Several months ago SlideShare launched a presentation contest. The goal was to find the World’s Best Presentation. The presentations were judged by top presentation gurus and the viewers (us, you and me).

The judges and top presentation gurus were Guy Kawasaki, Bert Decker, Garr Reynolds and Jerry Weissman.

Now I’ve created my share of presentations and I’ve been really proud of most of them… but these WAUW! Looking through the contributions you will quickly notice that they have a lot in common.

I recently created a slide show inspired by these presentations and the feedback was very positive. The audience told me they felt “provoked” to listen to me talk, instead of reading page after page of bullets.

1. Most use very large font sizes
2. Lots of colour contrast – most have a dark background with light text
3. Each presentation tell a story
4. Graphic images are big and simple – generally just one per slide
5. Images help tell the story – often critical to understanding the text
6. Text is minimal – many of the presentations only have a few words per slide
7. Text isn’t in the same place on every slide
8. Headlines aren’t used very much – Regular sentences or “Down style” are more common
9. Text and images are static, they don’t scoot around on the page
10. Slides don’t need audio to be understood (I might have some difficulties at that, people need a reason to listen to you)

Some of my presentations are way too text-heavy and according to these 10 observations way too boring and I might not get the right message out. Now all I need to learn is how to create the beautiful and fancy graphic in Photoshop (and be creative *ahem*). You can check out the winning presentations on SlideShare’s page. Amazing what you can do with PowerPoint.

[slideshare id=33834&doc=shift-happens-23665&w=425]

Do you know what mistakes you often make on your blog or in life? Do you do anything to correct them? If yes, then do you fall back into old habits after a while again?

I tend to do that. I realise that I’m making a mistake, I correct it, but then sometime I fall back into the old habit again. To rub salt into my blog-wounds, display my stupidity and show my ignorance, I’ve created this list of 5 blogging mistakes I keep doing and haven’t fixed yet.

1. I “impulse-blog”, meaning I suddenly get an idea and I write a post about it. Several pro-bloggers, including Maki from doshdosh.com and Darren Rowse from Problogger.net, suggest that you plan ahead and write a week’s worth of blog posts in one day. I wish I did that, but I’m not. Sometimes a post topic just pops in my head and I sit down and write about it as quickly as possible. Then I have other days, like yesterday, where I didn’t write a thing. Now if I followed Darren’s great advice I wouldn’t have to “stress” over not having any new posts for my loyal readers.
2. My posts doesn’t contain enough keywords. When I write posts for Connected Internet, I make sure that each post contain so many keyword, that I’m sometimes sick of writing “Xbox360″ or “FIFA 08″, but those cursed Adsense ads need keywords, unless I want ads for X-ray equipment or scissors (typing these words might already have screwed this up).
3. I keep changing the theme on my blog. Regular readers might experiencing a new theme when reading one post and another when reading the next. I’m still trying to find the ideal theme.
4. I don’t analyse my traffic, keywords or statistics. I have the Google Analytics script installed on all my blogs, but I rarely go there and analyse the data. I know, I should be analysing my bounce rate and optimise my blog accordingly. It’s important to measure how many people arrive at your site and then leave again without viewing any extra pages.
5. I very rarely write posts that contains hot keywords. I never write posts about “Paris Hilton”, “Britney Spears”, “Hawaii Earthquake”, “Brian Crush Adams”, “Hurricane Flossie” or similar hot keywords. I tried it once in my “Moving To Another Domain” post. I had a picture of David and Victoria Beckham (Becks and Posh) <—– keywords, because the post is about moving and they had just moved to the US. Pretty clever huh?!

I guess I could point out more mistakes, but then I’d only make another one: “I make my lists too long”. Writing this post has helped me realise what I need to focus on in order to become a full-time blogger. It is crucial to exploit the various tools and services offered to you in order to succeed as a blogger. My vacation starts on Friday, I’ll spend some of it to see what it’s like to be a full-time blogger. I have to dig into my blog’s statistics and learn to tweak it.

It’s never funny to focus on the things you do wrong, but I learn from them, so right after I’ve written this post, I’ll write one for tomorrow, that will explain the right things I do, when it comes to blogging.

About four months ago SlideShare launched a presentation contest. The goal was to find the World’s Best Presentation. The presentations were judged by top presentation gurus and the viewers (us, you and me).

The judges and top presentation gurus were Guy Kawasaki, Bert Decker, Garr Reynolds and Jerry Weissman.

Now I’ve created my share of presentations and I’ve been really proud of most of them… but these WAUW! I can’t wait to create the next presentation for a bunch of IT-executives or managers. Looking through the contributions you will quickly notice that they have a lot in common.

1. Most use very large font sizes
2. Lots of colour contrast – most have a dark background with light text
3. Each presentation tell a story
4. Graphic images are big and simple – generally just one per slide
5. Images help tell the story – often critical to understanding the text
6. Text is minimal – many of the presentations only have a few words per slide
7. Text isn’t in the same place on every slide
8. Headlines aren’t used very much – Regular sentences or “Down style” are more common
9. Text and images are static, they don’t scoot around on the page
10. Slides don’t need audio to be understood (I might have some difficulties at that, people need a reason to listen to you)

Some of my presentations are way too text-heavy and according to these 10 observations way too boring and I might not get the right message out. Now all I need to learn is how to create the beautiful and fancy graphic in Photoshop (and be creative *ahem*). You can check out the winning presentations on SlideShare’s page. Amazing what you can do with PowerPoint.

[slideshare id=33834&doc=shift-happens-23665&w=425]

It took a bit more than a month for the hackers to crack Apple’s SIM-lock, that restricts the iPhone on other networks than the American AT&T.

The hack means that Europeans can use Apple’s iPhone without paying the expensive roaming fee to AT&T. With a bit of technical knowledge and equipment it is now possible to get the iPhone to accept a SIM-card that uses a European service provider. Unfortunately it is not a “real” hack, because it’s still not possible to use the SIM-card provided by your service provider.

The process or hack requires an blank silver SIM-card and a SIM-card writer.

According to Sassha on hackint0sh.org Vladimir_CDI and ozbimmer figured out how to hack the iPhone. Sassha wrote the tutorial on how to create a European iPhone and posted it on hackint0sh. The post is already 22 pages long and several users confirm that the hack works. They also confirmed that all features on the iPhone can be used, except the YouTube feature. The visual voice mail might not work on some networks either because it depends on the service provider.

Now I’m sure you are all eager to know where you learn more about the iPhone hack and how to do it. It requires a modded iPhone and a SuperSIM. Visit hackint0sh.org and learn how to hack your iPhone.

I found this one Neowin:

Remember these patches goes live next Tuedays, so they are official, just not released.

Thanks Nekrosoft for the news on this major update to Windows Vista that should for most of us improve the speed and reliability of Windows Vista significantly!

Please note: These fixes break all current methods of bypassing driver singing requirements except the good old F8 during boot (that you have to do every single time you start vista)

IF you are using Rivatuner, atitool and or Peerguardian on 64bit vista, you will have to use F8 every single time to disable driver signing requirements to use those two programs. x86 version is unaffected.

These updates should go official on the next patch Tuesday (in one weeks time). Please read more for the download links and information on these updates.

938979 Vista Performance and Reliability Pack
This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the performance and responsiveness for some scenarios and improves reliability of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:

* Improves performance in resuming back to the desktop from the Photo and Windows Energy screensaver.
* Resolves an issue where some secured web pages using advanced security technologies may not get displayed in Internet Explorer on Windows Vista.
* Resolves an issue where a shared printer may not get installed if the printer is connected to a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system and User Access Control is disabled on the Vista client.
* Resolves an issue where creating AVI files on Vista may get corrupted.
* Improves the performance in calculating the ‘estimated time remaining’ when copying/moving large files.
* Improves performance in bringing up Login Screen after resuming from Hibernate.
* Resolves an issue where synchronization of offline files to a server can get corrupted.
* Resolves a compatibility issue with RAW images created by Canon EOS 1D/1DS Digital SLR Camera which can lead to data loss. This only affects RAW images created by these two specific camera models.
* Resolves an issue where a computer can lose its default Gateway address when resuming from sleep mode.
* Improves the performance when copying or moving entire directories containing large amounts of data or files.
* Improves the performance of Vista’s Memory Manager in specific customer scenarios and prevents some issues which may lead to memory corruption.

938194 Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack
This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the reliability and hardware compatibility of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:

* Improved reliability and compatibility of Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
* Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
* Increased compatibility with many video drivers.
* Improved visual appearance of games with high intensity graphics.
* Improved quality of playback for HD-DVD and Blue-Ray disks on large monitors.
* Improved reliability for Internet Explorer when some third party toolbars are installed on Vista.
* Improved Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
* Improved the reliability of Windows Calendar in Vista.
* Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from XP to Vista.
* Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
* Increased reliability and performance of Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.

Link: Neowin Forum Discussion Thanks Nekrosoft
Download: Windows Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack for x86 or x64 version

As you might know I recently moved from www.petersen-inc.dk to www.thebetanews.com. In this article series I will explain about my experiences during the move. Read the first article before reading on.

Alexa:

I’m proud to say that my Alexa Rank has improved a lot since last week. One week ago it was 1,036,749. Today it’s 412,833, so 200,000 more and I’m back to “normal”. I expect it to keep falling, but maybe not as much as previously. If you want to know how to improve your Alexa Rank, then read my post here.

 Technorati:

Last week my Technorati Authority was 12, this week it’s 29. Again I’m almost halfway there, since the previous was at 61. My Technorati has improved from 627,802 to 219,189. Currently I have 7 fans compared to Petersen Inc’s 30 fans. If you want to be my Technorati fan then please go here and add me and favourite my blog too please.

Las week I wrote about merging my Technorati Authority and Fans. Unfortunately that is a no go. I found this on the Technorati Support Forum:

I’m afraid that we are unable combine links from different URLs at this time. Links are URL based and are unique citations to that blog at that time. It is suggested to update the web server configuration to send a permanent redirect response (HTTP Status 301) to anyone requesting the old URL. This will help consolidate online blog presence for all web aggregators and help have links reestablished eventually.

My Page Rank won’t update until August as Court mentions in this article about Google PageRank.
Misc:

I’m proud to say that my feed readers has improved. Currently there are 43 subscribers to The Beta News Feed. About my current theme. I’m still no happy about it. I was hoping it would be better supported, but as you can see my sidebar is pretty empty compared to my old theme. I’m currently looking for a WordPress Theme designer to make me a new theme.

On July 3rd (my birthday) I moved from www.petersen-inc.dk to www.thebetanews.com. In this series I explain my progress week for week, building up the traffic, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, Technorati Autority, link backs and so forth.

The Background

Originally petersen-inc.dk was meant to be my personal space with my resume, family photos and other personal stuff, but during winter 2005 I discovered WordPress and the whole blogsphere. Before that I really didn’t think much about the whole blogging thing, except I sometimes found some useful information there. Now everything took a turn. I started to write about new movie trailers, Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft Office 2007 and generally funny stuff I found through StumbleUpon.

In April 2007 I stumbled upon smoblog.com run by Mark Blair. I posted a comment on his site and he wrote back to me, thanking for the post and beautiful music was in the air…well…as beautiful as it gets when two married men talk about social media and other stuff. At that point I started to focus my attention on the blogsphere. My traffic wasn’t anything to brag about (still isn’t, but I’m optimistic). I learned my first lesson: Comment on other blogs! Anyway to make an already too long story short. I read and commented on several blogs and thanks to Wendy’s Monday Motivationn I applied as co-writer on Connected Internet and this is where the story begins…

Why Move To Another Domain?

Everton Blair from Connected Internet and I had some email correspondance about my site and it’s name. Everton gave me the kick in the behind that I needed by saying and I quote: “that has a really bad url to be honest mate”. He was right. So I spent some time thinking of a good name and I ended up with thebetanews.com. Of course, afterwards I read a lot of posts about clever webpages that generate a domain for you, based on some keywords. So now I have a .com domain and I’ve set up WordPress on the new domain what now?

The Preparation

I researched quite a bit on various blogs and quickly realised what I had to do in order to make the move as smoothless as possible for my readers (and the search engines). One thing is making it easy for your readers, but what about yourself? All my posts, comments, plugins, settings, options, feeds and all the other blog stuff. How can I move that with me? I tried two things. I’m a bit impatient, so I wanted to get started on the new domain as fast as possible. I used the Export function in WordPress and imported it on the new domain, then I downloaded my plugins and theme and uploaded it to the new domain. I activated the plugins and expected everything to be peachy! My posts and comments were there, but the settings weren’t and the tags were made into categories. I honestly thought I could cheat by moving them into the same subfolder (/blog) as on petersen-inc.dk, but that didn’t work. So now I had a blog installed in a subfolder with A LOT of categories and with no settings, no SEO and days of work ahead of me.

Now I mentioned I tried two things during the move, here comes the good part. I deleted the whole thing, created a new database (MySQL 5 this time) and exported my database through MySQLAdmin instead of WordPress’ export. Then I found a small program that goes through your exported SQL database and replaced www.petersen-inc.dk with www.thebetanews.com. I copied the entire text from the database into MySQLAdmin on thebetanews.com and BANG. I had all my settings, tags, posts, comments everything was good to go once I activated the plugins. What a relief!

I wrote a post on petersen-inc.dk that I was moving to thebetanews.com and I got some comments on that. Good now my readers knew about it, but how about the casual readers, the ones that drop by once in a while, the ones looking for a Joost invite or those from the meme lists. Redirection is the answer and boy is that simple. For the technical minded ones I used the 301 redirect. It basically means my site has moved permanently to a new domain. So I added some code to .htaccess on petersen-inc.dk:

RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.thebetanews.com/$1 [R=301,L]

and voila everything got redirected.

What Happened With The Traffic?

Google

Since I’m using the redirection everybody is directed here, even if you type www.petersen-inc.dk it is replaced with www.thebetanews.com, so direct traffic isn’t affected. Seatch engine traffic took a little while more. Just in case I submitted the new domain to Google, uploaded my sitemap and added a robots.txt. This is what my robots.txt looks like:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /rss/
Disallow: /comments/feed/
Disallow: /page/
Disallow: /date/
Disallow: /comments/

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*/feed/$
Disallow: /*/feed/rss/$
Disallow: /*/trackback/$
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: /*?

# This is the ad bot for google
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*

# Allow Everything
Allow: /*

Now myPage Rank hasn’t moved yet. I’m still unranked and according to Google there are 300 errors reported from the robots.txt. It is all my tags, I don’t know enough about robots.txt, so maybe it’s supposed to be like that. Anyway on July 4th Googlebot visited my site and indexed it and I started to get search engine traffic again.

Technorati

Petersen-inc.dk had a rank of 93,011 with 23 fans and authority of 61. TheBetaNews.com has a rank of 627,802 with 2 fans and authority 10. I tried to update my petersen-inc settings, but that can’t be done for obvious reasons, so as I see it I have to start building relations all over again. Now here is the funny part. I can’t get myself to delete the claim for petersen-inc. For some odd reason it updates with the news I post on thebetanews. I’m still looking into that. I’ll keep an eye on Technorati and keep you updated. Oh and remember please add this blog to your favourites

Alexa

As you can see my Alexa Rank isn’t anything to brag about. Petersen-inc.dk’s rank was 229,523, where my current is at 1,036,749. It took around 4 days for my rank to update and appear. Again check back next week. Hopefully it has improved by then. By then please review and rate my Alexa profile.

Link Backs

I’m a part of David Airey’s very succesful The Face Behind The Blog list and with about 40 link backs it really hurts. I know the traffic is being redirected, but my old name is still on the list, so I’m in the progress of commenting on all the link backs (again) asking them to update to my new domain. It might sound a bit tedious, but it’s actually very interesting. I’ve already spoken with a lot of nice people out there.

Social Networks

Again just plain manual work. I had to update MyBlogLog and Blogcatalog with my new domain and update the feeds on Wallop, MySpace, Facebook and various other places.

Timing

I’ve been giving this one a lot of thought. I’m not sure if there is such a thing as the right timing in the blogsphere. When is the right time to move to another domain? During the summer when noone is online anyway or around major holidays? In order to draw some attention to my new domain I’m interviewing a number of “celebrity” bloggers and I’m proud to say the first interview with Everton Blair broke my old visitor record. Hopefully the one on Sunday with Wendy will do the same.

What Else?

Then there is the last minor details, like the pictures are broken, since they point on the blog sub-folder I had on my old domain. I’m fixing those as I get along and it still says Petersen Inc. in the browser window(at the top). My feed readers shouldn’t notice the new domain. I simply updated the URL in Feedburner and everything continued without interuption. Surprisingly easy. Now I can continue where I left – viral marketing. Getting my name out there again.

I didn’t get as much attention as Posh and Becks

Goals For Next Week

I have to improve my Alexa rank, Technorati Authority and find out how to get my Page Rank back. Then I have to decide if I want to keep the current theme, go back to the old one or find a totally different one.

This article is a part of Wendy Piersall from emomsathome.com Group Writing Project.

Linksys has finally released the KNAS firmware for the High Definition Media Player KISS DP-600. It is the same firmware that is used in Linksys’ latest DVD-player KISS DP-1600.

You can download the firmware directly from Linksys.

Read on for the installation guide.

You can read much more about the High Definition Media Player DP-1600 that I’ve been spending so many posts about.

I suspect there is more behind the KNAS firmware than just helping the owners of a DP-600. Linksys has some new products up their sleeves, but more about that tomorrow.

How to install KNAS:

Burn the .iso file on a CD as an image.

1. Turn on the unit with the ON/OFF button (on the back panel)

2. Open the tray, and insert the update CD without closing the tray

3. Turn off the unit with the ON/OFF button (on the back panel)

4. Press the Default button on the back of the unit

5. Turn on the unit with the ON/OFF button, keep the default button
pressed,and press the STOP button on the front panel of the player (the
tray closes and PLEASE WAIT appears on the display)

6. Stop pressing the Default button 30 seconds after clicking on the
Standby button.

Now Playing!

Chitika | Owna

My old Apple iPod needs an update. I think it’s a 2nd generation (the one with the faulty battery), but it has several issues.

Now here is my dilemma – Which Mp3-player should I pick? An Apple iPod or a Creative Zen Vision M?

I’m more of a feature guy than a design freak, so the looks doesn’t matter. I’m aware that iPod is thinner than the Creative Zen.

This is what I know about the Creative Zen Vision M:

The Good:

• FM-radio
• Supports a lot of video formats
• Has a clear screen
• Voice recorder and FM recorder
• No iTunes needed

The Bad:

• No iTunes support
• The touch pad can be annoying
• Dongle is needed to sync
• Not many accessories
• Heavier than the iPod

This is what I know about the Apple iPod:

The Good:

• iTunes support – I like the podcasts audio and video
• A lot of accessories
• Larger disk space 80 Gb, though it really doesn’t matter, I only have around 20 Gb of music
• Is compact

The Bad:

• Doesn’t support all video formats
• iTunes is required
• Screen isn’t as good compared to Zen
• Apple and support? (I’ve only had good experience with Creative support)

Right now I primary use my iPod on my way to work, sun bathing, travelling and so forth. I’m used to not being able to see movies, but it would be a great addition, though I’m not sure how long you can look at such a small screen.

Anyway…my question to you my dear readers – Which one should I pick?

vs.

Microsoft, the exclusive online media sponsor for Live Earth, has launched the MSN Live Earth Tree – an interactive online animation that lets people worldwide pledge their commitment to the environment and join the battle to halt climate change.

The Live Earth Tree can be found at http://www.liveearthtree.com/ and users are invited to visit the site to design their own unique leaf for the tree, and pledge to make small lifestyle changes to reduce their impact on the environment.

The tree will grow in size as people across the globe sign up to make their pledge and show their support for the causes underlying Live Earth, the concert series taking place across the globe to raise awareness of the current climate crisis.

The tree is a unique social networking site, as visitors can search the tree to find leaves created by family, friends and celebrities worldwide and regular updates on the number of pledgers – including who and where they are – will also be available.

The tree will be promoted across the MSN network, including Windows Live Messenger and the Live Earth Portal, and consumers can use the ‘send to a friend’ functionality to promote it via their Windows Live Messenger network.

The story of the developments of the tree will be told via blogs on Windows Live Spaces, MySpace, YouTube and other social network sites.

My wife and I already live very “green, we buy local and ecological food, use energy saving bulbs, have nothing on standby, no water is running, washing our clothes at low temperature when possible, recycle everything (metal, paper, plastic, glass, clothes), the toilets have two different “flush-settings” and a lot more.

You can my pledge is that I will use our car less. See my leaf here.

What do you do to help the Earth?