Improve Your Drumming Skills

4:36 AM

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Transcription software is a valuable learning tool for any drummer, and it’s often much more fun to work with than a one-dimensional drum book. You see, the software isn’t just intended for putting pencil to paper: today’s software is ideal for play-a-long and analysis purposes.

For example, most drummers like the idea of learning from cds, but often have trouble playing along with the recordings because of the up-tempo nature in which the tracks are recorded. Transcription software enables you to slow down a recording, while adjusting the pitch, and then, if you want, you can export multiple repetitions of a complete song or highlighted selection to an iPod or CD for use in your practice studio.

Practicing a groove or figure at a comfortable tempo puts you in a position to learn and play it with relaxation and confidence. This is paramount. Why? Because when you’re practicing in a relaxed and focused manner you’re practicing mastery and not tension. Tension is what you’re practicing when you’re trying to play a grove or figure at a tempo faster than your current level. It’s always best to play whatever you’re practicing in a relaxed manner, because this creates a positive spillover into every musical situation you’ll find yourself. This also applies to slow selections, which may create trouble. If a groove is too slow for you to play with mastery, speed it up to where you can learn it with relaxation and mastery and then go back and slow it back down to its initial recorded tempo.

Two of the most utilized transcription software products on the market are Transcribe (Mac) and Riffster (PC). After downloading and installing the software, you’ll find the processes of adjusting the pitch, tempo, and exporting the music to a CD or iPod to be fairly intuitive.

It’s important to adjust the tempo to a setting that will allow you to clearly understand the figures you’ll be asked to play. Start slowly and then gradually adjust the temp to where you see fit. After you become proficient, steadily increase the tempo until you can play the selection in real-time. You’ll find that by practicing slowly and then gradually increasing the tempo, you’ll play the music with much more confidence, relaxation, and conviction.

Another feature of this process is that you can highlight a specific section of a tune that is giving you trouble, and work on that section exclusively. You can even loop it and listen to it over and over while resting. Slowing a figure or pattern way down increases your ability to really hear how the instruments of the drum kit are interrelating. And, by listening to something in a repetitive way, it really hammers the sounds into your head and body, which is where you want the music. You can have great chops, but if you don’t have the music in your mind, body, and soul, the chops are useless and unmusical.

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Choosing Free Online Entertainment

4:25 AM

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Are you tired of searching for some free music and videos online for entertainment? Though Internet is the largest source of entertainment, when it comes to getting free entertainments they are really hard to find. Along with this difficulty comes the copyright and other legal download issues. Moreover, you will be exposed to computer viruses, spyware and adwares while searching for free music and videos online. When you will be bombarded with lots of troubles, trying to get some free entertainment online, the reliable, legal free sources of entertainment often remain hidden. Just keep reading on the article to discover the 3 best sources of free entertainment online.

1. Online music sharing sites

Almost all the savvy Internet surfers will be aware of the online music sharing sites. These unique websites are dedicated for sharing music. These online music sharing sites are guided by the Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music which makes it completely legal to download music. Moreover, you can download the music that you are looking for with the matter of a few mouse clicks. Downloading music from these online music sharing sites will safeguard you from virus and spywares. The files hosted in the online music sharing sites come through various checks before they are finally made available for download.

2. Online video sharing sites

The advancements in Internet technology has made video sharing just a breeze today. The slow download speeds and poor quality videos are no more alive. With the online video sharing sites you will be able get lightning speed downloads of high quality videos. With the recent growth of social networking, this video sharing technology has also got huge popularity. You can upload your favorite videos to an online video sharing site very easily. You needn’t be Internet savvy to do this. Any one who knows a little knowledge about the Internet can share their favorite videos with the whole world.

3. File sharing websites now premier the best dance clubs in Las Vegas

Some of the very best online music sharing websites like planetclubs.com premier the best dance clubs in Las Vegas. With the introduction of this feature in the online music sharing websites, you can download your favorite songs today by DJ Tiesto mixes and Armin Van Buuren all under one roof. These unique online music sharing websites lets you listen to your favorite artists all day for free. Best clubs in the world. Download your favorite songs including DJ Tiesto mixes and Armin Van Buuren. Moreover, downloading music form these online music sharing websites are 100 % legal.

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Find Right Affiliate Product to Promote

4:13 AM

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Choosing the right products to promote in affiliate promotions is crucial for a number of reasons - the two main ones being:

1. Relevant Products are Key - if your blog draws an audience centered around a particular topic or demographic you’re unlikely to be able to sell products that have no relevancy to your blog’s topic.

2. The Quality of Products can Impact Your Long Term Brand - promote low quality products and you could be hurting your brand. Readers remember who they heard about products from and their trust of you and your blog will be increased or decreased by what you recommend to them.

So - choosing the right affiliate product is crucial. It not only impacts conversions and profitability but it impacts your brand and relationships with readers.

A few tips and thoughts on finding affiliate programs to promote come to mind:

  1. Google It - this one isn’t rocket science but it does work. If you have a Beauty Product blog google “Beauty Products Affiliate Program”. Insert your main keywords into that search and you may just find products that are relevant to your niche.
  2. Look at Your Competition - what products are other people promoting in your niche. Quite often a quick glance down the sidebar of another successful blog in your niche to see what products and services they are promoting will reveal affiliate products you could promote to (and it could also point you to some relevant advertisers to promote).
  3. Check out AdSense Ads - many of the AdSense ads appearing besides Google search results, on other blogs and even on your own blog are likely to be products with affiliate programs attached. Don’t click the ads on your own blog but checking out what the ads promote can reveal all kinds of potential affiliate partners. The same thing is true with other types of advertising. For example I was recently surfing on Facebook and saw an ad relevant for my blog - on clicking it I found a new product with an affiliate program that I’d not heard of before.
  4. Approach Potential Affiliate Partners - this one might not work if you’re a new blog with small traffic but as your blog grows you might find yourself in a position to approach the makers of a product or service to see if they’d start some kind of affiliate program for you. I’ve done this a couple of times over the last year and it has been great. The best part of it is that you get a head start on your competition for the promotion as you’re likely to be the only person promoting it.
  5. Search Affiliate networks - lastly there are quite a few affiliate networks around that list many affiliate programs. Most of these have search functions to allow you to type in keywords and find promotions relevant to your niche. Check out MarketLeverage, Clickbank, Commission Junction, PepperJam Network (disclaimer, MarketLeverage sponsors ProBlogger) and many more.
  6. Search Online Stores for Products - many online stores like Amazon have affiliate programs attached to them. In general the comissions are not massive (for example Amazon’s range from as low as 4% up to 15% depending upon the type of product and how much you sell) - I guess they have narrower profit margins) - but stores like this have a massive range of products and can be a good place to start while you build traffic and find other programs.
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Top Ten Tips for Online Publishing Success

2:37 AM

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Are you have a targeted reader or reviewer of your article, tip, or book? There is some tips for make sure your article, tip, or book will get published. Please use this checklist to make sure your article, tip, or book excerpt will get published and make you a household name on the Internet.

  1. Does the title grab you and include a benefit? Make sure it is clear, but clever and clear is great.
  2. Does the opening grab your attention? How? You need a hook in your short 1-3 sentence introduction. A shocking fact, drama, or question about where your audience is, their challenge.
  3. Avoid starting sentences with "This is, there is, She is/was." Avoid passive construction such as: have, is, was, seems, appears. Replace "Judy is a book coach" with Book coach, Judy Cullins, digs her client's buried treasure (their words) up to make their books saleable gems. Aim for only 2-4% passives. Use strong, action verbs instead.
  4. Punch up those sentences. Instead of "people who are assertive are willing to stand up for themselves," say, "Assertive people stand up for themselves."
  5. Reduce general words. Replace them with specifics that are more compelling to the reader. Instead of "saves you time," use "saves you 10 hours a week, so you can finally take that vacation to that Caribbean island."
  6. Shorten all sentences for Online reading. Did you know that 15-17 words per sentence is standard? Over that number the sentence is "difficult?" We write differently for Online because we are busy people who want information fast!
  7. Use the present or past tense instead of "would have" and other passive forms. These verb forms help your article's clarity and give punch to it.
  8. Show, don't tell. Instead of saying this book helps you to a healthy life, say after you read my book, you will have "leap out of bed energy."
  9. Reduce the use of adjectives and adverbs. Avoid all -ly adverbs. Make your nouns and verbs describe. Use the senses of sight, sound, emotions, touch. Instead of "Suddenly, she yelled at Tom," just say," She opened the front door and yelled at Tom."
  10. Discuss only one point per article to help you write focused, compelling copy for the rest. Check out your article's thesis. What question does your article answer?

Remember, for opt-in ezine publishers to take your article and spread the good word about you, you need to submit a quality, well-edited article that will wow them.

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40 open source content management systems (CMS)

12:27 AM

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While we all know about content management systems such as Joomla and Drupal, you may be surprised to learn that there literally dozens and dozens of other content management systems out there, many of which do have their special niche.

While some CMSs are great for putting up a dynamic website in a snap, others are too difficult to implement and use. We’ve compiled a list of what we consider to be the top open source content management systems available to help you choose the most appropriate tool for your needs.

  1. Joomla - a very popular open-source CMS that is found at the heart of many well known websites (the United Nations is just one example)
  2. Drupal - another very popular, powerful and flexible content management system
  3. WordPress - although geared for publishing blog, WordPress has proven that it can be a powerful CMS too, as you can see with my publisher’s custom publishing web site
  4. Movable Type - like WordPress, Movable Type is also a weblog creation tool which is also used for building non-blog dynamic websites
  5. b2Evolution - a full-featured weblog creation tool/CMS that supports multiple categories, sub-categories, multiple weblogs, skins, statistics, comments, anti-spam filters, photo management and multiple blogs
  6. Xoops - extensible, OO (Object Oriented), easy to use dynamic web content management system written in PHP
  7. Alfresco - powerful enterprise content management system featuring web and document management
  8. DotCMS - J2EE/Java Web Content Management System (wCMS) which includes an AJAX calendar and events management, e-communications tools, personalization/CRM tools, eCommerce hooks and more
  9. e107 - PHP-based content management system designed for the quick creation of websites or community portals
  10. Exponent- a website CMS that allows site owners to easily create and manage dynamic websites without necessarily directly coding web pages, or managing site navigation.
  11. ImpressCMS - a community developed CMS for easily building and maintaining a dynamic web site offering easy to use, secure and flexible system which is said to be an ideal tool for business to community users, from large enterprises to people who want a simple, easy to use blogging tool
  12. Liferay - offers an enterprise portal solution using Java and Web 2.0 technologies
  13. KnowledgeTree Document Management System - document management software designed for business people for team collaboration, storing documents with ease
  14. Pivot - a web-based tool for maintaining dynamic websites, weblogs or online journals
  15. Magnolia - widely used by most Government websites, it offers an easy-to-use editing interface that allows authors to lay out content exactly as it would appear to a website visitor. Contains “best-of-breed” Java technology
  16. MediaWiki - is a free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia, but that is now used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis
  17. MiaCMS - is a fork of the Mambo CMS and offers simple installation, graphical content editors, RSS content syndication, powerful/extensible 3rd party extension system
  18. MODx - described as a “PHP application framework that helps you take control of your online content”; it allows developers and advanced users to give as much control as desired to whomever they desire for day-to-day website content maintenance chores
  19. Nucleus CMS - extensible and powerful CMS based on PHP/SQL blogging tool that features multiple weblog capabilities, and RSS syndication
  20. Nuxeo CPS - is said to be “the most complete open source platform” for building Enterprise Content Management (ECM) applications, and is described as an user-friendly accessible application ready to for enterprise-grade content management with many collaboration features.
  21. OneCMS - most commonly used by gaming websites, it can be used by webmasters to manage their website, allowing the user to upload files, add content and various other features
  22. OpenACS - an open architecture community system toolkit for building scalable, community-oriented web applications.
  23. PhpCMS- a CMS characterized by simple system requirements, high performance and flexibility, which is said to be suitable for both small, private websites, as well as complex high-traffic websites
  24. Plone- easy to use, set-up and run CMS, well suited for project groups, online communities, small business websites
  25. TextPattern - a flexible and easy-to-use feature rich CMS with a built-in search engine
  26. PhpNuke - a CMS and portal solution that features web-based administration, surveys, customisable blocks, modules and themes with multilingual support.
  27. Zope - application server for building content management systems, intranets, portals, and custom applications, written in Python
  28. Plone - suited for building an intranet, web site or community site, Plone is a Content Management, Document Management and Knowledge Management system
  29. Jahia - is an enterprise web content and portal management system that includes a web publishing system, a content management server, and a portal server
  30. Website BAKER - a PHP-based CMS developed with one goal in mind, to enable users to create websites easily
  31. ezPublish - is both an open source content management system and content management framework, which offers an enterprise content management solution, community portal and social networking platform
  32. jLibrary - a CMS engine geared for both personal and enterprise use and offers a very flexible system that can almost be used for any information management purpose
  33. Pligg - ever wanted to create your own Digg clone? Well Pligg is exactly what you’re looking for. It’s a content management system based on PHP/MySQL with features such as multiple authors, article rating, private messaging and much more
  34. Mambo - full-featured CMS that can be used for small or large websites; described as a “powerful enough for the most demanding Internet or intranet site, simple enough for everyone to use!”
  35. Jaws - a Framework and Content Management System for building dynamic web sites that is user-friendly and easy-to-use
  36. Geeklog - PHP/MySQL based application for managing dynamic web content, offering out-of-the-box blog engine, and CMS with support for comments, trackbacks, multiple syndication formats, and spam protection
  37. CMS Container - enables an organization to efficiently maintain a large content-driven website using single CMS. This CMS features the ability to create a staging and live environment, scheduling of content for publication, and automatic removal of content on expiry
  38. SiteFrame - a lightweight, web-based CMS designed for the rapid deployment of community-based websites. A group of users can share stories and photographs, create blogs, send email to one another, and participate in group activities.
  39. Xaraya - offers a “cutting edge open source framework” written in PHP, on which developers can create sophisticated web applications featuring modular design, stable and extensive API and fully internationalized platform
  40. PHP Fusion - PHP-based light-weight open-source content management system that includes a simple, comprehensive administration system.

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14 Rules for Faster-Loading Web Sites

12:32 PM

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These rules are the key to speeding up your web pages. They've been tested on some of the most popular sites on the Internet and have successfully reduced the response times of those pages by 25-50%.

The key insight behind these best practices is the realization that only 10-20% of the total end-user response time is spent getting the HTML document to the browser. You need to focus on the other 80-90% if you want to make your pages noticeably faster. These rules are the best practices for optimizing the way servers and browsers handle that 80-90% of the user experience.

These pages are the companion web site for the book High Performance Web Sites. The examples referenced in the book are hosted here. Navigate through the rules listed below to find the associated examples. Each rule page also contains a link to the Yahoo! Developer Network Performance Blog. There you will find a brief summary of the rule along with comments.

Rule 1 - Make Fewer HTTP Requests
Rule 2 - Use a Content Delivery Network
Rule 3 - Add an Expires Header
Rule 4 - Gzip Components
Rule 5 - Put Stylesheets at the Top
Rule 6 - Put Scripts at the Bottom
Rule 7 - Avoid CSS Expressions
Rule 8 - Make JavaScript and CSS External
Rule 9 - Reduce DNS Lookups
Rule 10 - Minify JavaScript
Rule 11 - Avoid Redirects
Rule 12 - Remove Duplicate Scripts
Rule 13 - Configure ETags
Rule 14 - Make AJAX Cacheable

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12 Secrets To Website Success

10:07 AM

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Are you finally getting around to getting a website set up for your company? Or, are you ready to have your existing website redesigned because you're unhappy with the way it looks or performs?

If so, you'll want the new website to be successful. In fact, as more and more business and consumers research and make purchases online, a successful website is critical to the success of your business. So, what can you do to make the new website successful? And how can you build a successful website on a small business budget?

Here are twelve secrets to website success.

  1. Have specific goals for your website.
  2. Know your customer or site visitors and what they want to get out of your site.
  3. Have pages dedicated to specific items or subjects the customer or site visitor is looking for.
  4. Don't make the home page of your site a "flash" animation. Web visitors routinely skip those animations (or just leave) because they aren't interested in pretty graphics. They want facts. If you're going to use flash to demonstrate your product (or a video) let people choose to view it, don't force them to.
  5. Make it easy for visitors to find what they want. Use a simple navigation structure, and if you absolutely must use drop down menus, make sure visitors can actually click on the links without the drop down rolling up before the person hits the link they want.
  6. If you're selling products, have category pages plus individual pages for each type of product. (For example, if you are selling jewelry, have one page for earrings with links to individual pages for different types of earrings, such as diamond earrings, ruby earrings, pearl earrings, etc.)
  7. Pay attention to search engine optimization (SEO) in setting up pages. The more closely the page title, page description, and keywords match what someone would search for, the more likely they'll find the website, and the more likely they'll buy whatever product is advertised on the page.
  8. Have a means for legally and ethically capturing visitors' email addresses so you can contact them in the future.
  9. Plan to advertise and market your site on an ongoing basis through all methods available to you.
  10. Track and measure traffic, bounce rates, sales conversions and progress.
  11. Ask for feedback from site visitors.
  12. Stay in contact with site visitors (those who gave you their email addresses) on a regular basis so they remember to come back to your website.
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