Netflix has had the “Watch Instantly” feature online for a while. When I would be working late into the night, I would use it to have a movie playing on one monitor while I slaved away on the others gettting work done. It was a great feature from Netflix to use for a guy that is glued to a desk 10+ hrs a day.

The only problem I had with the Netflix ‘watch instantly’ feature was that there were only s a few dozen movies to watch online. Most of them were old and rarely any TV series that I could catch up on. That’s when I started spending my time on the awesomeness called Hulu.

All that has changed now. With Roku, I may never need Hulu again. (OK I’ll still need you Hulu.)

Like Having Thousands of Movies at Home

The Roku player is like having your own video library at home with over 50,000 choices – from the best movies, TV shows and sports. The Roku player is the simplest (and cheapest) way to watch anything and everything from – Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, and MLB.com instantly on your TV. You never have to wait for a DVD in the mail or pay late fees ever again.

Three Great Channels From Three Great Partners

Over 17,000 Choices Instantly from Netflix

Watch as much as you want on Netflix— watching instantly is already included in your Netflix unlimited membership for no additional cost. You still get all your DVDs by mail, but now you’ll also get over 17,000 movies & TV shows streamed instantly to your TV with the Roku player. There are no ads or trailers, and you can pause, rewind and fast-forward all you like.

As I mentioned, it has been a long time since I have looked at the Netflix online movie selection. I was bored with it. In a way I am glad I missed all of the new additions they have made. It makes the Roku that much more exciting. Now I log into Netflix and add whatever I want to my Watch Instantly queue and then when I sit infront of my TV, I can watch anything from my playlist on the TV just as if I had the DVD delivered. If I don’t like the movie, there is NO mailing back, I just start something new off of the playlist. AWESOME!!!!

If you love movies and can’t wait for DVDs to be mailed to you, add the Roku to you Christmas list and let Santa bring you a treat.

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I started HyperLocal Edge as a way to creatively put my skills to work for others. HyperLocal marketing is a growing trend on the internet.

For small businesses in this challenging economy, getting solid results from a marketing investment is an absolute must. A new survey from Nielsen Online and WebVisible, however, reveals that local businesses and online consumers are often failing to connect.

The survey polled nearly 4,000 Internet users and business owners about their online consumer behavior and business marketing strategies. The data shows a “Great Divide” between media usage and small business advertising. The study provides valuable insight for local businesses that want to better understand online consumer behavior in order to maximize the return on their marketing spend.

Some of the key findings:

• Consumers use search engines 72% more often than they did two years ago
• Search engines are the No. 1 choice of consumers and small business owners alike when looking for a local product or service.

Yet, of small businesses:

• Half spend less than 10% of their marketing budget on Internet advertising
• Only nine percent are very satisfied with their results – meanwhile 63% turn to the Internet first when looking for local products or services

Reliance on multiple resources, reviews, blogs

The survey found that 75% of respondents rely on multiple information sources to find local business information; only an tiny minority (6%) said they used a single trusted source. However those “trusted sources” weren’t identified — whether traditional media or online.

Three fourths of users say they read reviews (product/service business) online. The number is higher (80%) as the audience ages:

–60% of 18-24 year olds read online reviews. –Ages 34 – 64 saw an average of 80% reading online consumer reviews.

–69% use blogs as a source for consumer product reviews, yet only 23% have ever posted a consumer review on a blog (among this group of posters: 45% of the posted reviews were negative, while 15% were mixed and 40% were positive).

Shop online, buy locally

Just over 70% of survey participants say they prefer to stay within a 20 minute drive of their homes to reach a business. And 80% of respondents say they have researched a product or service online and then made their purchase offline from a local business.

These findings are consistent with other information and empirical data in the market but serve to reinforce the importance and power of both search/SEM and local search in consumer purchase behavior.

Getting listed on localized business listings like Google Local and Yahoo Local can be tricky. We can mange these for you and make sure the information listed is up to date and draws customers to your business.

From the several online yellow pages and other local directories there are dozens of  places we can make sure your business is listed correctly and professionally. Getting listed in these online directories is usually free but not an easy task to accomplish with many steps and waiting for confirmations. We can manage this process and insure your business is listed locally for customers to locate easily.

Maximize your local exposure

Localized marketing on the several online yellow pages and other local directories where we can make sure your business is listed correctly and professionally. Getting listed in these online directories is usually free but not an easy task to accomplish with many steps and waiting for confirmations. We can manage this process and insure your business is listed locally and correctly for customers to locate easily.

• Google Local
• Yahoo Local
• Online Yellow Pages
• Yelp.com
• Many others

Many of these online directories make it easy to reach out to people who have reviewed your business. By contacting the people with the most positive comments to express your appreciation and possibly give them a special deal, you stay top of mind with some of your best influencers for more business. Even communicating with the people who gave negative comments to get a better understanding of the issues could give you another chance to get another customer for life.

Social Media Twitter

I have a Twitter account setup for the site. Actullay I had the account before the site but it ties in well. Social Help is a Twitter profile that spreads news, tips and trends in social media marketing.

The Twitter profile has been gaining in popularity among others interested in the latest news about social media.Besides pulling the feed from the HyperLocal website, I add in links to other sites that talk about everything from Twitter, SEO and other new media tools.

I knew there was a market for Hyperlocal marketing services and I decided to do a bit of generic marketing to test the waters. After designing the website and making sure it looked professional enough to show to the public and then using the Twitter profile to help spread the word, I got started on Facebook. I set up a Facebook fan page for HyperLocal Edge.

This was the first Facebook fan page I had spent any special amount of time on. I need put myself through some additional training on the system but I have the basic understanding and can make a decent fan page.

Many businesses want to be on Facebook but have no idea how to do this. So I figured this could be a service I offered.

Facebook makes advertising very easy and extremely targetable. I initially started off spending $0.20 on ads specifically in my area. Then I got to thinking and figured I could really offer services like this all over the US and now I have ads placed across North America.

I chose to only run the ads on certain days that’s why there are so many dips in the click throughs. Over all there were thousands of impressions and a couple dozen clicks. After dozens of clicks, that turned into about a dozen emails and call backs.

This only helped me understand what the business model should be. After each of these calls I was able to take note of the common questions and redesign some of the content on the site to address those issues.

I even played around with Google ads. Again these can be extremely targetable ads and I setup both text links and flash ads that are displayed online.

Since there doesn’t seem to be a company that caters to the small business and home based business for hyperlocal marketing, I figured I could be one of the first.

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I sold a large selection of the comics when I was about 20 when I was on my own and needed some money but I held on to about 3 boxes with 400+ comics.  After moving into the house and now with the little one, I kept looking at the boxes I had moved from place to place over the last few years knowing I had to do something with them but procrastinated until recently.

ONce I made the decision to do something about the comics, I had to decide how to go about cataloging all of them and getting a general idea of the prices. Part of me just wanted to take everything down to the local comic book store and have them do it but the reality is, I knew I had some pricey books and I didnt want to leave my collection in the hands of a stranger. So I did the next best thing and went online and started cataloging them on ComicsPriceGuide.com.

This site made the process fairly painless. I was able to identify my comics, choose the condition and then it gave me a price for the comic as well as saved the issue in my personal database. Not only did it save my collection as I entered it, my comics were devided by categories like the publisher (I seem to have been a Marvel fan) and comic name ( I have more GI. Joe Comics than I ever knew.)

All in all it was interesting to see that some of the comics I had loved so much as a kid were actuall worth something now. Nothing I can retire on but seeing that I have multiple comics over $100 makes me smile. Chances are I’m not going to be selling these but I will be getting rid of another large selection of my comics.

I can do this right from ComicsPriceGuide.com or start looking to put the comics on eBay. The hard part of cataloging the comics is done. Now it’s just a matter of finding them a good home.

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For something originally based on military-level counterintelligence technology, it’s ridiculously simple:

Step 1: After you register, you’ll simply key in a few numbers into your phone. So, if you’ve got fingers, you’re good to go (For those of you without fingers, simply ask a buddy to help out!). No software or downloads are needed.

Step 2: When you receive a blocked or restricted call, reject it. You don’t want to answer an unknown number anyway right? In a matter of seconds, the blocked call is sent to our servers, where it is instantly unmasked and sent back to your phone! All the while the caller hears a normal ring tone, oblivious to the fact that you know exactly who they are.

Step 3: Actually that’s all there is. You either take the call, or you don’t. In any case, you’ll know exactly who’s calling.

By programming your cellphone to direct all rejected and unanswered calls to TrapCall’s 800 number, the callers number will be recorded and and sent back to your cell phone without interruption. CNET’s review explains this only takes about six seconds.

I think TelTech has always been riding the line of the law and ethics with their Spoofcard service and the initial reactions to their latest service is mixed as well. Personally I can see many positive uses for the service but like most useful services, there will be the people that use TrapCall for less than pure reasons.

The service, which is currently available to AT&T and T-Mobile subscribers, is free. There are premium features including the ability to record incoming calls (which TelTech notes may be illegal, depending on the users’ individual state laws), voicemail transcriptions via e-mail and text message, and the ability to listen to voicemail via the Web.

Yes, they even have a Twitter account setup so you can follow and comment on their service.

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Conventional wisdom holds that you only get what you pay for, but the real free geek knows that with the right knowledge (and maybe a charming smile) pretty much anything, even the good stuff, can be had for less or in the best case scenarios nothing at all. Despite this, there are a number of things out there that don’t seem to scream “free” majority of the time (MIT being one). Here’s a list of a few free things that might surprise you.

1. Classes at MIT If you’ve ever wanted to know what it feels like to get a first class nerd education but never had the money or the grades, MIT offers a majority of its curriculum (graduate and undergraduate) online free of charge. On the downside, the quantum physics class you decide to take won’t count for any actual college credit, but free education is free education whether you get credit or not.
2. Language Lessons The world is an increasingly smaller place, and the ability to communicate in a language other than your native tongue is an increasingly valuable skill to add to your resume. There are a number of resources available on the web to help you learn languages (everything from French to Urdu) via Podcasts. A good one to try is the BBC. There, you can brush up on your Spanish or learn something a more complicated. Best of all, you can load it onto your MP3 player and take it with you to listen to while you’re driving to work or running errands.
3. Business Education Learning to run your own business can be a trying experience, but you can get a little help and advice for free from the Small Business Administration. Local business centers offer classes that can teach you how to write a business plan or even how to take care of all the tax details associated with business ownership.
4. Computer Classes Technology changes so fast these days it can be hard to keep up. There is a solution to at least some of your computer and gadget illiteracy woes, however. Apple stores nationwide offer workshops on a variety of (Apple) software and hardware techniques as well as some computer basics. The classes might not do you a lot of good, however, if you don’t own any Apple products.
5. Museum Admission Going to a museum can be pretty expensive, especially if you’re trying to bring a family along. Many museums offer free days or hours, especially during the summer (like the Art Institute of Chicago summer programs). Why pay $20 to see a Van Gogh when you can study his work for free?
6. Concerts, Movies and Shows Many communities offer a wide variety of free entertainment through local park districts and organizations. While it may not always be the hottest new feature, taking advantage of free entertainment can be a great and cheap way to spend an evening. Many large cities, like Chicago, show series of movies for free during the summer in the parks. You can bring a picnic, refreshing beverages, and enjoy the weather and scenery along with your free movie. Check your local park district’s website to see if there are any events in your area. Certain reward credit cards can get you free VIP access to certain events as well.
7. Pets Choosing to adopt or buy a pet can be a potentially costly endeavor, but there are ways to get around at least some of the initial costs. Sites like Craigslist and PetFinder often offer pets for free. You can find great animals whose owners can no longer keep them do to allergies or living situations. Make sure to meet the animal before you commit to taking it home, though, as not all posters might be as honest as they should be about the temperament of the cat or dog.
8. Gym Membership While more long-term solutions to free gym membership may be more complicated, you can get free passes to visit almost any gym in your area. Beware, however, that you might end up listening to their spiel to sell you on a pricier membership plan. If you aren’t pained by the idea of a sales pitch, you could theoretically shop around at every gym in town to maintain the free access for several weeks, depending upon the size of your town. The best time for free trials is at the beginning of the year, as many people want to make good on their New Year’s resolutions.
9. Photo Prints Many online photo album services not only allow you to share your photos with family and friends through the internet but they’ll give you free prints of your photos as well. Check out Snapfish, Kodak, dotphoto
   and Adorama to see about getting free prints when you sign up. Sometimes you can get anywhere from 15 to 50 prints of your photos depending on the site and the time of year when you register. The photos aren’t entirely free, however, as you do have to pay for shipping; but it’s considerably cheaper than having all those prints made at your local photo store, and usually amounts to mere pennies for each photo.
10. 411 Service Need directory information but don’t want to pay for it? Simply dial 800-373-3411 (800-FREE-411).
    You’ll get free directory assistance from your cell or land line. The catch is, however, that you do have to listen to a short (only 20 seconds) ad before you can ask your question, but really, that’s a small price to pay for a free service.
11. Phone Calls If your long distance charges are getting you down, stop using your phone to make calls and start using your computer. Sign up for Skype or Gizmo Project and you can make computer-to-computer calls for free to anywhere in the world. Hook up your Webcam and you’ll have an instant videophone.
12. Email Reminders Have a terrible memory? Never forget a birthday again by using a free email reminder system like Memo to Me. Simply give them the date you want to remember and your email address and the system will send you a note that will gently remind you to remember your anniversary. Of course, you do have to remember to check your email in order for this to work. If you want to take preemptive action, you can also pick out free eCards to be sent at a later date. Hallmark carries a great collection of free cards, but you can also try out Hipster Cards or CardCow.
13. Ice Cream There is nothing that cures a craving for Chunky Monkey except some actual Chunky Monkey. One glorious day out of the year you can eat all the Ben & Jerry’s you want and not spend a dime. That’s right, Ben & Jerry’s worldwide has a free cone day. The best part is that there is no limit, so you can come back for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
14. Used Books For some people (myself included), buying books is a ridiculous obsession. To find a way to somehow acquire more books for less money is a book lover’s dream. Try out PaperBackSwap or Title Trader. Both operate on
    the principle where you list books you don’t want (that horrible Oprah book club one you’re ashamed to have sitting on the shelf) and then wait for someone to request it. Once someone’s laid claim to it, you simply mail it out and you’re given credit towards getting a book you really want. You will have to pay for shipping your old books out, but on paperbacks it isn’t much and you won’t have to hunt through dusty bins to find the book you want in return.
15. Household Items Have some junk lying around the house thatyou don’t want anymore? List it on Freecycle, a nonprofit community group that encourages users to give away old items instead of throwing them away. You can clean out your old stuff and replace it with new stuff for free. If you see a listing you want, simply respond to it. Keep
    in mind, however, that you are responsible for transporting, shipping, or picking up the items you want.
16. Makeup Want to try out movie star makeup without having to pay movie star prices? Many beauty supply stores will give you free samples of their products to take home with you. Some stores, like Sephora, will offer a generous sample of almost anything in the store to try it out. This free supply might not last forever, but you can look good for at least a little while!
17. Face Cream Want to prevent wrinkles without giving yourself new ones when you think about the cost of your face cream? Many department store brands will give away free samples if you ask nicely enough, but Oil of Olay has a sample program where you can try out their products for free. Any Oil of Olay fan knows that a little bit of this product goes a long way, so this is a great deal.
18. Good Samples While it does require a bit of a time investment on your part, you have potential to get some decent free samples from product surveys. Programs like E-poll and American Consumer Opinion will send you samples of everything from spaghetti sauce to toilet paper to get your opinion on those products. Urban legends even tell of those lucky few who got free TVs to try out (don’t bank on this when you sign up).
19. Comic Books For comic book geeks out there, I have something for you as well. At the beginning of May (the event was held on the 5th this year) you can head into your local comic book retailer and pick up some free comics. The titles range from Spiderman to Gumby, but with almost 30 different titles there should be at least something that you can enjoy for the summer.
20. CPR Courses You may not think you’ll ever have a time in your life when you’ll need to know CPR, but it’s really better to be safe than sorry when it comes to first aid treatment. You can take free CPR classes through many local hospitals, fire departments, or even online. It might sound like a boring way to spend your evening, but your efforts could save a life.
21. Legal Music Not all music available for download online is illegal, though you do have to be careful about what you choose. Many artists contribute songs intended for free download so that they can expand their audience. Check out this list of sites that offer free music. There is bound to be something that will pique your interest, and possibly open your eyes to new music you didn’t know about, without making you get out your MasterCard.
22. Coffee Your morning pick-me-up can be a little cheaper at least a few days a year by taking advantage of free coffee. Starbucks sponsors the Starbucks Coffee Break on March 15th, when they offer free coffee between 10-12 am. If you’re lucky and Starbucks is generous, pastries may be available for sampling as well.

While not everything you want can always be free, there are a lot of free things out there for the taking if you know when to go and where. So take advantage of this list, and start getting all the free stuff you deserve (you’ve worked hard for it).

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Dear Ma.gnolia Community Members or Visitor,

Early on the West-coast morning of Friday, January 31st, Ma.gnolia experienced every web service’s worst nightmare: data corruption and loss. For Ma.gnolia, this means that the service is offline and members’ bookmarks are unavailable, both through the website itself and the API. As I evaluate recovery options, I can’t provide a certain timeline or prognosis as to to when or to what degree Ma.gnolia or your bookmarks will return; only that this process will take days, not hours.

I will of course keep you appraised here and in our Twitter account.

Most importantly, I apologize to all of you who have made Ma.gnolia a home for your bookmarks and community. I know that many of you rely on Ma.gnolia in your day to day work and play flow to safely host you bookmarks, keeping them available around the clock, and that this is a difficult disruption.

Sincerely,
Larry

I don’t Ma.gnolia for my bookmarks but the news of this outage disturbes me anyway. Ma.gnolia is one of the leaders in the social bookmarking and community sites. If something like this can happen to them, why would I think it couldn’t happen to my favorite bookmarking site as well?

I stopped adding bookmarks locally about 2 years ago and I bookmark a lot of sites. Being able to go online search through my favorite internet links and sort them by tags is almost second nature to me now. I guess no company is really safe from data loss.

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Becoming the Mayor of Concord (online) was a bit of a challenge. Many of the typical rules of internet marketing do not apply to a hyper-local blog. It’s not a primary focus to get people from all over the US or the world reading the site. I had to find other outlets that could be used to spread the word about my local blog and still keep the focus on a local audience. I have pulled together 10 ways to promote your local blog to a hyper-local audience.

TOPIX

Topix is the leading news community on the Web, connecting people to the information and discussions that matter to them in every U.S. town and city.

A Top 10 online newspaper destination (comScore, March 2008), the site links news from 50,000 sources to 360,000 lively user-generated forums. Topix also works with the nation’s major media companies to grow and engage their online audiences through forums, classifieds, publishing platforms and RSS feeds.

Based in Palo Alto, Calif., Topix LLC is a privately held company with investment from Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI) and Tribune Company.

Your Street

YourStreet transforms the way you experience local news by indexing and mapping thousands of articles, blogs, and discussions down to the street level. YourStreet connects you to the local information that impacts you most – what’s going on in your town, your neighborhood and even your block.

YourStreet scans thousands of newspaper sites and local blogs each day to bring you the most comprehensive local news available anywhere. Our algorithm interprets the articles, identifies specific locations in the text, and plots them on an interactive map.

Twitter

Using Twitter can help grab the attention of people in your area as well as other news outlets that are looking for ways to expand their reach in the virtual world.Using some common tools using the Twitter API, you can find and follow people in your area that may be interested. I had the opportunity of meeting people from the Contra Costa Times and learn about how a newspaper works. I have been in contact with other local news agencies like cbs5 and KTVU. The best part is that these larger news agencies are more than willing to have a short conversation with you as well. They understand and appreciate the social aspect of Twitter and know that building a following is important.

Craigslist

Craigslist is a way to get local traffic to your website. With more than 12 billion page views per month, Craigslist has more than 50 million people using it’s site each month. Using Craigslist is free and ther are multiple sections you can post to that can get people over to your local blog. One way to do this is to write up a short piece in the Rant and Raves section with a link back to your site.

Get the Community Involved

One of the best things I did when I started a local blog was reach out to local businesses that I frequented. From restaurants to movie theaters, I let the managers/owners know that I was writing a local blog (I had to explain what a blog was) and told them to check the site in a couple days when my post went live. I do this for free. I’ve been paid for a couple but it’s not about the money. Its nice to get to know others in the community and spread the word about their businesses online.

Besides businesses, getting the people of the community involved can draw attention to your local blog like a wild fire. I am a one man show but I get information from people all over the area on events and stories they would like to see given some attention. The network is small but growing. Now I get some pictures from people in the area that I can use in posts I write.

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I use Flickr as my online photo storage bucket. My wife is more of a photographer than I am but I have many pictures from Iraq and other trips that I have stored there. A lot of pictures I have collected over the years and many iPhone wallpapers I have collected. I was storing all of these pictures on my hard drive but ever with 1.5TB of space on my computers, pictures take up a lot of space.

There are so many great features to Flickr. It’s really a social media platform for people that appreciate photos. You can add friends, leave comments on great pictures and get some great stats on your account.

You can track the daily aggregate views of your photos and see how many times people are looking through your pictures. You can dig in even deeper and see what pictures are the most popular in your account.

I was completely ignorant to these features when I started using Flickr. I just uploaded my pictures and left it at that. I started paying attention to the statistics when I realized that I was getting traffic to my websites based on the images in my account. I added a link to a blog post on one of the images that I was using in the post and found that more people clicked through the link on the Flickr photo than were getting to my site through other means.

With so many people viewing pictures in Flickr, you can really help drive some traffic to your website by providing a link in the discription for people to click through.

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