Jacob S Paulsen's Blog, page 19

What Does Mother Nature Remind You Of?

Our home is situated in front of an open field. This open field does not open up to the wilderness. It, together with a small lake at one end, are surrounded by the homes of Denver suburbia on all sides. Within this wildlife safe haven we have seen a number of relatively “wild” animals which includes geese, muskrats, huge turtles & frogs, and all sorts of birds to include blue herons, ducks, etc. On a particularly lucky day we might also see a coyote or two. I love the coyotes. They have proven ski-dish as we have seen them chased by neighborhood dogs. The last year or so they have seemed more scare and less common to see.

On Sunday’s I’m particularly likely to spend a few extra minutes staring into the field with hopeful eyes. When I see the wonders of mother nature I’m turned to think of our creator and the serenity and brilliance of all of the creatures on earth. Perhaps that is why on Sunday I get extra excited to view our dear coyotes.

Regardless of one’s religious beliefs we all have a spiritual dimension of ourselves that we must grow and nurture. I have found that most people find that growth and serenity in mother nature.

How to Setup A Home Video Surveillance System Without Monthly Fees

In the first weeks of 2012 I added to my list of family goals for us to setup a home video surveillance system. Our family is very security minded and this was something we wanted to implement without signing a long term contract with a monitoring company. I’m not convinced that monitored home security systems are worth the money you pay… but that is a different article to be written. In the last month of the year we reached our goal. We setup the system we wanted and I though I would share with my readers how you could duplicate it.

Requirements:

A protected wireless network. (Password Protected Wireless Router)
A significant amount of internet bandwidth. We have appx 20MB from our cable internet provider.
A power outlet at each camera location. (Batteries won’t last long)

First thing you need to do is some shopping. You are looking for a “Wireless IP Camera.” There are many brands and providers. Some of the most reputable include D-Link and Foscam. Read all the product specifications. Please understand that the software that allows you to monitor and operate the cameras is built into the cameras. They are their own computers and when you access them you will be logging into the computer installed on the camera. So, understanding fully the various features included in that software as well as the hardware is critical.

Some features to look for:

How many unique cameras can be added to a single network?
Does it offer the ability to detect motion?
Does it Pan & Tilt (this is a feature worth it’s money)
Does it have some form of infrared technology that allows you to see in all lighting conditions?
Does it have a microphone and/or speaker built into the hardware?
Can you setup preset positions?
Does it come with any mounting hardware?
Can you record video?

Hopefully the cameras you select will come with detailed instructions to set them up. I will have to be a little more generic here since I don’t know what you will be acquiring.

First, you will need to plug the camera into your wireless router directly with an Ethernet cable. This has to be done initially so that you can program the camera to login to your wireless network. Once you have plugged it in, your instructions should give you a specific IP address to type into your browser that will allow you to login to the camera.

REMEMBER: the software is running on the camera itself. There is no program on your computer. Nothing to install.

Once logged into the camera you should be able to program it to login to your wireless network. There will be a variety of other configuration steps you may need to take. These should include selecting a wireless port, username & password, and nickname. When selecting a wireless port, be sure to pick a random 4 digit number. The default number provided in the instructions may not be ideal. This port number is a big part of the security of your video surveillance system so it needs to be super unique. If you are using more than one camera you will need different port numbers for each one.

How to Monitor Your Wireless IP Cameras?

You will probably find that you need to use Internet Explorer to take advantage of all your camera’s features. There are also a large number of apps available for Android or iOS that will fully monitor and/or operate your cameras. Search for IP Camera in the App Store or Google Play. If you intend to be able to access your cameras outside of your home network you will probably also need to add each of your cameras (with unique IP address and port) to the firewall exception list in your router’s configuration. When accessing them outside of your home network you will need to use your home IP address with port number along with proper security credentials.

 

How to Setup A Home Video Surveilance System Without Monthly Fees

In the first weeks of 2012 I added to my list of family goals for us to setup a home video surveillance system. Our family is very security minded and this was something we wanted to implement without signing a long term contract with a monitoring company. I’m not convinced that monitored home security systems are worth the money you pay… but that is a different article to be written. In the last month of the year we reached our goal. We setup the system we wanted and I though I would share with my readers how you could duplicate it.

Requirements:

A protected wireless network. (Password Protected Wireless Router)
A significant amount of internet bandwidth. We have appx 20MB from our cable internet provider.
A power outlet at each camera location. (Batteries won’t last long)

First thing you need to do is some shopping. You are looking for a “Wireless IP Camera.” There are many brands and providers. Some of the most reputable include D-Link and Foscam. Read all the product specifications. Please understand that the software that allows you to monitor and operate the cameras is built into the cameras. They are their own computers and when you access them you will be logging into the computer installed on the camera. So, understanding fully the various features included in that software as well as the hardware is critical.

Some features to look for:

How many unique cameras can be added to a single network?
Does it offer the ability to detect motion?
Does it Pan & Tilt (this is a feature worth it’s money)
Does it have some form of infrared technology that allows you to see in all lighting conditions?
Does it have a microphone and/or speaker built into the hardware?
Can you setup preset positions?
Does it come with any mounting hardware?
Can you record video?

Hopefully the cameras you select will come with detailed instructions to set them up. I will have to be a little more generic here since I don’t know what you will be acquiring.

First, you will need to plug the camera into your wireless router directly with an Ethernet cable. This has to be done initially so that you can program the camera to login to your wireless network. Once you have plugged it in, your instructions should give you a specific IP address to type into your browser that will allow you to login to the camera.

REMEMBER: the software is running on the camera itself. There is no program on your computer. Nothing to install.

Once logged into the camera you should be able to program it to login to your wireless network. There will be a variety of other configuration steps you may need to take. These should include selecting a wireless port, username & password, and nickname. When selecting a wireless port, be sure to pick a random 4 digit number. The default number provided in the instructions may not be ideal. This port number is a big part of the security of your video surveillance system so it needs to be super unique. If you are using more than one camera you will need different port numbers for each one.

How to Monitor Your Wireless IP Cameras?

You will probably find that you need to use Internet Explorer to take advantage of all your camera’s features. There are also a large number of apps available for Android or iOS that will fully monitor and/or operate your cameras. Search for IP Camera in the App Store or Google Play. If you intend to be able to access your cameras outside of your home network you will probably also need to add each of your cameras (with unique IP address and port) to the firewall exception list in your router’s configuration. When accessing them outside of your home network you will need to use your home IP address with port number along with proper security credentials.

 

How to Set S-M-A-R-T Goals

As you are considering goals and resolutions it is important to keep a few simple guidelines in mind. I like to refer to the acronym SMART when making goals.

S: Specific

Your goals should be very specific. If setting a weight loss goal do not determine to lose weight. How many pounds or what percentage of weight do you plan to lose? If you goal is to eat healthy, what does that really look like? Will you eat a specific number of treats each week, or eat 3 servings of fruit and/or vegetables each day? If your goal is to grow your department or business what exactly does that mean? Will you increase revenue by a certain percentage? Decrease expenses? Hire more people?

M: Measurable

If your goal is really specific it should also be measurable. If you don’t measure progress you can never hold yourself accountable and the goal becomes pointless. How will you be measuring your progress? Will you be keeping some type of written or digital diary? How often will you make entries to the diary to ensure enough data to track progress? If you are not clear on how you can track your current goals consult with friends or family and ask for feedback about how you can be more clear and setup a system to measure your progress.

A: Attainable

Is it possible? Can it really be done? Is it realistic. There is no point in setting yourself up for failure. Consider all the things that may come up. Goals are not meant to be easy but do not put yourself in a situation where you know there is no real path to success when lives comes at you.

R: Relevant

Do these goals really reflect the actions you need to take to move you closer to achieving self-actualization and working toward your personal, family, or organization’s mission statement? Perhaps the goal is relevant at some level but is the timing right? Is this the right thing in terms of your priorities? Keep yourself in line with what really matters.

T: Timely

Its important to set clear time expectations for your goals. Perhaps your goal is to increase sales 20% but when will you have that accomplished? Is your goal to do that within 6 months, a year, 3 years? Assign a timeline to every goals you write and measure against the due date.

Hopefully these guidelines will lead you to making smarter goals. I look forward to your comments below!

Blog Monetization With Kindle Publishing For Blogs

One way to generate some supplemental revenue with your blog is to publish it with Amazon Kindle. In addition to creating another stream of income it will also add some additional convenience for your subscribers who own a kindle.

Amazon’s system is relatively straight forward. It draws from your RSS feed and makes it easy for anyone to publish quickly. Here is a very short video tutorial that will walk you through the process.

 

See more Tutorials Here.

The Power of Snail Mail and Thank You Cards

In the last three weeks I’ve received three thank you cards. I think of this as a lost art. As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday I think its worth asking yourself, when was the last time you sent or received a thank you card? All of us want to feel special. Recently my sales team decided to craft physical letters to send in the mail to target prospects. Our culture has become so digital that hardly anyone bothers to put something in the mail anymore. The result was fantastic!

The first thank you card I received was from a mentor of mine. Receiving the card made me feel like he was appreciative of what I had done.

The second thank you card I received was from a CEO in New York whom I recently supported in his book launch. We have never met but he wanted to show his appreciation for my help.

The third thank you card I received from someone in Texas who was grateful for the work I do in leading my online business book group. I have also never met that person.

Stop and consider who are the people who have helped you recently. Perhaps someone who you know directly or someone you have never met. Who has recently supported you in a goal or project? Who has provided a product or service that you felt was extraordinary? Who recently recommended you or defended you to someone they know?

Go out and purchase a stock of thank you cards. Keep them handy and get them out often. You will bring big smiles to people’s faces.

All It Takes is 20 Seconds of Insane Courage

Not too long ago I watched the movie, “We Bought A Zoo.” Ever since I’ve been thinking about one of the key messages of the film. Here is the clip (courtesy of YouTube):

Fear is paralyzing. Fear has this amazing tendency to prevent us from finding joy and self-fulfillment. Fear, which I believe to be the opposite of faith, is a tool used by all those forces (seen and unseen) that want you to be miserable.

I am a person who believes in taking risks and following my gut feelings. This has on occasion led me to misfortune but more often than not it has paid me back endless dividends. I can think of several really important turning points in my life that fear tried to prevent. Among those I can remember the choice to marry my wonderful wife, serve a mission in Brazil, drop out of college, and start a large number of business ventures.

Dale Carnegie taught that when we are faced with a difficult decision we should first ask ourselves, “what is the absolute worst case scenario.” If, it really isn’t all that bad then you should move forward right away. If it isn’t so great then you should next consider the odds of the worst case scenario actually happening. How likely is it really? Lastly, if and when you chose to proceed, you should do your best to limit the potential risks of that scenario.

None of this however fully explains the genius of this line in the movie. We all know that fear is difficult to overcome. We all know that it prevents us from doing much that is wonderful in life. The real lesson to be learned here is that it takes very little courage to overcome the fear. We don’t have to be the strongest people or have superhuman conviction. All it takes is 20 seconds of Insane Courage. Twenty seconds is very little.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

This book is the best book I’ve read all year. A clever book that addresses a highly relevant topic for individuals, organizations, and societies with just the right mix of science, case study, and how-to practical application.

The book is effective at taking on a journey of understanding habits. The first part of the book breaks down habits. What are they? How do they form? How can they change? This first part has a focus on the individual and forces you to start looking for and identifying the various habit loops in your life. As I was listening to the first chapter on audio, I was driving home from work. When I left the office I knew very well that I wasn’t going straight home. I needed instead to go in an entirely different direction to teach a private class that night. Ironically, as I turned on the audio version of this book I clicked right into my habit and found myself outside my house before I realized that I had just lost an hour of time.

It seemed to me that as I continued reading, the author added some of the other critical elements of habit formation by using organizations and then communities and societies as examples. This allows the reader to understand habits in a full perspective while at the same time learning their various applications in all arenas of life.

Do you remember the last book you read that made you want to tell everyone you talked to about what you had just learned? This is one of those… be warned… or warn those around you because you won’t be able to stop thinking and talking about habits and how they can change your life!

NOTE: I read this book as part of the 12 Books Group; the largest online business and only author-led book group in the world.

Considering Self-Discipline and Will Power

I’ve heard many different definitions for the word discipline. The one I like best is “to chose long term joy over short term gratification.” I believe that I generally want to do the best things for my family, my employer, and myself. The big problem is at the core of human nature. As humans, we are programmed to react in our own best interest. Unfortunately, the human is often unable to recognize that what may serve us best in the moment, will not be to our best interest in the long term. This is the curse of human nature.

How do we force ourselves to always see the bigger picture. What can we build into our nature and instinct that will allow us to have a greater vision in the moment? This is the question surrounding the nature of true discipline. Whats more, discipline is not just the ability to make a good decision once. Discipline is the practice of making those decisions all of the time.

I think it has a lot to do with will power. Will power is what most of us think of as the resource that we draw on to make decisions that do not come naturally. The resource we use to make decisions that we know are good, despite our instinctive desire to do what is easy. This is why today I want to share two secrets to Will Power that I think can help each of us create a much greater degree of discipline in life.

Will Power Secret Number One

The first secret involves understanding something at the very core of will power. Specifically you must understand that will power is a limited resource. Think of it like a muscle. If you engage in your normal daily activities you probably don’t feel any sore muscles at the end of the day right? However, if you start working out, or increase your normal activity from your normal routine then you experience muscle fatigue. As we all know, if you maintain that level of activity your muscles will grow and eventually you will not be fatigued. In the same sense will power acts like a muscle. You have enough to accomplish your current normal level of activity. This probably means that you have enough to get up when you currently do, complete your daily work and activities like you currently do, and then go to bed. If you want to accomplish more during the day, or if you want to do more of the right things during the day, you need more will power than you currently have.

Let me illustrate this. When you have a really tough day of work how does this affect you? If work is more demanding than normal, forcing you to use more will power than normal to accomplish the tasks, then you use up your reserve of will power earlier in the day than normal. What does this do to your evening? You can’t force yourself to do anything you meant to do. Paying the bills, working out, and even preparing a decent dinner are all tasks you may now find out of reach. The will power muscle is tired.

Only by using it more and forcing yourself to exercise more than you think yourself able, will you begin to strengthen the will power muscle, giving yourself a greater resource to draw upon.

Will Power Secret Number Two

Do you ever notice that the most “successful” people you know tend to find success in every aspect of their life? The second secret to will power is understanding that if you can build good habits, you don’t need to exercise will power as often. Habits are things that you do instinctively without having to exercise the will power to accomplish them. You probably already have some great habits that play to your advantage. Imagine some of the things that right now require you to use will power to accomplish. Consider how you might be able to create automatic patterns around those activities that would allow you to react naturally.

If we teach ourselves simple patterns of behavior and practice the full pattern on often enough, it slowly starts to require less and less effort to achieve. That is the power of habits. Consider right now something in your life that takes effort to accomplish. Something simple. Now, consider how you can build an automatic pattern to accomplish that task. Next, put it into place and do it the same way, every time. It won’t be long before the habit will be formed and your will power muscle will be free to move on to other tasks.

Self Discipline isn’t too far away. We each can become better and work to utilize our own natural resources to achieve a greater level of discipline.

How Can I Tell If Comments On My Site Are SPAM?

If you have a website that uses popular blogging software such as WordPress, you probably are bombarded with comments that you assume are JUNK and other comments that you can’t help but wonder if they are legitimate or not. The following is designed to act as a guide and tutorial to help you better identify SPAM comments and prevent them from occurring in the first place.

How and Why Do You Get Junk / SPAM Comments?

Unethical internet marketing companies and professionals are willing to do about anything to get links back to their sites. One of the easiest ways to get a link to your site, from some other credible site, is to leave a comment. When leaving comments, most site publishers allow the visitor to leave a name, website, email, and text comment. So, there are a variety of programs and companies that will send an automated script (robot) to scour the web looking for places they can leave comments. Thus, these programs stumble upon your site and auto-fill the first comment box they can find.

Aren’t There Ways to Filter Out the Junk?

Yes, there are a variety of WordPress plugins that are designed to identify SPAM comments and send them right to the junk folder. Think of this in the same way your email works. Your Email Service Provider (ESP) identifies Junk mail when it comes into your inbox. They recognize Junk mail based on other SPAM reports given by other users of that ESP. WordPress plugins designed to do the same job are always using SPAM reports from users like you, to identify when the same SPAM comments are left on other blogs. When identified they are filtered out and you do not need to moderate them.

The most popular WordPress plugin for this purpose is Akismet. It comes pre-installed on most WordPress installations and can be activated when you obtain a WordPress.com API key. The API key is critical for the plugin to be able to communicate with the source file to index SPAM comments as they are happening.

You can also make sure your WordPress settings are setup to correctly handle incoming comments. For example I recommend that you moderate every incoming comment, not just first time commentators. Often time Spammers will send an innocent comment with no link so that after your approval, their future comments will publish without moderation.

Check your “Discussion” menu under WordPress Settings.

Should I Assume Then That Any Comment I’m Asked to Moderate is Legitimate?

No, just like in your email inbox, someone has to receive and flag as junk a new SPAM comment when it first hits the web. After a few users have flagged it as SPAM, future users who get the same comment will have it filtered as JUNK. On occasion you will be one of those who needs to mark it as SPAM.This creates the need that you really check every comment as it comes in.

When Moderating Comments, What Things Should I Look For to Identify SPAM

Check the Name:

Often SPAM comments will use words or phrases that are obviously not names. These can also be often disguised by words that you don’t recognize as names.

Vague or Generic Comment:

Spammers also use very generic comment text that they think will work if pasted onto every blog post in the world. Something like, “I’ve been looking for this for a long time,” or “Thank you for this post,” or “I’ve never thought about this topic that way.” Here is an example of a comment with a lame name and generic comment.

Check the URL:

Normal site visitors who leave comments will often not have a website and will leave that field empty when leaving a comment. Those who do have websites will almost always include the URL to their sites home page and not an internal page of their site. So, when you look at the URL in the comment and see that it is a long URL to an internal site page it is probably SPAM. ALSO, if they include a URL in the actual comment area you can almost be sure its SPAM.

Flattering Words:

Spammers like to play on your ego. Often comments with vague compliments that seem unrelated to the blog post are SPAM. Examples may include, “Your site is so awesome,” “You understand this topic so well,” or “I have been looking for this information forever.”

Poor Grammar and Misspellings:

Often Spammers try to misspell words and use poor grammar on purpose to try to get past some of the filters. Anytime you have to read the comment twice to understand it, its probably SPAM.

Here is a great example that shows a URL in the comment and some bad grammar.

Hopefully this has given you some insights into how you can prevent and identify SPAM comments on your WordPress blogs.

As a last thought let me also suggest a WordPress plugin called InComment Referral. This plugin will add a line at the bottom of your comment notifications so you can see from what website the user came to your website when leaving the comment. This is also a helpful way to identify SPAM comments.