I decided, after downloading and fiddling with Google’s new browser this evening, that a pretty good test of its mettle would be to do some Entrecard dropping with it.

First, I should note that every site I went to rendered just fine. I’m sure that makes all the web designers in the world heave a big sigh of relief. The last thing anyone needed was another set of odd CSS hacks they needed to incorporate into their designs.

It was also fast. Although there’s no Linky-like feature in Chrome, and I had to individually middle-click each link to load it in a new tab, there was absolutely no delay or stuttering while I did so. All the new tabs loaded happily on the screen. Unlike Firefox, which has scrolling arrows when you get too many tabs, Chrome just makes the tabs smaller, so when you’ve got lots loaded, it looks like a goofy looking mountain range at the top of the screen.

The biggest thing I noticed was that, even while the last sites were still loading, there was no delay when clicking the widget. You clicked the word Drop, and the next instant the Thanks, or Awesome was there.

Just to make sure this wasn’t just caused by a superfast Entrecard server tonight, I dropped my last 50 cards in Firefox. There’s a 6-8 second period where the yellow bar goes black in Firefox when some of the tabs have not finished loading.

The other thing I noticed is that when a script on someone’s site causes major malfunctions, Firefox closes completely, while Chrome just crashes the tab and keeps everything else running normally.

Actually, it doesn’t crash the tab, it just makes it unhappy. You gotta love those Google guys. Even a crashed web page becomes cute.

Finally, the extra screen space with Chrome might have also sped up the process, since I could see more of the widgets above the fold.

Overall, I really like Chrome. I am just hoping to see lots of cool add-ons like Firefox has.

In most people’s lives, there inevitably come telephone conversations which require massive amounts of time, but do not require your full attention. These can come in the form of calls from your mother-in-law, calls from a recently-dumped friend, or conference calls with clients about subjects merely on the periphery of your task.

While one option is to grin and bear it and sit passively through the call, if you mute the speakers on your computer you can effectively multitask during the call without sounding too distracted when you are called upon to speak.

Remember, muting the speakers on your computer is a very, very good idea. There are still far too many sites that blare music upon arrival, and the new pay per play advertising that’s sounding off in various circles would not make a good impression on your mother-in-law or your clients.

So here’s a list of things that will let you educate and entertain yourself without reading so much you’ll lose track of what your phone call is about:

1) Drop Entrecards. This option requires the least amount of brain power, so is ideal if you actually need to participate in the telephone conversation aside from the occasional “uh huh” and “okay”.

2) Check your stats for interesting keyword phrases. It can be of great benefit to find out what people are searching for when they find your site. Much of it can help you target your content… especially if your existing content doesn’t quite answer the question people were searching for answers to. If you’re a blogger, this is a fantastic way to come up with ideas for new posts.

It can also be amusing. You’ll inevitably find some incredibly weird search queries leading to your site like, “how do you get a pencil eraser out of your ear?”

3) Scan Clickbank or Paydotcom for new products related to your niche. It’s easy to think that you’ve seen all the products related to your niche already, but new products appear all the time. Some are great products from not-so-great marketers, so those products with amazing potential might not appear on your radar any other way.

Bookmark anything that looks interesting for further perusal… don’t spend too much time reading, since you’ll completely lose the conversation you’re supposed to be listening to if you do. Just figure out what the product is and make an impulse judgement whether you can sell it or not.

4) Play with some keyword suggestion tools. You can have loads of fun plugging in keywords at the various free keyword suggestion tools. Not only can they give you some new content ideas, but sites like spyfu can let you see what your competition is doing differently than you.

5) Use online tools to analyze your Website. You can learn a lot about how users and search engines see, rank and use your website by playing with tools like Website Grader which will grade your website on SEO, incoming links, social popularity and other factors, and give you suggestions on how to improve; SEO Analyzer which analyzes the actual code of your site and offers some suggestions on how to improve it for optimal SEO; BrowserShots will help you see your site in different browsers and resolutions; and the insanely cool CrazyEgg will let you see a heatmap of your design, finding out parts of your site are drawing your visitor’s attention.

While any tasks that require your full concentration are not at all recommended during a telephone call, having some of the above in your toolbox can keep those calls from being a complete waste of your time while still allowing you to interact when necessary.

Today Entrecard announced a partnership with SezWho , a universal profile service for the social web designed to engage communities and enable content discovery.

SezWho allows you to set up a profile, and have your comments across blogs using SezWho aggregated. So if you offer an erudite comment on blog A, people who read it can click your profile and see posts from your own blog as well as your comments elsewhere in the blogosphere.

In combination with Entrecard, not only do you get the advantage of a ‘carry along’ profile, but you can earn EC credits for your posts too.

However, we wouldn’t want people running around and writing “nice post” on every blog they see, trying to game the system and earn credits. So the community will be responsible for rating comments, and rating them truthfully. Depending on how well your comments get rated, and who rates them, your comments will earn you a sliding reward ranging from 1 to 10 credits. If your comments get rated poorly, especially by a blog’s owner, you won’t earn a thing.

This rather brilliant move should help to significantly offset the Bounce Rate problem that Entrecard has had.

I’ve just installed the SezWho plugin, and will be watching my Google Analytics carefully to see if it does improve my bounce rate, which went from ~30% before Entrecard to ~75% after.

I’m giving away 100 Entrecard Credits to the first 50 EC users who send me a secret code….

All you have to do is click this link to subscribe to my Google Links, then do a Google.com search for
Hello Mindsurfer to see the code and instructions.

I’m not the biggest Entrecard user on the Net, so it took me until early this morning to notice the ad price inflation that has taken place on the service.

The change was intended to make EC more of a marketplace rather than a popularity contest, but the result, at least in the short term, was to devalue the Entrecard credit as a ‘currency.’

Right now, there are very, very few sites that it would be smart, from an economics point of view, to advertise on with EC credits because they are simply a BAD DEAL.

I’m not talking hypothetically, here.

Take ProBlog Reviews, for example. A site with four months of archives and a PR0, is currently at top of the Make Money Online price list at 262144 EC credits per day.

Given the average market price of credits on Ebay for the past month, which is approximately .0045 per credit or $4.50 per thousand credits, advertising on this blog would cost $1,179 per day in real cash value.

Problogger.com’s ad price is currently listed at 131,072 EC credits per day, which in real value terms is about $590 per day or more than $17,500 per month. I think you can get a better deal on his regular ad space through B5 Media.

John Chow’s blog will cost you a much lesser amount… 8192 EC credits per day. Still, that’s a monthly ‘real cash’ rate that’s double his ‘get reviewed by’ price. You’d be better off buying direct.

My estimate is that the Ebay price for EC credits is currently way too high. The ‘real’ price – based on advertising value – under the current credit system is .00125 per credit, or $1.25 per thousand.

So, what to do.

First, don’t buy EC credits from Ebay until the price stabilizes under the new system. Second, don’t advertise on any sites over 128 credits until prices stabilize. Till then hoard your credits or exchange with other EC users for things of real value like reviews or permanent links.. Finally, keep reciprocating and dropping, since this is still, and will remain, a very valuable way to grow traffic to your blog.

ONE FINAL THOUGHT

I recall reading somewhere that EC will begin selling credits for $10 per 1000 EC credits. Under the current credit advertising system, I don’t think this will work for them.

Assuming the biggest and best blogs out there charge $10,000 per month for an ad –and that’s way more than I’d be willing to pay, but just go with me here — then the ‘real money’ daily price for an EC widget ad shouldn’t be more than $333. If the folks running EC want the value of 1000 credits to be ~$10, then ad prices for any blog should max out at about 33,333 EC rather than the hundreds of thousands of EC they are at right now.

Does that make sense, or is my math off?

All other thoughts, opinions, or disagreements are welcome in the comments.