There are a ton of options for universal remotes on the market, and today there is another option added to the mix.  The VooMote Zapper is a small iphone add-on that  can turn your mobile device in an all-in-one universal remote to control the host of random devices you have lying around the house.

The VooMote Zapper Universal Remote Control adapter can be connected to all iOS 5 devices including iPhones, iPads, and even iPod touches.  Of course the VooMote Zapper does require an accompanying app to function, but it comes free when the hardware is ordered.

Some of the features include an easy setup wizard for configuring all of your devices with the app and the ability to add One Touch Macros that can begin a sequence of commands such as turning on your television, followed by your Cable box, and then your DVD player, etc.  You can also combine the functions of several of your devices such as by creating a master volume switch.  There is also the option to create different rooms within the app that will allow you manage your devices room by room.

Once everything is setup within the app you can sit back and use your finger swipe to change channels for instance.  You also don’t have to worry about having a hard setup process for the rest of your Apple mobile devices.  Once you create your customized setup with the VooMote Zapper app, you can use the iCloud to sync the information with all your other iOS devices.

The list of devices it will work with include the iPhone 4,4S and 3GS, the iPod touch 4th generation device, and the iPad and iPad 2.  The VooMote Zapper hardware is currently priced at $69.95 in the Apple store with free shipping and comes in a black or white color.  Compared with other universal remotes available on the market the pricing point isn’t terrible, but you will want to make sure you don’t lose the small add-on adapter.  It’s hard enough finding a massive remote control, but it would be a whole lot harder to find something the size of your thumb.

Go Where the Employers Are

It may seem like common sense, but it is surprising how many bloggers and writers don’t use professional freelance boards and the like to search for new clients.  Places like Elance and Odesk will open your client base to individuals from around the globe.  The key to using these sites is to keep up with the latest postings.  On Odesk for instance you can actually save a specific search for open jobs meaning you can check out all the latest open gigs within your search scope in about 10 seconds.  If you can’t fit that into your daily routine, then you probably have some serious time-management issues to work out first.

The two listed places aren’t the only areas to check out.  If you’re looking for blogging jobs, then you can always check out Problogger’s job board or look into other specific writing boards.  Traditional job boards like Monster or Indeed can also be useful, but you’ll likely find more full-time positions with companies rather than single clients.  The point is you need to expand the areas where you are looking for work, and then actually apply for the jobs you like.  After all, searching for new gigs isn’t going to put any money into your bank account.  You have to apply and actually get hired first.

Check out how these 10 apps that can help you land a job.

Start Your Own Blog

There is a belief that starting your own blog is a horrifically difficult process that is time intensive and only for technically inclined individuals, but that belief is a farce.  Most blogging platforms have streamlined their website setup process to the point that most people could have their websites up and running in under a day.  Once that’s done you need to carefully plan out your content.  Remember that your main goal is to attract new clients.  If you write in a specific niche such as technology, then it is your goal to create outstanding content that you can use to show off to other clients.  Try to think about article subjects that your potential clients might search for as well.  Your blog doesn’t have to necessarily focus on your specific niche, but each post you make should be excellent enough that you would add it to your blogging portfolio to show to a potential client.

You’ll also want to set up a dedicated “Hire Me” page on your blog or something along that line.  Make sure that it is very prominent on your site because you want to make sure your potential clients know you are available to hire.  If they don’t know you are looking for work, then guess who isn’t getting a job offer?  You’ll also want to fill out your About Me page with your specific work experience that clients will look into.

If you want to check out a good example of this, then check out Jolie O’Dell’s ‘Hire Me’ page.  She’s been a writer at Mashable and currently writes for VentureBeat.  Notice how she lists what specific jobs she is looking for, how she is available to work and the fact that she adds a link to her social media account at the end.  This leads to our next point…

Build A Social Media Presence

This doesn’t mean signing up for Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn, and then simply attaching your blog feed to your account.  You have to get social with others if you want them to be social with you.  Again it is important to remember your main goal, which is to attract new clients.  This means you are going to have to expand your current contact circle if you are ever going to find new gigs.  This can seem like an impossible job for some, but it can be made much simpler by making small goals.

If you simply say that you want to make new connections on Twitter for instance, then chances are you’ll do that for about 2 days before you call it quits and assume it is useless.  Instead if you have a goal to contact one new person every day, then chances are good that you’ll be able to stick with that goal easily.  Just don’t forget that you are building relationships with others.  So don’t be a social leech simply asking people for work.  You have to ease into that like you would with any other relationship.

For example, you could contact a writer on a popular blog and compliment him or her on a specific post they made that you really liked.  You could then tell them a little about yourself and your business.  You could also further discuss whatever specific industry they write about.  After a few messages like this you could casually ask them if they know of any open writing opportunities.  Chances are good that if they write for a popular blog, then they probably have some connections or know about open gigs that aren’t displayed publicly.  It’s these types of connections that are very valuable, but can be the hardest to build.  If you can find a way to bring value to your new connection, then they will likely return that value or a favor back to you.  Again, remember that your main goal is to get new clients.  If your current social strategy isn’t producing any new clients, then it’s time to change course or rethink your strategy.  After all, socializing all day isn’t going to earn you money writing.

The PowerTrekk phone charger contains a fuel-cell battery with a double-chamber interior.  On one side of the device, you will see an opening where you can add your water.  On the other side you will see a small area where you place a sodium silicate, which is called a PowerTrek Pukk.  To get the device working, you simply add water and insert a new PowerTrek Pukk into the device.  Once you have resealed the gadget the chemicals will start mixing together and this process releases a small gas.  The gas then travels into the fuel cell battery where it is converted into mobile energy, which can then be transferred to your cellphone.

That all sounds really awesome until you start hearing the drawbacks.  For one, the PowerTrekk charger alone will cost you $299.  Then factor in that each PowerTrek Pukk costs $4, and then there’s the fact that you have to use a brand new one for every charge.  The main charger doesn’t even include any Pukks to get you started.  Instead you are responsible for ordering both separately, and there is no word on whether these Pukks are even recyclable.

Once the charge process begins the PowerTrekk phone charger is capable of holding its charge if you want to wait to charge your phone.  You can also plug you phone into the USB port to let it charge over time.  The whole process takes around 2-hours to complete, so I wouldn’t recommend sitting around to watch the charge take place.

The company believes this device will be useful for woodsman and campers who can’t reach a power source.  In reality I think will those going outdoors will likely find some other means to power their devices that won’t cost $4 per charge.  It isn’t like there aren’t any other gadgets that can charge a cell phone without an initial investment of around $300.

[MNN]

To catch up you up on this site, Techplz has been “postless” for about 5 months leading up to January.  It just kind of happened where one week of missed postings turned into two, then three, then 10….and so on.  I think that is the case with a lot of blogs on the web.  Anyways I decided to start back up fresh in 2012 with new posts on this site.  So it should be interesting to see how things turn out with such a long gap where no new content was added.

As you can see the traffic stats show 1,081 Unique Visitors came to Techplz in January 2012.

In December 2011, there were only 726 Unique Visitors.

That means there was a +48.89% growth in traffic from December to January.

Overall I’m very happy with the traffic growth.  Double-digit growth is excellent in any given month for a blog.  There were a number of significant changes I made to this site as well.

Changes

I hadn’t updated this blog to the newest version of WordPress for about 5 months so I found that someone had hacked into the tags section of my blog.  Under my Google Webmaster Tools account for this site, I found that a ton of medical and other obvious spam words were showing up on all of my tag pages.  I’m sure this is one reason why my traffic was low in December because the search engines were confused to see these types of keywords showing up on a mostly tech-related website.  It was probably a big red flag to Google and other search engines.

All Tags Have Been Deleted

After reviewing a lot of the tags I had, I decided to delete all of the tags on this website.  The reasons for this drastic move I’ll now explain.

Reason #1

The first reason was to remove all of the spam keywords.  The keywords were inputted by the hacker as meta data, and I had no desire to try to go through about 1,500 tags to change everything.  This leads to reason number two.

Reason #2

With the panda update that hit the web in 2011, one of the most important things for site owners to do was delete content that was thin.  It’s also important to not have the same content showing up multiple times on your website.  I found that my tag pages really served no useful purpose on this website.  They didn’t help me in any way, and they certainly weren’t serving any useful purpose for my visitors.  In fact, the only reason I had them in the first place was in order to draw in additional web traffic.

My tag pages showed little clips of my main content, but they had very high bounce rates and often times didn’t really match exactly what a site visitor was probably looking for.  My site thus had a lot of keywords showing to Google that really didn’t fit in with my main site’s content.  For example if a news post was written that included people’s names, then I would tag all of their names.  Again, this really didn’t serve any useful purpose for anyone.

As a result of deleting all of the tags, I noticed that my traffic took a little dip at first, but then recovered in no time.  This could also be a result of those spam keywords being removed, but from the sheer amount of tags I had compared to posts the difference in traffic was negligible compared to what I thought could have happened when I deleted so much content from the site.

Categories Narrowed Down

I noticed that I had a lot of categories on Techplz that weren’t even being displayed.   These hidden categories obviously weren’t serving any purpose, so I narrowed down all of my categories down to the ones currently displayed.  I also changed all of the posts in the archive so that each post belonged to only one category.  As mentioned before, this was done in order to remove the amount of duplicate content.  I want visitors to find unique articles in every category instead of seeing the same posts whenever they switch categories.

I think this is a smart move when it comes to search engines visiting the site, and it also improves the user experience greatly.

Wrapping Up

As you can see from the graph above, there was a nice traffic bump in the last couple days of January.  We’ll see if that trend continues or not in February.

The photo capturing technology in the LUMIX TS20 is pretty impressive as well.  It features 16.1 Megapixels photo taking capability with a 25mm ultra-wide-angle lens that will definitely be useful for taking massive landscape shots.  There is also a 4x optical zoom that can be extended all the way to 8x via the Intelligent Zoom function that uses the Panasonic Intelligent Resolution technology.

The Panasonic LUMIX TS20 is only good for photo taking, however.  This flat and slim camera can capture 720p High Definition video all in MP4 format.  You can also use the 4x zoom feature while filming in HD.  Your videos can also be uploaded straight to YouTube via the software that comes with it.

One of the coolest features I think is the Panasonic iA mode that will automatically setup your camera’s settings to take the best picture possible based on your situation.  The Panasonic iA technology used on the LUMIXTS20 includes AF Tracking, Intelligent ISO Control, Intelligent Scene Selector, Intelligent Exposure, Face Recognition and MEGA O.I.S.  If you don’t know what all of that means, then don’t panic.  It just means that you’ll be able to take awesome photos without having to jumble around with a ton of advanced photo settings.

The Panasonic LUMIX TS20 will hit the market in February 2012 according to Panasonic.  It will come in blue, black, red and orange varieties and it will have a price tag of $179.99.

Western Digital isn’t alone in its move, however.  Seagate is also reducing many of its drives’ warranties starting in early 2012.  Seagate will be shortening many of its warranties down to as little as one year.  Western Digital is not making as drastic a change with some its plans, but many of its drives too will be heavily reduced.

Western Digital announced that the Caviar Blue, Scorpio Blue and Caviar Green drives will now be issued with a two year warranty down from the three it has received to date.

The reason for the change comes down to reduced competition for the two companies.  Western Digital will be acquiring Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and Seagate recently purchased the Samsung disk-drive division.  It’s believed the reduced competition for the two companies gives them the leeway to be able to make these changes.  The market now appears to be a showdown: seagate vs western digital.

By reducing the Western digital warranty options for many of its drives, the company will be able to increase its bottom-line profits. The extended warranties will apparently be available for many of the models, but they will come with an additional cost to the customer.  For new customers, this means you’ll want to take a careful look at the western digital hard drive warranty you are receiving before you make your purchase.  Seagate rolled out its new changes starting December 31 and Western Digital on January 2nd.

So if you are debating whether to purchase a seagate or western digital drive with a changed warranty, you may want to lean towards the Western Digital model simply because most of its warranty changes are not as drastic as Seagates’.  In the end I wouldn’t necessarily base a purchasing decision purely on a warranty, but it does make you question whether the companies are making the right moves.  After all, a reduction in a warranty could be interpreted as the two companies not trusting their products as much.

The following is a quick tutorial to get your iFit application connected to your television.  The actual program functions through your computer, but many users like to connect their computers with their TV’s.  This way you can check out your latest fitness statistics and workout goals on your big screen.

Step 1:  Find connection slot on your Television

You’ll first need to find the connection ports on your television for connecting your computer to the TV.  Some TV’s will have a single composite video jack while others will have three circular input ports which means you’ll be connecting your computer to component video jacks.  There are of course several different video jacks on televisions so be sure to check your television manual.

Step 2: Find connection slot on your computer.

The next step is to find the connection port on your computer.  This will likely be an outbound video jack, but there are several connection ports on various computers.  View the manual that came with your computer if you are unsure which port is correct for your specific model.

Step 3:  Attach cables between computer and television and select correct input.

After finding out which cord you’ll need to make the connection between your computer and TV, attach the cable between the two.  Your television will likely need to be adjusted to the correct input setting.  If you are unsure which input to select, then you can refer to the manual to see which input you placed the cable in or simply run through the input options on your screen to find which one it is.

Step 4:  Run iFit on your computer.

Start the iFit application on your computer.  You should now see the iFit application running on your TV.

A lot of companies in the business world today are using LG cell phones, so this tutorial will quickly teach you how you can mute your LG cell phone with ease.  There are actually two different methods for muting your LG cell phone, so depending on your specific model choose the method that will work with your specific phone.

Method 1

Step 1: Make a call with your LG cell phone.

You’ll need to make a call in order to fulfill this method.  Once the call is made you will then be able to locate the “Mute” option somewhere on the screen of your LG phone.  Usually it will be located in the bottom right or left corners of your screen depending on your model.

Step 2: Press the Mute Button

Once you have located the “Mute” button simply press the key to initiate the command.  Your LG cell phone will now be muted.  In order to un-mute your phone, simply press the “Mute” button again.  Your phone will be un-muted.

Method 2

Step 1: Make a call with your LG cell phone.

You will first need to make a call in order to mute your cell phone.  Once the call is made press the “Options” button located on your phone.

Step 2:  Choose the “Mute” function

Look through the list of options that come up and press the “OK” button when you find the “Mute” option.  When you want to un-mute your LG cell phone simply go through the same steps and choose “Unmute.”

This may not be the case you run into, but the fact remains it is sometimes necessary for a person to know whether a person has read the email you sent them or not.  This is especially true when it comes to business emails because it can keep other employees accountable because others can know when they received a message.  The following is a small tutorial on how you can find out if someone has read your email or not.

Step 1: Head to ReadNotify

You will need to head to a website known as Read Notify.  Click here to head to ReadNotify.

Step 2: Register your Account.

You will need to fill in your information here in order to setup the system.  Use the mail id that you will be sending your email messages from.  The service comes with a free trial so you can test it to see whether it is a good fit for your personal business needs or not.

Step 3: Send your email message

When you are sending an email message to another user, you will simply write your email as you normally would.  When you are ready to send the message, you will need to manually type “.readnotify.com” at the end of your recipient’s email address.  It’s important that you type it at the end of your recipient’s email address instead of your own.  The neat thing is your email recipient will not see the added “.readnotify.com” extension when they read your email.

Step 4: Check out the Stats

This program is pretty neat because it gives you every detail you could want about how your recipient interacts with your email.  You can see the date and exact time it was opened.  You can know how long they viewed the email as well as the location of the reader.  You can also know how many times they opened your message and you can find out what URLs that they may have clicked in your message.

The new extension is called the Adsense Publisher Toolbar.  Download it Here.

There are two ways that users can view their information using the Adsense Publisher Toolbar.  You can use a pop-up account overview or use an in-site ad overlay.

The pop-up account overview allows Adsense publishers to view their account earnings summary for the current day, the previous day, the current month and the previous month.  Users can also view information on their top 5 custom channels and the top 5 URL channels if a user has setup those functions within their account.  The lifetime revenue for a publisher is also displayed.

If you choose to use the in-site ad overlay, then you will be able to view information directly on your site.  You’ll have access to instant summaries of each of your ad unit’s earnings for the current day, the previous day and the previous 7 days.  The links in the ad overlay also directly take you to your Adsense account.

The current version is 1.4.  In this new version, publishers who login with a user without having an Adsense account, or with an account that is not supported, will receive an error message that tells them the cause of the error and what they can do to fix it.

The Adsense Publisher Toolbar works by connecting to a user’s Google Adsense account via OAuth.  It then receives a publisher’s account data using Adsense APIs.  The authorization process only needs to be completed one time, which is nice for users who check their account’s earning throughout the day.

The toolbar actually isn’t a toolbar, which I like because I can’t stand having multiple toolbars that make my top navigation bar a mile long.  When you download the Adsense Publisher Toolbar, you will see a brand new Adsense button near the Chrome address bar, which you can click to access your data.  The whole overlay process is reportedly nearly instantaneous which will definitely make users very happy.

Below is a picture of the Adsense overlay in action: