File Attachments

Gmail Adds Drag-and-Drop to File Attachments

Posted using ShareThis

Flash embedded in MatalasCo today

joy

My Favorite Free Download

ColorPic

"Our popular Color Picker has an inbuilt magnifier and allows you to save full palettes of colors."

I scanned a magazine cover whose palette I liked and was able to identify colors and get the web-safe colors to match.

ColoPic even offers a preview of a light and dark website layout for each of your choices.

Sweet!

Pixel Ruler -- another useful and free tool

A Ruler for Windows

If you do a lot of picture cropping and re-sizing like I do, you may find that this saves you a lot of guessing. Downloaded it only today, but it seems really cool.

There was another freebie at the site where I found this, but it didn't install, was only available for use from the Web.

CSS-JavaScript Foldout Menu

I'm integrating this on matalasco.com and enjoying it. Thanks to developer Adviesinzeo. This blog entry title links to the source web page.

Thoughts about Web Development Partnership

My business has been registered for about a year-and-a-half during which I have had some customers, a year of other full time employment, a wife recovering from cancer, guitar students and a busy life. Now I'm setting a goal and a deadline for business development and have invited a friend to join me.

Original motives

The freedom to live anywhere and earn a living, even in old age.

Freedom from an employer's vacation schedule means the freedom to take trips throughout the year.

We can satisfy our values for living by helping folks to get online with a cost effective and pleasing presence, whether a free web site hosted by Google or our inexpensive hosting. There are lots of fine people who would be grateful to us as some already are.

Any business owner has a dream to make a LOT of money.

Looking for a job consumes a lot of time and anxiety, this is another freedom.

Concepts

The target market is new businesses that don't have a web site.

I found in the past that there's always a need for home repair and that my business thrived by word of mouth. Likewise I believe for web development, somebody's going to be building a lot of web sites for new companies. The challenge is to get our message to them.

find them on Craigslist and

new businesses at a training-and-support program I belong to, trains about 30 new business owners every 3 months, with at least 10 of them carrying on with their dreams.

Non-profits. We might qualify for more contracts if my wife becomes a principal in the company, as a woman and an immigrant.

eCommerce, of course. I need to develop the sample eCommerce site I have.

monthly revenue from ongoing marketing -- search engine optimization.

My friend pays monthly for this service for his artist's web site. I'll follow up researching the business model.

business services such as bill pay and phone pay and click to call

helping new businesses to set up their books -- the idea of offering this service comes from recently updating my books using a good, free system. I wish to purchase Quicken, which simplifies things, especially taxes.

use templates, e.g. the ones on peteschulte.info -- we could just assemble a bunch of CSS, DreamWeaver and Joomlaofferings that are already online or build some in DreamWeaver.

I don't know how we would structure the compensation or ownership of the company. In past years I've hired 4 or more guys from CL to help with remodeling jobs and each was happy to work for me again. So I have confidence that we are capable of working out something fair and effective.

Once that is in place, I really like the management strategies in a small book called The E-Myth by Michael Gerber.

Perceptions

Within the last year a new coffee house started in my neighborhood. I'm skeptical about it surviving and feel the same about a web development company. The economy is depressed and there's a lack of surplus cash and enthusiasm for new companies that would need web sites.

For me this means that getting a full time job may soon become priority one.

Between now and then, June 15th, against my expectations, I want to see if I can earn $20.00 for 40 hours a week at my business, $800 net. This means gross revenues about $1100.00 per week to cover taxes. We would want to achieve double that for two of us.

Some years ago I did market research and found that charging $40.00 / hour is standard.

Recent Motivations

The reason I proposed working together is that my friend and I created a lot of synergy doing his remodeling project for 5 days. Replacing two 8-foot door frames with one slider door and a separate side light window was half. This involved some new deck floor, which we had to seal against rain and wind on the Oregon coast and replacing the adjacent siding. The other half was replacing the ceiling in the room below.

What I liked was the freedom to take a chunk of work and do it until it was done, without really thinking about all of the other chunks. Also, working together, we corrected and improved each others approach to doing things that came up unexpectedly.

It's so difficult for me to use a schedule for web work, with the conflicting priorities and interruptions from my life.

Now my wife is finished with the most demanding cancer survivor treatments and has recovered her can-do attitude. My day is punctuated by driving her to-and-from work and medical appointments, in addition to several hours a week shopping. The new schedule has me returning home about 8:15 and picking her up at 3:30.

It's a pleasure to have this high quality of life with her, but also aggravating and frustrating trying to remodel the basement, maintain the weekly chores, the vehicles and build my business. During the day I need to prep vegetables for dinner and/or cook rice and go to the gym. You might think the gym would be an evening activity -- wish that it were.

Scheduled times for web work as a team would really help!