Just click like in the little bar at the top of the page!
It's every child's dream, being rich, owning a mansion and a fast car. However, only few can turn this into a reality. There's no doubt that becoming a millionaire requires you to work for yourself. I did a post on jobs that earn you
six figure salaries, but seven is pushing it. So you're going to have to start your own business.
However, do you need to invent something to do this? Well, not back in the 1970s. Take Richard Branson for example, now worth and estimated $4.2bn, he started off buying and selling records. This isn't exactly a difficult thing to do and he made a lot of money out of it. The thing is, back then, the Internet and technology as a whole wasn't even a fraction of what it is now. This meant that individuals had to rely on their entrepreneurial merit, which meant that only a select few would succeed.
So why can't you making money buying and selling now? Well you can, but it's a lot harder. Internet sites like eBay and Amazon have made it easier to sell goods. This means competition is huge, and whatever you're thinking of buying and selling, chances are somebody is already doing it, and doing it more efficiently too. If you don't believe me, go on eBay, think of any item and type it in. Chances are there's a power seller shipping out hundreds of goods every day. If there's nobody selling that item, there's either no market for it or you've just found an opportunity!
Anyway, back to the point. If you can't buy and sell, you need to produce something yourself right? If you produce something yourself, you can get the all important patent, meaning you are the only person allowed to sell it. Patents are expensive, but if the product is good enough, it'll be worth every penny in the long run.
So, is this the only way to make a million? I highly doubt it, but it's probably your best bet. Of course, inventing a new product is risky, expensive, and if its good, chances are somebody is already selling it. Never mind.
Well that about wraps things up! Hopefully I haven't demotivated you too much, it can still be done, just get inventing!
The Internet’s a wonderful place. It’s full of facts and games and pictures and oh, isn’t it wonderful. Unfortunately, it’s got its slightly less brilliant side as well in the forms of memes, jokes, and simple photosets. There are so many parts of this nightmarish side, but here are the five which particularly push me to the edge of sanity.
5. Voldemort doesn't have a nose.
|
Okay. So, like all of them, this one was funny at first. Paha, look at the supposed dark lord, doesn’t even have a nose. He had one in the first film now he doesn’t, isn’t it hilarious!? No. No it isn’t. I don’t understand why people get such amusement out of mocking a fictitious character. You can’t look at it and think “WOAH. YOU SHOWED HIM.” because he isn’t actually REAL. Voldemort doesn’t particularly give a shit if you insult him, mainly because he’s completely fictitious. But a little bit because he’s probably just so tired of hearing it right now. He was SUPPOSED to look like a snake, he was supposed to look evil. Voldemort with a nose would take some of the scary aspect out of it. But I think my main problem with it is how obvious it has become now. Every time there’s a picture of Voldemort, you can pretty much guess the comment. Unimaginative jokes irritate me, and that’s why Internet memes in general aren’t really my favourite things.
4. The autocorrect fail.

Ah. We’ve all been here. Trying to type a word and, oh, autocorrect changes it! Such hilarity! That’s fine, that’s cool, that’s funny. But what isn’t funny is all the so called ‘autocorrect fails’ that plague the Internet. Some are probably genuine, but most are just so obviously fake. “Aw, I meant to type forks and now I’ve told my mum I want her to pick up some fucks, aw no, I’m going to be grounded for a week!” The last one of these I saw was the phrase ‘make it up to you’ being changed to ‘sex’. What kind of phone does that!? The naïve mum ones are just as bad. Her sending ‘LOL’ when someone’s died because she thinks it means ‘lots of love’. It seems blatantly obvious that they’ve simply renamed their ‘mum’ contact, as well as reusing jokes which we’ve all read a million times by now, just in another format. The jokes are too hard to prove as genuine, and all seem faked. If not, then I also think the fact that you didn’t do it yourself seems to ruin some of the humour. They seem like very weak jokes, relying on a swear word to make people laugh.
3. Justin Bieber jokes.

Oh dear God. Everyone knows Justin Bieber, and everyone who has ever been on the Internet knows the jokes. Justin Bieber is gay. Justin Bieber is a girl. Justin Bieber has a small penis. Yes. We get it. Earlier I said how unimaginative jokes annoy me. There is nothing more unimaginative than this. These aren’t witty, or funny, or shocking. I don’t like Justin Bieber, I hate his fans, I dislike his music, and he seems like a bit of a cocky git. But it doesn’t make me happy to see everyone insulting him in such obvious and childish ways. It makes you look petty and jealous, even if you’re not. Not a day goes by without his name being mentioned somewhere on the wide, wide interweb. To make a problem go away, you ignore it. You don’t rile his millions of irritating fans and keep talking about him to make him go, okay. Not how you do it.
2. Captions.

Now, most memes are captions, so I have to be more specific. The photosets where people pose with the captions underneath, giving instructions and advice are what I’m actually talking about here. The people themselves are horrible wannabe scene kids with horrific poses which boast such arrogance that I want to punch them all in the face. The advice itself is usually something like ‘if you want girls like us’ or ‘you’re a slut if’, and things like that, which manages to play on stereotypes and calls perfectly normal girls sluts. Hurrah! Nice one, well done, you judgmental fucks. They’re up on their moral high ground, but even worst is when someone tries to take them off of that high ground with a comeback. A comeback which has the exact same problems as the first one had originally, as well as usually being wonderfully unfunny.
1. Like this if…

This is the kicker. Oh boy. The old ‘like this if you agree’ or ‘like if you do this!?!!!??!’ I suppose it’s not really a bad idea, it gives you a number of how many people like a certain thing, that’s kind of interesting if you were doing some kind of poll, or vote. But they never bloody are. Instead, it’ll be something like “like this if you touch your face when on the computer.’ I truly weep for humanity when I see so many likes and realise people must have gone ‘Oh my God, I totally do that! It’s like you’ve known me my whole life!’ It’s something which is so painfully obvious that it’s simply done for likes. Likes! On Facebook! Which mean literally nothing. Less than nothing. Things that don’t actually exist and do nothing for your life. It doesn’t have a purpose, and it irritates me that some people actually think that it’s intelligent. It just isn’t.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Leo Thorncroft - Writing for The Idle Scribe |
For the first 'dirty mind' photo, click
here
While you're here, have a look at the photos on the right hand side and click any that take your fancy! Better still, have them delivered straight to your twitter by clicking the follow button below!
If you're one of the people who's given into the general pressure of jail breaking your device, fed up of hearing "why don't you just jail break it?" or "oh, you have to jail break it to do this", then you are most likely in the same position I was in about a month or so ago. I sat at my desk, with what was now a jailbroken ipad mini thinking, 'what now?'. All of a sudden the people who forced me into jail breaking my device became very reluctant to tell me what to do next, so I asked my good friend Google. Sound a bit familiar? Read on and I'll tell you the first 5 things you need to download.
Just before I get started I should point out that to download the apps, just search for them in Cydia. Anyway, in no particular order...
5) Auxo
I don't exactly dislike the way the iOS handles multitasking, but having to hold down the icons until the little red minus sign appears is a bit tedious. Auxo creates a simply stunning alternative, in which you can simply swipe to remove apps from the multitasking bar. Genius!
4) Swipe Selection
Swipe Selection is one of those tweaks that makes you wonder why Apple didn't think of it. Personally I don't mind the general typing experience on iOS, but if one thing does annoy me, it's having to go back to correct a spelling or something, and having to battle with the horrible magnifying glass. Luckily, there is somebody on the planet with a few more brain cells than Apple, and they made it so you can scroll through the text by swiping left and right on the keyboard. Crisis averted.
3) NoNewsIsGoodNews
When it comes to the appearance of my home screen, I'm very OCD. I like things in folders and organised. The one thing I can't bare to see is the empty news stand sitting in the corner of my screen, just wasting space. This thing can't be removed, or even put it an folder! Sure it's not the cleverest Cydia apps, but NoNewsIsGoodNews makes me life that little bit easier.
2) Springtomize 2
Often described as 100 Cydia tweaks in 1, Springtomize 2 is a necessity. Allowing users to customise a wide range of options such as lock screen, home screen, multi-touch gestures and more, it gives your device that personal touch.
1) Accelerate
We are all obsessed with the speed of our device, and after jail breaking, I wanted to make sure my iPad was faster. I soon stumbled across this app which literally speeds up the opening and closing of apps. It makes your device feel significantly faster. To put things in perspective, my iPad is more than fast enough for me, and I'm only on Ferrari speed setting!
So there we have it. My 5 essential Cydia apps. Have I missed anything? Comment! Remember to like us on facebook or follow us on twitter and if you're feeling really nice, try out one of the share buttons below, thanks!
I apologize for the second Catholic Church related photo in about 3 days, but they are just too damn funny. View the first one
here.
While you're here, I've got a whole load of content for you to enjoy, have a look at all the photos on the right and click any that take your fancy!
Want funny photos and articles delivered straight to your twitter? There's a button for that! It's at the bottom of the page, click it!
Fancy funny photos delivered straight to your twitter feed? Click on the little follow button at the bottom of the page. Thanks!
When it comes to yearly salaries, everybody cares about 'six figures'. For the vast majority of people, earning more than 100k every year is enough to consider there life a success. When thinking about what jobs will pay you this much, a few obvious ones spring to mind, CEO, Surgeon, Lawyer etc.
However, I recently discovered some really high paying jobs that you would never of thought of, so naturally I consider it my duty to share them with you.
5) Astronomer
Even though the mean income is only $93, 000, the top 10% can earn up to $155, 000! Not bad for a career in looking through a telescope.
4) Captain of water vessel
Okay so maybe becoming a pirate doesn't count, but still, being the captain of a water vessel can earn you a nice $117, 000!
3) Elevator installers
This is a prime example of a job that I never realized anybody actually did. For some reason I just imagined the job to magically get done by itself. However, there are people who do this for a living, and get $101, 000 in the process.
2) Transport inspectors
Hardly the pinnacle of law enforcement, but I've seen enough episodes of 'traffic cops' to understand how fun this job could be. Especially if I'm able to receive $108, 000 for it.
1) Purchasing agents for farm products
Now I'm not exactly sure about what this job entails, but it must be something pretty important to justify earning £101, 000!
Worth a share? I think so.
Want more florid delivered straight to your twitter? Click the follow button at the bottom of this page!
If you liked this photo, you'll love
this
It's just cool to say you have a safe in your wall, even if it's only filled with 1p coins.
Worth sharing? I think so.
Smartphones are such a fundamental part of our daily lives that we are determined to make them do as much as physically possible. Using a variety of apps and technology, the phone is set to overtake the wallet completely, but is this what we really want?
Firstly, I'll talk a little bit about how it all works. A fair amount of smartphones include a NFC (near field communication) microchip, which is able to connect to various receivers. Phones that carry such a chip can be used as an Oyster card, simply by downloading an app. Of course, this is just the start of a smartphones potential. Using the same NFC technology, Google have developed Google Wallet, which allows users to sync their debit/ credit card to their phone and purchase goods using contactless technology. (Similar to that of the new Barclay card.)
So if this works as well as I'm saying it does why hasn't it properly taken off?
Two reasons, the first of which being it relies on the receiving devices (like Oyster card readers) having wifi. This could be costly to install, and it won't actually create an increase in revenue. People aren't going to suddenly jump on a train purely so they can use their phone as a ticket.
For this idea to really work, businesses, buses, and train stations all need to be equipped with the technology that allows it all to work, otherwise there is just no point.
The second reason is even more important. Apple haven't put NFC chips in iPhones. If you look up a list of phones with an NFC chip, you'll see loads of Android phones, Windows phones and even Blackberrys, but no iPhone. Considering the amount of people that own an iPhone, it's going to have quite a big effect on the success of the concept. I'm pretty sure that if an IPhone came with an NFC chip, businesses would jump a the chance to make it possible to pay via phone. It would become a sales gimmick.
However, I think Apple are aware that they have the power to make this concept a reality, and are most likely holding back in order to release their own clever version for a high price. They're probably developing a completely different way to make your iPhone work as your wallet, but of course, we'll just have to wait and see.
Personally regardless of whether iPhones will come with some sort of NFC technology, I would still not feel entirely secure knowing that all my information is stored on my phone. What if you lost it? Surely you wouldn't take that risk?
What do you think? Would you use such technology? Comment!
Upon request, I changes the share buttons from the floating style, to static ones at the bottom of the post. For some reason this caused loads of problems which took me ages to fix. Grr.
Sorry Americans. Don't hate me
I may have mentioned this before, but follow me on twitter!
On an iOS device? Click on the little 'reader' button at the top. Amazing eh? So nice!
Although my
golden rule for blogging is to put your content before your statistics, it doesn't mean to ignore them altogether. For the vast majority, stats are the main way or measuring success. The problem is, many people focus on pageviews because, that's the one they can brag about. This is true but not necessarily useful. in fact, I think there are five key stats that you should focus on just as much.
5) Who your audience are.
It's a key business concept to know your target market. So why should blogging be any different? If you know who's actually reading your posts, you can work out how to optimise your content for them. For example,if you know the majority of your readers are from a different country, then write accordingly. It will help to generate a loyal following.
4) What your readers like.
This one is simple but often overlooked. Take the time to monitor which of your posts receive the most views, and look out for patterns. If you notice that all your lost articles get way ,ore views than anything else, maybe write more list articles? Having said this, remember the golden rule. Don't post purely to get more views, because you'll end up posting things you don't actually care about, and if you don't care,many should your readers?
3) Bounce rate.
Bounce rate monitors the percentage of people that view your site, and simply 'bounce' straight off (meaning they stay on your page for less than 5 seconds). 100% bounce rate is the worst you can get and 0% is the best. The most common factor that influences bounce rate is time taken to load page. If it takes ages to load, readers will just move on. Avoid this by minimising widgets and media content. Another way to reduce bounce rate overnight is to increase text size. Research shows that readers are more likely to stay on a page with slightly larger font. Just be sure not to take it too far with articles in size 72.
2) Average time on site.
You want people to stay on your site for a long as possible right? Yes, and for so many reasons. First of all it will mean more pageviews. Secondly, readers will be more likely to click adverts, generating revenue. Finally, readers are more likely to share a post.
It's important to look at this statistic regularly. If you see a downward trend, it's time to I prove your content and maybe even layout. It's a great indicator.
1) New vs returning visitors.
You might getting 10000 visitors a day, but if they are all brand new, then it's still a failure. It's I portent your readers like your blog enough to come back the next day. You have to become part of their Internet routine. This is difficult to achieve but can be done by offering incentives to come back. Great content is obviously a ,must, but maybe try a members section?
So there we have it, my list of stats you need to monitor frequently. Better still, the stats are so easy to find you have no excuse!
Allow me to introduce the image toaster. Quite self explanatory I know but this toaster literally burns an image onto your bread. HOW COOL.
But it gets better. This toaster can, using wifi, burn little snippets of news onto your toast!
It would be inconvenient at best to eat 500 pieces of toast to meet the same amount of news as a typical newspaper. Like all things it's the conceptual excites us, not the practicalities.
Anyway, here's a nice little video of it in action...