Most audio junkie craves his own studio. Now stop and imagine having the power to record, mix and publish your own tracks. Such was just a pipe dream since the cost for quality studio equipment would have left the average Bobby without a home to get the studio flying. The good thing is, the Samson comes into the picture with a cool alternative to atrociously expensive condenser mics flooding the market.

Here’s a pic:

Now, the C0-1 may not be the first USB condensermic, but it’s definitely the most affordable. It’s creators strove for simplicity. The Samson is ready to wail with no need for a pre-amp, in/out box or fancy gadgetry that will set you back $$$$$. Just plug it into the familiar USB port and you’re tickling the heavenly harmonies. It’s god-sent to musicians and anyone needing to record on the go.

Need to podcast while on the run? No sweat. Want to produce a voiceover in the plane? Go fire it up. You need nothing more than an average laptop. And your golden voice.

Watch what you eat and buy in China. The government’s idea of consumer protection is giving “Certificates of Government Approval” to those rich enough to pay for them. I bet the inspectors never even peek under the hood of what they approve!

You see, I recently visited Guangdong and bought a can of mushrooms. After frying it, I consumed the sickly looking things only to experience severe stomach upsets right after. My guide said (seriously) that manufacturers here tend to use formalin in their food stuffs. Formalin??? Isn’t that to preserve the dead?

The shopping district looked next to Shi’a beckoned to me after the doc pumped me full of medicine so I took a stroll and bought some shirts and jeans. Hmmm… never knew that Prada was spelt “Prrada” and Louis Vuitton sold as “Luis Veeton” here. Quality matched the poor spelling: the darn things started shrinking after a good wash.

Sigh. Any horror stories from fellows visiting this consumer unfriendly land?

I got two good friends. Can’t name who they are coz they’d kick my ass giving out details. Both retired their day jobs. Both live off the internet now. Let’s call one Mr. White and the other Mr. Black.

Now both of them run online businesses of a similar nature. They’re seduction gurus and good ones at that.

Mr. White maintains a cool seduction portal. It’s got lots of pages with unique content, and a moderately active forum. Funny thing is, his site had been at PR2 for over a year. He has few backlinks and ranks 50 to 100 for his desired keywords.

Mr. Black also maintains a seduction site- but his web has only a blog and a few info products for sale. His site had reached PR4, has 5000 backlinks and ranks 10- 20 for the same keywords Mr. White aspires for.

Turns out Mr. Black had been spamming blogs leaving cute comments on thousands of blogs with the employ of a few nice Indians he hired. Gosh! And here I thought google punished spammers!

Could it be that Google simply spends all its resources punishing link sellers like text-link-ads.com instead of going for the more annoying spammers??

I love blogging but there are days that I have nothing much to say. It’s frustrating. You see, I like to behold a new post on my blogs everyday. On days that there are zero posts, I feel incomplete. Must be the OC in me, eh?

Just this morning, a friend directed me to a cool piece of software that solves my woes. The software automatically plugs in relevant content into my site using RSS- and it’s perfectly allowed by Google and the other search engines. Have no fear: you won’t be banned.

The software is Carp Evolution.

The software comes in two flavors, free and commercial. The latter came with so many more enhancements and customizability for just $29. Compared with competitors I researched, like RSS Equalizer ($97) and RSS Content Builder ($77), that was a steal!

With an easy install script, I was good to go. I simply plugged in the code to pages of my site and wham! I was serving up fresh content. Just like that!

The default layout was clean and simple. For most of you fellas, this would be dandy. But Im a stickler for perfection so I modded the code a bit and the RSS feeds soon looked like hand-coded entries.

I was in tears at the beauty of it.

Boys. Do download the free version of Carp and tell me what you think.

I’d usually let my friends lust over the top-end shoes made by Prada and Feragammo. I mean, why spend $400+ on a pair of shoes that get battered and blasted after a few months use? What a waste of money right? Give me the cheapo Kenneth Cole Reactions for $40 anyday and I’m a happy duck

However, I have recently stumbled a branded casual loafer that by itself, is a finely crafted driving shoe. But, when the inimitable house of Vuitton slaped its famous “LV” across the top, the loafer is transformed from a mere weekend bum-off shoe to a virtual piece of bling for the feet. Something’s flashing in your eye? It must be the shiny initials on my podsies!

This shoe is amazingly comfortable and exudes more class than a stiff and uncomfortable Hugo Boss patent leather evening shoe! Take it on a date and watch the gals ooohhh

Be bold. Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.

Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site. Here is an example of deep linking, in this case to my personal happiness workbook.

Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?

Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.

First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won’t follow additional links to the same page. You can see this in action at the link to the home page on this web site monitoring page

Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?

Article exchanges. You’ve heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else’s article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)

Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.

Not anchor text. Don’t overdo the anchor text. You don’t want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation - something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, “Gumbo Pudding Pop” occasionally, “Get gumbo pudding pops” as well, “Gumbo-flavored pudding pops” some other times, etc.

Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It’s called the navigation bar. See how the second navigation bar at the bottom of Last Minute Florida Villas is like a mini-site map?

The SEO Writer