Too late for publishing a drawing for Frisky Friday Art but here’s a Slideshow display of a variety of my drawings – Cosmic, Moon, Fairy, Botanical, and Fish portraits, too…enjoy!

Enjoy my vacation pics! I had so much fun! Can’t wait till next year.

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This is my garden. I like to garden. I call it “gettin dirty” because I can not go into the garden without getting filthy. I do most of the work myself and then everybody gets to eat the veggies and enjoy the flowers. Wish I could share the veggies with everybody! There’s probably nothing better than a garden fresh vegetable. The blue thing you see in the flower garden is the future home of a waterfall and pond. Digging is a lot of work and I do a little at time. If I ever get it done I’ll take some pics of it too.

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The top question that people ask me when people find out about my online marketing and web analytics blog, is how I came up with the name idaconcpts.  I really like words that are similarly written and understood in several languages, and ideas and concepts are two of them.  I played around with different variations of these words, until I realized that what my blog was truly about was putting ideas and concepts into e-commerce.  Therefore, putting these ideas and concepts would be put to work into commerce, or would put the “e” in e-commerce.  Hence, idaconcpts.

One of the best things of writing at idaconcpts.com is that I have a passion for analyzing photo sharing websites and my readers seem to share that passion with me.

Over 34% of the readership at idaconcpts follows the posts about the BIG 5 of photo sharing: Flickr, Photobucket, Snapfish, Shutterfly, and Slide.  Please note that I am limiting myself to websites (as opposed to desktop apps such as Picasa).  At the same time there will be debate about:

1. why I am not including Myspace and Facebook (which obviously have major photo sharing activity),
2. if I include photo printing services such as Shutterfly, why I don’t include major online photo printing services like Walmart and Costco, and
3. if I am not including Picasa Web Albums, why am I selecting Slide, which obviously is not a photo sharing website, but rather a widget generator like Sprout Builder.

And my answer is that they are all great questions that I will tackle on future posts to come!

In the meantime, let’s continue the analysis of the BIG 5, which started back in November 2008 with the post Flickr versus Snapish versus Photobucket versus Slide versus Shutterfly and continued with the follow-up post Revisiting Flickr versus Snapish versus Photobucket versus Slide versus Shutterfly. In this posts we analyzed the traffic to these photo sharing websites through Google Ad Planner and Google Trends.  Today we will take a look through another great web analytics called Compete.

Compete is an awesome cloud computing web analytics tool that allows you access website activity info from any website.  The first killer feature of Compete is that it allows you to compare 5 websites side by side.  Even though Google Trends and Google Ad Planner do offer this service, Google Trends‘ information is quite limited, and Google Ad Planner’s information is limited to a handful of websites.

Here a couple snapshots of Flickr, Photobucket, Snapfish, Shutterfly, and Slide using Compete:

The second killer feature of Compete is that it allows you to take a look into the subdomains (finally!) of entered websites.  Google Trends does not (as of 05/29/2009) allow that feature, it only allows you to take a look at the web analytics of the home page.

Remember point 2 above? With this tool I can finally tap into finding out how much traffic from walmart.com goes into photos.walmart.com:

Finally, Compete allows me to post these simple little graphs, which previously I had to take a snapshot using Skitch and upload to my blog.  I still love Skitch, but this saves time!

What about an updated analysis of Flickr, Photobucket, Snapfish, Shutterfly, and Slide using Compete?

Dear reader, you already have a start with the post Flickr versus Snapish versus Photobucket versus Slide versus Shutterfly and its follow-up post Revisiting Flickr versus Snapish versus Photobucket versus Slide versus Shutterfly. Now with Compete, you can slice and dice the data in no time!

Best of luck in your research!

Bei Bopla!-Tasse 3 waren auch Licht und Schatten die Kellner

Meine Erste Slide-Show hatte die 1 Tassen-Partie zum Thema. Bei KatiSommer sah ich die erste Show in einem WorpPress-Blog. Ihre Eindrücke aus Paris und London verpackte Sie auch gekonnt.

Diese beiden Diashows habe ich mit iPhoto auf zwei unterschiedliche Arten umgesetzt.

Übung macht den Meister

Standart Diashow

Diashow mit KenBurnsEffekt

Musik: Tom Waits – The Sea of Love – Video: YouTube

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http://www.slide.com/

it’s a website where one can host images, create slideshows, guestbooks, etc., & get other widgets compatible with MySpace, facebook, bebo, hi5, Orkut, friendster, Blogger, Xanga, etc., & it’s free, I set up an account there a little over half a year ago

WordPress is to blogging pretty much what Mac is to computers.

Compared to Blogger, it offers a more intuitive interface, and a more slick layouts, leaving an impression of a higher level of professionality to readers of our blogs. However, the everlasting troubles regarding WP’s UNWILLINGNESS to allow embedding flash and java objects. (Let’s face it, it’s not like they can’t do it).

To cut the long story short, I ll skip the meditation on why a great platform like WP is making such an ABSURD choice, I’ll go right to the problem solving.

WP is still the best FREE blog hosting platform out there, so we are compelled to keep bearing this lack of convenience and spend hours and days trying to figure out how to add some decent features to our blogs, in orfer to be least compatible to all embeddable stuff available outside WP.

PROBLEM: THE ONLY SLIDESHOWS WP ALLOWS FOR EMBEDDING ARE PLAIN UGLY AND KITSCH. (READ: SLIDE.COM)

Slide.com might play its game and serve its service with the Myspace teenagers, but it is not good enough for all the WordPress bloggers who chose this platform because of the slick layouts and user-friendly logical interfaces it offers.

SOLUTION: VODPOD

You can embed Picasa and Flickr Slideshows directly into WP posts and pages by using a Vodpod account.

QUICK FIX: Enter your Picasa or Flickr slideshow code into Vodpod account, and it will then generate a WordPress-friendly code for you.

Buttons for Safari and Firefox are also available- they will allow you to post to WordPress via Vodpod without entering your Vodpod account.

Hint: Try embedding other embeddable stuff thgrough Vodpod- not all of it will work, but it is worth a try.

We have already spoken about how Vodpod is not a perfect solution for all the WP embedding troubles, since, for example it cannot embed Google Maps.

What you CAN do with Vodpod: 

1) Embed Picasa Slideshows

This is a more slick option compared to SLide.com since Picasa offers a very simple and clean interface for slideshow. It is just a bit of unnecessary registration trouble for those who do not already have google accounts (anyone?:)), or Picasa accounts.

2) Embed Flickr Slideshows to WP posts and pages

Do I have to mention why this is amazing? )

Apart from being finally able to embed your own Flickr images rather than uploading them into an ugly and user unfriendly image gallery, you can actually embed Flickr slideshows of any group, which is excellent for all posts focused around a theme (see an example here). 

3) (SORT OF) embed Issuu dinamic catalogues (It works only in a Vodpod widget, not in posts)

Here is an interesting new look for the Vodpod widgets: instead of showing off just plain video, they can now show your Flickr, Picasa slideshow collections, and even Pdf dinamic catalogues such as the one at Issuu. 

4) Embed Vimeo, and other non oficially WP supported videos. 

This is good because Vimeo has a much slicker interface and a slightly higher quality video than the WP accepted video formats of Yout Tube and Google Video and Daily Motion. It is better for embedding wideos you uploaded yourself since, being more niche than YT and GV, Vimeo has less searchable content. 

What you CANNOT do with Vodpod:

1) Embed Google Maps. 

Useless to say why this is a great pitty. Platial map widgets are not even close as good as an actual Google Map would have been. Sometimes you need a map in a post or a page, not in a widget. Not to mention the customization options, very poor with Platial.

Geeky Coder pointed out some very useful stuff that helped me a lot with figuring out the ways to integrate stuff via Vodpod. He is a WordPress.com hosted blogger, and he offers some useful advice on how co overcome WP.com troubles, showing the results directly on his blog. Those who have been searching will know that most WP related tips are about Plugins for the self hosted WP, so this means that Geeky Coder is one of the few useful bloggers who are willing to ACTUALLY help around the FREE hosting WP. 

I hope he will be able to resolve my Issuu dilemma as well. Issuu is a beautiful embeddable and free flash PDF catalogue, that works well when embedded into Vodpod, but when I copy it into WP posts or pages, it just disappears. 

(Unlike for example Google Maps, or the Flickr Slidr- the API version of the slideshow that is not working on Vodpod at all). 

Until then, there is a SORT OF A SOLUTION for Issuu: SInce it works in Vodpod, you can show off your Issuu catalogues through the Vodpod widget available by default on WP. (You can see an example for Vodpod widget use for OTHER THAN VIDEO here. )

Feel free to comment if you know some other interesting uses of WordPress via Vodpod.

Yahoo announced major partnerships with television manufacturers: Sony, LG, Samsung, and Vizio. Under the deal announced today at CES, Yahoo’s web platform will be integrated within television. Yahoo branded services and applications can be accessed while you’re watching television. The applications, mainly widgets to start, would reside alongside television shows and would remain as a means to complement (not replace) television programming.

So imagine watching the Wall Street headlines on CNN and getting instant access to company profiles and charts per Yahoo Finance… or watching the Travel Network and making new connections with people that have been to Peru, your next travel spot. For big sports fans such as myself, watch Monday Night Football (NFL) while beside it, tracking your Yahoo Fantasy team points.

If Yahoo is successful and can lead and open up the way for web applications to converge with television, a whole new Industry can follow in its coat tails. New start-ups would spawn to build widgets and other useful applications for television. Similar to widgets for social networks (per a Clearspring or Slide.com), there would be new applications that make the television viewing experience more social, interactive, collaborative, share-able, and most importantly, more entertaining!

It also creates new business models for existing web application developers:  Companies that rely on advertising revenues and are currently limited to the web only can now distribute their widgets (with clients’ advertising) on CNN, the Travel Network, and Monday Night Football!

New agencies, ad networks, and services companies will also be born around the new TV-Applications Industry.

Ahora que llega el final del año he decidido echar una mirada atrás y hacer una recopilación de entre todas las fotos que he publicado este año. Para ello he realizado una pequeña presentación. Espero que os guste y os animo a que elijáis las que más os gusten.

Además, aprovecho este post para desearos que paséis un muy buen fin de año y que el año entrante sea mejor que el que se acaba. FELIZ AÑO NUEVO A TOD@S.
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Memodifikasi blog tidak akan cukup dengan tampilan banner GIF saja. Jika gambar dengan format Gif ditampilkan dalam ukuran besar, maka akan menimbulkan kekacauan dalam ketelitian gambar tersebut. Salah satu cara menarik yang dapat dilakukan dalam menampilkan animasi seperti Slide Show adalah dengan menggunakan situs http://slide.com. Teknik yang dilakukan dalam menyisipkan slide show ini sangat sederhana. Bagi para pengunjung yang tertarik mencoba teknik ini silahkan download Tutorial  GRATIS berikut ini. Klik Link :

Menyisipkan Slide ke dalam blog WordpPress

Jangan Lupa titip komentarnya ya…. Semoga bisa Sharing. 

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Pick your favorite Christmas themed iggy. Place your vote below and in about a week I will announce the finalists for the grand prize of a special Christmas somethin somethin! It’s a long slide show so hang in there.  LOL where’s the mistletoe?

The response to the post:

Flickr versus Snapfish versus Photobucket versus Slide versus Shutterfly

has been great! Thank you very much for reading it. Here is a breakdown of the number of daily readers provided by WordPress BlogStats

I am really happy that my Spanish colleague, Gemma (who writes a great web analytics blog in Spanish called ¿Dónde está Avinash cuando se le necesita?, a great tribute to Avinash Kaushik) found some inspiration to use Google Trends (one of my personal favorite tools!).

Another great tool for broad research is Google Ad Planner (currently in Beta, so you need an invitation, mine took about a week to arrive).

Let’s take a look at the BIG 5 (Flickr, Photobucket, Snapfish, Shutterfly, and Slide) of online digital photo sharing using this tool:

Flickr versus Snapfish versus Photobucket versus Slide versus Shutterfly: using Google Ad Planner

Google Ad Planner provides much more in-depth information on a monthly basis (the figures for unique visitors and pageviews are on a 30-day basis).  The reach is for the United States.  As discussed on the previous post, Photobucket appears to continue to have the upper-hand over Flickr.

What I found really interesting is that if I was to theoretically put ads on these 5 sites trying to reach everybody in the United States, I would reach 31 million or have a country reach of 13% or have 660 million pageviews.

Do you think that is a lot? Wrong! Take a look what would happen if I just select Facebook and Myspace:

That’s 90 million unique visitors or a country reach of 39% or 20 billion pageviews!

Does that mean that advertising on Facebook and Myspace is better than advertising on the top 5 of online digital photo sharing?

If your objective is to monetize on printing services, I would dare to say no.

Why?

Take a look at the age and income distribution of the audience at Myspace using Google Ad Planner:

Compare it with the demographics of the audience at Shutterfly:

Obviously Shutterfly has a more mature audience with more spendable income, so they would be more prone to spend on printing services than a younger audience with a tigther budget.

Of course, you could argue against this hypothesis.

Let me hear your thoughts.

An important part of my job is to understand the trends in the online photo sharing industry and I wanted to provide a couple of insights to my readers using Google Trends.

Daily Unique Visitors of 5 key players in the online photo sharing industry.

For the period May 2007 – September 2008, Flickr and Photobucket compete for the highest number of daily unique visitors worldwide out of the five selected online photo sharing:  Flickr, Snapfish, Shutterfly, Photobucket and Slide.

Take a look at the latest performance of Photobucket and Flickr:

What caused that there were more daily unique visitors at Photobucket than at Flickr?

Photobucket is capturing more daily unique visitors than Flickr in the top photo sharing market: U.S.

However, Photobucket should not rest in its laurels, because Flickr is ahead in the second most important photo sharing market: India.

What about Slide?  Slide enjoyed an important spike in the last quarter of 2007, but its number of daily unique visitors is coming back to previous levels.   What caused this?

2 reasons: hi5 and England.

Worlwide, people who search for the the term “slide”, also search for:

As you can see, hi5 appears several times and it different languages!

This is relevant because hi5’s daily unique visitors worldwide dwarfs that of the top 5 players in the photo sharing business (note: I drop Snapfish, because Google Trends only accepts 5 websites at a time).

Plus, Slide did pretty good during that period in England!

Finally, what about Snapfish and Shutterfly?

They depend on each other because:

People who search for “snapfish” also search for “shutterfly”.

And people who search for “shutterfly also search for “snapfish”.

In conclusion:

1. Markets outside of the United States DO matter!  Increased demand in important markets (e.g. Slide in England, Flickr in India) can generate a lot of views, which potentially means increased ad revenue.  Just ask Dave McClure, web analytics guru and blogger at Master of 500 Hats.
2. Despite all the hype about international markets, the leader must keep its focus on the top market, the U.S.
3. Keep a close eye on the SEO tactics of your rivals and copy what seems to work (Shutterfly and Snapfish).

What do you think?

Here is a collection of some of my slide shows! enjoy!

Ashley H. Bridal Portraits!!!

Matt W. Senior Photos!!!

Brown Wedding !!!

Ruth & Yong Engagement!!!

Dress Destruction…Urban Style!!!

A.H. & B.H. Engagement !!!

Pueblo MTB Photos !!!

J.S. & M.K. Engagement!!!