I have a Kindle Fire and use it to watch videos and TV shows that I have purchased from Amazon, but my husband likes to buy DVDs on Amazon and so these are not available for me to watch in the Kindle Cloud.
Here’s how to be able to watch the DVDs you buy on Amazon on your Kindle:
1. Go to the Kindle app store and get the free app called Flixter. Install it on your Kindle Fire.
2. When you buy the DVD from Amazon, you’ll get a coupon with the DVD package that allows you to use Digital HD Ultraviolet as your on-demand cloud storage to watch the video on any of your devices. Go to www.movieredeem.com and enter in your special unique code to add the Amazon movie or DVD to your collection. I selected as my merchant Flixter, as this is my Kindle Fire movie watching app.
3. Once you enter the code you will set up a Digital HD Ultraviolet account AND a Flixter account. Both work together to allow you access. Once your accounts are confirmed by email, you will now see your digital cloud copy of the movie you own in the “owned” section of both apps.
4. When you want to watch the video on your Kindle Fire, just open the Flixter app and stream your newly purchased video anywhere and anytime.
As you own the video online plus have a DVD copy, you can watch offline. It is really the best of all worlds!
Matt Cutts from Google helps to demystify the issue that many older and previously well placed websites ask frequently, “how can I maintain my organic placement against new website startups in my industry?”
Here are my tips to assist you even further on this important topic.
1. Just because you’ve had great organic placement for years does not assure that your site will continue to be well placed now and in the future. It is important to know that your placement can be pushed down as new more relevant websites appear. Even those that are brand new.
2. If your website is over five years old, it is absolutely time to budget for a complete redo. Not only a design change but a full review of your content and how you are using technology on your website. If you don’t have YouTube videos on your website, you are really missing a strong channel that will drive traffic and keep visitors coming back to visit.
3. Have you really read your own content? Have you looked at your Google Analytics data in the last month on your website traffic? If things are falling off for you, you will want to look at your message, look at your bounce rate, and time spent on your website. If the numbers are low, it is time to really think of the things you can add or remove from your site to improve value to your readers.
It is very important to understand that just because your business and website have been around for a while does not guarantee organic placement. Google is evaluating click through rates, time spent on your site, and a user’s search history to rack and stack websites. If your numbers are low or your site is stale your placement will drop when compared to other hungrier, more relevant websites.
If you need professional eyes on your site to help understand where you are and where you should be, we offer a SEO placement review that may be of value to you as you evaluate what you should do to move up or retain your site placement. I invite you to read more and check pricing.
Matt Cutts, the lead Spam Engineer at Google revealed just this last week that Google is not using Facebook or Twitter posts or profiles for index ranking. This is very big news and a change in what Google has stated about how social impacts their algorithm.
Here’s the bottom-line about using social media and Google rankings:
1. Google is not ranking your site based on the activity you have on social media profiles like Facebook and Twitter.
2. Google does look at links that are shared on these social sites just like they look at content pages when they can spider the content.
3. Google is concerned about using social profiles to create “identity” as this may change or be blocked over time.
4. Google is not recording, for their algorithm, the number of likes or followers a social profile has.
5. Matt Cutts states that he personally likes social profiles for sharing and driving traffic, but does not recommend using them as an avenue to impact Google search placement.
This is an interesting change for Google as previously Google has stated that it did include likes and follower numbers as part of social signals and that these social signals impacted organic placement.
My recommendation is to continue to use Twitter and Facebook if it makes sense to do so. Some businesses have a rich forum on Facebook and should not abandon their followers just because they now don’t get SEO juice from activity there. But for SEO’s to encourage social media interaction now appears to be just one more SEO tactic that Google is clearly disavowing as a way to get organic placement.
If you have teens you already know Facebook, but do you know Ask? Ask is an app accessed from within Facebook that encourages your teens and children to tell all about themselves. Scary if you actually take the time to read what your kids and teens are posting there and the questions that are asked of them.
Here is a scenario that is playing out right now in our family as a cautionary tale. One of my kids has been pretty open about herself on Ask. All her answers to questions from Ask are then posted to her Facebook profile. Her Ask profile page and Facebook page are automatically linked by the app in Facebook.
Routinely she gets asked all kinds of questions by people many anonymously. She answers nearly all of them. Her young wisdom, sense of fun, and essence are clearly revealed at Ask. This is very troubling for a parent. Recently she got friended at Ask by a person called Tyler Damon Allen. This person has pushed his way into my daughter’s life and she has reacted as if this was a real and legitimate love interest. What got me concerned was all the emotional drama this person had:
1. Supposedly the same age as my daughter in school, but birth date was two years older.
2. Was a teen but did not have an online presence or even a Facebook page.
3. Stated he was in England because brother had cancer. Then decided he actually lived in New York.
4. Claimed he was going to commit suicide and needed my daughter to talk him down.
5. The next day claimed he had a serious longboarding accident (this is a skate board) and posted images of his body damaged. But there is snow in the ground right now in New York and England and you could only get these types of injuries if you were shirtless or boarding with a T-shirt on not a heavy coat due to weather.
6. Then Tyler D. Allen decided to create a Facebook page so he could chat directly with my daughter. His profile picture did not match his Ask Profile. Haircolor and facial features were different. Hmmmmm… I did a search and found his Facebook profile picture at a clip art site.
Scary scenario for any parent – right? You bet. If you have teens it is important to know what they are doing and sharing online. There are bad people out there not only sexual predators, but emotional predators.
This is what I did. I sent a friend request to Tyler and then sent him a Facebook message letting him know I was watching all online interaction and would not hesitate to report him to the authorities for cyber stalking as my daughter is a minor and that the legal penalties were fierce. I recommended that he cease all contact with my daughter. There are laws about cyber stalking especially when it comes to minors. The predator may be located half way around the world, but data shows that they may also be in your own community and may actually be a family or extended family member.
Sometimes an emotional predator will build a relationship and then move into the sexual arena. Anyway you look at it someone who is hiding their true identity and then interacting with your teen is a potential recipe for disaster. As parents we have to all work together to keep our kids safe by education, monitoring what is online about them, and stepping in when need be.
