In preparation for the new year we have decided to move forward with a different advertising technique regarding the gadgets from UndergroundWidgets. We also have begun to develop and label various gadgets as to their 2 or 3 column designs for iGoogle.
Starting in 2010 all TPCS widgets will be released through UndergroundWidgets. These widgets will be labeled as to whether they are intended for a 2 or 3 column iGoogle layout. To view this list click the below link:
http://www.undergroundwidgets.com/html/featured.html
New advertising ideas...
Yes, we have started to make widgets with new advertising ideas in mind. Not that these ideas are earthshakingly new, but I have not used them before so I am currently unaware of their overall worth.
 
Today we released a few new daily quote widgets. The persons represented in this series so far are George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Mohandas Gandhi.
These widgets have not yet been submitted to the widget directories so I don't have embed codes for your websites and blogs as of yet.
Add these widgets to your iGoogle page
To get the embed codes for these widgets (once they are released) make sure to visit Widgipedia!
 
The global economy is in a spin and apparently there are not too many areas left untouched by this serious situation. Although the advertising budgets of many companies have suffered financial cuts, online advertising is still a viable means to earn a living.
This year we did not see the growth we were hoping for, but due to the circumstances, any growth is favorable. Both of our flag ship sites http://scripts.tropicalpcsolutions.com and http://widgets.tropicalpcsolutions.com are approaching a million monthly visits each.
Our other sites received 250,000 combined monthly visits. Although we have doubled our traffic as of last year at this time, our earnings have taken a slight dip. This downward trend in earnings is most likely due to the economic strains on the advertisers budgets. With all things considered our Adsense earnings have held their ground much better than expected. Although most single-click payouts are in the 5-10 cent range we still regularly see single-click payouts in the $2-$3 range .
This year we mainly focused on expanding into ad networks other than Adsense. We have established accounts at dozens of ad networks and found a few of them to be worth the additional efforts. Currently the ad networks we work with are:We have also begin experimenting with the different CTR's and payouts of Kontera and InfoLinks in-text advertising units. Although we like Chitika we didn't find their in-text links to be very targeted/relevant. Both Kontera and InfoLinks seem to be fairly relevant but the payouts to-date are very low compared with Adsense.
NOTE: If you rely on online advertising to pay your bills and business expenses then be sure to check this out and get involved!
 
If you run a small to medium size website and depend on 3rd party advertising your business plans may change if this bill passes!
This is being proposed under the guise of privacy concerns. Now, I am getting tired of fear mongering by those in charge! A stupid cookie (that your browser can be set to ignore) should not be a valid reason to potentially ruin online businesses.
If you depend on advertising revenue to pay your bills then be sure to visit Keep our web free and learn more about what you can do!
 
A few users of our PHP guestbook program have written me in regards to the random number feature and asked that we remove it.
We didn't remove this feature from the main program as we feel it is a good idea overall. We did create a patch file you can use that will eliminate the need to enter the random number. This patch file can be found here:
PHP Guestbook patch file
 
NoBull widgets has just joined our advertising network. With the success of our TPCS web widgets domain I am left with high hopes for this little up-in-coming site.
NoBull widgets is gaining more traffic by the day! Since we have started using this domain for hosting our widgets we have found it to have a good deal of potential for widget based advertising.
- To visit NoBull widgets click here.
- To visit our advertising section click here.
(If you want to advertise on our network use the above link)
 
"Windows-7x-large Microsoft has toned down the intentionally annoying User Account Control security feature introduced in Windows Vista. UAC is the feature that frequently prompts Vista users for permission to do something, sometimes more than once."
"But security experts say the streamlined UAC in Windows 7, launched Thursday, is being shipped in a configuration that may do more harm than good, in terms of leaving your Windows 7 PC vulnerable to cyber criminals looking to take control."
Read the entire article:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/technologylive/2009/10/windows-7-security-settings-may-leave-pcs-vulnerable-to-cyberattacks.html
 
Gadgets for iGoogle and other homepage sites (start pages) are getting ever more popular. I seem to get a good deal of email asking about how can a beginner easily make these gadgets, so I decided to write this small article to describe the easiest and quickest way to get started making your own gadgets.
Before we begin making gadgets there are a few things that must be in place first.- You must already know how to make basic HTML content.
- You must have access to a server in order to host your content.
Now, if you already understand these two areas then you are as good as done! So let's begin building our gadget:
Let's make some content
For this example we are going to make a simple IP display gadget. So, let's find some code to do this:
<script language="javascript">
var ip = '<!--#echo var="REMOTE_ADDR"-->'
document.write(ip);
</script>
Now, we enter this into an .shtml file. Note the S in shtml, this is necessary to process the SSI code that displays the IP address.
So we now have a file called ip.shtml on our computer with the above code in it. We need to upload this file to our web server. In my case the address of the file is:
http://www.tropicalpcsolutions.com/ip/ip.shtml
So, we now have our basic web content up and running. Now we need to make it into a gadget. For this you will need some XML code. The XML file is in a sense, the gadget. Another way to look at this is that the XML file is a portable container/wrapper for your html content.
XML code used in this example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Module>
<ModulePrefs
title="IP Example Gadget"
title_url="http://www.yoursite.com"
height="50"
width="200"
author="ME"
author_location="HERE"
author_email="nospam@nospam.org.com"
screenshot="screenshot.png"
thumbnail="screenshot.png"
description="Example IP display gadget"
category="tools" />
<UserPref
name="IP_DISPLAY"
default_value="0"
datatype="hidden"/>
<Content type="url" href="http://www.feedblitz.com/t2.asp?/380382/0/0/http://www.tropicalpcsolutions.com/ip/ip.shtml" />
</Module>
Notice this line:
<Content type="url" href="http://www.feedblitz.com/t2.asp?/380382/0/0/http://www.tropicalpcsolutions.com/ip/ip.shtml" />
This will have to point to YOUR content on YOUR server. You also will need to change the variables to say what you want them to say! For starters you can just take the code as is and change that one line to point to your content.
Now save this file as ip.xml and put on your server in the same directory as your ip.shtml file. My example xml file is located at:
http://www.tropicalpcsolutions.com/ip/ip.xml
Now, we go to Google GGE (Google Gadget Editor) and test our gadget. To load the gadget choose "Open from URL" on the drop down list to the left.
Once we have loaded the xml file we click the preview tab and test our gadget/content:
Once we have determined that all is working we then go here and submit the gadget. Once the gadget is submitted you will be given a link and embed codes that allow you to offer the gadget to others. Example:
<a href="http://www.feedblitz.com/t2.asp?/380382/0/0/http://www.google.com/ig/adde?synd=open&source=ggyp&moduleurl=http://www.tropicalpcsolutions.com/ip/ip.xml" target=_blank>Add to iGoogle</a>
The above code would create the below link:
Add to iGoogle
Once the link is clicked the gadget will be loaded into your homepage:
There, you have made your first iGoogle gadget. I hope this helps you guys out...For more info on this topic then sign up for our email newsletter and get a free eBook that goes into greater detail.
 
I have been a big fan of Hawking for quite some time. Recently I have put together a list of some of his more popular books and where to get them for next to nothing.
If your interested in astronomy, cosmology, or astrophysics then I'm sure there is something on this list you will appreciate.
Stephen Hawking Book Reviews/Deals
 
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