Mindanao Bloggers Summit 2 Featured on TV

Thursday, October 30, 2008





This video clip was aired on October 29, 2008 over ABS-CBN's Regional network's morning program, “Magandang Umaga Socsksargen” hosted by DJ Joey C and Ms. GenSan 2006 Rhean Hazel Hacosta. I was also told by those who saw it that part of the clip was aired on ABS-CBN's prime time news program, TV Patrol. Mindanao Bloggers Summit 2 is the grand eyeball of bloggers based in Mindanao (Philippines). Its main purpose is to give the world a better view of Mindanao. We all know that at present the media is painting a somewhat inaccurate image of this part of the Philippines by sensationalizing the "war" that is happening in some areas in Mindanao. Actually the "war" is limited to a small area, a little fraction of the big island that is relatively peaceful and very progressive. The "war" is nothing but the government forces chasing down some bandit groups who are hiding away in some forested mountains.

I am proud to say that I am a native of Mindanao and participated in the summit (you can see me in the clip).

Yahoo's Open Strategy

Tuesday, October 28, 2008


Yahoo! is really working hard to better compete with the big ones, Google and Microsoft. Yesterday Yahoo! launched Y!OS or Yahoo! Open Strategy. This is Yahoo's way of opening up their products to third party developers, which would lead to a wider use of their products.

Y!OS have three major components : Yahoo Social Platform, Yahoo Query Language (YQL), Yahoo Application Platform.

If you have been following Yahoo! you would probably have seen how the company has been "opening up" lately. We saw it in the way they tried social media from a new angle, and how they integrate SearchMonkey projects into regular search.

More "opening up" is expected in the future. "In 2008, it’s been all about building the base platform," Sam Pullura, Yahoo! Application Platform Vice President said. Yahoo! will focus on integrating the platform into the rest of Yahoo! in the remaining months of this year and into 2009. Pullara added that the "social dimension" will begin to be felt by users when they activate the network across services like Yahoo mail, and Yahoo Messenger. With this, developers will have the chance to create "cool" things.

Yahoo is becoming more and more interesting. we'll see what's coming in the next few months.

The Gadget Advisor

Sunday, October 26, 2008



For tech bloggers like me, it is important to be always updated with what is happening in the world of technology. It is part of my daily life to wade through the flood of technology news and try to pick the very few that are worth blogging about. One of the sites that gives the most significant, useful, or particularly cool technology news is GadgetAdvisor.com. Though this site is quiet new, it shows a lot of promise because they only post news items that are carefully hand-picked, making sure that the top products and news items are always what they present. If you blog about computer hardware, software, gadgets, and tech news, you should check out this site. It was in this site where I read about the best extensions for Firefox and some cool stuff about the Google Cache Checker Firefox extension. I have also gleaned some good items about cool software like their Blaze Media Pro review which is very useful to the likes of me who dabble every now and then with things like converting video files and stuff like that.

Mindanao Bloggers Summit 2



I've been to the two-day Mindanao Bloggers' Summit 2 in General Santos City. I have posted about it in my other blog.


Shop Online with Shopwiki

Friday, October 24, 2008


Shopping online has become more and more convenient nowadays; you can find almost anything you want to buy online, there's no need to move from your chair to shop, all you need to do is let your mouse do the shopping. It's amazing how technology makes our lives easier everyday! Now Shopwiki.com has made it even more convenient for online shoppers to get what they want from their shopping. Unlike traditional shopping sites that will only show you stores that have paid for placement, Shopwiki.com will give you everything. Why? Because Shopwiki does it like Google: it crawls every store in the internet and get you to the product you are looking for. So if you are looking to buy something that is not so common and not that easy to find, head to Shopwiki.com and find it. A friend of mine was trying to find a particular infant car seat carrier for days but she was not able to find exactly what she was looking for. I told her to find it through Shopwiki.com and sure enough, she found the infant car seat carrier she was looking for.

What if you're looking for some rare beverage, or a rare book, or some fabric for your homemade doll that you wish to buy online? Shopwiki it, you'll have a better chance of finding it. By crawling internet stores instead of relying on data feeds from merchants, Shopwiki has more to give you when you search for a particular product. By the way, ShopWiki is not a store and does not sell anything, its main purpose is to help consumers find the products they are looking for online with ease.


Google's Gmail 2.0 for Mobile

Thursday, October 23, 2008




Google is introducing Gmail 2.0 for mobile. This is for mobile phones that support J2ME. Version 2.0 is available in over 35 languages. In the Google Mobile blog, software engineer Derek Philips emphasized that the Google's main focus in this new version is "to make the experience faster and more reliable". According to him the entire client was architected to "push all the processing to the background, greatly improve the client-side caching scheme and optimize every bottleneck piece of code".

Gmail 2.0 for mobile has the following features :
  • Overall performance improvement: You should experience significant raw speed improvement, smoother scrolling, and no freezing.
  • Multiple accounts management: If you have both a Gmail and Google Apps email account, you can easily switch between them quickly. You will no longer have to use two different mobile apps to access personal and work emails.
  • Multiple mobile email drafts: You can save multiple email drafts in your mobile phone, so that you can pick and choose what you would like to send later.
  • Powerful shortcut keys: If you have a QWERTY phone, you can use shortcut keys. Hit 'z' to undo, 'k' to go to a newer conversation, and 'j' to go to an older conversation. See Menu/Help in the app for more shortcuts.
  • Basic offline support: Can't get a signal? Not a problem. You can compose and read your most recent emails even when there is no signal. Also, any outgoing messages will be saved in the outbox on your phone and sent automatically when you're back in coverage.
The new version of Gmail for Mobile can be downloaded from m.google.com/mail from your mobile browser. Take note that not all features are available for every phone.


Is Blogging a Thing of the Past?

Tuesday, October 21, 2008


Two days ago someone posted in a not so popular magazine's blog an article that starts with these words :

Thinking about launching your own blog? Here's some friendly advice: Don't. And if you've already got one, pull the plug.

And he continued his rant with this paragraph :

Writing a weblog today isn't the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It's almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

And he went on and on with his argument. Honestly, some of his points have merit but when you look at the article as a whole it loses its power. One thing that you will notice is that the writer is just trying to bait some links. He knows that many bloggers would react and blog their reaction about his article and of course he will earn a lot of inbound links which would help Wired magazine's n/a pagerank. The very fact that he used a blog to publish an article about the futility of starting a blog now defeats his argument. If he really thinks that blogging is a thing of the past he should have used a different avenue to announce it to us. But the poor link baiter is using the best way to announce something, he used blogging.

Now he won't have any inbound link from me because I did not give him what he wants. If you are interested about reading his article just Google it. But I doubt if his article would come up high in your search because his article is in a magazine's blog with n/a pagerank.


Give Your PC a Mac OS X-like Dock

Monday, October 20, 2008


You are not using Mac OS X but you would like to have that cool dock. Well, you can have it in your PC with RocketDock, a customized bar of icons that allows you a quicker access of your most frequently used programs. It provides a nice clean interface with its a smoothly animated, alpha blended look. Your minimized windows can appear as icons on the dock with its added Taskbar support.



The coolest feature of this app is the fact that it is free. Yes, Free.


Where Would You Go? (Part 1)

Sunday, October 19, 2008


WebThe internet is where you will find anything under the virtual sun. Yes, anything that can be saved electronically can be yours through the internet. When we say "anything that can be saved electronically" it includes every single one of the billions of files in the millions of servers in the internet. We have so much information in our hands, too much to be taken in one gulp. Too much information could confuse us, when we want something we are often at a loss as where to start looking for that little piece of information or file which is buried somewhere in the multitude of electronic data flooding the net. Most of us has Google to help us find what we want to find but it is good to know exactly where to go when you need to get something. I have been using the internet for years so I have my own list (not an actual list, but just a list in my head) that I think would be of help to some people.

Where would you go when you want to...

...find music, books, or videos?

If you are looking for indie music, you can head to Pitchfork, one of the first and the best indie music websites. If you want a social network whose reason for existence is music, then you can go to Last.fm, you'll be hipped to several new bands there and discover new music. You can also go to Metacritic.com if you want to read fresh criticism about mainstream films, DVD's, music, games, and TV. They have a wide selection and the reviews are written well.

As to books, Amazon is still the best but you can have Powell's too if you want a site that focuses primarily on books (Amazon is not only focusing on books) and offers quality reviews to old and new volumes.

Now, if you want to browse through an extensive list of free Business, Computer, Engineering and Trade magazines, white papers, downloads and podcasts, why not hit it with Tradepub, there you will find the titles that best match your skills and interests; topics include management, marketing, operations, sales, and technology. Simply complete the application form and submit it. All are absolutely free to professionals who qualify.

... store and share stuff

I use a lot of services to store and share my stuff, one of those is Ziddu.com, a very good site where you can dump your files on and share it to friends. Every time someone downloads one of your files (wheter its an image, music, PDF, and anything) you earn. You will be paid through Paypal when your balance reaches $10. Rapidshare is also a favorite of mine, I have gigabytes and gigabytes of files in their servers, and I have two years worth of Primium account from them. Probably that would tell you how good Rapidshare is.

Some more alternative sites where you can dump your digital stuff : Drop.io, here you can have up to 100MB space for your images, music, videos, documents, and more. Drop.io is easy to use, simply set up a private space to drop any files by phone, email, web, widget or fax and then share them with whoever you want via a variety of outputs.

If you want a social network with a "file sharing" theme, you need to check out Esnips, a place where you can store your content and access them later. What makes esnips good is that it is really a social network where you can discuss with member the stuff you store there.

...publish your stuff

If you are into photography and you would like to publish your images, you can use Picasa, Google's answer to Flickr. What if you want the world to know about the book you have just written and you do not know where to start "publishing" it? You can employ the help of Lulu, which will help you publish hardcopies of your book at a reasonable price.

When it comes to publishing your videos, we all know about Youtube, but there are also cool alternatives like Vimeo, which allows you generous amount space for your large files.

If you want to publish your own music and videos, then you can go to UnicornMedia, I have a separate post for this beautiful site that gives a chance to unpublished artists (musicians and indie film makers) to have audience and to be promoted (and get that break you've been waiting for all your life).

...access private information

well, Searchsystems is one of the oldest and most reliable company that does the legwork of collecting all kinds of public records and sell access to them via the internet.

If you really want to dig dirt, Glassdoor will indulge you. You can log in anonymously and write what you really think about the company you work for, tell all your gripes about your lousy boss, your rants about how you are recieving salary that is way below your worth, and stuff like this. Then after you write all of those stuff, it is only then that you will be able to access the "dirt' of your boss, his company, and your co-workers.

I am writing this post too long, more of this in Part 2 of this post.


Designing Websites for Multivariate Testing: Top 3 Tips to Ensure Your Success

Saturday, October 18, 2008


If you are like most online marketers, you are doing everything you can to optimize your website. One of the best ways to optimize your site is through multivariate testing, which is a technique that enables your visitors to tell you what's working on your site and what isn't. Download this information brief to find out how you can evaluate the effectiveness of your web site using three top tips to prepare your site for multivariate testing success.

Learn how to reach your marketing goal and gain the competitive advantage that makes it possible to out-test, out-learn and out-optimize competitors.

Google's First Click Free


Of course when I need to find something on the web my first stop is Google. But not everything that I find through Google are easily accessible. Some information are behind a registration wall, meaning I need to register in that site before I could access what I need that happens to be inside. This is annoying especially if you are in a hurry and you badly need the information behind the registration wall. This is exasperating when you will be required to shell out some money to register. Now Google is putting a stp to this with First Click Free. In order to help users find and access content that may require registration or a subscription, Google offers an option to web and news publishers called "First Click Free." First Click Free has two main goals:
  1. To include highly relevant content in Google's search index. This provides a better experience for Google users who may not have known that content existed.

  2. To provide a promotion and discovery opportunity for publishers with restricted content.

Webmasters wishing to implement First Click Free should follow these guidelines:

* All users who click a Google search result to arrive at your site should be allowed to see the full text of the content they're trying to access.

* The page displayed to all users who visit from Google must be identical to the content that is shown to Googlebot.

* If a user clicks to a multi-page article, the user must be able to view the entire article. To allow this, you could display all of the content on a single page—you would need to do this for both Googlebot and for users. Alternately, you could use cookies to make sure that a user can visit each page of a multi-page article before being asked for registration or payment.


Personalized Flash Drives

Friday, October 17, 2008


Most of us can't live without these things : cellphone, computer, and your flash drive. Yes, for the modern man these three things are essential for survival in the urban jungle. Your personality shows in the way you personalize the important gadgets that you have. You do not want to be generic, you want to be different so you express your difference in the way you choose themes and add-ons to your cellphone and PC. But what about your flash drive? how do you personalize it? Aside from having a personalized wallpaper for it (which only you would see and is kind of too teeny for a yuppy) you can do a lot of things for your flash drive that would show your uniqueness. With Pexagontech.com, you can make your flash drives personal. Here are the top 10 reasons why you must personalize your thumb drive:


Personalized Flash Drives
1. The New Brag Book
2. Organization Is The Key To Success
3. Share Music
4. Be A Corporate Big Shot
5. Multi-Media Love
6. The New Mix CD
7. Portable Library
8. Build Customer Loyalty
9. Network And Be Remembered
10. For The Person Who Has Everything


* Your choice of 14 colors
* FREE Laser engraving on BOTH sides!
* Choose from one of our 32 exciting Themes such as "#1 Teacher", "Sports" or "Butterflies"
* Personalize the back with two lines of text
* Available in 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities
* Hi-Speed USB 2.0
* One piece, standard shipping only $4.65! 20 cents each additional drive.

512MB - $9.99 | 1GB - $11.99 | 2GB - $16.99 | 4GB - $24.99 | 8GB - $34.99 | 16GB - $69.99

NO ORDER MINIMUMS.



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Public Beta of Windows 7 Could be Available on December

Thursday, October 16, 2008


Rumors has it that Microsoft is planning to run a public beta test of Windows 7 beta 1 this December. As of now no one knows how Microsoft would go about distributing Windows 7 beta to the public but there's a buzz that Microsoft Connect would be used to administer the test and sign up of beta testers. Now, Are you excited? As for me, not really. I am just curious as to how the next Windows would fare.


Yahoo Web Analytics

Wednesday, October 15, 2008


Yahoo! launched its own web analytics service. It is still in beta stage and is available on a limited basis to a selected few advertisers and third party application developers. Yahoo! has acquired IndexTools earlier this year so it is only natural for them to roll out this kind of service which is also being offered by Google and Microsoft.

The next "big deployment", according to Jitendra Kavathekar, Yahoo's VP of Web Analytics, will be for Yahoo's Small Business service users. Yahoo Web Analytics will continue to be rolled out this year and into 2009. This service is free. In Yahoo web Analytics FAQ, three reasons are pointed out that make this service better than what Google and Microsoft has to offer:

  1. Real-time Data: “While some analytics products provide data 24-48 hours after collection, Yahoo! Web Analytics reflects data within minutes of collection.”
  2. Raw Data: “While some products store aggregated data, which restricts the usefulness of the data to pre-created or canned reports, Yahoo! Web Analytics stores data in non-aggregated raw form.”
  3. Ease-of-Use and Flexibility

List of Free Blog Sites


Ever wondered how many sites are there where you can create your free blog? Of course we all know about the most popular ones are Blogger and Wordpress. Some people use Multiply and Nireblogs. But if you would like to know more than these sites here is a list of more than 200 sites that offer free blog hosting :

https://www.blogger.com/
http://www.myspace.com/
http://www.livejournal.com/
http://wordpress.com/
http://geocities.yahoo.com/
http://www.filefront.com/
http://my.opera.com/community/
http://www.vox.com
http://9rules.com/
http://www.newsisfree.com/
http://peopleconnection.aol.com/blogs
http://www.xanga.com/
http://members.freewebs.com/
http://www.bravenet.com/webtools/journal/
http://www.angelfire.lycos.com/
http://boingboing.net/
http://www.snap.com/
http://www.doteasy.com/
http://squarespace.com/
http://www.diaryland.com/
http://www.blog-city.com/
http://www.zefrank.com/
http://www.thefreesite.com/Free_Blog_Resources/
http://www.antville.org/
http://www.blogher.org/
http://www.blogrankings.com/
http://edublogs.org/
http://www.textamerica.com/
http://weblogs.us/
http://www.bloghub.com/
http://portal.eatonweb.com/
http://www.blogsearchengine.com/
http://www.blogowogo.com/
http://bloghi.com/
http://www.weblogger.com/
http://www.freevlog.org/
http://blogrox.com/
http://www.inknoise.com/pages/index.php
http://multiply.com/
http://thingamablog.sourceforge.net/
http://www.bloggar.cjb.net/
http://www.blogsome.com/
http://www.salon.com/blogs/
http://www.tumblr.com/
http://blog.com/
http://www.fotopages.com/
http://www.blogdrive.com/
http://www.twoday.net/
http://www.blogspirit.com/en/index.php
http://www.jaiku.com/
http://blogs.botw.org/
http://www.weebly.com/
http://www.ziki.com/
http://www.alivedirectory.com/Blog-Directory/
http://www.blogger.de/
http://www.pitas.com/
http://www.blog.co.uk/
http://www.insanejournal.com/
http://www.blogharbor.com/
http://www.terapad.com/
http://www.motime.com/
http://www.easyjournal.com/
http://findory.com/
http://www.20six.co.uk/
http://www.myblogvoice.com/
http://www.weblogalot.com/
http://www.viddyou.com
http://www.deadjournal.com/
http://www.lsblogs.com/
http://www.blog.ca/
http://www.danchan.com/weblog/
http://ourstory.com/
http://www.supersized.org/
http://www.etribes.com/index_etribes.php
http://www.21publish.com/
http://www.bloglisting.net/
http://thespoke.net/
http://www.iseekblog.com/
http://www.blogates.com/
http://www.loudblog.com/
http://www.upsaid.com/
http://writetomyblog.com/
http://www.openserving.com/
http://www.beanrocket.com/
http://blogslive.net/
http://www.bloki.com/
http://www.botablog.com/
http://70.86.12.98/~ranger/22blog/
http://www.thumblogger.com/
http://zorpia.com/
http://www.maktoobblog.com/
http://www.zoomshare.com/
http://www.memebot.com/
http://tabulas.com/
http://www.opendiary.com/
http://www.snapvine.com/blog/list
http://www.journalfen.net/
http://www.weblog.ro/
http://blogster.com/
http://www.tblog.com/
http://www.soulcast.com/
http://www.blurty.com/
http://www.ebloggy.com/
http://www.today.com/
http://www.busythumbs.com/
http://clearblogs.com/
http://www.aeonity.com/
http://www.blognow.com.au/
http://www.bloghoster.net/
http://www.weblog.com/
http://www.thoughts.com/
http://www.blogr.com/
http://www.alkablog.com/
http://www.shoutpost.com/
http://2pt.net/
http://www.blogeasy.com/
http://www.mydeardiary.com/
http://www.bloggerteam.com/login.php
http://www.blogstudio.com/
http://okayblog.net/
http://www.deardiary.net/
http://seo-blog.org/
http://www.kmax.ws/bloglinks.htm
http://www.blogupper.com/
http://www.phlog.net/
http://www.blogdog.com/
http://www.wikyblog.com/
http://www.globenotes.com/
http://www.my-journal.com/
http://www.blogladder.com/
http://livelyblog.com/
http://blogs.xanco.com/
http://www.atom5.com/
http://www.blogtastic.com/
http://johndoe.org/
http://www.journalfiend.com/
http://www.jeeran.com/blogs/
http://avblog.userplane.com/message.cfm
http://www.blogtv.com/
http://blogs.skaffe.com/login.php
http://www.getjealous.com/
http://blogsavy.com/
http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/
http://www.journalhome.com/
http://conservablogs.com/
http://www.hosting365.com/blog/2006/04/01/free-blogs/
http://www.my-diary.org/
http://blogetery.com/
http://newblog.com/
http://www.blogabond.com/
http://www.bloxster.net/portal.php
http://www.blogyx.com/
http://www.manhattanservice.com/directory/blogs.html
http://dakotablogs.com/
http://www.blogtext.org/
http://www.blogmyway.org/xportal_main_clone_open_source.php
http://www.dragid.com/
http://www.blogadr.com/
http://www.trippert.com/
http://www.superblogdirectory.com/
http://www.digitalexpressions.nu/
http://www.outblogger.com/
http://www.blogbeee.com/
http://www.iuplog.com/
http://www.blogiversity.org/
http://www.blogthing.com/
http://www.blogomonster.com/
http://www.egoweblog.com/
http://www.myblog.net/
http://www.inube.com/
http://www.netcipia.com/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome
http://journalhub.com/summary.php
http://www.blogcheese.com/
http://www.wordcountjournal.com/
http://www.livelogcity.com/
http://blogbud.com/
http://blogcityusa.com/
http://www.theblog.cc/
http://reger.com/about/index.log
http://www.blogpod.com/
http://www.planet-travels.com/
http://www.talkingforest.com/
http://www.crablog.com/
http://tooum.com/
http://www.bahraichblogs.com/
http://www.rememory.com/
http://monkee.biz/
http://blog-dir.blogspot.com/
http://blogs.namesatnames.co.uk/
http://www.myitblog.com/
http://www.xlogz.com/
http://webmasters.thumbblogs.com/
http://shoutpost.com/
http://www.hyperblogs.net/
http://blogsarena.com/home.html
http://www.blogsboom.com/
http://nowblogging.net/
http://zeroblogs.com/
http://www.eblogger.com/
http://www.bloty.com/
http://www.theblogs.net/
http://www2.globbo.org/
http://blogspex.com/
http://blogisme.com/
http://pagebuildr.com/
http://blogmole.com/
http://shinyblogs.com/
http://www.myhappyblog.com/
http://webcamfreeblog.com/
http://speedytown.com/
http://tennerblog.com/
http://www.indoblogger.com/login.php
http://avatale.com/
http://www.lonelymind.com/
http://knowwizard.com/
http://blogonfly.com/
http://blogema.org/
http://ebzzo.com/
http://ufem.com/
http://home.live.com/?mkt=en-us
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/
http://jaoblogs.com/
http://blog.allyouwant.cn/
http://www.perfectfreewebhosting.com/
http://blogsearch.google.com/
http://www.free-blog-site.com/
http://www.greatestjournal.com/
http://mytypes.com/
http://www.mindsay.com/
http://blogstreet.com/?
http://www.blogghost.net/
http://nodblog.com/
http://iblog.net.au/
http://www.beklo.com/portal.php
http://www.desiblogz.com/home.php
http://www.x-aff.com/
http://www.365.travel/
http://wpfreeblogs.com/
http://myblog.ph/
http://www.x8blogs.com/
http://www.upwith.net/
http://www.blogs-blogs.com/home.php
http://blogvis.com/
http://vivopress.wordpress.com/
http://apcala.com/
http://www.webcrimson.com/
http://www.baidu.ws/home.php
http://www.bloggrok.com/
http://blog.9hts.com/
http://www.blogalaxy.net/
http://www.yourblogs.net/

Google Sees Me

Monday, October 13, 2008


It makes me happy to see visitors coming into my blog via Google. In the past weeks I have noticed that more and more visitors come into this blog through Google search. I have Feedjit live traffic feed installed in my sidebar, this helps a lot in analyzing my traffic. Most of those who come into this blog via Google are people searching for Windows tips and tricks. I have quiet a number of these kinds of posts so it is only natural to be snagged by the most powerful search engine in the world when someone from the other corner of the world do a search in this area. Just before lunch today I checked my Feedjit widget and I was happy to see two persons fining their way into my blog via Google. So I checked what these people were searching for that brought them here. One person was searching for information related to import and export of Firefox extension preferences. I got curious as to how my post was ranked in this person's search result so i checked it out. It turned out that the string entered by the searcher was "export firefox extension to another computer". I was happy to be the second in rank in the search result.




happy2


Then after finishing lunch I checked again the Feedjit widget and I was again glad to see that another person found his way to my blog through Google. this time it was the string " ilasik for military" that was entered by the searcher in the search box. again, the page in my blog that has information about iLasik and its use in the US military came out in the search and it is in the second rank.



happy3



How Important are P0rn Pages in the Eyes of Google?


PageRank is Google's way of deciding a page's importance. PageRank matters because it is one of the many factors that influence the determination of a page's rank in the search result. I somehow got into thinking about how Google sees p0rn sites, so I checked some of my, ah, favorite pages and here's the result. It is good to note that all of the sites I've checked are ranked, meaning, they are important as far as Google is concerned.

Google's Advice on Inbound Links and Other Important Ranking Factors


Google has always been secretive when it comes to the topic of SEO and PageRank. Webmasters and SEO experts have theories, but no one is really sure about how Google does its thing. But in the recently concluded Links Week, Senior Support Engineer at Google, Maile Ohye, shed some light on the mystery of PageRanking through her tutorials. But what she revealed were not news to us, SEO experts have been telling us about this for years. It is as simple as this : the contents of your site and the inbound links are really important in ranking. According to Ohye inbound links that are gained naturally would really help your ranking. So do not think that every inbound link would help because only merit-based links count. Inbound links that look like spam will not help at all. Merit-based inbound links that are freely-volunteered as an editorial choice would signal Google that your page is important. A page is important when someone mentions it from another page and links to it.

So how can we earn merit-based inbound link? Ohye advices that you should be interesting. To be interesting you must have something to offer that others do not have. To be interesting you should be an expert. To be interesting you should teach something in your niche. When your content is something that many people could really use, many other blogs or sites will refer to it and link to it. Participation in the community that surrounds your blog's niche would also invite many inbound links. Relevant comments in relevant blogs would also invite inbound links that could really matter in your page's ranking. To summarize it in one sentence : if you post good content and participate in your blog's surrounding community, inbound links will come naturally to your blog.


Mozilla Labs' Geode

Sunday, October 12, 2008



A good browser needs to be wise. A wise browser knows your geographical location information. The next release of Firefox would be supporting the new W3C Geolocation Specification, which adds the native ability for Web sites to request (and the user, that's you, to have the option to grant access to) your location. Mozilla labs is still working out the specifics of this but they are hoping that location will be provided by one or more user selectable service providers and methods like manual entry, WiFi-based, or GPS-based. You will have a taste og this goody in the beta release of Firefox 3.1. But if you could not wait for Firefox 3.1, you can have a good try with this with the Firefox add-on Geode. This add-on experimentally explores geolocation in Firefox 3 ahead of the implementation of geolocation in a future product release. To give you an idea of how it works: when your location is requested by a website, a notification bar will ask how much information you want to give that site: your exact location, your neighborhood, your city, or nothing at all.

What are you waiting for? Try it now and please don't ask me if it works with Chrome :)


Full Length TV Show in YouTube

Saturday, October 11, 2008




There are signs that  in the very near future we will be watching full-lenght TV shows in YouTube. YouTube and CBS started rolling out full-length episodes of selected TV shows from CBS archives like Star Trek, MacGuyver, Beverly Hills 90210, Star Trek, and The Young And the Restless. These videos will be quiet different from the normal Youtube videos we see because they will have pre-roll and interstitional ads. If you are familiar with Hulu you will say that Youtube is, in a way, copying this side of Hulu. 

The World Bank Group's computer network is hackable


I stumbled upon an article at FoxNews.com about the hacking of World Bank. It is stated in the article that servers in The World Bank Group's highly-restricted treasury unit were deeply penetrated with spy software last April. The hackers were also able to gain full access to the rest of the bank's network for almost a month, that was in June and July. There were six major intrusions since 2007 and two of these were traced back to a group of ip addresses located in China. The most recent attack happened last month. This is considered as the worst security breach ever at a global financial institution.

This makes us think that no one is safe anymore. The World bank is a very large organization and yet their security is not that impenetrable. How secure are we?

Cisco on Cisco News




Do you want to have an insider's perspective on how Cisco uses its own technology? Then you must grab the chance to receive a free quarterly newsletter that will take you inside Cisco and give you a closer look on the business reasons for Cisco implementations, including best practices, lessons learned, and tangible benefits. This newsletter is full of articles that focus on how Cisco IT uses its own products and solutions to enable the business. With this free news letter coming into your hands quarterly, you will always be up to date and be among the first to find out every quarter what is new in the world of Cisco on Cisco.

Grab your free digital subscription here.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 Download



Though I am a sucker for free software that perform like their expensive counterparts, I haven't got the chance to really use OpenOffice.org. I remember installing it in my PC two or three years ago. It was impressive but Microsoft Office was (and will always be) the best office suite for me. So OpenOffice.org just sat in my hard disk for some time then when I did a reformat of my disk I forgot to reinstall it.

Thought I am not using OpenOffice.org, it is worth mentioning here that its latest major release, the OpenOffice.org 3.0 will be officially out on monday, October 13. But if you are itching to have it now, the first stable, post-beta, post-release candidate copy of OpenOffice.org 3.0, just head to FileHippo, SoftPedia, or MajorGeeks and download it. OpenOffice.org team has already sent out file to the websites I have mentioned and many other mirror sites. So why wait for monday when you can have it now?

My Newest Blog

Friday, October 10, 2008



My newest blog, www.onlinemoneymatters.net, is now up. In the past weeks I realized that I have been thinking about posting articles about different ways of earning money online but I could not post all of them here because this blog is for technology news and covers areas like Window tips and tricks, the internet, computers, and gadgets. So there is a need for me to have another blog just for chronicling my journey deeper into the world of internet money harvesting.
I was also inspired to do this new blog after seeing the new face of one of the blogs I follow, The PTC Investor, which has an angle of its own that is attractive to new and old bloggers alike. I suddenly got a lust for a new blog that would fall under the category of "make money online". But of course this blog would not be a copycat of The PTC Investor because I have another angle in mind.

Have You Tried Chitika?

Thursday, October 9, 2008


Get Chitika Premium


I have just signed up with Chitika. I read about them some months ago but when I applied for a publisher account my blog was rejected because my blog was too young then and the traffic was too small to make me earn money from them. I forgot about them for a while but while blog hopping a few days ago, I chanced upon a blog post about Chitika. So I tried my luck again with this company and submitted this blog, the very same blog that they rejected months ago. This time it is quiet different. First, this blog has far more traffic than when I first tried to submit it months ago. Second, it now has a domain of its own. Two days after I applied I recieved an email from them informing me that my application for Chitika Ads was approved and that they are welcoming me aboard. Wow this is good news, I got another opportunity to earn more money out of blogging.

For those who are interested about earning extra income out of their blogs with Chitika but do not really know what Chitika is all about, here is a short explanation:

Chitika offers unique one-stop-shop contextual advertising and intelligent merchandising services that combine the strengths of over 10 leading Advertising Networks into one - simplifying ad placement and revenue generation for its clients. Chitika s eMiniMalls service launched in June 2005, is the industry s first intelligent and interactive product merchandising service - providing users with the ability to purchase merchandise when they know that the product and the price is rig.

What is interesting and unique about Chitika is their Interactive Primium Listing ad unit. Here's how Problogger.net explains it :

The ads are quite like their other units but they are ads for all kinds of other products. I’ve included a live one lower on this post (although not all of you will be able to see it - read on to find out why).

The ads are getting good reviews from publishers that I’ve been chatting with who have tested them although at this stage they will only be served to US readers (some of them). At this stage the ads target at US readers and even then they are ‘behavioral’ and not all US readers will see them. If Chitika feels it’s more profitable to you they show other ads.

The ads pay on a CPC basis and you can specify different keywords when generating your code for the ad. On the following ad I’ve chosen ‘Search Engine Optimization’ as the keyword.

Most of my blog's visitors come from the USA so I think I can benefit from their Interactive Primium Listing ad unit.

If you are a blogger who has good enough traffic you can add to your income with Chitika. Sign up now.

Transfer of Money to your Account‏


Some people think that the easiest way to get money is the dirty way. But one should be creative enough to succeed in earning dirty money. If you are not creative enough you'll just be wasting your and other people's time or end up in jail. I received an email from a not so creative dirty earner wannabe. The title of the email is the same as the title of this post. What in the world made him think that I'd buy his pitch? You can read the email here.

Of course I sent him a reply. The reply I sent was an ascii art of big dirty finger. I hope he gets the message.



Check Out Windows Embedded Theme for XP and 2003

Wednesday, October 8, 2008



Tired of the same old boring themes of your Windows XP? Here's good news : Microsoft has come out with a new Windows XP and 2003 theme which can be found in Windows Embedded Standard CTP Refresh. As you can see in the image below, this theme is shiny and blue all over, which is refreshing to the eyes. Though this is not available for download publicly, AskVG has extracted it from the operating system itself and has given out a link for those who want to download it. This is an official Windows release digitally signed by Microsoft.


To use the theme, download it and unzip it, and place the .theme and embedded folder into your %systemroot%\resources\themes (usually c:\windows\resources\themes) folder, then double click on the embedded.theme file.

Try this and enjoy the new freshness of your old XP.

Stylish Prescription Glasses At Zenni Optical


My younger sister started wearing prescription glasses when she was eleven. She is now thirty four years old. I know that she is very particular about choosing the right frame for her, she wants simple but stylish designs that perfectly suit her very feminine facial features. I remember all those times when she would ask the opinion of the whole family about a particular frame she was planning to buy. Now that she lives with her husband thousands of miles from us, we can no longer give our advice about what frame to choose when she buys a new one. Good thing that stylish prescription glasses can now be bought online, my sister would find it easy to get the kind of trendy frames she needs. ZenniOptical.com has a wide range of eyeglasses categories. You might have seen some good reviews about Zenni Optical on Fox Newx TV. And of course, The Clark Howard Show recommends them too. But don't think that Zenni Optical's prescription glasses are very expensive. You can have a stylish eyeglasses from them for only $8. Now new frames has arrived to them, adding to their already ample line of trendy eyeglasses.

Here is the trendy eyeglasses from Zenni Optical that I really like, they look very cool:



Zenni Optical really understands that eyeglasses are not only a health item necessity for most wearers but also a personal fashion and style item, that is why they work hard to provide customers with safe, durable, trendy and stylish products. Why not check them out now and get to wear your eyeglasses with style?

When You Take Your Blogging Seriously

Tuesday, October 7, 2008


You will know that you are taking your blogging seriously when you start to think about buying a domain name for your blog and getting a good hosting service. Before I bought a domain name for this blog I did some research and found out that there are thousands of companies offering web hosting and domain name registration. How would you know what's best for your blog? Most of us will look at the price first and would probably choose the one that offers the lowest price. Getting a bargain is good but sometimes we need to see if it is really a good bargain we get. Here are some of the good web hosting and domain name registrars that I considered before I bought my blog's domain name. I consider these companies as among the best.

Lunar Pages has been around for ten years. They offer different kinds of web hosting options like basic hosting which is ideal for new webmasters, bloggers & small businesses. Their basic hosting is only $4.95 a month, very affordable for a blogger who is beginning to earn a modest income from paid posts and ads in his blog. If you are a business man who wants to bring your business into the internet, their business hosting which is e-commerce ready with 15,000 Gigabytes of transfer. It also comes equipped with Apache 2 and SSH (Secure Shell). All of their annual web hosting plans include a free domain. They also offer domain registration so you can manage, park, and register unlimited domain names with ease under one domain management control panel. Their unique control panel allows you to update your personal information, add anonymous domain registration, lock or unlock domains, register additional domains, purchase hosting accounts, and manage the Domain Name Servers (DNS) to point to any web hosting account in the world. You can purchase your domain with an email hosting plan and choose between 1 email address or unlimited addresses.


1and1 is probably the best web hosting and domain name registrar around because they offer quality services with prices that are a lot lower than their nearest competitors. Their web hosting service is as low as $3.99 a month yet it is packed with feature that you can find in other companies' more expensive packages. You can choose from a lot of different kinds of hosting packages they offer like beginner, home, business, and developer. As for domain name registration, I bought my blog's domain name from them. What's good with them is that the price they advertise is the price you pay for a domain registration. There are no hidden fees and no special conditions - ever.


GoDaddy is another very good web hosting provider and domain registrar. GoDaddy, which was founded in 1997, is the world's largest domain name registrar. Their hosting plans, are ideal for most individuals and small businesses, include website hosting, blog and podcast hosting. hosting plans. They develop, run, maintain and support their hosting plans in their own facilities.


Bluehost started in 1996 and has been providing hosting solutions to thousands of business and personal web site. Bluehost offers 2000 GB of bandwidth, 200 GB of storage space and 2500 email addresses; this high capacity makes this host a competent competitor in this market. They also offer some great features such as up to 20 subdomains. They support several languages including CGI, PHP, Perl, Front Page and MySQL Databases. The ecommerce tools include a free shopping cart and the ability to track website traffic.

Changing Template

Sunday, October 5, 2008


I am on the process of changing this blog's template. So if you see things are somewhat out of place just tell your self that the author of this blog is probably busy tweaking his new template.

Do You Feel Safe Using the Internet?


We use the internet on a daily basis and we do a lot of things while we are at it. We find the internet very useful to us; it makes the world smaller and it makes our business transactions easier. But despite the fact that the internet has become a very important part of our daily lives, most of us do not really trust it totally because we know that there are many intruders that could put our business, finances, and even our private lives at risk. Do you totally trust the internet?

If you do not feel safe surfing the internet and doing business transactions through it, then you need to understand the Trusted Internet. You can only trust the internet if you know who to trust. If you could tell whom to trust you will feel more confident in doing your business transactions. But telling the difference between the trustworthy and the ones that could not be trusted is quiet difficult. But if you use computer tools that could help you tell who the bad guys are, you will begin to trust the internet. Computer tools that could help secure your online transactions and build your trust in the internet need not bore holes through your pocket and drain your cash. Free security software like what Comodo has to offer could protect your online life. Comodo has been creating online trust with their free award-winning firewall, anti-virus software, and secure email software. Comodo believes that creating trust online is a mission that inspires us forward towards our vision of a Trusted Internet that is why they work hard to bring us the best security tools.



The $15 Million Blog


Would you believe that a PR5 blog with an Alexa ranking of 42,168 and averages less than 20 comments per post was bought from its owner for $15 million? Yes, a fairly regular blog named Bankaholic, which provides info on deposits, savings accounts, and money market accounts is being acquired by Bankrate, a financial information site. This is part of Bankrates expansion of its financial products listing. Bankrate will pay John Wu, the owner of the blog, $12.4 million up front and then pay him $2.5 million in the next 12 months. John Wu will be staying with his blog during the transition and will probably remain (or be hired by Bankrate) working for his blog as a Bankrate employee.


Oracle Magazine


Oracle Magazine contains technology strategy articles, sample code, tips, Oracle and partner news, how to articles for developers and DBAs, and more. Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's largest enterprise software company.

For more information about Oracle, please visit their Web site at http://www.oracle.com. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Click here for your free subscription.

Musicians, Bands, and Independent Filmmakers Read This

Saturday, October 4, 2008


My wife stumbled upon Unicorn Media's website and stayed there for a long time because she got hooked listening to the music of featured musicians there. She also had a good time watching videos made by independent filmmakers. Unicorn Media helps emerging and unsigned artists promote their works in high quality digital format. If you are an artist you are free to have your content promoted by them. It is also free for anyone to enjoy the content of the site, from song to videos.

My wife told me about the site and of course I visited it. What I saw was a site that is a good medium for music promotion. If you are an unheard of musician wanting your beautiful work heard by the world then here is your chance to be heard. I checked Unicorn Media's music section and found very good music there. One band really got me with their instrumental pieces. I told my wife about the band and found out that it was also the same band that she liked listening to in Unicorn's Media's music section. The band is Pedja. I really like the guitar sound of this band and the way they arrange their music. Like my wife, I got hooked with their instrumental pieces Raindrop and Broken Engagement. Then my wife showed me the video she liked in the video section of the site, it is an independent film by Wysiwyg Flms that took four years to make. I liked the high concept of the film and its visual effects. The story is equally impressive. Independent film is really something worth putting one's time into.

I checked out Unicorn Media's blog, Unicornsightings.com, there I found a lot of valuable information that would be of help to unsigned artists. There are lots of tips for getting signed up. So if you are a musician needing music promotion or a filmmaker wanting the world to see your work, check Unicorn Media out and start promoting your content.



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Windows XP is Staying Alive



The seven-year-old operating system, Windows XP, has again been given a new lease on life. Early this year Microsoft stopped selling the software (in an attempt to boost the sales of Vista) but allowed customers purchasing new computers running certain versions of Windows Vista request a free downgrade to Windows XP. This was set to expire on January 31, 2009. But now, Microsoft has moved the date to July 31, 2009, this means that Windows XP will stay alive up to that time, almost around the time when Window 7 will be released. (there are rumors that Windows 7 will be released next year). This would allow many users to do an upgrade from XP to Windows 7, skipping Vista in the process. Poor Vista, nipped in the bud, killed in its infancy.


Changes in This Blog

Thursday, October 2, 2008


In the next couple of days there would be some little major changes in this blog. First it will have a new look, I am on the process of making a new header (actually its already done, i am just thinking about making another header so that I would have another choice. Aside from the new header the template would also change. Another major change is the move to a new domain name. I have just finished purchasing a domain for this blog so in a day or two this blog will become http://technotechniques.com


Microsoft's "Windows Cloud" Operating System

Wednesday, October 1, 2008


In a month's time Microsoft will announce a new operating system called Windows Clouds. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has revealed a few details about this new operating system last Wednesday. But this new OS is not in any way connected or part of the Windows 7 the operating system that Microsoft is developing to succeed Windows Vista. Windows Clouds (or whatever its name would be upon its release) "is intended for developers writing cloud-computing applications". This is what Ballmer said to IT managers at a Microsoft-sponsored conference in London. Cloud computing is a term often applied to programs that are presented in a Web browser, but the actual computing is performed at a distant data center. So if you are not a developer this new OS would not be of any use for you.


 
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