Having lived in Toronto and area for many years, I have never thought of myself as a tourist and therefore, usually avoided all tourist type of things. As I mentioned in the previous post, this trip was different. After the Blue Jays game I was walking along Front Street back to the Royal York Hotel and came across a tour bus that floats!

It is called the Hippo Bus and is run by Toronto Hippo Tours. The idea is basically you can take a tour bus around the downtown core and then do a little trip out on the water of Lake Ontario seeing Ontario Place and the marina etc.

If you are ever in Toronto and are looking for a unique experience I would highly recommend this. Sit as close to the front of the bus as possible for the best view and experience – especially when you are leaving the land and entering the water! (Oh, and make sure that the window is closed).

This is the first of (hopefully) many blog posts dealing with my trip to Spain. Unlike my other trips this one is purely for pleasure and exploration. My other trips have had an underlying purpose such as house sitting and/or dog sitting.

Normally when I fly anywhere I take the local airport bus shuttle service (Robert Q airbus) to Toronto International Airport and immediately fly out. As I mentioned in the opening this trip is different and I decided to travel to Toronto via train. I haven’t been on the train in Canada for nearly 2 decades and quite honestly I thought train travel was dead. Well I was wrong!

I was amazed at the number of people that take the train. It was basically full by the time we reached Toronto. Not surprising when you consider the price (which is really cheap if you book 2 weeks in advance) and that we seemed to stop at every hick town along the way to pick up new passengers. Apart from the frequent stops to pick up passengers, I loved the train. There was food/beverage service right at your seat (think airline stewardess) and free wifi. If the opportunity arises take the train – I know that I will.

The reason for the train was also that I had tickets to watch the Toronto Blue Jays play the Philadelphia Phillies at Skydome (now known as the Rogers Centre) on the Sunday afternoon. Having been a long suffering Toronto sports fan I know that the chances of actually getting to see a game in person where the home team wins is remote so I wasn’t expecting much.

I have always enjoyed the Skydome for a venue for sports games. The seating is great – lots of activity in the stands and the jumbotron is absolutely amazing. The game was better than expected – the Jays only lost by 1 run but it was exciting and they were always close to a victory.

It was nice to get back to Toronto. There is a life to this city that Sarnia just doesn’t have. I wouldn’t want to move back but it is sure nice to visit.

(In order to dispel current rumours of my death or alien abduction I thought I should post something here).

I read this news release from the Conference Board of Canada which bills itself as “The foremost independent, not-for-profit applied research organization in Canada”.

Here is the release in full:

Canada seen as the file-swapping capital of the world

OTTAWA, May 22 /CNW Telbec/ – Canada’s failure to strengthen intellectual
property rights (IPR) in the face of digital technology has given it an
unwelcome reputation as the file-swapping capital of the world. Stronger
intellectual property rights and enforcement are needed to protect new
knowledge and shore up Canada’s poor innovation record, according to a series
of Conference Board reports-released in advance of its May 29 conference
Intellectual Property Rights: Innovation and Commercialization in Turbulent
Times (http://www.conferenceboard.ca/conf/09-0120/default.aspx).

As a result of lax regulation and enforcement, internet piracy appears to
be on the increase in Canada. The estimated number of illicit downloads (1.3
billion) is 65 times higher than the number legal downloads (20 million),
mirroring the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s
conclusion that Canada has the highest per capita incidence of unauthorized
file-swapping in the world.

Canada has not ratified new global minimum standards of the World
Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) internet treaties, and the United
States has put Canada on notice for inadequate intellectual property
enforcement measures.

“Canada’s innovation performance has been dismal for decades, and the
role of intellectual property systems has received inadequate attention. If
Canada does not change its approach to intellectual property, its economic
outlook will suffer,” said Gilles Rhéaume, Vice-President, Public Policy at
the Conference Board.

“Intellectual property protection is the essential ingredient that allows
creators of knowledge to obtain value of their work without it being copied or
stolen. Canada is earning a reputation, one that is not to be envied, as the
file-swapping capital of the world.”

The Conference Board report, Creating Value and Stimulating Investment: A
Business-Level Assessment of the Role of Intellectual Property
(http://www.conferenceboard.ca/documents.aspx?did=3053), recommends increased
emphasis on enforcement of IPR regimes. These include: strengthening current
IPR protection legislation, giving Canadian Border Services Agency greater
authority to deal with counterfeit and pirated goods, combating intellectual
property crimes and educating enterprises and consumers about the negative
effects of counterfeiting.

In the report Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Economy
(http://www.conferenceboard.ca/documents.aspx?did=3054), the Conference Board
puts forward a multi-pronged approach to IPR. Canada should ratify the WIPO
internet treaties, while it encourages collaborative structures that protect
the copyrights of creators and allow new knowledge to be accessed legally.

The third report, National Innovation Performance and Intellectual
Property Rights: A Comparative Analysis
(http://www.conferenceboard.ca/documents.aspx?did=3050), looks at the leading
innovative countries and compares their IPR systems with that of Canada. All
three reports on intellectual property rights are publicly available at
www.e-library.ca.

For further information: Brent Dowdall, Media Relations, (613) 526-3090
ext. 448, corpcomm@conferenceboard.ca

I don’t want to state personally what my thoughts are on this topic as I am interested in what my readers have to say about this. Please leave a comment and mention if you are in Canada or not. After there have been some comments I will chime in with my opinion.

I have been traveling for the last few weeks and the number one problem that I have found is being able to send email while on the road.

Most places including hotels and internet cafes advertise that they have free wifi etc. What they don’t tell you is that they block port 25 which allows you to connect to your mail server (assuming that your local ISP even allows you connect from outside their network). They do this to stop people from using their wifi connection for sending out spam. The problem is that they also stop me from sending my email that is 100% legit.

After lots of looking online and talking to other digital nomads I have found a cheap and effective way to resolve the problem.

The solution is a company called SMTP2GO and they provide a quick and easy way to send email using their mail (smtp) server for as little as $1.99 USD per month and the whole setup takes less than 2 minutes.

The way that they do this is to use noon-standard ports to connect to the mail server. What this means is that instead of using the standard way to connect to the mail server (which many of the free wifi hotspots block), they use another route. This gets around the blocking and allows you to connect and send email just like you were sitting at your desk at home or office. In fact, once you have it configured there is no need to ever change it. It will work from anywhere.

It works with your normal mail program whether that is Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird or Outlook Express for example. They offer a 60 day, 100% money-back guarantee. Service is guaranteed or you get your money back.

Can’t go wrong with that!

Give it a try and you will get rid of one more frustration from the digital nomad lifestyle.

SMTP2Go website.

You’ve been doing the SEO basics on your website. Now that you have simple features in place like keywords, header tags, and other basic elements, what else can you do?

When it comes to search engine optimization, it’s important that you take advantage of all the “behind the scenes” clues you can offer to a search engine. One thing you’ll want to do is to create a sitemap for your website. A sitemap is an overall map that works like an index. 

After you’ve created your site map, you’ll want to start to add special tags that can give you an edge. When you create a hyperlink on your site, you’ll want to also add in a title tag. A title tag goes after your link, before the closed bracket. It looks like this:

<a href=”yourlink.com” title=”my keyword”> Anchor Text</a>

Notice how directly after your link is placed in, there’s a title tag. If tells the search engine what your link is about. If your link is about spaghetti and meatballs, your title tag might say “spaghetti and meatballs” or it may say “pasta”. It’s a small description of the link. 

You’ll also notice the word “Anchor Text” above. Your anchor text is the word or words that are seen when you create a link. The part between the brackets becomes invisible, but your anchor text is what your readers see. Your anchor text should be keywords defining where the text goes. 

It’s better to do this:

<a href=”yoursite.com” title=”my keyword”>Spaghetti and Meatballs</a>

Thank to do this:

<a href=”yoursite.com” title=”my keyword”>My Site</a>

The first link tells you where the link goes, and the anchor text becomes important. The second link, while it will take you to the same location, does nothing to help you. 

When you add images to your webpage, you’ll want to tag them also, but this time you use the tag ALT. Your images will look like this:

<img src=”location of my picture” alt=”spaghetti”>Your picture would be here</a>

Do you see how the ALT tag says spaghetti? That’s because search engines can’t read pictures. They read the tags that describe the pictures. These small simple tips can help you make a difference when it comes to SEO.

Link building an important step in search engine optimization. Many people build a website, and then don’t take the time to promote the website. When you build back links to your site, it becomes stronger, and the search engines will find it easier.

When a search engine sees a lot of incoming links to your site, it looks at that and sees it as a relevant website, since many people are pointing to it.

The question is how do you build back links? Where do you get back links from? There are a lot of different places where you can gain back links.

• You can ask other similar websites if they would like to exchange links.
• You can write articles and submit them to directories, adding in your links.
• You can submit your website to directories.
• You can create special pages like Squidoo pages or Hub pages and add back links to your site
• You can join ‘on-line carnivals’ where similar topics come together and link to each other
• You can add your link as your signature on forums and message boards
• You can do a press release to gain back links
• You can comment on other websites and blogs to get back links.

Regardless of where you get the back links, remember it’s also important to remember to use relevant anchor text link that leads back to your site. You’ll want to target your main key phrase or keyword.

Many people overlook the relevance of link building. When it comes to gaining visibility for your website, link building is an optimum step you don’t want to skip.

One last tip, while link exchanges will help build your links, one way links are even better! If you can get incoming links to your site, while not having to link back to the site linking into you, these are seen as stronger links.

The best service that I have found for 1 way back links is Neurolinker.

If you’re just starting out with SEO, there are some tips that are good to learn early in the game. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It should not be confused with SEM which is Search Engine Marketing. We’ll be looking at SEO, while paid professionals deal with SEM (a combination of SEO and paid placements).

The reason you’ll want to learn about SEO is that it can help your website become more visible. If somebody searches for something in their favorite search engine, and you have a website on that topic, ultimately you want your website to be one of the top choices they are shown. The benefit of having higher rankings in the search engines is gaining more traffic. The more traffic you have, the better chance you have of converting that traffic into sales, or gain more visibility.

If you’re considering creating a website, you’ll want to think about what you’ll be promoting. Is the market oversaturated, or do you offer something different? Now that you’ve got an idea about what you want your website to be about, you’ll need to choose a domain name. This next decision is important. Do you want your site to be a known brand? If you believe your site will be brandable, then you’ll want to choose a domain name that is catchy and matches your brand idea. If you’re not sure if your site is  brandable, or it will be an informational site, then you’ll want to consider using your keywords in your domain name.

Once you’ve chosen a domain name, and secured web hosting, you’ll start to create your website. Some SEO tips you’ll want to include in your new website page are simple things like title tags or heading tags. You’ll include these tags so that search engines know what your page is about. It’s a way to give the search engines clues. You’ll also want to add a description in your meta tags.

Your main home page or index page will be the entry way to your website. It’s important to use your chosen keywords through out your website, and especially on your home page. Again, these are clues for the search engines to understand what your page is about.

When you’re involved in using SEO on your pages, it’s easy to forget that your actual visitors will be people, not search engines. It’s easy to get carried away, and try to do everything you can for search engines. For your website to be appealing, you must offer good, unique content for people, not for the search engines.

Once you get the basics of search engine optimization down, you can move onto to promotion of your website and other more advanced techniques to help you with search engine optimization.

As a web site owner my number one goal is to increase the number of visitors to my sites. I don’t think I am alone in this. More visitors translates directly into more revenue either from advertising, sales of my own products or affiliate sales. Without visitors I get no revenue from my sites. It is that simple. Visitors are the life blood of any web site.

So the question becomes how to get visitors. The number one rule is to have content that people are looking for and find value. Without valuable content you may get visitors but they will leave very quickly after they realize that there is nothing of value on the site. The second most important rule is to get a high ranking in the search engines. This is done by employing Search Engine Optimization techniques. There are lots of sites out there that discuss the dozens of different rules, tips and tricks. I will not go into all of them. I do however wish to talk about one rule in particular.

Backlinks are the number one way of increasing your page rank and therefore the position that your site appears in the search engine rankings. The reason for this is simple. Google (and other search engines) use the number of back links to your site as a way to gauge how relevant your site is. The more sites linking to you the higher Google sees your site. No one will link back to a site that doesn’t contain relevant and valuable information.

There are two different programs out there to help improve your number of site linking back to your site. One is called Google Annihilation and the other is called Neurolinker.

Both of these sites do the same thing. They allow a user to sign up and pay a monthly fee to provide back links to that user’s site or sites. While the goal is the same the differences between these two sites is amazing.

Here is a side by side breakdown of the features of both:

Google Annihilation:

* $37 per month for up to 30 websites
* Uses NO relevant website matching algorithms, only manual categories
* ONLY 3 anchor keywords allowed
* NO article marketing
* NO social bookmarking
* NO user options for selecting number versus relevance of links
* NO ability to reject any inbound or outbound links
* NO tutorials or instructions
* NO forum

Neurolinker:

* $27 per month for up to 100 websites
* Uses complex algorithms for finding most relevant websites, and lets you pick manual categories too
* Virtually unlimited anchor keywords using advanced keyword syntax
* Article marketing component with article spinner
* Free website content for your website from articles
* Collaborative social bookmarking system for permanent links from social BM sites
* Can reject any inbound and some outbound links
* Plenty of tutorials and instructions
* A forum for help and suggestions from other users

Google Annihilation has been getting a lot of press lately. Every ‘guru’ seems to be pushing this solution as the be all and end all of backlinking. What I don’t understand is how they can objectively be arriving at that conclusion. Google Annihilation costs more per month, offers less and provides no way for the site owner to control what is happening to their site. Neurolinker allows the site owner to use article marketing, social bookmarking, approval of all incoming links (I don’t want my site listed on porn sites for example) nor do I want to link back to sites that I have a personal objection to. Google Annihilation has no such controls.

By all means check out both and if you can honestly say that Google Annihilation is better than Neurolinker please tell me why in the comments below because I don’t get it.

Apple is now offering a free 30 day trial of the latest version of iWork.

For those that don’t know or aren’t Mac fanatics iWork is Apple’s answer to Microsoft Office with spreadsheets, document creation and Keynote (a powerpoint like application).

Download here.

Happy New Year to all readers! I hope that this year brings you everything that you hope for.

The nice thing about the New Year is it is a good time to drop bad habits and start good ones. Backing up your essential files is one of the good habits to start. The folks at Mozy have made that a little easy by offering 2 GB of backup space totally free! No need for contracts, credit cards, etc. Just follow the link and sign up. Mozy provides automated “set-it and forget-it” functionality and all of your files are encrypted for additional peace of mind.

Still not convincced? The Wall Street Journal, PCWorld, Newsweek and MacLife all have endorsed the product. Read their comments on the site under the News and Press area.