That being said, this is not something I’m doing for a profit…this is a free product I’m recommending.  You may have heard of it through the buzz over the past couple of days.

It’s called PPC Web Spy by Brad Callen.  I had basically ignored the emails and chalked them up to the usual tripe that gets sent around, but then, while talking to a friend, he told me that I absolutely NEEDED to take a look at it right away.

So I did.

Woah!

Not only is this absolutely wonderful and amongst the best keyword tools I’ve used, but…

It’s genuinely FREE!

For any search results you run in Google, it’ll literally SPY on the Adwords results quickly providing a list of keywords and a bunch of other stuff.  If you’re into arbitrage, let nothing get in your way to get this now.  Heck, if you’re into any sort of internet marketing, this will pay for itself instantly–hah, because yes, it’s free!

Sure, it’s been done before–but never in a free bit of software!

Anyway, if you haven’t already, you can download it here now: http://kansieo.com/likes/ppcwebspy/

Not sure how long that link will stay up, so you might want to take a look at it right away!

For those of you without a list of your own, this strategy could take you to the next level (by making sales and building that list).  I read through it, and what can I say, I’m a believer.  I won’t give away the details here (although it mainly involves Squidoo and Hubpages), but if you’re looking for traffic, are willing to put in a few minutes of work, you definitely won’t be disappointed.  It’s just one of those oft overlooked things…

It’s a thumbs up for The $5 Traffic Trick for me, and I can’t wait to get started implementing this idea!

Anyway, the Asus Eee PC. It’s considered an ultra compact/sub-notebook…and that it is. It has a 7″ LCD (at 800×480 res) and by default runs a linux derivative as it’s OS. It does have instructions for installing Windows XP and there are people who have installed MacOS Leopard/Tiger. There is NO built-in optical drive. The model I bought came with a 4 gig solid state hard drive and has three usb ports, and a SD flash card reader. 512MB (but easily upgradable) RAM. Built-in wireless, stereo speakers, etc (if you want to know more, go to http://eeepc.asus.com/.

Now, obviously this isn’t meant to be a powerhouse gaming machine. It can, however, do almost anything you throw at it. Every single video I’ve tried playing has worked without a hitch. MP3s, OGG, and so on are supported out of the box. Networking was painless. And the machine startup time? About 10 seconds–even in Windows XP (specially tweaked to get the best performance with a small footprint). The solid state hard drive is a beautiful thing…no more worries about moving parts.

Here is an online demo of the default Linux UI. This is what is commonly called “basic mode” and includes most everything a non-power user would need…but let’s face it, the audience for this thing is probably not going to be your average non-power user. Advanced mode is painlessly activated through a quick bit of hackery, and then we’ve got a full-blown version of kde to work with…wonderful.

There are a few cons that are to be expected with a machine this compact and economically priced. The lack of an optical drive, the small screen/resolution, the small keyboard, the small HDD. With the exception of the HDD, each one of these is limited by space (as far as I know, there is no possible way to fit a 15″ LCD into a 7″ space). The HDD, on the other hand, is limited by price. Solid state hard drives are a relatively new technology and thus are still extremely expensive. I’m sure this one is upgradable, though, so when 128 GB SSD become affordable, I’ll be first in line (the new MacBook Air offers a 64 GB SSD at a $1000 price tag…ouch).

Already a huge modding community (much of which takes place at http://eeeuser.com) has sprung up around this machine because Asus has kindly left it wide open. I can’t wait to see what happens with it in the next year or so. I have a few things in mind myself, including using it as a controller for a robotic project (based on the iCreate platform, I think)–can’t wait to start this off.

Anyway, I can’t wait to really start using this thing. I’ll keep you all posted on my escapades.

I was lucky enough to get a pre-public release copy of busin3ss and vvk’s [YACG] Mass Installer.

Wow, what a beautiful piece of software.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. For those of you that don’t know, YACG is an acronym for ‘Yet Another Content Generator’. It’s a fun piece of software that is the logical successor to myGen and RSSGM before that…not to mention that it’s open source with a supportive community behind it. What it does exactly is build sites…you feed it keywords, customize templates, find content sources, etcetera, and it’ll put together a nice site for you in a fraction of the time it’d normally take for development.
This is where it gets interesting. Let’s just say that it still can be relatively time consuming to collect keywords, and to customize those templates (or build new ones) and find articles or other usable content…especially when you’re in the business of building a ton of websites in a short period of time.

Now, this is where the [YACG] Mass Installer comes into play. More on that in a sec, though.

[YACG] Mass Installer is a top-notch bit of software. It’s sleek, it’s pretty, it’s AJAXified. If you’re mass installing anything, this is the interface you want to be using. The people behind the scenes (busin3ss and vvk) are both down-to-earth good guys and have proven with YACG that they know their stuff.

This is all well and good, you might say, but what can [YACG] Mass Installer do for me?

I’ll go through a quick rundown: it can harvest keywords from YSM and WordTracker and pull keyword statistics through Google’s Adwords tools (this feature alone works better than most paid desktop keyword tools…obviously though, free keywords from YSM and WordTracker won’t shine a light on paid keyword sources such as Wordze). When you’re done harvesting keyword lists, you can harvest templates. That’s right…I said templates. Just point the software at almost any website out there and it’ll return a usable template based on that website…I’ve yet to see any app do what this puppy does, very novel, very cool.

So from there, you have keywords and templates, what else can it do? Well, as the title implies, it Mass Installs YACG. Imagine that! It’ll do your normal job of putting the YACG core files, template files, keyword files etc, exactly where they need to be, as well as removing certain footprints–like having a keywords.txt file located in your base directory.

Are you convinced yet? Since, I really just gave a cursory overview, here is their screencast which’ll give a whole lot more information than I was able to: http://yacgmassinstaller.com/screencast/.

Since it’s a new piece of software, it’s a given that there will be bugs. This is yet another place where [YACG] Mass Installer has excelled. That’s not to say it doesn’t have it’s bugs, as it does. However, since reporting them yesterday and today, both busin3ss and vvk have been hard at work to fix them, even on the eve of their public launch. Dedication to customer service will obviously not fail, here.

Anyway, to sum things up, behind the slick exterior lies a virtual YACG powerhouse…if you build YACG sites, get this now (that’s two thumbs up from me).