Before we start I would just like to say I really want one of these machines.

There are some good looking machine available, with flashing lights and pretty add-ons, but there are very, very few who can match the range of pro gaming computers on offer at Commodore Gaming. Each of their pro gaming computer systems features a Ckin(/skin/) a custom Gaming related piece of artwork that is then painted onto the panels of the computer to produce a truly stunning looking computer system.

• High definition paint finish made to last
• Artwork is baked on metal case in 350 degrees Fahrenheit oven
• Paintwork is covered with durable anti-scratch layer for protection and shine
• Feel and touch of a painted car surface

  Best of all these ckins are changeable so should you see a new one that takes your fancy you can simply change the case panels to the new ones and you have a new looking machine.

Of course for gamers a pretty machine isn’t everything! so today we’ll take a look at the top of the range gaming machine Commodore xx coming in at just over £3000 it aint cheap but you can choose any of the Ckin range and just take a look at the specs below and you see below the Ckin this beauty is a real beast:

CPU/ Literally at the core of the Commodore xx is an>Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad Core CPU. Carrying out several multimedia based tasks while taking headshots or issuing commands to your guild has never been this seamless and fast an experience, with Intel’s four headed monster sitting inside your machine.

• Intel® Core™2 Extreme QX9650
• 12MB Level 2 Cache
• Clock Speed: 3 GHz
• FSB Speed: 1333 MHz

Chipset/ The P5N-T Deluxe is the most advanced, feature-rich motherboard available for gaming. It is triple SLI™ ready, has built-in 7.1 sound and many overclocking features for users who demand even more performance.

• ASUS® P5N-T Deluxe (NVIDIA® nForce® 780i SLI™)

Memory/ Corsair’s DOMINATOR™ Series make sure your memory is seemingly infinite. This 4096 MByte matched pair of DDR2s is built using Corsair’s latest high performance heat sink with Dual-Path Heat Xchange technology.

• 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 1066 MHz

Storage/ We are here to meet your storage needs, no matter how ridiculous they may seem! Do you have a massive collection of music, videos and still need more disk space? This is your chance to do something about it!

• Standard 2x 150GB SATA 10000 RPM (RAID0) and 1TB SATA 7200 RPM
• RAID 1 and 0 available
• RPM Starting at 7,200 up to 10,000
• Capacity Starting at 1 TB up to 4 TB maximum
• Interface Serial ATA 3GB/s

Optical Drive

• Standard Dual Layer Blu-Ray - DVD±RW Drive, also reads HD-DVD

Digital Media

• Standard 7in1 media reader / writer

Networking

• Integrated Dual High Performance Gigabit Ethernet Ports

Cooling/ In order to actually maintain its cool with all the heavy machinery put to work 24/7, the Commodore xx comes equipped Commodore’s exclusive Ice Cube technology. This thermal exchange system converts heat from the power supply into freezing cold air, generating a dramatic temperature decrease throughout the whole machine.

Graphics/ NVIDIA®’s GeForce® SLI™ setup inside the Commodore xx will ensure you don’t have to turn the graphics settings of your favourite games down. The world’s first DirectX® 10 GPUs deliver a graphical experience that takes you as far into your gaming reality as you dare to be taken.

• 2 x 1024MB GDDR3 dedicated video memory (512MB per GPU)
• Clock speed: 600 MHz
• Memory speed: 2000 MHz
• Up to 4 display support * with SLI™ disabled
• Full DirectX® 10 and OpenGL® 2.0 compatibility
• Shader Model 4.0 enabled
• NVIDIA® SLI™ enabled
• 4 DVI-I Connectors
• 2 HDMI Connectors

Sound/ To make your sound go well with your graphics, the Commodore xx is optionally outfitted with a sound card from Creative’s Sound Blaster® X-Fi series, the most powerful range of sound cards out there.

• Standard 7.1 onboard sound
• Optional Sound Blaster® X-Fi XtremeGamer
• 8-channel (7.1) 24 Bit audio
• Eight-channel analog jacks
• One Optical digital output

Connectivity

• Two Hi-Speed USB ports (front)
• One FireWire 1394 port (front)
• One 1/8″ analogue headphones jack (front)
• One 1/8″ analogue microphone jack (front)
• Six Hi-Speed USB ports (back)
• 1 PS/2 keyboard port (back)
• 1 PS/2 mouse port (back)

Case Chassis

• Exclusive Commodore Gaming Metal Chassis
• Exclusive C-kin process for high definition graphics
• Two lighted fans
• Easily accessible front connectivity port in Commodore Connect! Bay
• Unique 270 degree opening door
• Standard 850W power supply with Ice-Cube cooling system
• Easily changeable panels (front, sides and top)
• Height: 45 cm
• Width: 20 cm
• Depth: 50 cm
• Weight: 8.2 kg (empty chassis)

Operating System

• Microsoft Windows® Vista™ Ultimate

*note*

If your not a fan of Vista then with Vista Ultimate you can downgrade to XP using your own CD and then back to vista if you want to.  I would prefer to go for a dual boot option.

Now those are some serious Specifications any pro gamer would be proud of, and with these specs there are no game son the market that would put it under to much strain…

..but just to make sure if the guys at commodore gaming would like to send me one to test I’d be glad to put it through its paces.

Click here for more details

The Commodore xx is the top of the range model, for a more wallet friendly option you could try the Commodore GX with very good specifications at £1600 you should still have the edge on the competition

Technorati Tags:
pro gaming, gaming computer, gaming system
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

One of my newest students suffers with Cerebral Palsy. When we first started our lessons we made steady progress but a recurring theme was mousing difficulties.

We tried many things, increasing the mouse sensitivity, different mats, different mice all with varying degrees of success but still the usage of a mouse was a problem.

After attending a gaming LAN I turned up for a tuition session with my Razer diamond back still with me, and whilst unpacking my paperwork the obvious hit me.

Within a couple of minutes the drivers were installed and the mouse connected.

The first test was interesting, I’ve never seen a mouse pointer whizzing around the screen so much, after 10 minutes practise and a little tweaking with the in-built control panel, success.

Activities that would normally take a couple of minutes could now be done in next to no time and with much increased accuracy.

Why?

Without messing to much with the windows settings the average mouse operates at approx 400 dpi, the Razer had a dpi of 1600 3 times the sensitivity and with the drivers in place this seems like a lot more.

An action that would normally require 3 inches of mouse movement could now be completed in less than 1, meaning that with limited movement the same actions could be completed.

So if you need that extra sensitivity, precision or speed and not just for gaming why not try a high quality pro or gaming mouse.

the guys across at Spreadshirt are offering a free t-shirt from the marketplace if you blog about it(limited numbers if your interested ).

Browsing around the Marketplace there are certainly some interesting t-shirts available including this little Number:

Student Life

Certainly not for wearing when you having tea with you aunt dot is it.

My personal Favourite is ‘Power to Gaming’. A simple design with a lot of impact, and the mouse looks a lot like a Razer diamondback.

Spreadshirt

Power to Gaming

Whatever your taste pop over to SpreadShirtand see whats there or make your mark and design the next best t-shirt.

As highlited in a recent BBC Panorama Programme entitled “Children’s Fight Club” there is also a  growing trend of people adding very disturbing video’s to Youtube.

Whilst browsing around youtube its not long before you stumble across Video’s showing school children being bullied and psyically assulted by their own class mates. The attackers then place these videos on the internet for the world to see.Not only does the victim have to suffer the physical attacks but then they have the face the fact that the videos taken by their attackers will be on the internet, where they or their family and friends may see them.

Who’s responsibility is it to remove these videos?

YouTube’s Spokesperson Rachel Whetstone Says that it is the responsibility of the user community to decide wether these types of videos are innapropriate.

To me that sounds like passing the book, if I was to host similar videos on this blog then that would be my responsibility and you could almost gaurantee that I would be before a judge explaining my actions pretty quickly.

So how do Youtube and site similar get away with it? Surely there are laws preventing the distribution of video depicting criminal acts.

 Will Youtube moderate the content uploaded to their site, probably not, it would take a lot of people and money to police such a vast quantity of content. But then again the Parent company Google surely could afford this and I am sure that the ammount of money the site is making from advertising would more than cover the cost.

I personally feel that sites like these have a moral if not legal obligation to ensure that these videos are deleted, but until then I guess it is down to the Community to Mark the videos as innapropriate, that or find an alternative site for sharing videos.

Jessica Luthi CEO AffiliateProgramAdvice.com has compiled a very well written open letter to Youtube regarding this matter.

The Panorama Show is here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6920000/newsid_6923900/6923914.stm?bw=bb&mp=rm&news=1

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6921555.stm

 It’s a rare occasion for several reasons, obviously you dont get married every day, so that is the main thing but, I also have a whole day, yep 24 hours, off work, its unheard of and im not sure how I’ll manage(which is why im getting my internet fix this morning).

The scariest thing of all though, is the fact that I’ll be wearing a suit. Shock Horror.

So this will be my last post as a Free man, No longer will I be able to put single or co-habiting on surveys or forms.

 wish me luck. lol

Why? because I like to do everything myself, and to be honest I like to be in control.

In reality doing everything yourself may not always be practical or possible.

Say you had an excellent idea for a site but the main part involved a Flash application. Thats fine if you are familiar with Flash and can achieve what you need.

But if you’re not then you’ve got a lot of learning to do, theres the Graphics side of things, the action-scripting, sounds, security, testing. Thats a lot of learning and a lot of time.

Even if you have a little bit of knowledge chances are it will take quite a while to acheive the results you need.

Why bother? if its a one off project using a particular technology then Outsource it. You’ll save a lot of hair, time, and ultimately money.

While the works been done you could be setting up PPC campaigns ready, doing another site, creating content or relaxing down the pub.

Obviously outsourcing has its downfalls, your relying on someone else to get the job done, it might not be right etc.

You need to ensure that you explain fully what you need(after a non disclosure of course), the time-frame, and the budget, you then need to agree costs for extra works and possibly penalties or bonuses based on the deadlines, and if possible have any programing commented for when/if you do want to learn.

There are several sites available for hiring people for this sort of project, they all have some sort of buyer and seller protection, but the best thing in my opinion is to get recommendations from reliable sources. You all use forums, ask there, I did and found a diamond of a coder(I would mention names but i’d rather not as I don’t want him to be to busy for any future projects ).

So I am now happy to outsource some work it’s saving me time, stress and gives me time to concentrate on other projects.

At times you can put all your efforts into promoting a site and start traffic coming in, then the client will phone you and say “Client X didn’t even know we had a website”, and thats obviously my fault.

 So I’ve included here some of the things I recommend my clients, and all small businesses should:

• Ensure that all marketing materials have a website and email address as well as phone etc. give people the opportunity to contact you they way they want (within limits of course).
• If a potential customer requires further information, ask if they would like to receive it via email as well or instead of snail mail.
• Where possible have a “Quote this number for a…….” advert on PPC landing pages, particularly if sales aren’t completed online.
• Tell people that all up to date pricing/information is available on the website, and of course make sure that indeed up to date pricing and information are available on the website.
• Put a note or compliments slip in with orders or information packs etc. informing people of your sparkly website.
• When you email make sure the website details and emai details are present in the signature or similar.
• Make sure that the email you use is @yourcompanyname.co.uk using free email providers looks cheap and unprofessional.

and possibly one of the most important things, not just for your website but for any form of advertising.

• Where did you hear about our company?

Its suprising how many clients say “the website isn’t generating business” when there not even tracking where the business is coming from. I know we have stats etc. but if a products isn’t sold online and needs real world contact to complete sales, it can be hard to track.

If a company has invested time and/or money in  a website make sure you promote it to your current customers and contacts, if not having or them not knowing about your website makes them look at other companies then your loosing money, make sure you know where new customers are coming from, and as a result which advertising is working and make sure your site is up to date and working.

Yesterday’s meeting seemed a little rushed we had come to what I thought would be the end of the meeting in around 45 minutes, so i offered them a coffee before they went, “Before we go?, you better get some more coffee on the go we’ll be here a while!”

 At this point my mind is racing, wondering what the problem is.

“This affiliate marketing, How does it work again?”

So I explained the concept, again, then about how you need traffic and content to keep visitors coming back.

Then the inevitable question “so why aren’t you doing it?”.

Aaaaagggghhhh!!! that same bloody question, I ask myself it everyday.

Due to the way affiliate marketing works there is anything upto and beyond a 6 week lead, from making the sale to cash in the bank, and when you’ve got bills to pay and food to buy waiting that long isn’t an option. If I had the bills covered for 2 months I would go hammer and tongs at affiliate marketing, adding as many sites as I can, as much content as i can and driving as much traffic as I can. With a 2 month grace period affiliate marketing could easily become my main income(I don’t need a lot).

“Well how about if we pay you to develop some affiliate sites?”

I thought it had too be a wind up, but they are serious, they have some site ideas and want me to build and monitize them. An hourly wage and a percentage of the profits what more could I want, apart from a few more sites like that ;).

Is this a done thing in the industry? have an idea and pay someone else to make and affiliate site from it?

I suppose its no different to paying for an ecommerce site to be built and managed. But it gives me the opportunity to tune may affiliate marketing skills and get paid at the end of the week, which will hopefully allow me to develop more sites of my own.

After outlining what it was and briefly whats involved, they turned around and said, and I quote “You must be minted then, all that easy money”.

So this post is for them and for anyone else that thinks Affiliate Marketing is easy.

Guess what?, it isn’t.

Well not entirely true, if you want to cover costs of hosting domains and have a few quid then no problem, you only require a relatively small amount of traffic to earn enough. This is where i’ve been for the past few years, having fun, covering costs, but never really dedicating enough time to earn anything decent.

If you want to earn a living from affiliate marketing then you have a lot more work to do.

 The biggest part of affiliate marketing is a numbers game. If you have 1000 visitors to a site and 1% click through your advert and purchase:

1000 visitors 1% = 10 Purchases
average sale £20
Commission 5%

thats £10 commission per 1000 visitors to your site. If this traffic is based on organic listing then all well and good but if your promoting via PPC then you have that cost to take off.

Assuming that all your traffic is generic and free then to earn a wage you would need 30,000 visitors to your site to earn £300.

Which isn’t a huge amount in the grand scheme of things but you’ve got to retain those numbers on a monthly basis. So you’ve got to get the same people back buying something else or you’ve got to attract new people. Keeping a site up to date and fresh attracts new visitors and retains current so this is a must.

Is 30,000 people hard to get to your site? maybe. So what i’m doing is creating more sites in different areas this allows me to distribute the traffic I need across different sites and different subjects. So instead of 1 site requiring 30,000 visitors I will have 10 sites each requiring 3000 visitors, a far more achievable target in the short term.

But, 10 sites all requiring maintainance and content and ads placing and researching is 10 times the work of 1 site. I’m sure with practise and the right tools you can cut down the time required for each site but if we bargin on 10 sites 2 hours each, 20 hours per week then if we get quicker we use the same time and just create a new site.

So earning a wage via affiliate marketing is doable but like anything you only get out what you put in, sticking a site on the internet and expecting the cash to roll in won’t work.

How many sites did I say I was going to do? i better get to it then.

andy

To start with having your living room look like the TARDIS after a collision with an asteroid was bad enough, then when you get up in the middle of the night for a glass of water you pass the computer on the way to the kitchen and its just to tempting, befor you know it you’ve been sat there 3 hours and the sun is rising and you’ve had 3 hours sleep. Just too exhausting.

So we decided to get another Office, we contacted the County Council to see if they had any units available at one of their Business Enterprise Centres. Within a couple of days the Phoned us and offered us an office and we moved in yesterday.

 I wish we had made the move a lot sooner, the building is nicer, the facilities are excellent and the price, I would imagine, is pretty hard to beat. I have managed to get more work done this morning(apart from the interuption of writing this blog) than a whole day working from home and probably more than at the other office. Maybe I just needed a change of scenery or something to kick me up the back side, either way  am feeling very positive about the move.

 Andy