David Parkinson - Internet Entrepreneur - My Journey

A couple of days ago talk playstation received just under 3000 keyword searched via search engines. This is a massive jump thansk to Google’s quick indexing methods.

It will probably go down today though because the keywords were for an update to the playstation network.

At least this will help close down on that souce split i spoke about a month ago. In a months time i will post what the source split currently is but i can say at the moment that the traffic source split is fair and is just what i wanted.

I have set myself some goals for talk playstation and will reveal on July 1 if i’ve met them. I can reveal though that 2 of the 3 goals are ALMOST met.

So i guess you’ll have to check back in on July 1.

Firefox 3 is now out of beta and is available to download. I recently started using Firefox because i started having problems with Internet Explorer.

I’m still using Firefox 2 and i’ll be upgrading to Firefox 3. I will probably test it out at work first since i’m a web developer. Looks like i’ll have to have around 7 browsers open while developing at work (IE5, IE6, IE7, Firefox 2, Firefox 3 and Safari).

Anyway so what’s new in Firefox 3?

Well first of all it has 15,000 improvements and no i’m not going to list them all!

New Features

Firefox 3 sets the innovation bar very high with exciting new features, including one-click bookmarking, the smart location bar and lightning fast performance.

Security

Keeping you and your personal information safe is our top priority. Firefox 3 includes phishing and malware protection, plus our new instant site ID info.

Productivity

With features like built-in spell checking, session restore and full zoom, Firefox 3 makes it possible to work faster and more efficiently on the Web.

Customization

Your taste and needs set you apart from the rest. With Firefox 3 you can choose from over 5,000 add-ons that help you customize your browsing experience.

Help Firefox set a Guiness World Record by downloading it, it will get a ‘most downloaded file in 24 hours’ award.

If your having trouble download it off the official Firefox site, try this site instead.

I discovered PicNik at work from one of my colleagues who introduced me to it.

Basically PicNik is an online photo editor that works in your browser. Think of it as an online Photoshop but doesn’t have as many features. I was amazed when i first saw this because you can do some pretty cool stuff that would maybe take an hours time in Photoshop.

Not only that but you can import all your photo’s where ever they are hosted including Flickr, Photobucket and Facebook.

PicNik host aload of features including:

• Fix your photos in just one click
• Use advanced controls to fine-tune your results
• Crop, resize, and rotate in real-time
• Tons of special effects, from artsy to fun
• Astoundingly fast, right in your browser
• Works on Mac, Windows, and Linux
• No download required, nothing to install

Although it says its $24.95 for a year, there is a free ‘basic’ account that will most likely be sufficient if you only want to quickly edit photo’s and add cool effects.

So if your looking to quickly edit your photo’s, PicNik is the way to go.

I have set myself some goals and i have to reach them by the July 1 2008. Since my brother has been doing some stuff on talk playstation its grown into something kinda big.

So the goals are:-

• To reach 150 RSS Subscribers (currently around the 80 mark)
• 20 of which must be subscribed via e-mail
• Last month the blog received 61,053 Visits. July 1 will see 70k

So there we are. How am i going to reach them targets? I will use social media sites and promote the blog using social media.

If i don’t reach my goals… well what can i say but try again the month after, it is afterall quite a hard task because the blog did so well last month and hasn’t performed as well this month and if i don’t set targets they won’t be met again.

Other than working hard at my job, i haven’t been up to much apart from playing Metal Gear Solid 4 on the Playstation 3 and watching the European Cup.

There has been a huge inactivity on this blog and thats due to time constraints. I said i would sit back and have a look at where all this time is going and re-adjust it so i can spend a bit of time on this blog.

I usually watch the Euro cup but not this time! Although i did watch it last night when Holland thrashed the world champions, Italy. Holland played a really good game and have a good chance of winning this competition if they play like they did last night.

Now onto the subject of England not being in it. Well yes it sucks because i obviously only watch it when my own country is playing. I think i’ll only be watching Euro when the big matches are on like when the knockout stages start otherwise it doesn’t interest me.

I think that one of the 4 teams will win…

1. Spain
2. Holland
3. Portugal
4. France

Thats my bet that. I really hope Holland win it actually, they played so well last night and deserve it.

The long awaited Playstation 3 exclusive stealth game Metal Gear Solid 4 is almost here! I cannot wait to get my hands on this game. This game is sure to be a total system seller, hell it even crashed the Amazon website when they started selling the bundle… MGS4+80GB PS3.

So i’ve completed Grand Theft Auto IV now, i wanted to before MGS4 came out because i’d probably not have gone back to GTA IV.

I have 3 game currently on pre-order and these are…

1. Metal Gear Solid 4 (released June 12)
2. Top Spin 3 (released June 20)
3. Battlefield: Bad Company (release June 27)

So thats 3 games, week after week from each other. I think when i’ve got the above games i won’t be buying a game for a good while.

I’m enjoying the PS3 and has some great games ahead that are exclusive to the console.

Anyway, online play in MGS4 will keep me occupied!

I mentioned a couple of days ago that i’ve been looking for a new design for talk playstation. Although the current design isn’t bad at all but i can’t keep it forever.

A friend of mine has designed me a mock up of what he think the blog should look like and this is what he came up with:

I must say it is a really nice, clean design and will most likely go with that. Other themes i’ve been looking at are:-

wp-magazine

A magazine style theme, this is just what i’m after, a news style theme and this does the job. With featured articles that flick through and a thumbnail system for the posts. It’s not free and will come at a price. I was very tempted to get this theme last week, but i saw the above design instead.

Revolution Magazine

Another magazine theme that looks really nice. The only thing is, is that i don’t think its suitable for the type of blog it is. I think this magazine theme is for a blog that concentrates on a number of subjects rather than one.

Mimbo Pro

Another magazine theme again. Same as Revolution magazine i don’t think it will fit the one subject. As you can see it has a featured section for a number of subjects.

I will have to have a really good think on which one to go for. I will of course let you know.

A few of you have e-mailed me telling me that i’m stupid for not putting adverts on talk playstation. I thought i would answer this in a blog post. It’s quite simple, i don’t want to. What i’m doing is building up a community and readership. Whats the point in pointing adverts on a blog that isn’t ‘very’ busy in traffic.

Sure 61,053 Visits in a month is good but not good enough. I would need triple that amount before i even consider putting adverts on.

What forms of adverts could i try?

Well i could try adsense to start off with to see how well that does but other than that i don’t think i would bother with banner adverts. Not yet anyway, i don’t think it will fit in with the design i have.

Anyway on talk playstation more than 500 posts have been posted and as of recently a lot more comments have been posted.

I’ve been looking at re-designing talk playstation and i will post what i’ve been looking at in a few days.

After much practice i’ve finally scored a goal from the half way line in Fifa 08 on the Playstation 3. I was so proud of the goal that i recorded it and uploaded it to YouTube.

How did i do it? Well what you do is as soon as you kick off start heading towards the opposition and hold the long pass button (on PS3 this is square) and it will do a massive lob. 9 times out of 50 you will not score but it can be done if timed correctly. I’ve known a few people that have done this including my work colleagues. Luckily i’ve never had this done against me online but people have attempted and the closest someones got is hitting the bar but it went over.

The idea of this is to post the blog stats at the beginning of every month to share some information with you and how well i’m doing. All these stats are in accordance to Google Analytics.

So without further ado here are the stats.

daparky.com

From 1st May 2008 until 31st May 2008:

Visitors

• 2,615 Visits (2,381 Absolute Unique Visitors)
• 4,268 Page Views

Subscribers (in accordance to Feedburner and as of today)

• 15

Bandwidth Transfered: 869.81 Meg

talkplaystation.com

Visitors

• 61,053 Visits (49,688 Absolute Unique Visitors)
• 76,952 Page Views

Subscribers (in accordance to Feedburner and as of today)

• 85

Bandwidth Transfered: 49.76 Gig

Total Bandwidth Transfered: 50.61 Gig

May was a strong month for talk playstation with it reaching new records and heights. I created a custom 404 page and have been looking at a few new templates for it too. Meanwhile daparky.com hasn’t performed as well as i thought - probably because of lack of motivation and May was probably the month with not as many posts.

Key Moments in May 2008

• I asked 6 bloggers a question with regards to advertising etc. Check it out here.
• I’m also enjoying Firefox, it is now my defauly browser. I love it.
• I started to create my own plugin that will allow videos to show in RSS.
• I’ve constantly applied update to talk playstation.
• Daparky.com achieved a page rank of 3

I plan on improving thing even more so check back next month for updated stats.