I ran across this site last night and was very amused at this very inventive way to create an income stream on the net. This is the site of ‘Harper’, who apparently lives in Birmingham Alabama. Harper is 31 and came up with the idea of creating a website/blog that features…him counting. The site is very basic and simple He has a blog where he is tracking his ‘progress’ not only in counting but his weight, links for donations, links to buy t-shirts for the site, a link to the video article on the site on Cnet, and of course, links for sponsors. Basically all Harper is doing is sitting on his couch counting to 1 million.
     Now you may ask yourself how is this making any kind of money. Well like many of the other bizarre, wierd and off the wall things on the internet, people will want to see it, atleast once. With that in mind, the resourceful Harper and company sell ‘blocks’ of advertising. Your company or website can buy a space on Harper’s website during a block of time, usually 1000. So for say $20 you can buy time on his site so that your site’s banner will be showing when he is counting from 10,000 - 11,000. He will even say a short message (like a quick ‘word from our sponsors’) before he starts counting on the block that you have purchased.
     Along with sponsorship money, millioncount.com has t-shirts ($18.95) that you can buy, and who doesnt love a good t-shirt, especially something with a ultra nerdy yet hip obscure reference. There is also the ability to donate.
     Now this isn’t a purely income motivated venture. Harper is also involved with a charity called Push America that helps people with disabilities and raises awareness of people with disabilities. Part of the donations will go to Push America. A noble cause in my opinion. So in a nutshell, this simple yet ingenious idea is making him money and helping out a good cause, can you really ask for more than that?

     While donations and t-shirts are great, that’s probably not going to be enough to pay the bills of a streaming video/audio website thats getting an average of 20k hits a day. So how is he making his bread and butter? Three ways thatI can see. For one, if you look at his video feed, he has 3 banners in the background. One is for a local Alabama radio station, one is for a local sports paper, and there is a third back there I can’t really make out. Now as a guess, I would venture to say he’s probably getting paid either a decent one time payment or a regular amount for however long those banners are up there. What entity wouldnt want their banner up on a video site getting 20k visitors a day that will see their ad? The second income stream is of course the faithful standby of Google adsense. With an average of 90k visitors per week according to Alexa.com, millioncount.com is probably making a fair chunk of change just from Google Adsense. The third, and most clever way for an income stream is the sponsorship banner blocks that he is selling on Ebay. 
     So he has donations, t-shirts, sponsors, Adsense, and actual physical banners creating income for him, and all he’s doing is sitting on the couch with a webcam counting. If his girlfriend doesn’t snap from listening to him count all the time, he should do pretty well on this.

Cellphones have become a fixture in the world. With the exception of a few tribes in Africa, there arent many people that dont have a cellphone in their pocket, on their hip or constantly in their ear. They are an essential part of most people’s ‘gear’ for the day.

A little history.
     Cell phones may be new devices, but they originated in the 1920’s. Radios were used since 1921. Features were put into these radios in the 1940’s, and they were used by police. The concept of the cellular phone was developed in 1947 which originated from the mobile car phone. The concept of the cellular phone was produced by Bell Laboratories.
     The first actual cell phone was made in 1973 by Martin Cooper of Motorola and other assisting inventors who used the idea of the car phone and applied the technology necessary to make a portable cell phone possible. Cell phones were first made available to the public in 1984. Back then, they were very large, expensive instruments.
     The Federal Communications Commission made a regulation that limited radio-spectrum frequencies. This is the reason only twenty-three simultaneous conversations were possible in the same service area. In 1968 the FCC decided to increase the frequencies to allow research for better connections. The FCC worked together with AT&T and Bell Towers to establish broadcast towers. The towers were small with low power and covered a “cell” that was a few miles in radius, but actually covered a larger area. This allowed calls to pass from tower to tower.

As a reference, this was the high end of technology (and style)  in the beginning of modern cell phone tech:

Cellphones Today 
     Today, cellphones aren’t just for voice communication. Today’s cellphones take on many different jobs. With current technology, cellphones can do many things for the everyday person. Here’s a list of things that you may not know your cellphone can do.

Your cell as your wallet:
The Nokia 6131 features NFC technology for making mobile payments with your handset. By touching the phone to a special reader you can pay for everything from a soda in a vending machine to movie tickets. The technology is common in Japan and Europe but trials are underway in the United States.

Social Networking on the go
     The Heat–a Helio phone–offers access to MySpace and an application called Buddy Beacon, which is a friend-locator service that works by broadcasting your location to your pals (and vice versa).Finding your way
Verizon Wireless’ VZ Navigator GPS application offers turn-by-turn directions, points of interest, and local maps. It’s offered on a variety of Verizon handsets including the LG enV. Sprint offers a competing application, and we should continue to see more GPS services in cell phones.

Disney and your phone.
     Disney Mobile caters to the family market by offering cell phones for both kids and adults. Though the handsets offer a full range of features, parents can restrict how they’re used. Parents can also track their child’s location via a GPS online mapping service.

Your cell as a Tivo Remote
     Tivo Mobile allows you to schedule recordings on your Tivo DVRs. It’s now available on three Verizon Wireless phones, including the LG VX8300. In the future, you should be able to use your phone to watch programming saved to your DVR. Your cell as a TV

The only thing better than being able to control your tv, is being a tv. The Samsung SCH-U620 is one of two cell phones compatible with Verizon’s V Cast Mobile TV service. Through a partnership with MediaFlo, Verizon delivers TV broadcasts directly to the handsets, with picture quality that is far better than 3G streaming video. Look for TV to come to more phones and carriers.

WiFi on your phone

At present, only a limited number of cell phones support Wi-Fi calling, but carriers are beginning to take the concept seriously. T-Mobile is prepping for the nationwide launch of a Wi-Fi service called HotSpot at Home that would let customers use the technology to make voice calls with handsets like the Samsung SGH-T709.

Smile for the lens
     Though 10-megapixel camera phones are available in Korea, they’re still pretty rare in other parts of the world. However, 5-megapixel camera phones like the Nokia N95 are becoming more common. They offer great image quality and just about all the features you’d find on a standalone camera.

Video Calls
     We may not have Jetsons-style video calling just yet, but Cingular/AT&T is planning to launch its Video Share application this summer. It will allow you to stream live video to other supported phones.     This is a small list of what a cellphone can do at this point. But obviously a cell is becoming a useful tool that everyone just can’t seem to live without. The future of cellphones looks to be very exciting as well with the introduction of biometrics, voice verification and even more precise GPS applications that are coming down the pipe

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http://cameraonbeach.blogspot.com/ - Beach Cams for when you cant get away from the computer

It’s suprising the things you find on blog spots. Everything from family happenings to an up to date account of someone cutting themselves for fun.

At first glance, Microsoft’s secret project looks like a 2007 version of the sit-down arcade game Ms. Pac Man.

But if this machine were running the game, you could just take your finger and flick away the monsters chasing the heroine. Microsoft on Wednesday is taking the wraps off “Milan,” more than five years in the making and the first in what the company hopes will be a long line of “surface computers.” The Microsoft Surface tabletop PC, for which the company has created both the hardware and software, offers shades of the technology seen in the sci-fi thriller Minority Report. The whole unit is controlled entirely through touch; there’s no mouse or keyboard.
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