http://www.themewars.com/themes/colormatic-theme/

http://www.ubdmoneytheme.com

http://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/

Project Natal is going to change video gaming. Microsoft will release this as an upgrade for all XBox 360 systems in 2010. It truly is what the Nintendo Wii should have been. Check out this video of Project Natal being demoed on the Jimmy Fallon show.

What do you think? Are you going to buy Project Natal when it comes out?

So this is the longest I have gone without a post in a while. This blog and its audience definitely deserves an update though:

Affiliate Theme
My last post was announcing Affiliate Theme. Well, Affiliate Theme received a ton of awesome exposure and a TON of people are using it to more easily set up affiliate marketing websites. We have a lot of cool new features and additions planned which we will be adding in the upcoming weeks.

Moved back to Seattle, from Arizona
I moved to Arizona from Seattle almost 3 years ago for school. School didn’t last long (I dropped out) and eventually started this blog and building online businesses. Six months later, UBD started and since then we have been running and growing the business.

Many of you who follow me on Twitter know UBD recently moved back to Seattle from Arizona. This was due primarily for business reasons as we have many more business connections and opportunities in Seattle. Not only that, but all of our families still live here and it is a definite plus to be able to say hello to the family more often.

What’s next?
We have some really cool projects we have been working on lately which are going to change the blog design industry. I am excited to announce some cool stuff in the coming months.

As I get more caught up with work, I definitely will be blogging more. I need to start doing video – it is so much easier!

WordPress has become the content management system (CMS) of choice for not just blogs, but also websites and even landing pages/review sites for affiliate marketers!

Why? Ease of use, familiarity, and more uses than Grandpa’s Swiss army knife.

We have worked closely with and picked the brains of some of the top names in blogging and affiliate marketing, including:

• John Chow


• Jeremy Schoemaker


• Yaro Starak


• Zac Johnson


• Paul Bourque


• Jonathan Volk


• Jim Kukral


• Gobala Krishnan


• John Reese

They have all told us the one thing they wish they had was a WordPress theme optimized for affiliate marketing websites. Well, now the wait is over…

Affiliate Theme is an innovative new WordPress theme built exclusively for affiliate marketers and make money online bloggers who build landing page, review sites, and other mini-sites for niche products and offers.

Watch how Affiliate Theme works

How is Affiliate Theme different from other WordPress themes?

Unlike ALL other WordPress themes, this is not a WordPress theme built only for bloggers.

This is the first WordPress theme built exclusively for affiliate marketers and those who build mini-sites, review sites and landing pages.

While you can easily use Affiliate Theme as a blog theme, its true value lies in the fact that you can build multiple variations of your affiliate marketing landing pages/review sites and track the conversion rate of your changes.

We give YOU options!

An innovative Theme Options panel allows you to change virtually everything about your theme – from layout, colors and fonts, to logo, header graphics, and even the wording on your call to action buttons! Save time and money! No longer will you have to re-input all of your offers each time to make a major change to your landing page or review site.

Why use WordPress to build affiliate marketing websites?

There are a few distinct advantages when using a CMS to build your websites. Just like you can change the look of your site without having to recreate all of your content, you can now build multiple variations of your affiliate marketing web pages without having to re-input all of your affiliate offers. This means you save time from the tedium of creating multiple variations of pages. Of course, this means you can spend less time building and more time testing and making money!

Who should use Affiliate Theme?

Both new and veteran affiliate marketers will appreciate Affiliate Theme’s ease of use and the time they will save when it comes to building affiliate marketing sites. New affiliate marketers who are generally unfamiliar with creating effective affiliate marketing websites will be able to easily create, test and track the effectiveness of landing pages.

Not just for code monkeys

You don’t need to be an expert web developer to use and customize Affiliate Theme. Affiliate Theme features one of the most customizable Theme Options panels a WordPress theme has ever seen. This means you can customize the look of your landing pages to suit any niche or vertical.

What else?

• Create affiliate websites using the best content management system! The first affiliate website creation tool built for the best content management system in the world – WordPress.


• Whatever kind of site you want! Six (6) unique layout options means you can easily split test and find the highest converting layout, which means more money for you.


• Perfect for any vertical! Photoshop-like color picker allows you to easily change the colors of your page background, headlines, navigation, call-to-action buttons.


• Brand your Affiliate Theme easily! Choose from a variety of header options – including integrating your logo, full header graphic, a pre-made UBD Niche Header Graphic, or plain text.


• Gorgeous affiliate websites, ready for your use! Forget about having to upload custom artwork. You can automatically choose from dozens of professional, pre-made header and background graphics, all for popular affiliate niches.


• Customize the heck out of your Affiliate Theme! Take your CSS-level modification to the next level by enabling and utilizing the custom stylesheet.


• Get featured! Add a “Featured” offer box to any layout, giving you, in effect, twice as many layouts!


• Insane typography options! Select the font, font-size, and font color for your headlines, post captions and main body font.


• Improve conversion with simpler navigation! Remove the navigation from your Affiliate Theme to make it more like a landing page. Otherwise, select between displaying the categories and pages in the navigation.


• Less coding for you! Integrate header and footer tracking scripts without touching a single line of code.


• Get more clicks! Customize the call-to-action buttons for all of your offers! Choose font, background color, size and rollover changes as well.


• Affiliate blogging made easy! Easily enable/disable RSS feed, author name, date, post headline, comments and trackbacks

Incredible Support – vast knowledge base and video screencasts show you how to do everything!

Affiliate Theme is not just any WordPress theme. With your purchase of Affiliate Theme, you get access to our incredible Affiliate Theme Resource Center.

We have put together a wide array of video tutorials (screen casts) and knowledge base articles you can access to make the most of your affiliate marketing efforts.

Not only that, but with your purchase of Affiliate Theme, you get access to the helpful Support forum where you can post your questions and see how other members are using Affiliate Theme most effectively.

Get access to exclusive super affiliate podcasts

UBD goes the extra mile by giving you access to podcasts with super affiliates such as Jonathan Volk, Zac Johnson, Jim Kukral, John Chow, Ryan Wade and Yaro Starak.

So, what are you waiting for? Get Affiliate Theme now and create affiliate sites faster than ever!

ul.split li{width:33%;float:left;clear:none;}

http://twitter.com/the_real_shaq

http://www.mashable.com

http://twitter.com/zappos

WARNING: For anyone who is not a total gear-head like me, this post may be of little or no interest to you. That being said, you have to admit…half-million AND MILLION dollar cars are pretty cool no matter what you think about cars, right? Yep, that’s what I thought.

This was my second time going to the annual Barrett Jackson Auto Auction and Car Show, which plays host to 250,000 people every year. It is a week long event that features some of the most amazing classic cars, modern day super cars, and even vintage and new race cars. Truly an epic event for anyone who is a car nut like me.

There is a new class of super-ultra-cars that are incredibly light weight, high in horsepower, and well, insanely fast. Those are usually my favorite cars to hang around, so I took most of my pics/video of these rare, exotic monsters.

I took my Flip Mino HD and digital camera to the event grab some footage/pics. Some of the most epic vehicles:

Koenigsegg CCX
4.7 L twin-supercharged V8
806 hp and 782 ft-lb of torque
Price: $1.2 million

Gumpert Apollo
640hp Audi V8 Engine.
Weight: 2400lbs
0-60 in 3.0 seconds.
Price: $425,000

Cadillac LMP-02
600 hp Twin Turbocharged V8
1984lbs (it’s a damn racecar)
Price: Auctioned off for only $145,000. This is the deal of a century. Some day this car may be worth MILLLLLLLLIONS of dollars!

Now, here is a video of a 1000HP Saleen S7 Twin Turbo rolling up. This thing was auctioned off for only $375,000 despite it’s $700,000 price tag! It was featured in Iron Man!

Saleen S7 Twin Turbo from Nate Whitehill on Vimeo.

Better start saving up! Check out my photo entire album here!

http://www.zacjohnson.com

http://www.affiliatesummit.com

http://www.rescuetime.com

http://twitter.com

http://www.citrustheme.com

http://masscontrolsite.com/blog/?p=46

http://www.ted.me/cereal/

With the recent election of Barack Obama, there is going to a new Presidential precedence in using the Interwebz to communicate with the US citizens.

There was no question Obama’s Internet marketing was top notch. He and his team had the most effective marketing of anyone who ever ran for office.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr – Barack Obama’s team has and is participating in all of these new mediums.

Even though he will likely have to give up his Blackberry when he gets to the Oval Office, Obama will still be the first president to use a laptop at his desk.

Add to that, Obama will now be giving a weekly address via YouTube. This is obviously a HUGE step in the right direction – not since JFK using TV has a president involved himself in new channels of communication.

With regards to his technology policy, perhaps what is best about the election of Obama is that he is a strong proponent of Net Neutrality, the purposed laws and measures which will keep the Internet open and free for a long time to come.

Obama will even be appointing the first Chief Technology Officer of the US. Hello, change.

Check out this video of Arianna Huffington (Editor in Chief of Huffington Post) interviewing Google CEO, Dr. Eric Schmidt about the underlying potential of the new Internet Presidency.

Hopefully, the US government will be able to be as increasingly transparent as businesses/corporations have become through the use of social media.

Whether you agree with the rest of his policies or not, with Barack Obama in the White House, the Internet wins.

What do you think?

http://blog.izea.com/2008/10/blog-design-makeover-promotion-2.html

http://natewhitehill.com/blog-world-expo-review

http://www.johnchow.com

http://www.izeafest.com

http://www.citrustheme.com

Today, August 22nd, 2008, is the 1-year anniversary of Unique Blog Designs. One year ago, UBD was born with the redesign of John Chow dot Com.

Fast forward one year, and we have worked with over 200 clients, including John Chow, ShoeMoney, Zac Johnson, Uber Affiliate, Fat Man Unleashed, Alex Shalman, MakeUseOf, Here.org.uk, Blog World Expo, Entrecard, and now, Yahoo!

Enter the UBD 1-Year Anniversary Contest

In celebration of our one-year birthday, we will be running a contest for the remainder of August (until Sunday, August 31st). The contest is open to everyone on Earth! If you are not from Earth, you are responsible for the cost of shipping. So, what are the prizes?

Grand Prize – Brand New 8GB iPod Touch ($299 value) and One (1) Copy of our New UBD Citrus WordPress Theme (coming next week).

Three (3) runner-up prizes include copies of our new UBD Citrus WordPress Theme.

How do I enter?

Entering the UBD 1-Year Anniversary Contest is super simple!

• For one (1) contest entry – just reply to this post with a comment. Only one comment per person will be counted.


• For five (5) contest entries – write a blog post about the UBD 1-Year Anniversary Contest and link back to this post. If your blog post does not appear under the “Pingbacks,” leave a comment with a URL to the post.

The winner will be randomly chosen Monday, September 1st, 2008. We will draw the winner via streaming video from the UBD office.

Official Contest Rules

• The contest runs from 12:00AM PST Friday, August 22nd, 2008 to 11:59PM Sunday, August 31, 2008.


• Winners will be chosen Monday, September 1, 2008 through a random drawing.


• Only one (1) comment entry per person and one (1) blog entry per person. The total number of entries any person can receive is six (6) entries.


• Prizes include (1) grand prize of an Apple iPod Touch 8GB ($299 value) and three (3) copies of our new UBD Citrus WordPress Theme ($99 value) – coming next week.
  
• Contest is open to everyone world-wide.

Thanks to everyone who has supported us over the past year! We have many exciting things planned for this next year!