Hi All,

I might be heading over to Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco tomorrow to take some random videos again like AdTech 2008 but I just wanted to let you guys know on the biggest contest of the year before I leave you.

We are giving out 200 One Buck Wiki pages and 50 Beer Stocks, each worth $4,000 and $1000, total of $5000 worth of internet real estate and web traffic.

To enter, you need to enter the following contests:

(You will get 10 entries for entering the following contests)

Hochstadt.com Party Contest!

Ultimate Traffic Contest 5000 ECs and 50,000 BCs, and 10 Beer Stocks over at JoshWhitford.com

SiteHoppin Giveaway at Blogtomic.com

UPDATE: You can now enter John Chow’s 10,000 EC giveaway by blog posting about it and get additional 10 entries.

Here’s one more way to get your entries in:

Subscribe to Zedomax.com via E-mail and get another 5 entries.

Blog Post about this post gets you another 20 entries.

Here are the breakout of prizes.

1st Place - 25 Beer Stocks + 100 OBW pages

2nd Place - 10 Beer Stocks + 50 OBW pages

3rd Place - 5 Beer Stocks + 25 OBW pages

4th place - 3 Beer Stocks + 15 OBW pages.

5th place - 2 Beer Stocks + 10 OBW pages.

Remember, all winners will be verified with the other contest owners to see if you did actually enter their contests so make sure to enter to win!

The winner will be announced 1 week from today, so 30th, the end of this month at around 9PM.

You can leave a comment after you enter all the contests listed above to enter “this” contest.

Today, we will cover several ways that can help you to reduce cost of your printing, whether you are running a home business or a company with 1000 employees.

Make sure to Preview your documents before printing:

A lot of people might think this is something they do all the time but the truth is that most people waste a lot of paper printing out the wrong portion of their content, including myself.

Use that “Preview” button to preview what you are printing. Almost all applications including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Photoshop, and MS Word have this feature.

At least think about how many million trees would be saved if “everyone” used the Preview button?

Here’s an example of print preview on Firefox: (Yes, it’s so simple, isn’t it? Your actions can save a tree.)

Use Draft mode and Black and White mode for Drafts:

You can save additional time and ink if you are still working on your draft versions by using the draft mode.

Simply click on “Properties” and you should be able to set your printer to “Draft” or “Fast Draft” mode as shown here:

Save even more ink by printing in Grayscale:

Scan all documents “digitally” into CD or DVDs

Have you thought about all the stuff that could be digitized into a Jpeg or PDF file into a single CD or a DVD?

A lot of times, people will ask you to fax some important documents in order to verify your information when doing business.

By having all documents “digitized” and accessible from a single CD or DVD (or even your G-mail), you no longer have to remember where you left that Social Security card, passport, Business License, etc…etc… Although it is good idea to keep the original copies, I find it easier to e-mail my digital copies straight from G-mail.

I could be anywhere in the world and have access to all my important documents with just 1 CD or DVD instead of lugging all your documents everywhere with you, especially going over-seas.

Best ways to digitize your documents?

Get a good office scanner. I use an HP Deskjet F380, which cost me about $70 to do printing, scanning, and copying all-in-one. Although it’s slower than a laserjet, I can do most office work using it and it scans reasonably fast. I use it to scan all my invoices, receipts, and anything that can be scanned.

If you can afford it, there are some really nice laser version of the Deskjet, LaserJet M5025, which can scan hundreds of documents at a time and send them to your e-mail when its done via a single PDF file. This can prove to be very handy for all those POs and Invoices you have stacked up in huge boxes. I remember on one of my first jobs, I digitized about 20 boxes of POs (around 100,000 letter sized papers) from Wal-mart. (Think of how many trees I saved for their future POs!)

Nowdays, that company can simply access every one of their POs via a DVD-ROM.

Buy ink cartridges online from 3rd party suppliers

Buy cheap ink cartridges from 3rd party suppliers like DataBazaar.com. I find that their prices are much cheaper even if you are buying an OEM brand.

CD and DVD Labels

Now, just make sure to label them right using good CD labels, especially if you do have a lot of data to digitize. You can download free CD templates over here. These templates are great if you actually want to organize your digitized documents. You can even get some really good discounts on CD/DVD labels here.

Label Printers

If you like to spend more money, you can always get a label printer too. I have tried Dymo label printers before and these work really good with address labels or CD/DVD labels.

Print Labels and get your mail delivered faster!

Instead of spending time writing the addresses, I use my printer to print out labels so I save time on my frequent mailings and my mail gets there faster.
(Did you know that US Postal Service actually uses a scanner to process mail? If you have handwritten addresses, your mail will could actually take 1-2 days more due to manual scan by human workers. I did learn this through an executive manager I talked to at Pitney Bowes.)

By using labels instead of handwriting, you will save yourself hassle of writing and your mail will get to your destination faster. (You can even print out the US Postal Service address bar code on the envelope itself to ensure super fast delivery.)

You can also save some money by ordering labels from online label shops such as WorldLabel.com, which I have used before and found 40-50% cheaper than retailers. They even have popular “size-compatible” Avery labels, much cheaper than buying the branded ones.

Now, if you think this blog post will “change” printing behaviors of our readers, please leave a comment on how many trees you think we saved today.

Wow, it seems like search results for “Knol Project” is multiplying at the rate of every hour! It’s amazing how no one has really even tried this new Knol Project yet, there’s so much buzz going around the internet. We think Knol Project will be basically Google’s new knowledge database that will add nicely to their portfolio of search knowledge database.

Although we predict that Knol Project will never be close to Wikipeidia’s mass collaboration of information, Google’s new Knul Project could prove to be pivotal in providing useful information from authoratative sources such as real doctors and real professionals who practice their content, instead of having random people contributing to articles like Wikipedia.

We predict that their search results will still honor Wikipedia’s authority as long as Knol’s content isn’t any better. But if Knol proves otherwise, Wikipedia could be on its way to slow and tortourous death. (We doubt that though…)

In our efforts to keep up with Google’s latest Wiki project, we’ve got all the great news about the Knol Project in one post here:

CNet - Google develops Wikipedia rival

Zedomax - Knols Project Followup - Google’s Knol Project reminds me of a Paid Wiki

Wired News - Google’s ‘Knols’ aren’t a Threat to Wikipedia

QuarterWiki - Knols Project - Google’s new Wikipedia

BBC News - Google Debuts knowledge Project

OneBuckWiki - Knols Project - Google is building their own Wikipedia

EntreWiki - Google proves Wiki monetization is the future with its new Knols Project!

FiveDollarWiki - Google trying to make a paid wiki with its new project Knols Project!

The Huffington Post - Google Knol: Finder Becomes Producer

Gizmodo - Google Puts Wikipedia in its Sights, to Launch Knol Open Encyclopedia

EarthTimes - Google unveils anti-Wikipedia project ‘Knol’ - Featureseachviews - Google Launches Encyclopedia Project Knols

iTWire - Here comes Google’s Knol ‘edge’

BloggingStocks - Google’s Knol project: A Wikipedia killer?

Joe Duck - Google’s knol project

ReadWriteWeb - Knols Project: Google Experimenting With User Generated Encyclopedic Pages

Here’s a fun little project Digital Thermometer DIY that you can read and make your own with an Altoids can!

via

This instructable will show you how to create a multifunction platform with a thermometer, chronograph (count up timer), count down timer, and light display. It is also intended to be a platform for other analog sensors or any other functions you can think of.

Other Cool Digital Thermometer DIYs:

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

Zedomax Digital Thermometer - How to Build a Digital Thermometer in 1 Minute!

Zedomax Digital Thermometer II - Make a Ethernet Temperature Monitor

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

Zedomax DIY Hack - Let’s make a digital compass!

Zedomax Wall Clock Make a wall clock w/ temperature monitor from scratch.

You can see this Mini Cooper Billboard in San Francisco on your way towards Bay Bridge. I guess this is actually RFID enabled which is kinda cool. Yes, it’s a very effective way of advertising as I do read it about 75% of the time that I pass by this spot looking for changes in what the Mini Cooper is saying… (mostly kinda stupid… one time it was saying something like “Be small and Go faster” or something) But it is indeed very creative. I don’t know if it actually can identify Mini drivers but I will try to see if the sign changes next time I see a Mini in front of me… (and take a video of course!)

The boards, which usually carry typical advertising, are programmed to identify approaching Mini drivers through a coded signal from a radio chip embedded in their key fob. The messages are personal, based on questionnaires that owners filled out: “Mary, moving at the speed of justice,” if Mary is a lawyer, or “Mike, the special of the day is speed,” if Mike is a chef.

via businessinnovationinsider

Check out this mouse jiggler that jiggles your mouse annoying when plugged into any computer. You might have to call the IT department if you don’t know if the USB jiggler was inserted into your PC by your evil spirited co-worker. Talking about evil spirited co-workers, check out the USB Mouse Prank Garrett did on me the other day. (Well, Garrett is not evil, he’s a nice guy~)

Why? Either to make sure your screen saver doesn’t come on, or as a practical joke (depending on which mode you select). It was originally marketed towards security professionals and forensics experts who needed to ensure a laptop wouldn’t go into a password-protected screen saver mode while they were away.

via