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Digital Grog is Australia’s go‑to tech blog for sharp reviews, digital trends, AI tools, gadgets, cybersecurity updates, and practical how‑tos covering the latest in Aussie technology

Archives for June 2015

X Change my windows 8 start menu

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Like to stay abreast with new technology updates &  windows , but don’t like the windows 8 start menu. You are not alone, windows 8 was a good update,modernised an all – but millions of people have shown their displeasure in how the start menu was totally obliterated and not user friendly with the windows 8 release.

They are two solutions for this,  either wait for windows 10 to release ( which should not be too far away) and hope they make some good changes to this  or then  force your windows 8 to go back to the much friendly Windows 7 start menu.

I have windows 8 on my laptop and  the nutty metro start menu started to drive me crazy, enough for me to look for a solution to make life easier. Here are the two solutions that will get you faster to where you want, when you start up a windows 8 laptop.

windows 7 start menu for windows 8 get it back

Luckily  there re programs out there that can  easily make your windows 8 start menu just like windows7 and also allow you to switch back and forth between them both, if you want to change your mind.

how to get the old windows start menu back

Below i will give you a paid product (stardock) short review  that does this and also  a  FREE version called  (classic shell) that  does a good job with changing the start menu.

Classic shell ( free version) – So what does classic shell do

[from thier website]

Classic Shell™ is free software that improves your productivity, enhances the usability of Windows and empowers you to use the computer the way you like it ( Like windows 7 start menu).

Classic start menu

[imgfrom http://www.classicshell.net/]

The main features are:

  • Highly customizable start menu with multiple styles and skins
  • Quick access to recent, frequently-used, or pinned programs
  • Start button for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10
  • Toolbar and status bar for Windows Explorer

Classic Shell has been in active development for 5 years and has over 25 million downloads.[DOWNLOAD NOW] .Visit their homepage if you like the program and interested in making a donation

Note: Classic Shell works on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and their server counterparts (Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2). Both 32 and 64-bit versions are supported. The same installer works for all versions.

Start8 By Stardock (paid software $4.99)

This software is good, in that it does allow you to either go straight to the windows desktop,avoiding the windows 8 start screen. It also allows you to access the windows 8 start screen from the windows 7 style start menu you customised or created.

I  use another software by star dock called fences , which i truly recommend and has been of great use to me until today in organising my windows 7 desktop icons and shortcuts ( you can check it out in their website). However this windows 8 start menu software also has many good features

Start8 Features

  • Adds a Windows 7-styled Start menu with Windows 8 enhancements
  • Boot directly to the Windows 8 desktop (no more searching for your desktop)
  • Windows 8 Start screen accessible from Start menu
  • Adds option for WinKey to show fullscreen metro desktop
  • Skinnable start button

stardock start 8 and windows shell 7 start menu

Start Menu 8 is specially designed for Windows 8/8.1, as a freeware that can restore (simulate) the classic start menu of earlier version of Windows. It can be set to boot from startup, in order to skip the system default Metro start screen, thereby directly start into the traditional Windows desktop which is familiar for us.

There is the basic version that costs $4.99 and the Deluxe version that includes many other software enhancements and features for a windows desktop  that is $9.99 with a recurring monthly fee. Get details and download here

System Requirements

Windows 8.1/8 or Windows Server 2012/R2

If you have been searching google with any of these queries below,

  • How to bring back the Start Menu in Windows 8.1 / Windows 8
    Remove windows 8 start menu to windows 7
    Change the Start menu to Classic view – Windows – Microsoft
    Ways To Customize the Windows 8 Start Screen
    Change windows 8 start menu style
    How to change windows 8.1 start menu

then..these two software’s listed above will surely be able to help you in some way , let me know  how this works out for you and do leave me a comment 🙂

Making money with PPC Advertising and Blogging

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Every day thousands of make money on-line affiliates or website owners ask the same question –

“Why I cant sell anything online?

Do you know why most people fail ?

It is the topic/niche .

Almost every beginner starts in network marketing/make money online  niche and to cut long story short this niche  is overcrowded. Not many know of pay per click (PPC) adverting. To give you stats here, less than 1% of them are interested in how to make money from home.

What Are Bing Ads?

Bing Ads is the advertising platform you use to show ads on the Bing and Yahoo search engines – also referred to as Yahoo Bing Network. You also have the ability for your ads to show on their syndicated partners such as Facebook, Amazon, Monster, WebMD, CNBC, and Viacom. They are the direct competitor to Google adwords and PPC. Bing ads is normally cheaper to run than google as they are rated No#2 search engine  and get cheaper clicks for advertising

PPC GAME WITH  CLICKBANK

You can make money with your website and clickbank by using the relevant search terms in your ppc campaigns and advertisements. Here is how-

Go find buying keywords using the Google keyword tool.

Type in keywords like where to buy {item}, where to purchase {item}, buying {item} (get creative) and take the results and research them again until you find more buying keywords that you didn’t find before.

If you do this multiple times you will find a lot of purchase keywords that people are entering in google to find a specific item.

They might not get a lot of traffic but typically people who type in these keywords into the search engines  have their wallet in hand. Use these buying terms in your PPC ADS, I did this for a acai berry product and had some good success.

Hot targeted Marketing with PPC & CLICKBANK

If you are spending money on PPC, use every bit of it (dont waste it).You should be pushing these people(traffic) to an opt-in page for an email list. That way you can significantly seo Vs ppc and ppc marketingincrease the chances of converting them later on  through your email campaigns /Newsletters and this will reduce some of your expenses.

Free resources are great like SEO organic traffic . However Using  PPC even for at least for a short period of time, you can find out the best converting keywords. Then you can take those keywords, build optimized pages, and promote them via SEO to get high search engine rankings and make money. This way you can make money both with SEO organic traffic and paid traffic at the same time.

How do you make money with PPC such as Bing OR Google Adwords?

Bing advertises your webpage and every time someone clicks it you must pay Google. You pay anywhere from 0.2 cents  to 0.30 or even more for a click on your ad. People who are interested in your ad will only click, so it is targeted traffic.Conversion depends on how good your ad  and content on that page is. You will need to do the maths to get  good returns and profit from PPC, but you can just get lucky if the niche is not too competitive

Promoting Affiliate Products (pay per click internet marketing method :-

If you want to promote an affiliate product and expect higher level of purchase, you can choose a particular item from sites like Commission Junction or ClickBank. Try to select a high selling item from the site’s list. After this you can create a pay per click ad for the affiliate product which will send traffic to the site. This can be an excellent step to get as much traffic for their product.

Sometimes PPC seems to work much better with physical items than digital downloads. If you manage to get regular sales with PPC  and make a profit then its gold, as you will have a regular  income on auto pilot. You can always refine your PPC strategy  to get more out of it and increase your income, by learning more on how to improve your PPC skills.

Here are some free Bing PPC coupons If you are interested In trying out PPC/Search engine Advertising ?

These coupons are only good for new customers.

New Business and website customers in the following markets receive free search adverting credits to help them get started:

Italy – €50 in Bing Ads credit (New market!) –

 

How server technology is becoming agile with co-location

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Colocation is the hot new thing in the IT crowd and for small businesses – but what exactly is it? To explain things in a way that is going to be easy to understand for you, colocation is a process that effectively works to give you the ability to own your own hardware and servers, but to locate them in another company’s data centre. What this means is that instead of keeping all of the systems and equipment in house, and paying to maintain them and keep them powered and up and running – even in the event of a power outage or a storm (the consequences of not doing so can be disastrous!) you pay someone else to do it for you.

Captureheart merger new

Colocation is a new innovation driven by the fact that there are many new startups and businesses around who simply do not have the facilities to store something like servers within their own office. These companies want the freedom to have their own servers but don’t want to maintain them, and thus, colocation was the best option.

This practice gives you the freedom to upgrade the hardware as and when you need to, and it also proves to be a far cheaper option as a business owner. Now that we’ve outlined some of the basics of colocation, we can have a look at some of the pros of colocation for a business.

You own the server and the machinery. That means that if you suddenly decide that a machine is too slow for your needs, or that it doesn’t have the memory that your business required to run successfully, then you can simply upgrade it without having to ask anyone else about it. Another benefit to this is that you own the server software that comes with your machinery. You do not have to sit around waiting for a provider to make some upgrades if things are slow or too behind the times. You can just do it yourself. The same things goes if you decide that you want to use ASP or ColdFusion, you can just buy the software and then go and install it all.

Another bonus to using server colocation is that if you move offices for example, you can leave the server that you have in the borrowed rack up and running for the entire time. If you host your own domain, you’re going to find that you have to pay for two lines for a period of time in order to move domains over to a new location or to deal with the possible outages while the servers take time to move over to the new location.

Using colocation means that there is additional security being provided for your machines, and your server is going to be stored and maintained in a secure and well-maintained environment. After all, the company who is going to be storing your servers are also going to be storing their own servers there, so it makes sense that they would take care of things really well. You will also find that many colocation servers are going to offer a service whereby they take care of and manage your server – for an additional cost on top of your service agreement. If you don’t have an IT department this is going to be a very useful service for you.

Hopefully this article has gone some way towards explaining what colocation is, with a quick look at some of the advantages of using it for your business as well. Only time will tell how effective this practice is going to be in the future – but suffice to say, it’s working well so far. For further information regarding the benefits of colocation and how it could help your business, click here.