How much does a vacuum cleaner cost?
The entire block where my office is located had a blackout today for almost 5 hours. So there we were, not having a power generator, sat down at the pantry, chatting. Under the lights diffusing from the air vent window at the back wall, we noticed how the exhaust, with the power out, made way for dust to come inside. I really don’t remember how we came to it but we then started joking about vacuum cleaners and all the sucking things they do. 
Well, the power finally went back and we headed back to our computers. Being that curious-want to know all-INTJ that I am, starting from Wikipedia I ended up browsing this site about Dyson vacuums. That’s when I got a bit surprised. Here in town, vacuum cleaners seldom goes over $350. These Dyson vacuums starts from $400. One of their “might meet your need”-rated vaccum even cost $534. Looking at them, they seem like “designer” vacuums, especially the round-shaped canisters. But it’s a vacuum cleaner!
Maybe I just don’t realize the price range for them though according to this site, it’s still quite in range (they would fall into the “higher priced” group). I just feel that vacuum cleaners shouldn’t really cost that much. They also don’t really need to “look nice”. It’s not like you’re at a photo session, and there’s no point in “showing off” how beautiful your vacuum cleaner looks. :p
Ahh, it’s probably just me. Why not go and see it yourself, and comment on one of those Dyson vacuum.
Translation services
A friend once came up to me asking a way to translate his entire site (which was in Indonesian) to English, hoping to aim a wider audience and larger traffic from the keywords. At that time it really didn’t bother me to help him out. It was only a few pages. Then just this morning, a colleague asked me the same thing. Having my hands really full at this moment, I suggested him to try search for translation services on the web but I still offered to help look into it as soon as I have some time to.
From both my friends there I realized that translation services might really have a potential market. (Not that I intend to charge both of them :P) So I browsed the web to look for some when I found this site. The site, iaflindia.com, is an India translation and interpretation service. Using it as an example I would ike to write about what a translation service should offer.
People searching for translation services will most likely already know all the reasons why they’re looking for one. Instead of long explanations on the front page about how translating can benefit, just make it obvious what the site is and most importantly point out what kind of translation service you offer and why you’re good at it. If you have inspiring words on how a translation can open doors, etc, you can write it up on a special page where the details go by.
Provide multiple localized translation, especially when you’re offering translation from English to another language. A single country may have more than a dozen local language. Providing them shows that you can cover many local languages, but doesn’t mean only having the main national language is not good enough.
Provide other services, like market research and translation for other sorts of medias.
Make an easy way to contact you and provide good customer support. Make sure your customer gets what they were paying for and make them happily recommend your service to others. A translation would likely have revisions and adjustments so it’s not just a “here’s the translation-thank you-bye”. Offer follow up support and reviews.
If you have some more to add, just comment below. 
Accepting payments for your site
I’m planning on launching a small business site and need to receive payments for the service I provide. I came across the question: what payment method would I use? From all those options–thinking from it–why not have them all?
Having multiple payment methods on the site would give customers freedom to choose the most convenient way for them. Have you ever wanted to purchase something online but can’t because it only accepts payments using a service that you simply don’t have or can’t have (then end up leaving to find some other site)? For you folks living in the States may not experience it but international customers face it all the time. Trust me, I’m one of them. So there comes the need and logic for an e-commerce site to provide wide ranges of payment methods–and so to speak, payment processors.
Of course that doesn’t mean you need to list all processors you can Google on. I think it’s best to think of what kind of payment will your customer likely use then choose processors that can provide them. For now, these are the obvious ones I can think of:
PayPal. No need to talk about it. Provides professional and personal accounts, making sending and receiving money easy. Good for US buyers but may not be as good for international’s. Some countries would need a verified credit card to actually withdraw funds, and some more can’t at all.
e-gold. Been around for more than 10 years. This sholud cover international users that don’t have credit cards or accounts in the US. Exchangers from e-gold to local currencies are everywhere. Simple and secure.
A+ Merchant. Provides credit card processing for offline and online stores with low fees–US and international–for large range of services like MLM merchants and high risk storefronts that PayPal would usually reject.
Each processor would have different systems for setting up the site as a merchant but when it’s all done I’ll know my customers would have every payment option they need.
Hiding Wordpress admin directory
Changing the username will indeed add some extra security to your Wordpress blog. Well, you can double the protection by hiding your entire admin folder! This great step-by-step tutorial from Michi Knows will show you how to rename your admin folder to anything you like.
Customizing individual “Read more” text on Wordpress posts
Whenever writing a long post in Wordpress, we can split it so it shows only a fragment in the front page.(1) The entire full text can be seen when we click on it or read it in our theme’s single-post page. There are several reasons why we would want to split our post; it is indeed lengthy, we want to tease our readers with an intro paragraph and entice them to read the rest of the entry, or maybe simply just to maintain the look of our site’s front page.
To split a post, we add a <!--more--> quicktag just where we want our post to break. Worpress will then replace the tag with the text parameter within the the_content template tag in index.php and link it to the post’s individual page. By default, the text will display “more…“. If we want to change that text, simply type in our new words in the tag.
- Split post are also shown on other non-single pages such as the archive and search page. [back]
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