Wow, it seems like an age since I was last helping out in the back end for Swhiz. What a thrill and a privilege it is to be able to contribute to my all time favourite place on the net once again! Thanks K.

This section I’m starting is to take interested persons on a journey with me as I discover the joys and challenges of becoming a concept artist. For those who remember from years gone by you may recall I used to produce web sites for clients, so this isn’t too huge a leap into the unknown. I hope… (more…)

The image you portray can help you win, or loose customers.

Recently everything and anything to do with property has caught my attention. Why because I know that in years past a great number of people have made wise choices around property that have netted them great wealth. On a more personal note I’m facing a potential 3% increase in my mortgage rate this year - 3% I can’t afford. So I’m looking at options.

I left work today and jumped in my truck (flickr pics) to drive home. As I pulled out of the side road I park on, I noticed a vehicle with some form of advertising at the top of the windscreen. I noticed because it was backward - I guess so you could read it in your rear vision mirror should this vehicle be behind you. So I drive on a little more (traffic = bad) and realise the advertising was a URL.

I forget the url (it was way long), I remember it was orange and I remember 2 words out of it. Passionate and Property. Now let me paint you a picture. (more…)

Guest post by: Paul Sanderson
Hi all. Mr K is letting me ride his coat tails and allowing me to guest post over here at this wonderful place.

A little about me:

I’m a Pisces, 26, love long walks along the beach… oh wrong site… (Edit: Bl**dy oath, what sort site am I running?)
The long and short of it is that I am on a journey to become a dot Com Mogul. Yes that could be a bit pretentious but that’s the challenge. The plan is to use the techniques and advice that other “successful” blog owners are always talking about. Readers of page92 will be able to learn what works and doesn’t directly from my experiences.

One of the main factors that makes me think I am going to be successful is that I have a clearly defined set of goals. Mr K has talked about goals in this post here, but today I wish to let you know the way I went about setting goals.

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We’re a cynical bunch aren’t we. If TV & Movies desensitize us to violence then the internet desensitizes us to charity & needs.

I’ve had a couple of things happening recently that have highlighted the issues faced when wanting to or needing too raise funds online and just how hard it is becoming to raise awareness and funds.

Lets take the case of my very good friend over at webhelp …
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In the first of our interviews we took the time to send some questions to Dwayne Alexander the brains behind the new social network Live My Goals. Here is our interview with him.

[Studiowhiz] Live My Goals is very new - still in beta right? So why don’t you start off by giving us a quick run down of just what livemygoals.com is?

[DA] www.livemygoals.com is a social network for goalgetters.

Our definition of goalgetters includes

• people who are goalsetters and want to achieve something specific in their lives (e.g. launch a business, achieve health & fitness, earn more money create better relationships or simply get their act together)
• professional goalgetters like coaches, trainers and mentors who help goalsetters create action around their goals.

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I’ve mentioned before that when you want to run a blog & bring in great levels of traffic you have to devote a lot of time to sculpting the content of your blog/website.

One of my issues is that I’m not a professional writer, I make no claims to being a good writer - however without content, without writing you have nothing to bring in more visitors. (more…)

I’ve been around the software development industry for around 15 years now. Because I am mainly self taught and now I’ve moved more into management roles I quickly forget all correct terms & jargon. This morning I found a great resource that gives 101 Design Patterns & Tips and provides a great place to refresh your memory.

» Check out 101 Design Patterns & Tips now.

It seems today that websites are in a battle to get more and more traffic. I wonder sometimes if people get the message wrong? I mean really is that all it’s about?

Of course traffic increases are fantastic and make a direct impact to any revenue a site, either through the online advertising, the increase in sales or the ability to promote the site through offline sales. A good thing about allowing a site to grow steadily is that you can see issues and resolve them. (more…)

I have been slowly building up a collection of must listen too podcasts - podcasts for helping you learn. I was hoping to (and may still do one day) write a post here with the ultimate list of learning podcasts. I mean why pay a fortune for an education when you can get much of the information FREE online via podcasts?

Well I don’t need to any more as this morning I found OEdb (online education database) have published a fantastic list of 100 podcasts, from some of the best colleges in the world.

Learn from Stanford, MIT, Berkeley and more. These podcasts are well worth your time. From Quantum Mechanics to Human Nutrition, Business Skills to Search Engine Technology (this is a great podcast for all SEO people).

» Check out the OEdb list of 100 great podcasts by clicking here.

I’ve just spent about 4 hours looking around Google trying to find some solutions that I need. I only have a few requirements:

• must be free (open source)
• must be php & mysql
• must be (x)HTML & CSS compliant
• must integrate with PayPal
• must have Credit Card integration (c2o etc)
• manage memberships (free & paid - 1 off fee, paypal)

As a bonus I’d love one solution that can do all of that and can manage online tests - nothing over the top just a few multi-choice questions in each test. Would like to track users answers, not so worried about them being able to see their history. This however is proving hard to find.

Got any thoughts? Why not post some links in the comments & I’ll check them out.