So I’ve been hearing about these websites where you can borrow money or loan money to other users. It sounds like a pretty cool idea, but I was curious is this for real and do people actually pay the money back?

I know one way to find out and that is to try it. So that’s exactly what I did. Last week I created my account for free on Prosper.com and after some basic verifications my account was approved to be a lender. In order to lend money to other users you need to first deposit money. It says it takes about ten days for the funds to clear but it only took about 3-4 days, which is pretty fast. Also the next time my deposit should be faster. Once you have $2500 in loans the money should be deposited almost instantly.

So I got my $1000 in my account, now who do I loan it to? Well they also made this very easy, they have a tool that helps you setup your portfolio plan. You can choose what type of portfolio risk you are comfortable with - the risk level is directly proportionate in most cases to the most of interest you will earn. Here are the options you can select from:

• Conservative - Bids on very low risk borrowers - 5.10%
• Balanced - Bids on low risk borrowers - 7.63%
• Moderate - Bids on medium risk borrowers - 8.48%
• Aggressive - Bids on higher risk borrowers - 9.03%
• Start from scratch - I want to build my own portfolio plan from scratch.

I chose “Balanced” because for my first time I thought this would be a safe risk level to see how well this site works. What’s pretty cool is that your $1000 doesn’t all go to one person but they recommend you lend it in $50 increments to multiple people which I did and it was all automated.

Within about 10 minutes of building my plan all of my money was lended. Now I just sit back and hope everyone pays so I can get my 7.63%. What if someone never pays? That is entirely possible and is actually figured into the estimate rate I will get. They anticipate my return will actually be 11.87%, with a estimated loss of 3.12% and they take 1.00% themselves. That’s how prosper.com makes money, they take a servicing fee of 1.00 from the lender.

If a borrower doesn’t pay it is automatically sent to collections and the collection agency then works on your behalf to collect the funds. I will update my blog once I get some results on how my lending went and let you know if I Prosper!

Popularity: 78% [?]

We all know Google is a great search engine and know they have lots of other cool tools like Gmail, Documents, Reader, etc. But there are some other cool things that you can do with google that most people don’t know or they know and then they forget how to do it. Also most of these are no where to be found on Google so it’s hard for newbies to know what to do.

Number of Incoming Links
link:example.com

This tool will tell you how many other sites link to your site according to Google. If I plug in link:datinggold.com for example it says 9 sites linking in. However if I do link:allanhenning.com it says 0. Ouch! Looks like I got some work to do. Again, this may not be 100% accurate, but it shows you what Google knows. So use the command “link” if you want to know who links to your site.

Number of Indexed Pages
site:example.com

This tool tells you the number of pages you have indexed in Google, simply preface the domain with “site:”. Don’t forget the colon and make sure there is no space between the colon and the domain. For example site:allanhenning.com it show that I have 50 pages indexed. That’s not bad and gives me encouragement to continue writing on my blog. You can also the the “site” function to look for content within a particular website. For example, you can enter “site:allanhenning.com ferrari” into the search field and it will find all instances of “ferrari” within the allanhenning.com domain.

Checking the Cached Pages
cache:example.com

Some people use this if they want to see a prior version of their site. To be honest I don’t use this tool too often, but it’s still a good one. If you preface the domain with “cache”, it will bring up the cache of that site, which is basically Google’s “snapshot” of the page when it crawled the web. I can’t figure out why if I do “cache:allanhenning.com” it has no results. But go ahead and try it for your site. The results will show you the page that Google last spidered including the time and date.

Calculator that know more math than I do
2 x 2 =

Enter that into Google Search and it will correctly tell you the answer is 4. Very cool. Google can handle basic arithmetic like addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), division (/), and exponents (x^y). It can also do much more advanced calculations that are outta my league. You can also do really cool stuff like “half a cup in teaspoons“. Very cool go ahead and play with it.

Instant Stock Quote
AAPL

If you know the ticker for your favorite stock, all you have to do is enter that into the search field. If you search for AAPL, you’ll get:

Currency Conversion
100 USD to CAD

Simply enter the conversion you’d like done into the Google search box and hit “Enter” or click the Google Search button

Here are some sample queries:

• 3.5 USD in GBP
• currency of Brazil in Malaysian money
• 5 British pounds in South Korean money
• 2.2 USD per gallon in INR per litre

Weather Report
San Francisco weather

Just type the city name and “weather” in the Google search box and it will give you some nice results. For example I’m going to San Francisco this week so I can check the weather. Here’s the forecast.

To see a definition for a word or phrase, simply type the word “define,” then a space, and then the word(s) you want defined. If Google has seen a definition for the word or phrase on the Web, it will retrieve that information and display it at the top of your search results

Search By Number

Parcel tracking IDs, patents and other specialized numbers can be entered into Google’s search box for quick access to information about them. For example, typing a FedEx tracking number will return the latest information on your package. Other special search by number types include :

Those are the best ones, there are more. You can check out the page on Google that explains them all here.

Popularity: 84% [?]

I was looking for a good list of where to submit press releases and I managed to find a pretty good list of sites.

If you know of any others please leave a comment and I will add it to the list.

http://www.pressbox.co.uk/
http://www.press-base.com/add-press.html
http://www.fpsnewswire.com/freepost.asp
http://www.addpr.com/addrelease.php
http://www.articleuniversity.com/
http://www.agencyfaqs.com/news/company_news/submit.html
http://express-press-release.com/submit-press-release.php
http://www.i-newswire.com/submit.php
http://www.powerhomebiz.com/BizNews/pressrelease.htm
http://www.1888pressrelease.com/
http://www.free-press-release.com/submit/free-press-release.php
http://www.looselycoupled.com/news/lsubrelease.html
http://www.bizeurope.com/pressrelease.htm
http://www.pressreleasespider.com/AddFeed.aspx
http://www.prfree.com/index.php
http://www.ap.org/pages/contact/contact_pr.html
http://www.greatpossibilities.com/articles/publish/submit.shtml
http://www.dime-co.com/submitpress.html
http://www.thehostingnews.com/SubmitHostingNews.html
http://www.prurgent.com/submit_press_release.htm
http://www.theopenpress.com/
http://www.free-press-release.com/

Popularity: 74% [?]

I never blogged about it, but about a year ago I got a Google Cooler. What is a Google Cooler? Well it’s basically a mini refridgerator with a Google logo on it.

You are suppose to get them upon your millionth PPC lead through Google AdWords. Only thing is I’m not sure when they started the counter, because I’m pretty sure I hit it a long time ago. Anyways I think it’s very cool that I got one, I’m not sure how many there are. 1000? 5000? 10000?

It’s currently sitting in one of our techie offices with our Sys Admin and one of our programmers. It doesn’t hold much but you can fit some bottles of water in it or some six packs. If anyone has additional information on it please leave me some comments. I found the images on Google Images.. I was too lazy to take my own. So thanks to whoever took them in the first place. Don’t sue me lol.

Popularity: 70% [?]

I ran across Website Grader, at first I though it wouldn’t be a very good tool. But I decided to give it a shot anyways so I could right a review.

Well I’m glad I tried it. It’s a very useful tool.

Here is the basic summary of what it does, before I point out some details it told me about my website - Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

Ok great, so what’s that mean? Well here are a few of the things I discovered about my blog by running that tool and a brief description of why this is valuable:

• No Meta Keywords Found - Wow! I screwed up on one of the most basic things. Gonna have to fix that.
• More than one H1 tag found - Ok not a big deal. They agree.
• Images - 43 found which is alot for one page and 1 without ALT tags. Good reminder.
• Interior Page Analysis - 3 pages processed. I better work on increasing that.
• Readability Level - Elementary / Primary School - “ This score measures the approximate level of education necessary to read and understand the web page content. In most cases, the content should be made to be simple so that a majority of the target audience can understand it.”
• Off-Page SEO - I never knew that if your domain was registered further into the future Google and other search engines would trust it more. Makes sense though.

So the list goes on… But guess what, you can read my entire report right here. I encourage you to try it out, it only takes a few seconds no lie!

Popularity: 81% [?]

If you are interested in trading blog links with me, please contact me or leave a comment here and we can arrange something.

Link trades will be really good because we can specify which keywords we want. Interested?? Let me know!

Thanks!

Popularity: 79% [?]

If you are like me, you’re always looking for more traffic for your blog. Well a good friend of mine told me about StumbleUpon.

Basically Stumble is a toolbar that you install into your browser and when you click Stumble!, it will take you to another site based upon your personal interests. It’s really cool because I put that I have interests in things like marketing, internet, technology, etc. So when I click Stumble it brings me to sites that usually match my interests.

The sites you visit have been most likely given a thumbs up by other users so you are more likely to enjoy them to. You can also gives sites a thumbs down . I’ve found that I rarely find a site that I give a . This is because other users with similar interests rate the sites too and if I site gets too many , its not likely to appear.

So where’s the traffic? Submit your site and if you have a quality site you will start getting visitors thats “stumble” upon your page. As time goes on and you get more good reviews you will start getting more and more visitors.

ALSO: If you enjoy what I have to say. Consider subscribing to my RSS feed.

Popularity: 87% [?]

I recently discovered a pretty cool tool called Scoutle. You can see it in action in the bottom right of my sidebar.

Scoutle claims to be a new form of social networking referred to as Automated Social Networking. They say you do not have to do anything, nor do you have to know each other and there is no need of communication in order to connect. Automated Social Networking is all about networking without all that. It is a way of building a network of your own choice with no real-life obligations.

Those are some pretty big claims. I can’t really tell how well it works so I tried it out. Either way I don’t think it can hurt.

They have a nice video introduction that you can see right here.

And it’s only 4 simple steps to get setup. It only took me about 4 minutes to get on my site.

1. Sign Up & Login

Sign up, activate your account and login.

2. Create a Scout and let him walk

Your Scout is your personal webcrawler. He will walk over the Internet and will meet other Scouts. To help your Scout walk, give him some space so install the small Stage on your website. This will not only activate your Scout, but will also bring other Scouts to your website.

3. Check & Connect

The Scouts your Scout will meet are selected based on a range of criteria, like interests, networks, connections and more. Be sure to check his results every now and then, visit the websites and if you find them interesting, start a Connection. This will help your website become more valuable.

4. Grow & More

You will not only see you get more visitors to your website, you will also get more points, which means your website is more appreciated. Discover all other options Scoutle has to offer. Create or join Networks or search in the Guide. Of course new options will be available in the future as well. A new way of browsing the Internet is born!

So give it a shot and see who it scouts out for you!

Popularity: 100% [?]

Not too long ago I made Ferrari Twitter Theme for my Twitter. It turned out to be pretty popular and people are starting to use it. So since I’m also a Porsche owner I thought it would be cool to make a Porsche Twitter Theme too.

It’s very easy yo do Twitter Themes, however I will help you just in case. To edit your Twitter theme - login to your Twitter account and click “Settings” then “Design”.

Copy this image to your Desktop and it you want use my color choices below:

• Background Color: 000000
• Text Color: 969696
• Name Color: 7B0707
• Link Color: FFA600
• Sidebar Fill Color: 7B0707
• Sidebar Border Color: 7B0707

That’s really all there is to it. In the near future I might also make a Range Rover one.

Popularity: 91% [?]

This is a great plugin by Alex King. This plugin will help you see which of your posts are most popular. Views, comments, etc. are tracked and given configurable point values to determine popularity.

I have added it to my blog you can find it in the left sidebar and in the footer. But things didn’t go as smoothly as I planned they would and luckily just by doing some google searches I was able to find the info I needed to fix it.

Plugin Issues

If during installation it triggers a FATAL ERROR message then try this…

Open popularity-contest.php and scroll down to line 59. Replace require(’../../wp-blog-header.php’); with require(’../wp-blog-header.php’);

However, in running the plugin after making the changes in order to get the plugin to activate, it wouldn’t create the two tables needed in order to run, so these had to be entered manually (via phpMyAdmin). To create the tables, you’ll need to run the following SQL queries. If you dont know how to do this step or are comfortable using a MYSQL admin, then you better get someone more technical to help you.

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `PREFIX_ak_popularity` (
`post_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`total` int(11) NOT NULL,
`feed_views` int(11) NOT NULL,
`home_views` int(11) NOT NULL,
`archive_views` int(11) NOT NULL,
`category_views` int(11) NOT NULL,
`single_views` int(11) NOT NULL,
`comments` int(11) NOT NULL,
`pingbacks` int(11) NOT NULL,
`trackbacks` int(11) NOT NULL,
`last_modified` datetime,
KEY `post_id` (`post_id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM;

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `PREFIX_ak_popularity_options` (
`option_name` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`option_value` varchar(50) NOT NULL
) ENGINE=MyISAM;

Note that PREFIX refers to your Wordpress table prefix, in most common cases it is simply wp_ unless you’ve got multiple copies of Wordpress running in the same database. Make sure you change “PREFIX” to “wp”

Popularity: 83% [?]