Taking Down the eBay Machine

When eBay was first introduced to the online community, it truly revolutionized the way people viewed working from home. In a post-eBay era, it suddenly became a very real possibility for people to pull in a little extra cash simply by dishing off household leftovers. But as the company grew more and more popular, the higher ups grew more and more greedy. Raising their listing fees and other associated fees, users grew increasingly alienated.

With the advent of Craigslist and other less fee-driven sites, users began seeking viable eBay alternatives. While many sites cropped up claiming to be the next eBay rival, they tended to be plagued by scammers and questionable sellers. (Who wants to pay $100 for poorly made Christian Louboutin rip-offs?)
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Google Earth: Helping Us View Earth in a Whole New Way

Making its debut in the middle of 2005, Google Earth was an innovative virtual globe that allowed users to view satellite images of almost anywhere in the world. Seeing the roof of your house or your car in the driveway after zooming in from the earth as a whole was certainly a unique and exciting thrill, but after the initial appeal wore off, users began to draw a collective yawn.

Clambering for more exciting features, the latest version of Google Earth has finally arrived. Labeled Google Earth 5.0, the most prominent update is the addition of an ocean. While older versions of the program had a vague blue section that everyone accepted as the ocean, this new version features the ability to actually dip below the ocean surface. Users can now view the layout of the sea floor in 3D, and they can also view accompanying videos of ocean life, ocean expedition logs, and more.
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Beach Bum’s Business Booms With iePlexus’ Help

When Warren Worthley moved back to his home state of Florida after retiring several years ago he bought a boat and dubbed it “Paradise,” and paradise is exactly what Worthley had planned for his retirement.

“I grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida,” he said. “I swam before I could walk, played on the beach and fished everyday. I was destined to be a world-class beach bum.”

This self proclaimed “Florida boy” had spent years working as Dean of Engineering and Technology at Purdue University in Indiana before making his way back to the Sunshine State. His new boat, a 23-foot Donzi fishing cruiser, was perfectly designed for navigating the shallows of Charlotte Harbor, where Worthley planned to hook trout, redfish and snook.
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If You Want to be as Successful as Obama

With the world watching Obama on inauguration day, it was inevitable that people would carefully analyze his speech from a variety of different angles. But I’m sure not even his young, hotshot speechwriter Jon Favreau (sorry, not Mikey of Swingers fame) foresaw that Obama’s speech would offer some helpful insight into all of our future online content.

With it well known that politicians are the kings and queens of rhetoric, what techniques of theirs can we implement into our own work?

The Hook

It’s no mystery that any good piece of writing has to hook the audience right away. For Obama, this meant utilizing language that kept us hanging on his every sentence. If-then clauses kept us asking a collective, “If what?” (See a shameless example in this article’s headline.)

In terms of online writing, pose a question in your headline. With all the numerous blog posts and articles out there, there has to be something to set your article apart. And if the headline can already get your audience thinking and asking questions, you have a significant leg up on your competition.
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The King of Search

It’s hard to even imagine the internet without the aid of search engines. Whether you’re looking for a piece of trivia or you’re looking for a new website, search engines are the main way we navigate the virtual world. And within this world of search, one name stands far and above all the others—Google.

So popular is the Google monolith that it is practically synonymous with search itself. After all, what other search engines have warranted the creation of a verb? After enough time, users became so accustomed to “googling” something that Merriam-Webster responded with the addition of google, a verb meaning the use of the engine to acquire information.

But what exactly made Google such a commanding force in search engines? Official representatives of the company explained that it was Google’s speed that set it apart from its competition. Recognizing that Google itself was merely a middleman used to get people from point A to point B, Google devoted its time and energy into yielding the fastest search results and offering those results in an easy-to-use interface that got people to other sites and on their way.
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“We have stopped all our ad campaigns since signing up with iePlexus.”

iePlexus,

We have noticed considerable more sales and inquiries at our website. We attribute this to the fact that we have iePlexus.com working for us. We have stopped all of our PPC ads and other meager ad campaigns since signing up with iePlexus.

And yet we had many more sales orders this past Christmas season than in previous years. We know “finally” that people are finding our internet web site.

Thank you very very much.

Judee

*NOTE: Please do not contact any clients without prior written authorization from iePlexus. Thank you.

Yahoo Makes Cuts and Company Changes

Yahoo is one of the most established internet presences, and this has been a busy week for the online-centered business. While one move represents a company improvement, another feels like a step backwards.

The first change marks the company’s concerted effort to improve the spam filter on its mail service. Spearheading the campaign is Mark Risher, who has been aptly named the “anti-spam czar.” The new effort teams Yahoo’s research department with several universities in order to more effectively block spam in its mail service. Even with this new effort, Yahoo still urges their mail users to manually mark when spam messages get through to the inbox or legitimate messages get sent to the spam folder with the “spam” or “not spam” buttons.

The second company change actually speaks to the larger economic climate. After recently opening a research and development facility in France, Yahoo has announced that roughly 20% of the French department will receive the dreaded pink slip. These announced layoffs will reduce the French department from 251 employees to 199 employees.

iePlexus Becomes New Developers of the Featured Content Gallery WordPress Plugin

I’m happy to announce that iePlexus is now part of the WordPress development community. As of today, the Featured Content Gallery plugin, a popular WordPress plugin originally developed by Jason Schuller of Revolution Two, has changed hands and will now be hosted, maintained, supported, and developed by iePlexus. Along with this transition comes a significant update to the plugin, a new plugin website and support forum, and a fresh take on where the plugin can be taken in the future. Here at iePlexus we are very proud to be chosen for this responsibility, and we’re excited to positively contribute to the WordPress and Revolution community. We look forward to providing an excellent plugin and support system, as well as a smooth transition between Revolution Two and iePlexus.

About the Featured Content Gallery Plugin:
The Featured Content Gallery is a WordPress plugin that creates a customizable rotating image gallery anywhere within a WordPress site. The plugin has the ability to display either post or pages, and automatically rotates images associated with these in a gallery that includes a thumbnail carousel and text overlay. The gallery is completely customizable, allowing the user to specify the size, color and pages or posts included in the gallery, as well as custom thumbnail images and custom overlay text. Originally transformed into a WordPress plugin by Jason Schuller of Revolution Two, the Featured Content Gallery was developed from SmoothGallery, a javascript gallery created by JonDesign. The plugin is frequently included in some of the best premium WordPress themes available today, namely those found on the Revolution Two site managed by Brian Gardner.
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Worst Blog Offenders

Blogs have finally reached that point where they are practically a staple in our daily internet cruising. With such diversity available, blogs end up serving many different purposes. Whether you’re surfing the extensive repertoire of blogs for fashion, celebrity gossip, sports, or metaphysical enlightenment, the basic goal of any good blog is to inform and entertain.

But with blogs being free and easy to set up, there are sure to be many that fail to meet this simple goal. Today we salute some of the most atrociously awful blogs. In fact, these blogs don’t just fail—they represent the absolute dregs of the blogosphere.

Worst Marketing Blog

Jack in the Box has always had slightly different advertising tactics (why exactly is their mascot a half man/half antenna ball, and why isn’t that feat of genetic science being studied?) But their blog takes the talking car accessory a bit too seriously. In fact, this forum is supposed to be the official MySpace page of one “Jack Box.” Displaying fabricated interests, place of birth, and children (you guessed it, Jack Jr.), I can’t help but feeling bad for the intern who had to spend an afternoon coming up with these inane pieces of fake trivia.
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I Love You Less Than Beef

It is becoming an increasing trend for established businesses to utilize social networking sites in order to promote themselves, but Burger King has taken that trend and put a slightly different spin on it. Rather than promoting positive discussion on forums like MySpace or Facebook, Burger King has officially launched the “Whopper Sacrifice.”

This new campaign has Whopper-crazed Facebookers install the Whopper Sacrifice application to their Facebook profiles. Then all you have to do is de-friend 10 people, enter your email address, and a coupon for a free Whopper will be sent your way. The campaign was initially launched in order to promote BK’s latest beef concoction, the “Angry Whopper.”
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