More spam on Pinterest lately?

Pinterest boards are really becoming full of spam. A quick search on ‘iPhone’ pins end up with so many duplicate images all created by a couple of spammers.

And there are a handful of pins with suspicious URLs leading to sales page, and nothing relevant to the images we see.

As an iPhone fan, I’m always looking for the best iPhone stuff on the Internet and Pinterest. Unfortunately the search results are so disappointing and takes me more time than what I’m willing to spend. Maybe it will be better if the pinboard king can come up with a algorithm to remove similar images. That will make the user experience do much better.

Btw I keep an iPhone board ‘iPhone paradize” and if you like what you see, do follow or please repin.

Skype actually works on iPhone

Heard much and often that Skype app doesn’t work well and the app always auto shutdown when we switch app or try to run it in the background.

I had the same problem… But it turns out that the app may be memory intensive. So we’ll have to close those background apps (those that we are not using) in order to keep the Skype app running.

It could be bad design on the software developers’ part, but that’s probably the only way I can get the app to run continuously. Is there any tips or work around you manage to discover? 🙂

Klout is now available on iPhone

Klout is finally on iPhone. Perfect for crazy people like me who checks the score so often. The app is able to tell your current Klout score. When someone gives you a +K or your score changes, you be notified too.

The main screen gives you the main information: who you influence, who ate influencing you, and the 3 influential topics you are in. Looking forward to more features on the app!

Tweet me when you +K me

This is a continuation of my post on Klout, a reader said that sending a tweet to me is easier which I agree. So here’s the deal, if you +K on my profile, Klout will prompt you to share it via Facebook or Twitter. Click on Twitter, and Klout will give you the template to tweet. I check my Twitter account daily, so once I see the mention @imstash, I will response back with a +K 🙂 I don’t think this is any manipulation, since this is all about networking … we can’t possibly sit on the bench and wait for things to happen.

What’s your influence on the internet?

Recently, I have been playing a lot with my brand new Twitter and Google+ account. I wanted to test the impact social media networking has on bringing traffic to blogs, and the results are encouraging. Besides using Google Analytics to measure traffic, I’m also using Klout to measure the level of influence I have on my network. Out of 100, I got a score of 30 …. which is actually not bad, considering the average score at 20 (based on klout stats). 

On the surface, there isn’t any SEO benefits for having a klout account … but I can relate it to Page Rank. PR measures the importance of a page, while Klout measure the impact have on the internet and your connected networks. While it doesn’t spell the end of the world if you have a low score, I think it helps to know where we stand, and how we can improve our score. Klout measures our influence based on 4 factors: 

90 Day activity – your activities on major social networks such as Twitter, Facebook & Google+. It counts  how many RTs, mentions, +1, likes, comments you received

Your true reach – True Reach is the number of people you influence, both within your immediate network and across their extended networks.

Your amplification – Amplification indicates how much you influence people.

Your network – Network Impact measures the influence of your network.

When setting up your klout account, you can choose which 3 topics you want to be influential about. For me, I chose Social Media, Blogging & Internet Marketing. We can get free +Ks daily to acknowledge those who influences us. In a way, giving +K adds to the influence of the person. I don’t mind giving free Ks to anyone who wants it. But please do not leave your details in the comment box in case your profile gets abused by spammers/scammers, instead send me your Klout profile url via tweet, FB message, or via Google+. 

In Klout, there are 16 terms/levels used to measured your influence. Below is the list, not in any particular rank or order. You are categorized based on the level of involvment in Participation, Sharing, Creating, Broad, Focused, Consistent, Casual, Listening (re: the grid picture below)

1. Observer
2. Explorer
3. Activist
4. Specialist
5. Dabbler
6. Conversationalist
7. Socializer
8. Networker
9. Syndicator
10. Feeder
11. Thought Leader
12. Pundit
13. Curator
14. Broadcaster
15. Taste Maker
16. Celebrity

If you are using Pinterest for business, it’s time to track your traffic

With so much attention and focus on Pinterest, the million dollar question many marketers are asking: is traffic from Pinterest worth anything? 

For every type of marketing, it’s natural that different businesses get different results. Pinterest may work very well for certain industries and products, but may not much additional profits for others. The only way to find out is to analyze the traffic with defined metrics, and determine the success of the marketing campaign. 

Pinerly is a company that gives you the answers on Pinterest’s traffic. Find out what your targeted audience likes, what get repins or viewed often, etc. However, it is not officially launched yet. To be one of the first to get in, you can put yourself on the waiting list:

http://www.pinerly.com/i/wpK7e

Dorian Taylor (doriantaylor) on Twitter

Yes agreed, technology is to make our lives simpler and more effective…and give us more time to enjoy our lives.

Microsoft Executive sings her resignation on YouTube

Maybe she’s isn’t that good in writing 😀

BoilermakerHawk Talks Tech

A project manager from tech giant Microsoft decided to go out in style by singing her resignation in a video that was posted to YouTube.

Executive Karen X. Cheng, posted the video to her YouTube account on April 16.

Cheng is moving to another company called Exec, which is a new company that was started by the creator of the popular broadcasting site, Justin.tv, according to TechCrunch.

The video is very creative but I had mixed feelings as I was watching her sing about all of the things that she worked on while she worked at Microsoft.

There is an element of sadness because it can be sad to leave your job, but I was also laughing a little as I was watching, because the lyrics are quite clever, and she smiled a lot as she was singing.

For your viewing pleasure, here is the video:

View original post 71 more words

Are Internet Marketers and Online Business Owners Socializing Enough?

It’s puzzling why Internet marketers and even individuals who do online business put little emphasizing on social networking with their peers.

While engaging with your followers and customers are important, we must not forget that networking with fellow partners and forming strategic alliances can make our online marketing a greater success.

You probably are guilty of this if you didn’t do one of the following or have been avoiding:

1. You don’t tweet, FB like or promote any content from your peers on social media networks
2. All your Pinterest images or tweets are about your blog and products.
3. You don’t follow any of your competitors because you don’t want to be part of their “count”. Not a very smart move IMHO, because you are out of the loop on their marketing strategies. And to win, you need to know the market inside out.

* this is not a complete list, but I believe you get the picture

This mistake also brings you unfavorable results since sharing only your content to the public bores your followers and readers. It makes them wonder are you objective in your sharing of information. If everything is about you and your products, you’ll get discounted by your astute readers sooner or later.

2 online photo editing tools you can use

Photo Enhancements

This is an awesome free tool that I just found recently. Great for editing profile pictures and make myself look better, make the food more delicious, and make me want to revisit those places I traveled! A big range of photo editing tools that you can use including: crop, rotate, adjust the level of exposure, colors editing, sharpening and resizing images.

http://www.picmonkey.com/

Other interesting features: 

Watermarking pictures

For those who are interested to protect your works and photos, this is a fast and easy tool to use. Best of all, it’s free! You can upload the pictures from your computer, flickr, facebook or picasa. You can position the location of the watermark too, put it top, bottom, left, right or center…all at your preferences. 

http://picmarkr.com/