I have heard of FriendFeed but never took the time to try the free service. When I finally did try FriendFeed, I was pleasantly surprised at the convenience it provides.

FriendFeed allows you to keep track of the online activities of friends and family. You can keep track of the web pages, videos, music, and photos your friends and family interact with around the Internet. What this does for me is to provide one place to share all my online activities, presenting one complete online personality.

FriendFeed allows you to to use up to 59 services which includes Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Amazon.com and many others.

You can hook up with friends and even create rooms that are really mini private groups. If you want to have your activities private….no problem.

Of course, there are also several additional tools to make using the FriendFeed service enjoyable. These include Bookmarklet, posting to Twitter, embeddable Widgets for your web pages, read and post by emale and iPhone, etc.

Check out my feed and add me at http://friendfeed.com/dejagib

Hoodia Diet Review
The herb Hoodia gordonii (or just “Hoodia”) has gained recent attention as an aid for weight loss, due to its appetite suppressing actions. The plant grows in African desert regions, and has been used by the Kalahari San Bushmen for many hundreds of years.

Studies at Brown University indicate that Hoodia appears to work by interrupting or stopping the hunger mechanism in the brain.

Much of the hype about hoodia started after 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl and crew traveled to Africa in 2004 to try hoodia. They hired a local Bushman to go with them into the desert and track down some hoodia. Stahl ate it, describing it as “cucumbery in texture, but not bad.” She reported that she lost the desire to eat or drink the entire day. She also said she didn’t experience any immediate side effects, such as indigestion or heart palpitations.

That caught everyone’s attention and influenced a whole new product line of herbal weight loss pills, powder, liquids and teas. Since then, hoodia has been featured on CBS 60 Minutes, ABC, NBC Today, BBC, CNN, in Oprah’s “O” Magazine and in other major media.

Hoodia Diet Review at http://hoodiasite.net gives you the A-Z on hoodia gordonii. It has everything you need to know about this amazing plant.

Read the Hoodia Diet Review. There is no doubt that an effective weight loss diet can be significantly enhanced by a safe appetite suppressant like hoodia.

OfferReview

There are a million different types of goods sold online each day and it can get quite confusing to sift through the good and the bad products or services. Review sites have grown in importance for the simple function they perform of highlighting the pros, cons and features of online offers from an independent perspective.

OfferReview is a new review site featuring offers that give the greatest value to consumers. The site offers free trials and discounts and tells why it recommends products and services.

Take a look and you may find a review that will be of some help to you.

The UK National Lottery was originally started by the Camelot Group in 2004. It is the biggest lottery in the UK. Millions of people play every week, and it is now more popular than at any time and it is not hard to see why.

So how does the UK Lotto work?

There are 49 balls in a draw machine and six main balls are selected by that machine. Then a final ball is drawn called the ‘bonus ball’. This counts towards a prize only if you match five numbers. Prizes start at 3 winning balls and the full prize money is awarded to anybody who matches all 6 balls. Generally if you do match 3 balls then the prize will be 10 UK pounds. If you match all six balls then depending upon how many other people also got six balls, the prize is usually millions of pounds.

In order to take part, you fill in a slip marking the numbers that you want to choose. You could also choose a ‘lucky dip’ where a machine picks six random numbers for you. The total prize money for the lottery is made up of 45 percent of the ticket sales.

The UK Lotto is drawn two times per week and it is shown live on BBC One. There are twelve different machines that can be used for the draw which are selected randomly to make the results fair. Whilst it started off as ‘The National Lottery’ in 2002 it was renamed ‘Lotto’ and that is what many people now refer to it as.

As well as the Lotto game, there are also other games that you can take part in including Dream Number, Dream Number and Daily Play.

Chances of winning?

The chances of you winning the lottery jackpot are slim. However, everybody has the same chance and there is usually at least one winner every week. It is much more likely that you will win smaller amounts, but as everybody has the same chance of winning there is no harm in buying a ticket because the next lucky person could be you. Alternatively you could join a UK lottery syndicate for a better chance of winning.

The UK Lotto is still an extremely popular game over ten years after it started. Winners have come from many different backgrounds, and all ages from the elderly to 16 year olds. Anybody can win just as long as they have a ticket. You can check the UK lotto results here.

The advance of technology since the advent of the micro-chip has been mind boggling. The possibilities for improvements in entertainment seem endless and every now and again revolutionary products makes us wonder: “What’s next?”

Now imagine a guy like me being used to his 71 channel cable system with a monthly subscription, owning a piece of software that allows me to watch over 3000 stations from all over the world?! Imagine the joy I feel scrolling through those endless channels!

The only other thing you’ll need besides the software is a PC or laptop with internet connection. You can access this service from any country in the world! Now all you have to do when going on  a vacation is to pack your laptop (which you usually do anyway) and you’ve taken all 3000 channels with you! Welcome to to the world of iSoftware TV.

What Do You Get?

Over 3000 channels of television stations from around the world.

What kinds of stations?

Stations countries all over the world including local, regional and international broadcasts.You’ll get Sports, News, Movies, Music, Weather, Kids Channels, Educational, Shopping and even radio stations! . There is HBO, CNN, ESPN, EuroSports, MTV, MSNBC and and thousands more. Most importantly,  the movies are DVD quality! The digital sound quality is equally impressive.

Channels originate from which countries?

ALBANIA, ALGERIA, ANDORRA, ARGENTINA, AUSTRALIA, AUSTRIA, BELARUS, BELGIUM, BOLIVIA, BOSNIA, BRAZIL, CANADA, CHILE, CHINA, COLOMBIA, COSTA RICA, CUBA, CZECH REP, DENMARK, DOMINIC. REP, EGYPT, ESTONIA, FINLAND, FRANCE, GERMANY, GREECE HUNGARY, ICELAND, INDIA, INDONESIA, IRAN, IRAQ, ISRAEL, ITALY, JAMAICA, JAPAN, JORDAN, KURDISTAN, KUWAIT, LATVIA, LEBANON, LUXEMBURG, MACEDONIA, MALAYSIA, MALTA, MEXICO, MONGOLIA, NETHERLANDS, NEW ZEALAND, NICARAGUA, NIGERIA, OMAN, PANAMA, PERU, PHILIPPINES, POLAND, PORTUGAL, PUERTO RICO, QATAR, ROMANIA, RUSSIAN FED, SAUDI ARABIA, SERBIA, SOUTH AFRICA, SOUTH KOREA, SPAIN, SRI LANKA, SWEDEN, SWITZERLAND, TAIWAN, THAILAND, TURKEY, UNITED KINGDOM, UKRAINE, USA, VATICAN CITY, VENEZUELA, VIETNAM.

I still haven’t found the time to go through all the channels and it is so good to get different perspectives of the world without traveling.

But how long does it take to start using the service? As soon as I ordered, I downloaded the software and installed it and presto, I was watching ISoftware TV! Best of all, it was a small, one time payment and no monthly cable bill!

This is indeed the future of television. With subscribers demanding more and more from their program providers, this is the ultimate package. Try ISoftware TV. I am sure you’ll thank me for introducing it to you. TV will become interesting again. The predictability and stereotypical programming is gone. Now you’ll have more stations than you’ll have time to watch! Learn about different people and cultures…be informed, amazed and entertained. Still watch the regular programming you love. Get ISoftware TV!

Here is how iSoftware stacks up against the competition:

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This is a follow-up evaluation article on building my first site, Right Price Camera using Datafeedr.com, an affiliate data feed program that pulls affiliate feeds from affiliate sites (like Commission Junction) and allows you to create your own online store by utilizing WordPress (the most popular blogging software in the world).

1. I have chosen a different template, Blue Shadow.
2. Removed empty categories.
3. Re-arranged the front page, displaying more items in Random Products and moving it above the categories.
4. Added Google Sitemap to assist Google in crawling my site.
5. Used the ‘drip’ feature so posts will be made automatically about the products. This will help in improving positions in search engine results.
6. Used Datafeedr’s Ad Rotator to randomly display ads from google, some affiliates and the two free advertising networks, adleaf and adgridworks.

The result is an improvement in the attractiveness of the site has been than was the case with the the default WordPress theme and I can now make my official store opening announcement. That was the easy part. The next stage is the challenging one of site promotion so people online will want to buy.  I’m already working on that using two free advertising networks adleaf and adgridworks and getting hits without an advertising budget but, that will be next. I’ll have to exhaust all the free ways to advertise so I can increase hits to the website before I start a spending plan.

By the way, I started another store this evening. It is so easy (even a caveman can do it). It is at http://findyourwebhost.com. It is a work-in-progress but will soon be good to go. I had to leave it before reaching the ‘finishing line’ because of family commitments.  I still need to add more web hosts and fine tune it for release. It is a little more difficult as most of the items had to be added manually (they weren’t available with the feed).

I am happy with Datafeedr.com so far. It does the job really well, leaving you time for what can be the most demanding, time consuming and frustrating task of finding the right web promotion method (s).

PS Some keywords for this article was provided by a free Keyword Generator from Web Rank Info. I’ll have to see if it will prove to be a ‘traffic master.’

Turn Datafeeds Into Beautiful Affiliate Stores!

Lately, I have been attempting to make some extra money online by filling out surveys. I have tried several sites including Greenfield and Survey Spot that promise big payouts, but almost always enter you into a draw for cash giveaway, which means you’re entering a lottery where few people will win….no guarantee of rewards.

I decided to try AWSurvey.com as the concept was much more attractive than the others. Instead of long drawn out surveys, you simply give a short evaluation of 2 websites at a time for a $4 payment. Membership is free and there is a $6 bonus just for joining. There is a referral programme that pays $1.25 for each person you refer that joins free. In my first session, I netted $27.

There is a great debate on the web as to whether this is a scam. Some people boast of getting paid promptly, some say they have problems getting paid, but almost every online survey with cash payout that I have seen, is treated with some suspicion.  This article gave me some encouragement and I thought, well, I didn’t pay anything for joining and my input is only my time, which would be spent unproductively on some social networking site anyway.

I will continue to try AWSurvey and give an update when it is time for payment.

$6.00 Welcome Survey After Free Registration!

With 10,708 athletes competing from 204 countries for 906 medals in 28 sports, two competitors will be propelled into immortality by their outstanding performance in Beijing 2008: Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps.

photo credit: sagicel

Michael dominated the pool, breaking Mark Spitz’s record of seven gold medals set at the Munich Olympics in 1972, snatching 8; seven of them being World Records. This adds to the 6 he bagged in Athens in 2004 making him the closest human relative to a fish. The 6 ft 4 inches, 195 pounds, 23 year old native of Baltimore Maryland, confessed to doing nothing but eating, sleeping and swimming.  To be swimming in 8 events is no mean feat as each has its rigorous rounds. To win all including a 7 World Records is truly super-human. He swam 17 times over 9 days breaking the record in 4 out of 5 individual events in which he participated. His 3 relay teams also set world records.

Phelps who started swimming at age 7, made his Olympic debut in Sydney at age 15 when he qualified for the 200m fly by finishing second at U.S. Trials, but despite his age and lack of international experience, he made the final in Sydney and finished fifth. Five months after that race, Phelps became the sport’s youngest male world-record holder when he claimed the 200m fly mark. Now we will speak of him with the same reverence as Mark Spitz.

photo credit: rich115

Usain Bolt won three gold medals on the track, all in World Record times.  He won the 100 meters in 10.69, the 200 meters in 19.30 and ran the third leg on Jamaica’s 4×100 meters team that posted 37.10 seconds. Bolt will also be long remembered for his dancing and celebrations after winning the events, and people who don’t understand him have criticized him for everything from walking barefooted after the race, not shaking hands after the race, beating his chest after the race, lifting up his shirt, looking in the camera and saying “I am number one”, his mother running through the crowd to hug her son in the front row and sticking out his tongue are just a few that come to mind.

I have never heard a champion so criticized, yet his records will stand and we will soon forget the critics. The 21 year old from Coxheath, Sherwood Content in Trelawny has realized his true potential after winning the World Junior 200 meters title at 15 years old. What makes his performance more impressive is the fact that the 100 meters was never his race; he was originally a 200 and 400 meters runner and only ran a few competitive 100 meters races before this Olympic win.

There are other memorable results for me from Beijing 2008:

1. The dominance of the Jamaican sprinters on the track.
2. The brilliant performance of the British in hauling in 47 medals, including 19 golds, 13 silver  and 15 bronze coming from 9 golds, 9 silver and 12 bronze in 2004.
3. The Chinese surprisingly winning the overall medal standings over the USA and Russia with 51 golds to the USA 36 and Russia 23.
4. The Swedes having their worst Olympics since 1896, placing 56th in the medal table, winning only 4 silvers and a bronze down from 4 golds, two silver and a bronze in 2004.
5. The Jamaican team placing 13th out of 204 countries with 6 gold, 3 silver and 2 bronze medals up from 2 golds, 1 silver and 2 bronze in 2004.
6. The depth of the USA in winning the most silver, 38 and the most bronze, 36 to go along with 36 gold medals, winning in the total medal count 110 to China’s 100.
7. Jason Lezak posting the fastest relay split in history, 46.06, to catch Frenchman Alain Bernard for the win, by just .08 of a second in the 4×100 meters freestyle relay to keep Michael Phelp’s hopes of 8 gold medals alive.
8. Rebecca Lyn Hammon from Rapid City, South Dakota, USA, playing for Russia against her native USA in women’s basketball.
9. USA “Dream Team” re-claiming gold after losing in the last 2 Olympics.
10. Argentina re-claiming gold by defeating Brazil 3-0 in semi-final and Nigeria 1-0 in the final of men’s soccer.
11. The USA defeating Brazil in women’s soccer.
12. The performance of the Chinese “baby” girls in gymnastics.
13. The brilliant opening ceremony.
14. South Korea upsetting Cuba for baseball gold.
15. China sweeping the medals in table tennis (one of my favorite sports).
16. Ethiopian and Kenyan dominance of the long distance athletics races.
17. USA and Jamaica disastrous baton changes in sprint relays (USA in men and women’s 4×100 meters and Jamaica in women’s 4×100 meters).
18. The poor performance of South Africa in bagging only one medal, a silver and placing 71st in the medal table.
19. Matthew Mitcham of Australia winning the Men’s Platform, preventing a clean sweep of the diving medals by China.
20. Chris Hoy of Great Britain winning 3 gold medals in cycling.

It has been a wonderful, memorable olympic games. There are many more great moments and everyone will have their favorites, but these are the ones that will stick with me. Now on to London 2012.

If you own a blog and would like to drive more traffic to your site, you might want to check out SezWho, a social networking site that rewards you for participating and commenting.

It works in 5 stages:

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