Superordinate

Finding a cure for the common cold?

2010-12-23T12:40:00.000-08:00

Hey, let's be honest here, we're still a very long way from finding a cure for the common cold. Yes, colds are causes by viruses and typically these viruses.

Of course, chicken soup is commonly used by people who're trying to get over the common cold. Studies actually have shown that warm beverages can relieve some symptoms of the common cold!

What's more is that commonly used vitamins such as Vitamin D and Vitamin C may play a role in reducing the duration of colds.

After that, there are some natural remedies for the common cold that include other herbs such as different forms of ginseng as well as andrographis paniculata, and possibly echinacea.

Free Twitter Tools 2010

2010-07-31T18:03:00.000-07:00

Chances are that if you're a Twitter user, you're probably looking for ways to manage and find your Tweeps. Though many free twitter tool lists are plagued with outdated and dead links, I recently found a list of Twitter tools that are very useful.

Free Useful Twitter Tools

Find out how influential your Twitter users are..
Twitter unfollow tools
Find your Tweeps
Get rid of inactive Twitter users

Click the link above if these are the Twitter tools that you're looking for.

-Digg-ing for dummies, 101

2008-11-10T10:43:00.000-08:00

Digg (dot) com for Dummies?

For the many people who've tried to use Digg (dot) com to promote their blog traffic, it doesn't take very long to realize that for most bloggers, Digg is a very ineffective tool. In fact, trying to make a Digg popular pretty much feels like pissing in the wind for most people.

What Digg is really about?

Okay, the first thing to understand and this was honestly hard to grasp for myself, is that people who use Digg often have vastly different objectives than many bloggers like myself. It's very easy and natural to assume that the majority of Digg users are simply trying to promote their own blog posts or websites. I myself quickly learned that more often than not, this is not the case.

Types of Digg users:

1. The blogger

--Like myself or many of you reading this post, we submit our blog posts to digg, then hope that some miracle occurs and our posts actually get dugg. If you're like me and writing on a blogspot domain, then the power diggers can see you coming from a mile away. In fact, there's a very good chance that by virtue of your domain alone, that you're post will simply get buried.

2. The spammer--

Yes, the spammer is somewhat like the blogger, but differs in that they are spamming diggs to product or affiliate sites. Affiliate diggs actually violate the Digg TOS. Spammers, to be certain, you're chances of getting your product page to the front page of digg is virtually impossible--unless you're hacking the system with scripts.

3. The noob--

Yes the noobs like us. The Digg noob simply creates a Digg account then maybe adds a digg button on their blog. We cheerfully submit our little posts to Digg and wait and see what happens which is invariably very little. Further, noobs don't try to acuire new friends, post shouts, or even check to see if they have any fans. Noobs are completely oblivious of the whole social aspect of digg.

4. The Digg idealist--

Yes, there are actually a vast number of people on Digg who have no selfish motives of promoting traffic to their own sites our blogs. They take their Digg powers very seriously. They vigilantly Digg stories that they find newsworthy and bury stories that they don't. The idealist is often very selective also in terms of the like-minded mutual friends that they acquire. They will send shouts out for relevant newsworthy items to Diggs on domains like CNN dot com or other credible news sites.

5. The Digg Shark--

Much like a card shark, the Digg Shark is someone who's figured out how the system actually works. Though the sole motive of the digg shark is simply to promote traffic to their own website or blog, they're actually cognizant of how Digg works. For example, digg sharks collect active users as mutual friends (more than 150) whom they spam shouts to. However, they conceal their real agendas but occassionally submitting relevant news articles and digging
ligitimate news stories from credible domains.

6. The Digg Power User--

The Digg power user is not much different than the Digg Shark, however, they have a completely different agenda. Unlike the Digg Shark, they are not simply using Digg to drive traffic to one of their own websites or blogs. Instead, the Digg Power user takes somewhat of a narcissitic pride in their ability to influence news traffic. Digg Power users have large mutual friend lists consisting of select other digg users who are on Digg around the clock and extremely active. You can spot a Digg Power user from a mile away--simply check their stats on the bottom right of the Digg profile. You will see tha they make 35+% of their submissions made popular. Further, all of the stories that they make popular are on various credible news domains.

How to make a story popular?

Let's first point out that there is a world of difference between making a story popular on Digg that's from your own blog or website, than there is to making a story popular on a high-traffic Digg-enabled site.

Top Ten list:

If you're trying to make a story popular on a blogspot domain, then I wish you the world of luck. Though possible if you have 150 active mutual friends, it's very difficult as these submissions often get burried like crazy by other digg users.
Mutual friends--yes we all need a little help from our friends. If you can acquire a large list of active mutual friends, then it makes the world of difference. To do this, you will need to frequently check your fans and accept them or simply become a fan of other active users and hope that they accept.
Submit a story on a popular domain--be the first (Non-news). If you can submit a story on a ulta-high traffic, Digg-enabled website, then this will make your job very easy. The hardest part is often being the first to digg the article. After this, you can ride the site's wave of traffic and loyal supporters who digg it. Once you've actually made a story popular, it's much easier to acquire new mutual friends.
Submit news story from Newspaper website or CNN etc. This is a very daunting task as stories are often in syndication which means that the same story appears on multiple domains. This makes your life particularly hard as it is often very difficult to be the first to submit a story. Worse yet, even if you are the first to submit the story on one domain, someone else can still submit the story on another domain. You's might get burried and there's dugg. i.e. you submit an article from the New York Post, while someone else submits the same story from the LA Times website.
Send shouts--this is painfully obvious, but you really need as many active mutual friends as possible and you can't be afraid to sent the shout out if you want the story to take off.
Comments--again painfully obvious, but frequently commenting on diggs helps you acquire friends and also helps to promote your digg.
Digg your friends--again painfully obvious, but you have to actively digg your friends stories if you want them to do the same.
Getting a story popular on your own website or blog. First make sure that you have a custom domain. Then, hopefully you have enough loyal readers as well as some help from your digg friends to get the job done.
The bait and switch--this is painfully popular technique. How this works: you become a fan of a popular user. They see this and send you a shout asking you to digg all of their favorites. You naively do so thinking that they've already accepted your mutual friendship. When you try to send them a shout back, you learn that they don't accept your shouts and they didn't actually accept your friendship.
Last, but not least--the bury. Yes, you can actually bury related stories to help your own story stand out. Some diggers are particularly viscious about burrying stories and maybe even send shouts out to bury stories they don't particularly like.

Flying economy these days...

2008-10-11T16:13:00.000-07:00

Ahh to reminisce about the days of yore, when taking a flight involved free food, a movie, and a little bit of leg room. As an act of derision, airlines now pack us into our seats like canned sardines. What's next, will they use a space saver bag to allow them to seat more passengers?

Terse words were never so truly spoken as "coach class." However, in a vain effort to ameliorate class distinctions, we're now derided with words like economy class as if to remind us that we're actually saving money.

On my last flight, the last t-shirt I wore, looked something like this: [Oh and I flew 'economy class']

Cats vs Dogs Final Round!

2008-09-14T20:40:00.000-07:00

Apparently, this is my not so much anticipated final round of cats vs dogs--which are more intelligent? Comments on my post of declined to the point of zero over the past few months--from a fairly auspicious beginning with my most commented post of all time, What makes Entrecard so addictive? I am not really certain if this is a reflection of the deteriorating quality of my recent posts, or maybe just the ugly blog skin that I switched to? Well, heck, I write late at night and I've been fairly uninspired lately...

The winner....

Despite the malicious tactic used by the dog in the final round of my previous post, does the cat emerge as the winner of this tie-breaker.

Cat opening door:

Dog opening car door:

The judges have ruled that this round is a tie. Tune in next time for round 5!

Brave New World...Forgeddit!

2008-09-13T18:12:00.000-07:00

To be certain, this will be my first attempt at writing an interesting (hopefully) yet nonsensical post that seems to put my readers in a calm, relaxed mental state. You know, the kind of hypnotic post many Entrecard readers have read on Monkey Fables and Tales. I find that after reading his blog posts I feel entertained, relaxed, ready for a restful sleep, yet somewhat unclear about what I actually read or what he was really implying. Conversely, I feel like I just had a conversation with a friend about some related nonsensical events.

Even Aldous Huxley lacked the prescience to predict the modern world in which we live. The complexity of our daily lives has increased exponentially--even over the past ten years. Ten years ago, we were worried about brushing our teeth--now we're forced to fiddle with blue tooth technology and Crest white strips. Delicious--once a word to describe perhaps your favorite apple pie, now is the name of a social networking site. Neologisms are being added to our lexicons at a resounding rate. The nineties were all about keeping up with the Joneses, now we're preoccupied with keeping up with the latest social networking tool. It can certainly feel overwhelming at times...

Follow me on Twitter...
I remember the time I first stumbled upon a great Mexican restaurant, now I stumble upon web pages using the stumble bar. Spurl, furl, reddit, diligo, simpy, fark, follow me on twitter... Who can even be bothered to find out what these social networking sites actually do or how they even work? How about a new social networking tool--Let's call it, "Forgeddit!" Forgeddit doesn't have a web page yet--to use this new social networking tool, just go to a trade show, tuperware party, wine and cheese, or Christmas party and mingle with some real live folks.

Do you have anything more productive to do with your time than to follow me on twitter? Why don't you follow me to a restaurant and get a bite to eat or follow me to the Heat game and enjoy some old fashioned entertainment. There's a few other places you can follow me to like a bar, beach, gentlemen's club, or whatever. Either way, I am sure that you will 'digg it.'

I am sure that if you really met me, you would find that I am likely more inane than insane. My Space? Forgeddit, I will invite you over to my place. We can sit and watch a football game and have a few beers. If you're cool, I might offer some de.li.cious chocolate cake. Then we can play some music and listen to some technorati, I mean, uhh techno. I also have several great facebooks, uhh, I mean photo albums that I love to share with my friends.

Cats vs Dogs...

2008-09-11T17:11:00.000-07:00

Today, I was contemplating which species of animal is more intelligent, cats or dogs...? I am going to make this a three round bout. In the red corner, we have the domestic feline cat (felis catus) and the white corner, we have the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris).

The tale of the tape gives the dog the slight size and weight advantage, but this contest has more to do with dementia pugilistica than pugilism. Which species will win? Will one species capitulate before the third round?

Round 1.
Domesticated cat using a toilet

Round 1 winner: The Cat! I couldn't find a video of a dog using the facilities...

Round 2. Thirst is a natural instinct. Which animal is better able to satisfy their thirst with the toilet?

The dog:

The cat:

Round 2 winner: This was a toss-up, but the cat was able to take a quick drink and then finish up with a number 2.

Okay, so far the cat has won the first two rounds. Naturally, 2/3 makes the cat the winner. However, in the spirit of competition, the last round is going to be worth double points to give the dog a chance to tie things up. The third round requires no introduction. If you're still watching this series, then you're just a little deranged which is okay.

Round 3:

The dog:

The cat:

As you can see, I was wrong about the size and weight advantage not being a factor. Despite losing the first two rounds, the dog has tied up the contest with the crucial double point third round. Sure, the dog used a dubious tactic to tie this contest up, but either way, we're forced to go into our tie breaking round. Tune in next time for the finale!

Anti Monkey Butt Powder!

2008-09-01T20:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a real gem that I happened to find today! It's the cure we've all be looking for. Relax your muscles, pull out your wallet, and go buy some of this anti-monkey butt powder to stay fresh!

Oh, for the ill-informed, here is the top definition of 'monkey butt' from the Urban dictionary:

"Monkey butt:
on a hot summer day when you don't wipe your ass good after a shit and your asshole gets chaffed and then sweat mixes in fucking up your whole day."

Here's what happens if you get a whiff of some monkey butt:

Okay, let's make this a trilogy. Here's some monkey butt lunch:

Close, but no cigar...

2008-08-23T14:34:00.001-07:00

McBolt!

2008-08-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

I smell a sponsorship deal in the making. Today, I recently read a post on another blog about how the 2008 Olympic gold medalist/world record holder in both the 100m and 200m events, Usain Bolt, fueled up on McNuggets prior to the race. Hey, if you can run a 9.69 on McNuggets, just imagine the advertising possibilities. Me? I probably couldn't run a 11.69 time for the 100m, nor could I hold down a McTasty in the process. Eitherway, don't be surprised to see athletes secretly indulging on some tasty chicken nuggets prior to their respective sporting evens.

I am not a sport's nutritionist, but I would surmise that there were probably several better choice of pre-race food. The tasty combination of saturated fat, low quality protein, and whatever else constitutes a McNugget probably wouldn't help him run faster.

Since my curiosity prevailed, I had to find out what chicken McNuggets are actually made of. Here is info from Wikipedia... You will see that there is clearly something wrong with their facts. For starters, there's no way in hell that 10 chicken McNuggets have only 250 total calories!


Chicken McNuggets
McDonald's Chicken McNuggets in older packaging
Serving size	10 pieces (96g)
Calories	250
Calories from fat	130
Total fat	15g (22% of US Dietary Reference Intake)
Saturated fat	3g (16%)
Cholesterol	35mg (12%)
Sodium	670mg (28%)
Total carbohydrate	15g (5%)
Dietary fiber	0g
Sugars	0g
Protein	15g (45%)
Vitamin A	(2%)
Vitamin C	(2%)
Calcium	(2%)
Iron	(4%)
Source	McDonald's
Notes	May vary outside US market. Dietary Reference Intake based on 2000 calorie diet.

Another source of info on these power nuggets suggest the following info:

Chicken McNuggets/Sauces
Menu Item	Calories	Total Fat	Protein (g)
Chicken McNuggets (4 piece)	190	11	10
Chicken McNuggets (6 piece)	290	17	15
Chicken McNuggets (9 piece)	430	25	23

Not sure what is the source of this apparent discrepancy. Either way, this concoction has equal parts protein/fat/carbohydrate by mass. Is this Bolt's secret to success or did his training and incredible genetics prevail despite the nuggets? Will we see the launch of the McBolt in the coming months??? Only time will tell my readers...

Here is the video of the fastest man alive setting the world record both for running the 100m in a record 9.69 seconds and for holding down an unknown quality of McNuggets while doing so...

New Blog Skin!

2008-08-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

The Superordinate blog has just been updated with a new blog skin. I would like to thank the folks at Our blogger templates for this free template. For those who blog on the blogger format, yup cheap bastards like myself, many of the standard templates available often leave something to be desired... to say the least, right? Many of the other templates that I've tried from free sites in the past seem to have various bugs that I myself have been unable to fix. I am happy to report that I haven't had any problems with this template. Visit their site if your in the market for a free blogger template as they have quite a good selection to choose from.

Cheers,

Greg

2008 Beijing Olympics

2008-08-21T05:49:00.000-07:00

Olympic fervor is in full force following the 8th gold medal of uber fast Michael Phelps. Now try saying that 8 times in a row really fast... Aside from his 12,000 calorie per day diet and incredibly hard training regime, what makes Michael Phelps so incredibly fast?

I've read various discussion on his genetic attributes. For starters, his arm span is actually longer than his height which essentially means that he has tremendously long arms. Additionally, he's quite tall at approximately 6'4". His feet? Something like size 14 which means that he has natural flippers. Overall, his body is long and narrow which creates less drag and apparently he has legs that are relatively short compared to his height which creates a hydrofoil effect. In interviews, he often credits and refers to his effective use of his "dolphin kick."

To be certain, no one can or will ever win 8 gold medals at the Olympics with simply a hard worth ethic alone. Clearly, there has to be something in his genes that just makes him faster.

Hmm. Undefined...

2008-08-11T16:12:00.000-07:00

Okay, for those who come across this blog and have any expertise on XML or HTML or whichever this blog skin was written, any suggestions on how to repair the date field for my blog entries would be appreciated. I've tried to download the XML template again and this does not seem to resolve the problem.

Again, if you look at the top left box on my blog entries, you will see the words, "undefined" instead of the actual date of each post. For some reason, I do seem to like this blogskin in spite of this irritating problem. I've seen other blogs on entrecard that use this template that do not seem to share this problem.

For that matter, if you know any links to any decent free blogger skin sites that have an attractive, dark, 3 column blog template that is devoid of this or other problems and does not look like a little kid's myspace layout, feel free to post that as well. As and added bonus, you will earn points or whatever towards your 'sezwho' status as this is a sezwho blog.

Thanks,

Greg

Funny Commercials

2008-08-07T14:48:00.000-07:00

Here's an Alli(TM) spoof commercial that's actually pitching another product. I know a few people who've taken Alli and I've actually seen this happen to them on more than one occasion. For those afraid of leakage, there are other options.

Hm, these "banned Ikea" commercials are really offside...

Entrebar, tastes great, less filling.

2008-08-05T10:19:00.000-07:00

I've just recently tried the new Entrebar, and already I can tell my blog readers that it tastes great and it's less filling!

Here are some of the benefits:

1. Zero carbs.
2. Zero trans fats.
3. Sodium Free!
4. NO MSG!
5. Gluten Free!

Okay, in all seriousness, I've recently taken the Entrebar for a little test drive, and so far it seems to work great. It's been out for a few days and I am assuming that all of the kinks have been worked out.

To entrecard, my only suggestion would be to add a feature for you to be able to surf your inbox for sites that you haven't already dropped on. Other than that, no complaints here...

-Greg

What makes entrecard so addictive?

2008-07-30T20:09:00.000-07:00

"A dedicated dropper with a hint of addiction..."

I am guessing that Entrecard is a portmanteau of "entrepreneur" and "business card." Though the whole idea of turning us into "click monkeys" to generate traffic to our respective websites and blogs has been done before, what makes Entrecard unique? Entrecard was preceeded by other traffic generating sites such as Traffic G and linkreferral.

Yes, the whole business card idea... so damn simple, we are all asking ourselves, "why didn't I think of that?" To be sure, whenever we ask ourselves that very question, you already know it was a "Post-it note moment." Of course, people are already accustomed to and habituated to handing out business cards. Why not allow them to do this on the web?

Entrecard only includes blog sites. This was another simple, yet key idea which helps Entrecard maintain a sense of community. Basically, though we are still 'click monkeys,' we now are part of somewhat of a social networking site as well!

Entrecard Psychology... okay this deserves more than one bullet point. In one word, it is based on the principle of positive reinforcement. However, it takes this concept to another level. Unlike other sites, where I click on your site, write a review, and move up in the listings so that I will likely get more traffic... Now, I drop my entrecard on your site and you not only know exactly who gave you traffic and an in turn an Entrecard credit (immediate reinforcement), you now feel compelled to return the favor. Do you ever feel guilty when someone drops a card on your site and you haven't completed the circle by dropping back on their respective blog?

The postive reinforcement of Entrecard dropping is two-fold, not only do I get a credit for dropping my card, but additionally there is a pretty good chance that the person will see my card and return the favor thus giving me another credit (intermittent reinforcement). Additionally, not only are we reinforced by getting Entrecard credits, but we also increase website traffic to our respective blogs.

So now what we have is basically a token-economy. Hm, now we are talking about a system used in behavior modification in which tokens are accumulated and spent on a reinforcer (ads to get more traffic or selling for $$$). Now, this leaves us with a social networking/traffic generating site based on the principles of operant conditioning.

Summary... Entrecard employs the principle of positive reinforcement (which is actually stronger than negative reinforcement), integrates the intermittent positive reinforcement of people returning EC drops, and uses a token-economy to fuel this card dropping behavior.

How BIG will Entrecard get? For now, it's difficult to predict, but given that virtually anyone can create a blog tomorrow and instantly start to generate the type of daily traffic that once took someone with reasonable blogging accumen months to generate, the future's looking pretty bright for the folks over at Entrecard.

Cuil--dead on arrival?

2008-07-29T13:42:00.000-07:00

Recently, I read about the new search engine, Cuil, on a related post by an entrecard blogger. Despite having a presumably massive PR campaign, I found it odd that I learned about this search engine from an entrecard blog. Where have I been the past month?

To be certain, Cuil has a daunting task much in the same way than many have already likened to the battle of David vs. Goliath. In fact, it even has a pretty good story behind it with the fact that it was designed by former Google employees. Heck, I even liked the idea that they tried to think outside of the box and design an algorithm that is not based on popularity. To those whose sites are unpopular, this idea seemed like the very paradigm shift that we've all been hoping for. At the very least, I hoped that it would be somewhat refreshing to see something other than a Wikipedia post ranking number one.

To my great disappointment and dismay, I recently tried Cuil and found the search results to be, shall we say, "a joke?" Okay let's think about their search results from strictly a 'visual' perspective.

3 columns with results all at different eye levels, some results with pictures, some without...? You're kidding me right? Unfortunately, though unique, the search results page doesn't seem to look neither cohesive or very functional. Let's just say that the search results page looks very disorganized and scattered. Not to mention that I find the search results page to be very distracting....

Okay, now let's think about the actual search results that you get from a Cuil search. From my incredibly small sample size of searches on products and companies, I found that neither the corresponding domain name, product, or company shows up at all with the search result.

Here's my example... Your company name is called Boondoggle Inc. (arbitrary example). Your company website is (3w) boondoggle dot com, and your product is called Boondoggle. Now you would think that if you're a relatively established company, that your company site, matching domain, and product would all rank fairly well on a search engine for the search term, "boondoggle." On Google, this is the case more often than not. On Cuil, you often find a random collection of results for anybody that uses the word "boondoggle."

Is this useful for business or individuals? Not really. Secondly, the lack of PR, backlinks, or popularity for sites, means that anyone who writes a single page optimized for a certain keyword, can rank number one in a search result?

I've read on other site reviews of Cuil, that it doesn't index names that are in the URL???
I've read that Cuil seems to rank old long-forgotten posts or blogs quite high.
Not ranking posts based on popularity??? Popularity ranking helps to filter out irrelevant posts (aka SPAM).

If we take a step back and think about search engines. Google really is that good! Of course, this is not my humble opinion alone. After years of trying to compete with Google, Yahoo has capitulated on some level by running Google ads on their searches. Even the mighty Bill Gates (Goliath vs Goliath) has failed in his attempts to beat Google at Google's game.

Okay, so now we have a new player named Cuil... It has the originally of trying to rethink both the way that search results are displayed as well as the way that its algorithm ranks search terms. Page rank, backlinks... all apparently out the window? Well, without giving the final verdict on Cuil, I think that it will definitely need a lot of work. On a positive note, Cuil actually makes Google far more 'loveable.' Through Cuil and only Cuil, we can actually appreciate the order that Google brings us on a daily basis for our search engine queries. In short, compared to Cuil, Google is looking better than ever.

More Youtube moments

2008-07-28T13:24:00.000-07:00

Youtube is clearly the most-effective way to waste your time. I bring you another fine youtube moment:

Antivirus 2008 XP VIRUS WARNING!

2008-07-27T21:49:00.001-07:00

Hi my fellow entrecard bloggers... A number of my recent entrecard advert requests have been declined. Oddly, these declines have been politely accompanied by an inbox message from several bloggers who've informed me that they are declining ads because their computer's recently been infected with a virus.

To clarify, they're reporting that the virus is actually called, "Antivirus 2008 XP." Apparently, it's a fake virus removal program that's devastating the web. Since the program must be manually downloaded and installed avoiding infection with this virus is really simple, JUST DON'T DOWNLOAD IT!

According to the Norton AntiVirus website, the program reports false or exaggerated system security threats on your computer. The user is then prompted to pay for a full license to remove these threats.

If you're computer has already been infected with this virus, make sure that you use a reliable program to remove it before it does futher damage.

-Greg

Andy Rooney

2008-07-26T13:13:00.001-07:00

Growing up, I always enjoyed watching Andy Rooney. In fact, it was probably the only reason that I used to watch 60 minutes. In many ways, I always felt that he probably had one of the best jobs of all time. Not only did he get his 15 minutes of fame served on a regular basis, but he actually got paid presumably pretty a pretty decent wage to offer a controversial diatribe about some seemingly random topic.

You tube moments

2008-07-26T13:00:00.001-07:00

Okay, I am going to include this youtube clip with the proviso that this one is, in fact, just over a minute and a half of your life that you will never get back.

Will you find this clip funny? Probably not. Will you regret watching it? I am guessing you will. Will you be one of the over 150,000 people who lost 91 seconds of their life watching it? Yes.

In today's society, what isn't a youtube moment? Many of us own little digital camcorders and love to record and catalog moments of our lives. Now, with youtube we can share these senseless moments with everyone around the world.

We all want our fifteen minutes of Fame, which is a phrase coined by Andy Warhol as we all are abundantly aware. With youtube, this fame is accessible to everyone.

talking with sealions?

World's fastest car?

2008-07-26T12:43:00.001-07:00

The Bugatti Veyron

Okay, I will be the first to admit, that in my humble opinion, this has to be one of the sickest looking automobiles ever created... It's also the fastest car ever made with top recorded speed of 253 mph! Price? Yes, another record with the base price starting at $1.7 million dollars.

Yup, the Bugatti Veyron looks absolutely beautiful and is incredibly fast. In fact, this clip describes the Bugatti Veyron as a "Concord moment." One one level, it represents an unheard of accomplishment in automotive technology. Yet, from another perspective, one might question the judgement of VW in spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing a car that achieves 5.82 mpg in city driving which I might add, is another milestone in the automotive world. With crude oil priced at over $120 dollars per barrel, quite simply, what were they thinking?

I am all for questioning conventional thinking, but creating the world's worst fuel effecient car in the face of the highest oil prices on record, is quite seeminly absurd to me.

How to be a successful blogger

2008-07-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

I created this blog on dark and stormy night with one goal in mind--to achieve success! Since I've failed miserably on monetizing my other blogs, I decided that I had to re-evaluate my goals and objectives. By changing my goal to NOT making money with this blog, I was able to become an instant success!

Achieving goals can be a very rewarding experience, even when the goals are of dubious value...

Here are my goals and success record:

1. PR Zero = success!
2. Profit from blog, Zero dollars = success!
3. Subscribed readers, Zero = success!
4. Backlinks, zero = success!
5. A few readers per day who can be cognizant of my success = success! (Thnx to entrecard)

-Greg

Top 10 ways to NOT make money with your blog

2008-07-26T11:51:00.000-07:00

Okay, much like Thomas Edison who invented the lightbulb, we all have to learn from our mistakes. Here's my top ten ways to NOT make money blogging:

1. Don't have an opinion. Let's face it, people read blogs to here a viewpoint or opinion on an issue, not to read an objective news feed.

2. Don't host your blog on your own domain. Well, wordpress dot com is a great free blog hosting service, but if you haven't learned already, there's absolutely no way to monetize a wordpres dot com blog. Solution? Like the old adage says, "you have to spend money to make money." If you're serious about making money, register a domain name, use a wordpress dot org platform, download a free template, and you're off to the races... Sure you can monetize a blogger blog, but why spend all of the time creating backlinks, traffic, and readership to a domain that you don't own?

3. Don't use feedburner. Yup, though it can be hard to monetize feeds, the number of feedburner subscribers determines the value of your blog to advertisers.

4. Write about how to make money if your not. This goes without saying... John Chow used to digg a post then follow it up with a digg on how much money that post made him.

5. Blog about blogging! If you want to try to compete with seomoz, problogger dot net, or John Chow, you're facing some incredibly stiff competition who already has several years head start on you. Just try something else...

6. Don't use digg! Apparently, John Chow got his first traffic boost from digging articles. However, getting people to digg your posts is quite a challenge lately.

7. Don't promote your blog with a TV news story or newspaper article about your blog! Nothing can compete with the traffic spike you will get from conventional marketing. True, it's not easy to get a TV segment or newspaper about your blog, but if you're lucky enough, then go for it.

8. Don't write frequently with original content! Yup, you have to take blogging very seriously and dedicate quite a bit of time to develop regular readers and subscribers.

9. Don't build backlinks! Yup, PR requires backlinks and PR is $$$. Once you have a PR of 6, now your talking...

10. Take my advice! Yup, I have a proven track record of not making money blogging. In the grand scheme of things, you're probably better off not taking my advice.

Comments...

2008-07-26T11:19:00.001-07:00

Okay, I sagely added a recent comments box and feed. If you notice, it's currently empty and this is just plain embarrassing, not too mention it's just not right... Share some random thoughts or ideas. Don't be afraid to be the first to write a comment on this site.

My entrecard ad price has rocketed up to 256 credits in less than one day. I am really quite surprised by this. Aren't you? I am sure there's actually some really good blogs out there that are selling for much less.

How did this happen? I really don't know and I can't say for sure. It might have something to do with the fact that I drop lots of cards which is really the simplest way to generate entrecard traffic. Yes, dropping your card is probably more effective than even advertising on some really expensive entrecard sites. Hey, I also have a bad habit of chain dropping which some people seem to like. We all like to have people click on the EC adverts on our site, right?

My ad also seems to look like the admaster, "advertise everywhere ad" which also can't hurt too much. Maybe, I am leveraging the popularity of his ad, but whose to say for sure?

-Greg

Make money online?

2008-07-26T09:54:00.001-07:00

Making money online... How many ads, get rich quick schemes, websites, and blogs are out there trying to make money online or advertising how to do so? Is it still actually possible to make money online?

To answer this question, I turned to John Chow's free E-book for answers. According to John Chow, he cite's the statistic that 99% of blogs will not actually make money online. In spite of these odds against, there's no shortage of people hoping to cash in on the internet with yet another blog.

Why do 99% of people fail?

I've put some thought into this and the answer is pretty simple. Making money blogging is really not very easy. To make a successful money making blog, you really need to carve out an original niche--there's not many left, blog every day, and work to develop page rank, alexa traffic, and subscribed readers. This means that it requires time, effort, persistence, and probably a little luck which are all contrary to getting rich quick and easy...

Let's look at creating a new niche. Many bloggers decide to write about a topic that's already saturated (like how to blog) or a topic for which they have little passion or expertise. If you're going to write a blog about how to make money online, you're out of luck unless you can show your readers that you're actually successful in doing this. Strangely, this puts you in a chicken and egg situation, since you can't actually be making money blogging when your first start out, right?

The truth is that many of us bloggers, myself included, simply lack the creativity to create a new blogging niche in today's saturated blog environment. It already feels like everything's already been done... Hm wait, I have a great idea, why don't I take funny pictures of cats or dogs and put some nonsensical, grammatically incorrect blurbs underneath which I will call lol-speak? Isn't this a great idea? Well, yes it actually WAS. The blog was created two years ago called icanhascheezburger and it sells ad space for more money than any of us can ever dream of.

Here's my next blogging idea. I think I will call it, "one red paper clip." What I am going to do is create a blog about my flipping items. I will start with one red paper clip and trade it for something. Then I will keep trading items until I have a scene in a movie and a house. This should be really good... Oops, welcome to last year. This has already been done too, so what now?

More to come...

Superordinate Psychology

2008-07-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

Superordinate goals, in psychology, are achieved by the co-operation and coordination of two or more people or groups. In these cases, individual goals are normally in opposition to each other, but the individuals or groups are now working together. It's a classic zero-sum situation.

In game theory, zero-sum situations are basically when it's impossible for both players to win. Board game examples of zero-sum situations include Go, Chess, and Checkers among others...

With superordinate goals, it's much like two people who are engaged in a game of chess, working together to achieve an alternate goal. Am I starting to sound somewhat pedantic?

Insomnia is a terrible thing to waste...

2008-07-26T00:36:00.000-07:00

Yup, just some late night platitudes from a fellow insomniac. How many of my fellow entrecard bloggers suffer from insomnia? First, there was chloral hydrate. It was made from chlorine (what were they thinking?) and alcohol. I am guessing that this was one of those serendipity moments that occurred when someone accidentally dipped their cocktail in the swimming pool... Yup, just like chocolate and peanut butter. Years later, some malicious sod found out that if you put the chloral hydrate tablet into someones drink, now you have something that will really put someone to sleep. They used to call it a 'Mickey Finn." Now, there's a smorgasbord of sleeping pills currently available on the market.

Why take a sleeping pill when you can surf for entrecard credits and watch Youtube? Okay, now I am telling you to put down that Ambien CR tablet right now and click to watch this classic comedy routine by Russel Peters:

No Country for Old Milkshakes

2008-07-25T22:16:00.000-07:00

No Country for Old Milkshakes is a classic, irreverent, satire which I viewed quite a while back on Saturday Night Live. I myself have seen both No Country for Old Men as well as There will be blood.

It really does go without saying that Daniel Day Lewis is clearly one of the most talented actors in recent years. When I think back to some of my favorite actors such as Robert Deniro, Al Pacino, and Nicholas Cage--it really does seem like many of them have almost become parodies of themselves which is quite sad, really.

Well, this is a must watch, so please take the minute out of your life to view this, you definitely won't consider it to be a minute out of your life that you'll never get back!

Page Rank

2008-07-25T21:49:00.000-07:00

If you're an astute blogger who is surfing the internet on Firefox with with an Alexa toolbar carefully installed, you will notice that this blog has a PR of Zero and a nearly non-existent Alexa ranking. If you are interested in increasing your page rank (PR), then you will likely want to consider several of these options:

1. You do realize that you need backlinks, right?
2. How do you get backlinks? Well, you can ask or simply hope that people will link to your site or your incredibly insightful posts.
3. To do this, you may wish to consider joining on of several different social networks including, but not limited to: Stumble upon, digg, blogcatalog, or one of the many others available.
4. You can post comments on other peoples sites and carefully leave your backlinks politely tucked away at the end of a brilliant comment--otherwise your comment will be viewed as spam and simply deleted.
5. You can try to register your blog on many of the free blog listings or websites that give free links. Neither one of these options will result in a substantial increase in PR as most of these sites have PR of zero. Basically, you need to get backlinks from related blogs or sites to significantly increase your PR.

***Don't ask me for a backlink, trust me, you don't want one from this blog. To some it may seem somewhat nihilistic, but I am quite happy with my PR of Zero.

About page

2008-07-25T21:36:00.000-07:00

What exactly is the Superordinate blog about? Superordinate aspires to be a broad, encompassing blog, covering any and all topics. This particular blog was launched very late at night on a Friday evening on July 25th, 2008. It may appear to be an inauspicious beginning, but you can be sure to expect great things to come...