Those of us who can see take the Internet for granted.  We use it for research.  We’re entertained online.  We get our news online.  We buy stuff online. And we use the Net to make money.

Can you imagine being blind?

One San Diego family is on a mission to the make the Internet more accessible to the blind. 

JAWS has given them a head start. It is a screen reader service that helps visually impaired people surf the Internet.  JAWS does a fairly good job, but does not work on a site that uses Adobe Flash or javascript instead of html links.  For this and other reasons, SEO Incorporated in Carlsbad changes codes on websites so that links can be accessed by the blind.

The news story below discusses the conflict between websites and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Amber, the young lady featured in the news story, is the plaintiff in a lawsuit against Target. She was able to surf Target’s site with JAWS but was unable to make a purchase.

My take:  We will all need to comply at some point, offering alternative pages for those portions of our sites that are embedded with javascript, AdobeFlash, or other programs that are not accessible with screen readers such as JAWS.

(It may take a couple of seconds before the video loads.)

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This week, I’m kind of on a “history” trend.  I’d like to show you another site that has cool stuff that you can use for research on your genealogy, history or travel sites.  It’s great for environmental and natural resource sites as well, particularly if you are writing about mining activities or other uses of public resources.  Best yet, it’s free.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has a federal records search service that allows you to access old homestead patents, survey maps, and mineral/land use reservations.

The patent searches often yield copies of the original land patents, signed by presidents.  Even if a copy of the original patent is not available, the site provides in-depth information about the original patent.

For instance, let’s say you are putting together a travel site about California and want to add some interesting pieces about ghost towns.  One of the ghost town areas in California is at the Salton Sea, which is littered with abandoned hotels, eateries and other buildings.

I don’t know who the original settlers of the Salton Sea area are, so I will need to look for patents by location.

You can get old homestead patents by searching for the township-section-range.  To find this information about the Salton Sea, go to the BLM and Forest Service’s “GeoCommunicator.”  Choose a map type (I choose Forests) and then search for your location.  As shown in the image below, you can search by place name, and then you’ll see the township-section-range information.

Using the data from the GeoCommunicator, I can now see if there are some homestead records.

Go to BLM’s Land Patent Search page.  The basic search lets you search by name of owner.  Since we don’t know the names of the owners, there is a standard search which allows for searches by location.  As you can see from the screen shot below, I used the Section 27, Township 10 South, Range 11 East description found on the GeoCommunicator map.

After typing in the location, I can see all of the homestead records and patents that were issued for this portion of land near the Salton Sea.  Except for the patent issued to the railroad, these are old patents, dating back to the late 1860s.

In this particular instance, the homestead patent was not scanned in; however, there is plenty of information to launch some interesting research for articles or genealogy stories.  Here’s an example of the wealth of information you can find in a patent.

From this information, we know that Lux and Miller had significant land holdings in the Salton Sea area.  This is a good launching point for a travel or historical article about the area.

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One of my most favorite activities is looking at old photos.  Perhaps it’s because I have a pretty active imagination.  Just looking at them inspires me to think about what life was like years ago.

When you have a history site or a travel site, dredging up old pictures and stories from the past allows you to create unique and interesting content that people will truly enjoy.

You can easily find remarkable material at the American Memory Project, which is a part of the U.S. Library of Congress.

For instance, let’s say I’m putting together a travel piece about towns and places in Arizona that used to be military posts.  From personal knowledge, I already know there is one called Camp Verde in Yavapai County.

At the America Memory Project, I typed in Yavapai County and found almost one hundred historic photos, reports and other entries.

There are pictures of the old Army post in the search results.  Here’s one of an officer’s house from 1933.

You will frequently run across old diary entries, travel reports and other  pieces at the American Memory Project.  You’ll also find archived Congressional records and presidential proclamations from the 1800s.  For instance, there are some about the appointment of U.S. postmasters, Native Americans, creation of national monuments and parks, and so on which can add some flavor to your travel or history site.

As far as reproduction rights go, the Project contains links about where you can get more information. Some of them have no restrictions, but in some instances, you need to get authorization.  Here’s an example of one of the restrictions for old photos.  While you can use the photo free of charge, you need to first get permission before publishing it on the web.

The reproduction rights are clearly stated throughout the site, which is a very nice feature that adds to peace of mind from a web publishing point of view.

Chances are, you may have a lot of PLR articles about different vacation spots or places on your hard drive.  You can spice up that type of content by using interesting historical information.  This will make your site much more engaging and relevant for your readers.

Not only can you create an interesting web site with the wealth of information you’ll find at the American Memory Project, but you might discover some interesting places to see in your personal travels.  I’ve used it to find off-the-beaten path ghost towns on my road trips.  In many cases, these places have been more memorable and interesting than my main destination.

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Back in June 2008, I gave myself a personal challenge:  Do I have the self-discipline to blog every single day for a full year?

Well, I did it.   The first post was made on June 26, 2008.  And I thank you folks for reading and commenting since that time.  This would have been very hard to do if it felt like no one was reading any of this.

What Seems to Help With Consistent Blogging.

If you’re working on a similar challenge, and for what it’s worth, here’s what I discovered.

• Take care of your articles the day before, so you don’t feel “behind schedule.” I generally write my blog articles the night before they are published.  This isn’t always the case, but I do that about 97% of the time.  I write the blog article around 7 at night after working out.
• Create a schedule that you know you can keep. The key seems to be sticking with a regular publishing schedule.  Doing this creates an “I will do this” mindset.  From the very beginning, before you install your WordPress, I think it’s best to decide whether or not the blog will be updated daily, weekly, every other week or so on.  It needs to be something that is reasonable and that you know you can handle.  Once that decision is made, do not deviate.  You can always schedule articles within WordPress in advance so that your publishing schedule will be consistent and so you don’t miss deadlines.
• Creating a “publishing deadline” has made me much more focused.  If I plan on going out of town, I write my articles in advance.  A consistent and regular publishing schedule definitely keeps the search engines coming to your blog.

Unique Content vs. PLR.

I have some other blogs — I post 5 or more articles to the successful ones daily.  Others are waning because I have not kept up with a schedule and quite frankly, did not seriously plan a schedule from the very beginning.

The blogs that are most read, quoted by other sites, and have the most interaction are the ones with totally unique content.  On those blogs, which includes this one, I have not used a single PLR article, nor have I bothered with keyword research.  These are personable types of blogs.

On product types of blogs, however, PLR has been pulling in organic search engine traffic for me.   They are based on keyword research.  There are few, if any, comments, but the people who show up are looking for specific products or information, not social networking.

The Most Popular Entry.

Guess what the most popular story on this blog was, over this past year?

It was about my top 4 ways to waste time on the Internet!

That article took a minute or two to write, as compared with some of the more instructive ones that took hours to do because I was taking screen shots and spending the time in creating thorough “how to” instructions.  To my surprise, people actually use the search term, “ways to waste time on the Internet” in the search engines.

You Can Do It!

If I can do it, you can, too.  I guarantee that if you have a blog that is regularly updated, you’ll start seeing traffic.  It will turn your attitude about your online business from one of “it’s a hobby” to “it’s a business.”

Thanks again for reading and commenting.

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Getting back links is critical for good search engine rankings with Google.

For years, a hot topic has been whether paid links vs. free links have weight with Google.  In the following video, Matt Cullen explains that in evaluating the power of a link, Google looks at the editorial value of a directory.  Directories with editorial discretion and review are considered high quality links. He says that it is not necessary to focus on looking for a lot of directory listings.

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According to an article posted at ARS Technica, MySpace is becoming irrelevant because of Facebook’s popularity.  The article says that 30% of the United States employees were laid off last week, and that a significant number of international jobs with MySpace are going to be cut.

Personally, I never used MySpace because I wasn’t keen on the backgrounds and layouts, and was concerned about privacy.  According to the ARS Technica, the privacy issue is a common concern.

Facebook also seems to be more technically friendly with social networking, with its integrations with Digg, Twitter and blog bookmarking.

Do you use MySpace and if so, do you prefer MySpace or Facebook?

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Using Adsense is an easy way to make some extra money with a blog. I have experimented with a lot of different themes on a lot of different blogs and have found that the Prosense theme, which is Adsense ready, has by far made the most in Adsense earnings.  A blog of mine that is using this theme is averaging  triple the income from from blogs that enjoy more traffic and page rank.

I could not find the theme in the handy “automatic theme installer” function of the new WordPress 2.8 system.  You can download it from DoshDosh here.  Once you’ve downloaded and unzipped it, just FTP the theme  into your WordPress content file or upload it from your hard drive via the Wordpress dashboard.

Once your theme is installed, you don’t need to mess around with going through each php page to figure out where your Adsense code belongs.

First, go to your Wordpress dashboard and select the “Editor” function for your theme’s appearance.

From the Editor, you’ll see that all of the Adsense blocks have separate PHP files.

Just put in your Adsense code in each of the special files and you’re set to make some money.

You can always tweak the CSS files to make the theme look uniquely yours.

I’ve seen “prettier” themes, but as far as earning Adsense on a blog, the Prosense theme has definitely been the most effective one that I’ve used.  If you have a theme that’s worked for you, let us know in the comments area.

By the way, the theme is free.

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If you have a WordPress blog and are disappointed with its income, you really need to check out the InLinks service.  Once you’re a member and have registered your blog, you’ll start getting notices like this in your email on a regular basis:

Depending on the traffic and page rank of my blogs, I see anywhere from $2 to $7 a link. When there are ten or so links that are sold per blog, this can add up quickly.

One of the nice things about In Links is that the signup process is fast and you can immediately submit your blogs. Submit as many blogs as you wish!  You don’t have to wait for an “approval.” Instead, advertisers choose which blogs they advertise on.

If you are looking for a fast and easy way to make some money with your WordPress blog, I highly recommend InLinks.  They pay on time, they consistently deliver sales, and they are user friendly. Click on the graphic below and start making some money today.

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Adding fresh content to your blog or website is essential for keeping folks interested in your site and coming back, and also important to keep the search engines crawling your site.

In my web businesses, I tend to write unique content for a few of my busier websites, but use modified PLR (private label right) content for some of the feeder sites.  If I attempted to write totally unique, researched material for each blog, I think I’d be working 24/7!  You, too, probably could use PLR for your feeder sites.  There are excellent paid content memberships, as well as some free ones.

A free resource that I’ve written about before keeps on delivering good content and material.  It’s called PLR Wholesaler.

This weekend, I received another notice that another 100 PLR articles were added for members.  Here’s a look at some of the new PLR downloads that recently were posted:

Among the resources available in PLR Wholesaler is a guide on how to make money with your PLR material. You’ll also find a report on how to use PLR to increase your website’s traffic.

Unlike giveaway events, there is no expiration date with PLR Wholesaler.  That means that access is not closed after a month or so.  Check it out.  There are blog templates, some software downloads, affiliate cloakers and other useful downloads.

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When my computer seems to be running slow or making a weird, grinding type of noise, the first thing I do is to check for dust on the fan / power intake area.  In my experience, getting rid of the dust makes a huge difference in the computer performance.

Your computer fan serves as an intake device to cool off the computer and as a result, a bunch of dust collects in the circular vented area of your computer case, where the fan is located.  As shown in the video below, you can easily get rid of the dust and dirt that collects there.

I have noticed that merely dusting the back of the computer this does not always do the trick.  About once or twice a year, I open up my desktop computer casing and blow the dust out of it.

No matter how clean your office or computer room is, dust and dirt collection in your computer seems to be inevitable.  Check the back of your computer once or twice a week and remove the dust.  It makes a big difference in your computer performance.

Clean Dust From Back of Computer — powered by eHow.com

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