Although many internet marketers have yet to discover Yahoo Pipes, this should not hold you back from taking advantage of this great resource. In the words of the web site itself, "Pipes is an interactive data aggregator and manipulator that lets you mashup your favorite online data sources."

To those of you who are inexperienced with RSS feeds, this may sound like nothing more than a standard RSS feed reader. However, there are two main reasons that Yahoo Pipes is much different from a normal RSS reader: it's HIGHLY customizable and can be integrated into your web site to provide you with a fresh stream of new content.



Simply put, you can keep your web site updated with fresh content by doing the following:

-Mixing together multiple third-party feeds

-Filter the mix with targeted keywords to ensure that you are only getting the most relevant stories

Once this is added to your web site, your visitors can view highly relevant stories from dozens (or even hundreds) of other sources. Once set up, this will provide your users with an enriching experience, and it will also ensure that the search engine spiders are crawling your web site on a regular basis.

Although there have been similar services in the past, Pipes has several advantages over these, including:

-It's free

-Can aggregate and filter any XML feed (not just RSS). This means that you can easily streamline data and information from within something such as your company's daily sales activities.

-The content filtering is very advanced, which means no matter how many sources you are pulling information from, the stories displayed to your visitors are going to be highly relevant to what they are interested in.

-Pipes is Web 2.0 friendly, which means it has a social aspect built into. Although the surface of these capabilities has barely been scratched, as more and more people start using Pipes, it's true potential as a social tool will begin to shine.

-Did I mention it's free?

To learn more about Yahoo Pipes, be sure to visit its official blog, along with a detailed tutorial by IBM.

I want to discuss how to get the best results when recording a video in Camtasia to be uploaded to ScreenCast.com. As discussed in a previous post, ScreenCast will give you the best quality when uploading a video to share on your web page, but you have to record and produce the video using the best possible settings to get the results you desire.

Equipment

The first thing to consider is the equipment being used. You want to make sure you have a good quality headset microphone, this will insure the best sound quality. Camtasia offers a sound check each time you start to create a project. I recommend doing this each time you record a video. Adjusting the sound before starting the video makes for easier editing later. If your going to record web cam as a part of your video, you want to make sure that the settings for the web cam are set properly also. You can do this by clicking on the "camera" link in the "Tools" box, this will bring up the settings. Set the frames per sec. to 30, and the rest leave at the default settings.

Getting started

Start by opening Camtasia. You will get a box that ask "What do you want to do". Select "start a new project by recording the screen". You will then get the "New recording Wizard" box. This box starts with asking, "What would you like to record?". I prefer using "Region of the Screen". This option allows you to define the exact region of the screen that will be captured in the video. The next setting will ask for the dimensions, leave this to the default, as you will select the dimensions later when you capture the screen area yourself. Just be sure it is set to "region" and not "fixed region" Next is the question, "what would you like to record?". Check the "record audio" box and if you are going to record from your web cam then also check the " Record Camera" box,. You have the option when recording the camera to see the preview of the camera while recording. This is personal preference, some people find it to be a distraction while recording. The Audio setting will be the next prompt. Usually the default settings are best, but be sure to test this before moving on, and make adjustments as needed. Finally, click on the "video" tab and set the video screen rate to 30 frames per sec, this will give you the best streaming video. Leave everything else set to the default settings.


Recording

Now that your settings are in place, you can begin recording your video. You will start by clicking on "record". You will then be prompted to select the region, you do this by dragging the cursor to create a box around your desired region. Once you release the box in it's place the recording begins. While recording, it is better to just start speaking and not to pause for short transfers from a screen or if you make a mistake. This will make the video seem choppy. A good rule of thumb, is when you make a mistake, let the video run for a few seconds, to leave room to edit and repeat the section you made the mistake on. When you finish recording click stop and save the video for editing.

Editing

This is my favorite part. The Camtasia program has many editing options. Just be careful not to get carried away with them. A few cool ad-ins will make for a great video, but too many can make it look cheesy. One of my favorite editing options, is the "callouts". You can use these to blur information you don't want shown during the video, like personal information on an account. You can all also add chat bubble and full page written notes. The instructions for using these are available in the program, by clicking on "help".
Start your editing by dragging the video to the time line. Click play and listen and watch the video as the bar moves down the time line. You can choose to cut any section of the video you don't want to keep, such as recording mistakes. The volume can also be adjusted up or down and you can take out background noise or feedback, by clicking on the "audio enhancements link.

Producing

You have edited your video to your desire. So you now need to produce the video. This is where you will determine the quality of your recording.
Start by clicking on "produce video as". This will open the Production Wizard. You want to choose "custom production settings", for this video, that will be uploaded to ScreenCast. Next choose WMV format and click next. You will then be asked for the Profile to use. Leave this to default, which is recommended. Also leave the size of the video to the default (recommended) setting. (Tip- If you recorded the video in full screen, but plan to have it play in a smaller screen, then you want to change the size to 640x540. If not then when played in a smaller screen, the text will not show through clear.) In the video options, you just want to make sure the HTML option is checked, to be able to embed the video to a web page. The next page will ask about the introduction to your video, leave this to the default. Now you will be asked to name your video and select the location on your computer, to save the to and you can choose if you would like the video to play right after production. Click finish and your video will start rendering the production setting you have chosen.


Uploading to ScreenCast

You have recorded a great video, edited it with a few cool call outs, produced it to a WMV file and saved to your computer. Now you are ready to upload your video to ScreenCast. Login in to your account and click "Library". You will see an upload button on the top. Click "upload" and you will be prompted to browse for you video and upload the contents. After the video has been uploaded, you can give the video a title and also an introduction description, click continue when done. You will be taken to the details of the video. Here you will see the URL link, HTML link and the HTML embedding code. (TIP) (If you do not want the video to auto start when someone comes to your page, then make sure in the code, that the "auto start" value is set to "false" and the "show controls" value is set to "true".) To embed the video to your web page, copy the embedding code and paste it to your desired location. That's it!~ Now your ready to show off your work.

Embedding video in Forum

If you embed your video into VBulletin, your best bet is to create a video tag that will make embedding videos easy, without having to paste object and embed html code. We created a tag called 'video' for our use, so when you need to embed a video in one of your posts all you would do is write:

[ video ] location_of_video [ /video ]

(Remove the double spaces surrounding video and /video to make it work. Replace location_of_video with the http:// address where your video file is located)

IMPORTANT: Make sure your filename doesn't include any spaces. If it does when you embed it, replace all spaces with %20

Video is quickly becoming the medium of choice for viral Marketing.

Hundreds of sites are popping up everywhere promising to let you easily upload, broadcast and share your video with millions of viewers.

While YouTube/GoogleVideo remain the largest community, several other video broadcasting sites offer unique benefits.

Here's a brief overview of the top sites we use, along with an explanation of which tool is best for the job -

YouTube / Google Video:
* Largest community
* Limited video formats supported
* 100MB file size limit
* Poor to decent video quality, best suited for wide view
* Does not save video unless cached
* Internal full screen view with distortion of quality

Veoh:
* Upload videos of any format or file size, no restrictions
* External media player for full screen with no loss of quality
* Automatically saves video locally for speedy offline viewing
* Distributes your video to Google Video, YouTube and Yahoo Video
* Superb video quality (but takes a long time to process each new video)
* Supports publishing via RSS

Revver:
* Supports saving videos into collections
* Superb video quality (Better than Veoh), also suited for screen casting
* Ad-driven (an ad is displayed at the end of your video and revenue is split 50/50 between you and Revver)
* Supports .wmv and .mov when uploading files
* Analytics
* RSS feeds by collection (For example: http://api.revver.com/rss/collection/38935/)

ScreenCast:
* Absolute best tool for screencasts, zero distorion of quality
* Instant view after upload (no need to wait for compression)
* No built-in community
* Not free. Costs about $6 per month at the basic package
* Simple interface

--

Here at SoftwareProjects, we use video primarily for screencasts (recording screen output), to demo our products, conduct online training or deliver market research data to our clients.

We were initially using YouTube, but the quality loss was so bad we ended up hosting the WMV files on our own servers.

That didn't work very well, as non WMV-compliant browsers couldn't view the videos.

As soon as Veoh came out, we migrated all of our YouTube videos to Veoh and were much happier with the quality. Veoh takes A LOT of time to process each video, but the quality is soooo much better than YouTube.

ScreenCast, a hosted video broadcasting solution by Camtasia, specifically designed to handle screen casts, didn't work too well initially. But thankfully, our friends at Camtasia listened to our feedback, fixed all the kinks and these days - ScreenCast absolutely rocks.

We are in the process of migrating all of our screencasts to ScreenCast.com. Quality is absolutely phenomenal with zero loss of quality, processing time is quick and embedding videos couldn't be easier. ScreenCast is the single solution where you actually have to pay for the service and it doesn't have a built-in community.

Yet it's worth every penny. We will be using ScreenCast to broadcast all of our videos and we're going to continue uploading them to Veoh for the community effect (Veoh can automatically send your videos across YouTube, GoogleVideo and YahooVideo, to do this; Login to your account and click on "Go Pro", you will be taken to a sign up page:
--Complete the information in the form on the right.
Check the box to indicate you are the rights holder to your videos.
Check the box to indicate you agree to our terms of service.
Submit your information by clicking "Apply".
That's it.
You'll get a confirmation email shortly after submitting your information.

The Veoh Pro program is totally free so go ahead and apply and start taking advantage of all the Veoh Pro publisher features!


Here's a comparison of a screencast uploaded to all services I mentioned, so that you can see the quality difference for yourself:

YouTube:



Veoh:



Revver:



ScreenCast:



The next time I'm going to see anyone posting a screen capture using YouTube, I'm going to get very upset! YouTube was simply not designed for screen casts. If paying Camtasia's ScreenCast.com is too much for your budget, use Revver or Veoh.

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If you're building a new website, or simply looking to spice up your old one, images and stock-photos are a great way to breathe life into your website.

Research by MarketSherpa has shown relevant images strategically placed throughout your site, help in building trust with your visitors and increase click-through rates.

There are dozens of stock-photo libraries you could use for free or dirt cheap ($1 per high quality image) and there are more established sites such as comstock where prices average around $80 per image.

Here's a list of the top royalty free stock photo libraries we use when designing new sites:

http://www.sxc.hu - Free to $1.
http://www.fotolia.com - $1 to $3 per image.
http://www.comstock.com - Huge library but expensive (around $80 per image)
http://www.istockphoto.com - $1 to $15 per image.
http://www.fotosearch.com - Great collections but expensive (around $129 per image)



Any other good ones you use that are not listed here? Please let me know

PepperJam, a leading search engine marketing firm has a tradition of posting a video interview with a member of the staff every Friday. Great viral marketing tool that earned PepperJam huge exposure across the blogosophere with more than 150,000 views as of this writing.

ShoeMoney, a SEM rockstar / AuctionAds owner, has a free shirt day tradition where he posts a picture wearing a free shirt received in the mail, typically from an industry power-house. True win-win.

StuntDubl, co-founder of SEO-class, has a Friday favorites tradition where he lists the top posts of the week.

So we figured, heck, why not. SoftwareProjects should join the party with our very own Friday tradition.

With a tagline of "We Help Businesses Make Money Online", we decided our Friday tradition should encompass just that. So here goes.

Every Friday, SoftwareProjects will post a new "make money by doing X" post. It can be an invitation to perform a service, a tried-and-tested technique to immediately boost sales, free traffic etc. The only requirement is that whatever we post as part of our "Make Money by doing X" series - must be stuff you can immediately take to the bank, and not just vague ideas.

Hopefully this series will encourage & inspire new entreprenuers, provide value to business owners and demonstrate the depth and breatdh of SoftwareProjects services.

First in this series, to celebrate our new forum -

"Make Money by writing a post for SoftwareProjects.com"

Rules: We're looking for experienced search/email professionals with good writing skills, passion for the business and an understanding of the key principles of arbitrage, sem, edm, ppc. Each post must (a) include 250 words or more (b) include at least one screenshot / picture (c) be unique (d) include a call to action, "how to", case study or profiling of a popular Internet marketing service.

Compensation: $20 per post. No cap.

How to post: Create a SoftwareProjects account, then send your first post to amy (at) softwareprojects.com. If we like it, you'll be paid and we'll show you how to get paid automatically for all future posts.

One of the absolute best ways to generate content and keep your website fresh is 'User Generated Content'

If you have a forum, encourage users to post new threads and comment on existing posts. If you have a blog, turn comments on and encourage users to post their comments by rotating links to top posters on the front page, running contests and removing the nofollow tag.

User generated content is free, it keeps your site fresh with the search engines and it opens up new monetization opportunities as your website begins to rank for longtail keywords in your industry.

As is the case with most good things in life, user generated content has a nasty negative side to it - comment spam.

You see it in most forums and blogs. Comment spam comes in all flavors, from gybrish, to dozens of links, non related content, one link to the poster's website or warm invitations to purchase viagra, levitra, insurance etc.

Regardless of the technology you use, if you have a form that allows users to post new content on your website, comment spammers will eventually find a way to use and abuse it.



Sure - you can require all users to register before they can post anything, but as Guy Kawasaki says, you don't want to do that unless you're stupid.

In the case of SoftwareProjects, a few short months after we launched our forum (powered by vbulletin), we started getting bombarded by a couple of hundred (!) spam comments every single day.

While there are built-in tools to moderate comments, nobody likes to spend time going through hundreds and hundreds of spam comments to weed out the few legitimate ones. Not a good use of your time.

As part of this 2-part post, I will go through our experience and elaborate on how we went from getting a couple of hundred spam comments per day to zero spam comments, without requiring a human to moderate spam.

The first step is to understand there are basically two types of spam-comments:

1. Bot-generated
These are server-side scripts that scrape websites looking for familiar patterns of "post comment" or "post reply" forms. Once these bots find your form, it will be added to a list of open comment relays. From that moment on, you can expect to be bombarded with comment spam, often several spam-comments posted within the same few minutes.

2. Human-generated
Human users finding your website and posting a one-line link back to their website or a dozen links, typically to bad neighborhouds.

--

The first type of comment spam - "bot generated" is easier to mitigate.

We can use the fact that "bot generated" comment-spam is server based to our advantadge. Server-based scripts can't execute JavaScript.

So all we have to do is some basic PGP encryption using JavaScript to authenticate the comments form is running on a browser and not as part of a server script.

Here's how -

Step 1: Locate the page that shows your Post Comments form. Find the FORM heading and add the code below directly after the FORM opener.

Replace 'olegrulez' with another random string.



What this does is - generate a unique hash value, encrypt it using MD5 with a private key ("olegrulez" - replace this with some other random string) and set the value using JavaScript.

Step 2: Locate the page that handles processing of all posted comments and add this code:



Replace the warning message with whatever you like and make sure to use the same random string you picked in step 1 instead of 'olegrulez'.

Explanation: We are validating that the information (user IP address) passed through step 1 and properly encoded with our private key. If not, a nice message is displayed to the user and execution terminates.

--

Simple. Works every time.

This quick fix helped us completely eliminate 100% of all bot-generated comment-spam. If any of you would like to get the specific "how to" for WordPress, post a comment here and I'll add that.

The next part of this post will explain how we got rid of human-generated comment-spam.