One of the key features of Elite Retreat was the networking with the other attendees, I learnt more from them than the actual speakers. One of the organizers and all round good guy Dave (AKA dk) spoke about creating an event purely for networking, so there would be no speakers just like minded attendees with knowledge to share. Dave isn’t the type of guy to say he might do something, he either will or won’t and I’m delighted to say Think Tank 2008 is go.

The event is being held in San Diego on September 27th and 28th. Attendees so far include, two speakers from this years Elite Retreat Neil Patel and Andy Liu along with Pamela Lund, Jeremy Hermanns, Aaron Chronister AKA The Mad Hat and myself. there will also be organizer extroidanaire David Klein and his excellent team.

The event is invitation only or by personal referral, so if you fancy a bit of networking on the beach and in the sun check it out (if you need a referral let me know). Prices are on a ladder scale (the earlier you register the cheaper it is) with the current vacant step being $699. Also if you book early with Virgin you can get Upper Class tickets for under £2,000 (London to LAX) so prepare to be pampered .

Want to read books while at work, the New Zealand Book Council certainly took a new approach to building their site.

Patrick posts about insurance for bloggers, I’ve had a few legal wranglings in the past so this sounds like a good idea.

Google being moaned at for not not providing a prominent link to its privacy page.

Google announces GMail Labs, if you use GMail this is a great way to try out new features

Tim Ferriss ta;ls about mini retirements, something we should all try I reckon. Hat tip to Google Tutor.

Today’s game is an oldie but fun and a great use of Google Images, guess the google, I scored 201 can you do better?

There is likely a new scam email going about, seems to have been fired off repeatedly with many many people getting it all from different names and email addresses but with the same text so I’d be very wary, looks like a scam, the email I received goes like this:

I am interested in purchasing your web site xxxxxxxx.com . If you would like to sell it send me your phone number to call you.
I have cash to buy today!

Thank you

My email was from a ‘Phemie Dull’ aol email address, however the name/email address is different for others like Michael and Andrew, so just a heads up in case you get the same.

I am starting a new regular feature over on Coolest Gadgets where each week we will feature excerpts of the best gadget posts from across the web and ask our readers to vote which they think is the coolest, thus creating a Coolest Gadget of the week.

I think this will be a great way to show readers different blogs that may interest them, build traffic and relationships between blog owners and find out what people think cool is really cool.

So I’m looking for relevent site owners to take part, provided it’s has original and relevent posts I do not care about traffic or age so it will be a great way for new and old tech sites to get a bit of publicity.

If interested either leave a comment of get in touch and I’ll send you further details. If you have any ideas or suggestions on improvements please again let us know. Thank you.

I was having a bit of a tinker with the comment layout here on SMM and whilst I was at it adding a few plugins and made the whole site a lot more commentator friendly (thanks guys), so we now have:

• DoFollow Links - links left in comments are followable by the search engine (not that there will be but any comments containing spam looking links will be deleted)
• Gravatars - There is now a nice picture next to each comment (you’ll need a free Gravatar account)
• CommentLuv - This is the coolest IMO, if you have a blog and leave a comment we will automagically deep link to your latest blog post (again DoFollow but and moderated). This should also work with trackbacks
• Formatting - There is now a bit of spacing between paragraphs (the one change I originally intended to make )
• Add This - At the end of each post there is now a quick and easy way to bookmark and share your favourite posts

Comments and suggestions welcome, especially now for testing. Have fun!

Want to see the percentage change of house prices in the US from 1920 to present, The Economist demonstrates in a graph that’s pretty shocking. It’s a good time to be in Europe and buy in the US, be it domains or websites.
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Guy Kawasaki explains how to pick up a venture capitalist and more importantly, how not to.
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Blast Billiards is a bit of fun if you fancy a game.
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Weezers new video Pork & Beans is pretty entertaining in a geek/youtube loving sort of way
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Dell have been given a ticking off for making it unclear they had a £60 delivery charge!
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Scott Fish points out some bargains in the recent Sedo auction where Amercia.com did not sell
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Pair of 6 figure sales top the charts at Dn Journal
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Everton has been contacted by Google with some Adsense opimisation tips, congrats Everton but you’re not normally allowed to tell people about stuff like this
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Cool post by Yanik from Necker Island, 34 Rules for Maverick Entrepreneurs, can’t say I agree with all of them mind.

I might create another site

I might do that as well

Cool, I might try it

I might go to that networking event

I see blog comments and forum posts like that just about everyday and when ever I do the writer loses all credibilty. I find when people say might you can safely swap it for won’t. By saying might you are putting off the actual decision until later (read never in 99% of cases), so next time you’re about to say ‘might’ change it to will or don’t bother saying it at all.

If you think I might be wrong, tell me in a comment, unless you’re thinking you might leave a comment.

Earlier this month I posted my entry for the Blogpreneur Contest 2008, I wrote about what I thought made Coolest Gadgets a success. I’ve just heard that my entry is one of three winners, cool.

It’s the first time I’ve won something like this and it will be interesting to see what publicity I can generate from it. Unfortunately I can’t attend the award ceremony as it’s half term this week and my daughter has already made plans for us. Congrats guys.

The other two winners are Shawn Collins (Affiliatetip.com) and Jeffrey Strain (FinancialHack.com), both entries make great reading and it’s a real honor to be a winner alongside them. Congrats guys.

E2Save have a video showing the changes in phones from 1985 through to the present day, technology has come a long way!

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3rd party ads are to be shown on the Google network

The Google content network now accepts display ads served from qualified third-party vendors. Third-party ad serving has been a longstanding request from top brand AdWords advertisers who use third parties to create and manage their online campaigns.

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Q. What do Microsoft have in abundance that they could use to improve their search numbers?
A. Cash
Microsoft purchased cashback.com quite recently and intend to pay you to search through Live offering cashback deals and a running balance that you earn on cashback deals which can be claimed in once you reach $5. Live Search Cashback

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Sometimes people can way overcomplicate a process but hey they have fun trying, Justin Wickett has ignored all the eays methods of home automation and used his Twitter account to turn his light on and off.

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Todays game is 6 differences, spot the six differences, as you find them the image will correct itself and there is also a hidden counter on the page which shows how many you have left to find.

Last week was a bad week, following on from one of my blogs being hacked I also experienced one of my forum accounts being accidentally deleted by our provider. It wasn’t just my host that was completely bloody incompetent, the backups I had of that site had also failed so in the end I had to resort to a backup from 2005, not good. So on the subject of backups, here’s the methods I use on other sites (and the old one now) and also some other suggestions.

Static vs Dynamic Sites

A static site is one that once uploaded doesn’t change, this means you already have one backup on your local machine and to protect from multiple failures this should be backed up onto other machines/mediums. Then if it does fail it will just be a case of uploading again. However nowadays most sites are in some way dynamic and are being continually updated so you need a more proactive back up regime.

Let the Host Do It

Many (more competent) web hosts offer their own backup service. This may be included in the package or as an optional extra. As your server/site is already with your host they should have direct access to the data thus not clogging your available bandwidth. Even if you do use your hosts backup services I would advice also taking your own just to be on the safe side (some hosts that do backups do not guarantee their effectiveness).

Backup scripts on your server

You can either use a third party script or a plugin for your CMS. I use WP DB Backup (part of the install now) to backup my Word Press databases on a daily basis and email the resultant files to my GMail address (this is a great way of using all those free GBs). Another method would to FTP the files to another server, you can do this in a few ways:

• Use multiple hosting accounts with different providers (it will use bandwidth on both), this is useful for people with a few sites
• Set-up your own local FTP server (for windows checkout XAMPP) and use a service such as DynDNS to give your home server it’s own IP address on the NET (you will need to mess with forwarding rules on your firewall so this is probably the most techie option)
• “Phone a friend” and ask if you can have an FTP account on his server for backups and you’ll return the favor

Backup Locally

Instead (or as well) of running scripts on you server to backup your data there are also applications that you can run locally that automatically download backups for you. The excellent MySQL Administrator has a schedule option which can be used to download your databases on a regular basis.

Dedicated Backup Companies

There are various companies that specialise in backing up your data, I’ve not had any experience with these, but if you have please let us know.

I’m very interested to hear other peoples backup regimes, recommended scripts, providers, etc. If We get some good suggestions I’ll put a full guide together.