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Showing posts from 2009

Google Chrome update itself without warning

Chrome update itself without warning, but it's not so "silently" and let me keep "using the browser without interruption", because the only thing I can do is just to look at my Good Old Laptop (more than five years), the hard disk indication light flashing, the cooler fan accelerated to it highest speed with squeaky noise, then a window pop up to let me choose "kill" or "wait" the web page in loading. The updating normally starts shortly after I open chrome, it's quite frustrating to wait for it to finish updating, even worse when I did know this feature. I only found out this after my firewall program asks me if I let Chrome out to the internet because it has been changed. This is said in the help document that Chrome use GoogleUpdate to check and install browser updates: When you choose to install Google Chrome, GoogleUpdate is first installed if you don't have it already. It's then used to download Google Chrome and Gears

The Google Maps API

When I tried to create a new post here in Blogger and I got the error message: The Google Maps API server rejected your request. the "sensor" parameter specified in the request must be set to either "true" or "false". I searched the internet, there are reports that this kind of error happened when people was trying to use Google maps in browser. I don't remember I use any Google maps in my blog. And in this post , people reported the same problem, and other issues: when I go into the blog post, and attempt to set the locate for the post, using the Google Map API, it says: "Couldn't find location, please try another query" This same issue happens independent on browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox and IE.

Virgin Media Netgear Wireless Router Username and Password

As Virgin Media customer, if you find your wireless router is Netgear, then you may type the router's setup URL into a web browser address bar. http://192.168.0.1 is the default Netgear router IP address. http://192.168.1.1 will work for some Netgear models. Mine setup URL is http://192.168.1.1 . Then you are required to enter a username and password. If you haven't change the default setting, it is "virgin" and "password", you may find that on a label stuck on the router. This default username and password of Virgin Wireless router is different from that of the normal Netgear router. The default username of Netgear is admin and the password is either password or 1234. Then you open the configure interface, change the settings, such as change your DNS server to OpenDNS . For a normal Netgear router, if you forget the username and password, you can reset and restore the NETGEAR device to factory default settings. But I couldn't find any button on

Mysql Quota

I installed a forum, and forget about it. After several months, I received a Mysql Quota warning, and found that the forum has got thousands of registered users and posts. All of those usernames are randomly generated and posts are ads with many links, fortunately there are no adult photos and videos. Here is the Mysql Quata warning email: Dear Valued Customer We are mailing you to let you know your free account has exceeded its mysql quota of 50mb. The ability for your user to add new data to your databases has been revoked (denied) due to the quota breach. You will be able to log into phpmyadmin (or possibly use tools in your script) to remove data from mysql. If you are unable to reduce your database usage to under 50mb, we would ask you to upgrade. Best Regards Besides of the restriction of SQL usage, there are disk usage quota, bandwidth usage quota and daily CPU usage quota.

Payments

Google Adsebse offer Western Union in 23 countries. Google also offer courier service in many other countries. To receive your payments via Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) is quick and easy to set up. When payments are issued, there's no need to wait for the delivery in the mail -- the funds appear in your bank account shortly after they're issued. That means if we processed a payment for you this month, your earnings would be in your bank account already. Also, EFT is good for the environment, since a check doesn't need to take a ride by sea, plane, or land to reach you. In available locations.

Ad Manage Networks and Optimization Solutions

DART for Publishers. To access DART for Publishers (DFP), you'll need to update your sign-in to a Google Account now. This will let you access all your DoubleClick and Google products with a single sign-on. Google Ad Manager . Google Ad Manager is a hosted ad management solution that can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure all of your directly-sold and network-based inventory. Atlas. Provide digital media technologies for advertisers, agencies and publishers. platforms. OpenX. Openx helps publishers maximize the price of their ad inventory and helps advertisers gain access to highly targeted, premium inventory. Yieldbuild , Yieldbuild continually optimize and manage your contextual ad process.

Shall I Update My Account to British Pound Sterling Earnings?

Local currency reports has been available for U.K. publishers for a while, it is currently optional, shall I click that button and update to pound sterling, or keep waiting until it become required in the future? There are some changes of the terms and conditions, one of these is: "The party that publishers are contracting with changes from Google Inc. to Google Ireland Limited." The payment threshold will change to pound sterling, it says in the TOS that "payment due to You is greater than £60, payments to You shall be sent by Google within approximately thirty (30) days after the end of each calendar month", About the VAT, it says: You shall pay all applicable taxes or charges imposed by any government entity in connection with Your participation in the Programme. Google will not issue any VAT refunds to You. In this post , Inside Adsense Team says: "While you may receive your payments in your local currency, all payments are being made by Google Ireland, a c

Jack Herrick's Tips to attract visitors

Jack Herrick is the founder of wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. wikiHow is a wiki, which means that any visitor to the site can create or edit wikiHow articles. wikiHow is currently ranked as the 100th most popular site on the web by Quantcast, and receives over 16 million unique visitors each month. Jack shared three of his favorite tips to attract visitors. Tip #1: Produce great content The first tip is obvious, but it's also the most important. The articles on wikiHow vary widely in quality. We have some of the highest quality how-tos on the net, for example How to Hard Boil an Egg, and we also have some fairly ugly, unfinished drafts we call stubs. Interestingly, the high-quality articles don't get just a little more traffic than the mediocre articles, they get hundreds of times more. When you can produce the single best page on the Internet on any given topic, people will find it and share it with the

Tips from Ricardo Prada, a user experience researcher at Google

Tips from Ricardo Prada, a user experience researcher at Google: Tip #1: Design for the tasks that visitors complete on your site. Think about tasks on your website first and layouts second. It's tempting to want a flashy design that exercises your CSS skills, but remember that vistors come to your site with specific goals in mind, like reading your essays, or checking out your collection of sports photos. Write down the top three tasks your users might want to accomplish on your site, and design to make those tasks quick and efficient. Tip #2: Use ads as potential exit paths, not interruptions. Ads should complement your site, not distract from it. The most natural place for a user to evaluate an advertisement is after they've completed their goals on your site. Instead of interrupting your user's main tasks, try to offer ads as potential exit path for users who were probably ready to leave anyway by placing them at the end of completed tasks. Tip #3: SEO - only if it make

Chrome: Drag out a tab to create new window, is this process irreversible?

Google Chrome has a cool feature that you can drag out tabs to create new window. Suppose you have two tabs opened in your Chrome browser and you want to move out one tab to a new window, just drag the tab out of the main window, and you get a new chrome window with the same page opened. Google chrome tabs are separate windows process and as a result if one tab crashes, it won't affect other tabs! But my mouse is pretty sensitive or my fingers are too clumsy, so when I click on one of my tabs it accidentally drags the tab out, I am NOT happy with it, and wonder if there is a way to restore the newly-generated window back to a tab window. You can drag out a tab to create a window, but as far as I know this process is IRREVERSIBLE, I haven't found a way to "drag" a Chrome window back to a tab. And I wish there is a way to LOCK tabs so I can't drag out a tab to a new window accidentally.

Create a three column blogger template

I found this tutorial about how to create a three column template in Blogger layouts, using the Minima template as a starting point. You have to be careful if you use using Blogger's new "Layout" version.. This tutorial uses "left" and "right" as parameter, but blogger has changed these respectively to two variable $startside and $endside instead, so when you edit template html, you have to change accordingly. #left-sidebar-wrapper { width: 220px; float: $startSide; word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */ overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */ #main-wrapper { width: 410px; float: $startSide; margin-$startSide: 20px; word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */ overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */ }

Glosary

Impressions: The number of times ads on your website have been viewed in that program. Unique impressions: Number of responses to page requests from a visitor’s browser within a predefined time period (most Advertisers do not track this event). Clicks: Number of times ads on your website were clicked on in that program. CTR (Click Through Rate): Clicks divided by Impressions times 100. Unique visitors (UV): One click per visitor per predefined time period, for example; if the sameuser clicks on an ad 10 times in one hour that will register 10 clicks but only one unique UV. UVR (Unique Visitor Rate): UV divided by Impressions times 100. Leads: The number of leads generated from the website in that program. Leads are generally completed actions without a sale, for example an application. LR (Lead Rate): Leads divided by Impressions times 100. Sales: The number of Sales generated from your website in that program. GBP (or other currency): Generated commission. CR (Conversion Rate): Sales

YieldBuild' major improvements

Microsoft pubCenter access! Microsoft's AdSense challenger is still in private beta, but through our Premium Text Ad Program, you can start running pubCenter ads alongside your AdSense or other ads. Want to improve your revenue by seeing how ads from these two heavyweights play out on your site? Opt in to the Premium Text Ad Program to start! Improved performance . Billions of ad impressions run across hundreds of sites over the past year and a half have taught our optimization algorithm a few things. Our publishers are seeing the top-line benefit of YieldBuild's enhanced format and network optimization. Shorter training time. Improvements to our algorithm have brought down the training period to significantly shorter than the 100,000 page impressions we previously needed. YieldBuild will narrow in on the ad formats and layouts to test based on an intelligent understanding of your site's format, colors and structure. Expanded network support . In addition to Google AdSense

Kontera updated its TOS, no more $5 earnings minimum

Kontera removed "$5 earnings minimum" clause, this has been announced in their blog : After releasing our updated TOS we’ve received some publisher feedback pertaining to an existing clause. The clause, stating a $5 earnings minimum in order for revenues to be rolled over to the next month, though not a new addition, raised some concerns among a small yet important segment of our publisher community. Since publisher feedback is highly important to us and as a result, we’ve decided to remove this clause from our TOS effective April 1st 2009. Is this a good news to 'a small yet important segment of our publisher community?' but I have removed Kontera code in most of my webpages after I have realized this , and feel very unhappy with MY 'stupidness'. I am sandbox publisher, I joined Kontera six months ago, none of my monthly revenue has reached minimum earning requirement (and I have to say, Kontera's CPC rate is very low!), so I have worked for Kontera for n

Do I meet Google Spider?

I check "Who's Online" in my forum, and notice one IP from Google, is that Google's spider? In my SMF forum, login as admin, click "Who's Online", it show one guest's IP is 66.249.71.113, click this IP address, it takes me to "Track IP" interface, it shows five regions with ARIN (North America, a portion of the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa) in bold: AfriNIC (Africa) APNIC (Asia Pacific region) ARIN (North America, a portion of the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa) LACNIC (Latin American and Caribbean region) RIPE (Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia) Then click the entry in bold, it takes me to "Search ARIN WHOIS for: 66.249.71.113" result: OrgName: Google Inc. OrgID: GOGL Address: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway City: Mountain View StateProv: CA PostalCode: 94043 Country: US NetRange: 66.249.64.0 - 66.249.95.255 CIDR: 66.249.64.0/19 NetName: GOOGLE NetHandle: NET-66-249-64-0-1 Paren

Blogger is a money machine

I never noticed this blog has a "Monetize"  tab until today, which let you look at Adsense reports without logining to your Adsense account.

Kontera ads in SMF: Template Parse Error!

I wanted to integrate Kontera code into my SMF (Simple Machine Forum), but got "Template Parse Error!"  message: Template Parse Error! There was a problem loading the /Themes/default/index.template.php template or language file. Please check the syntax and try again - remember, single quotes (') often have to be escaped with a slash (\). To see more specific error information from PHP, try accessing the file directly. You may want to try to refresh this page or use the default theme. syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting ',' or ';' One solution is to change single quotes (') to double quotes,  for example, you change var dc_AdLinkColor = 'blue' ; to: var dc_AdLinkColor =  " blue "  ; Another solution is to escaped with a slash (\) as sugested in the error message, put a slash (\) before every single quote (').

Not comfortable using reports in Kontera

I feel not comfortable using reports in Kontera. It is all confusing and not able to take out the reports I that would like to see. In Adsense it very easy and several report options are available, for example, it's quite easy to generate an "all the time", or "since last payment" report for Google Adsense, but as for Kontera, how can I get the report for all the time since I registered my account? There are custom dates for me to choose from, but it seems the starting date always keeps changing, last time I can get my report starting from 2008-9-19, but today I can only start from 2008-9-24, and revenues seem keep changing too, I mean, it seem doesn't increase all the time, sometimes decrease! I double checked my Kontera report, and it does seem to drop some data. I saved my last report (date from 2008-09-19 to 2009-03-17), but this time I can not go back to 2008-9-19, I can only go back to 2008-9-24, so I generate anther report dated from 2008-9-24 to 2

About us dot org

If you own a domain name and a website, aboutus.org is another good wiki to advertise yourself. Aboutus will read informations from your domain registrar and your website,  generate automatically entries about your domain identity. You just type http://aboutus.org/your-domain-name/ , and be the first peroson to privide all the informations about your business and domain name. Here is two examples: http://www.aboutus.org/DayABook.com http://www.aboutus.org/DalRiadaBooks.co.uk By the way, you can search Wikipedia for a relative entry, and add your blog into the external link, this will help people to find you.

Adsense Domain Strategy

retsek shares his process of Adsense domain strategy in digitalpoint forum, he says: -Research keywords. Not necessarily high paying ones, but keywords that have high advertiser competition and SE traffic but low competition from other sites. -Once I find a keyword, I buy a domain and build the site. I use Wordpress MU ..it makes it easy to manage multiple sites. Use all the SEO tools available for wordpress, sitemaps, etc. But I think, a blogspot sub-domain sometimes is better than a newly-registered bad domain name. For a blogspot blog, you don't need to worry much about generating a Google XML Sitemap, where to put Adsense code in the template, just keep on updating. And to my own experience, I give more credits to a Blogspot blog than others. For beginners, sometimes you maybe better to try revenue sharing site, such as Hubpage or Squidoo or this forum, most of my earnings come from hubpage , I have never got any clicks from this forum yet, though.

The easiest way to upgrade Wordpress

In an earlier post , I mentioned an error to auto-upgrade Wordpress 2.7 to 2.71, the reason is the problem of the free webhost byethost . If you use byethost too, and need to update, here is the easiest way. Backup your files and database. Of course you can use FTP to download all files to your local computer, but quickest is to make a copy in the server itself using Vista Panel File manager tool. Export your database, and save it as a file, just in case something go wrong during your update. Delete wp -admin and wp -include, do as the instructions given out in the  Upgrading Wordpress document. Use Fantastico type installer to install the latest version of Wordpress . Byethost almost has the latest version of Wordpress as soon as a new version released. This save you a lot of work to download and unpack and upload to your server. Don't do the wordpress installation procedure. Then go to File manager, copy all files except for wp -contents and wp - config and overwrite yo

Sitemap for SMF and Verify it in Google Webmaster tools

As an admin of Simple Machine Forum, two things are important and have priority, one is to give your SMF forum an XML Sitemap, another is verify your web in Google Webmaster tools. Here you may find Sitemap mod, and it's quite handy to install this package. but one word for precaution, don't be confused by this sentence:  Google does not like SEF formatted URLs for the sitemap because it won't show the sitemap in the root directory just do as the author tells you, make a .htaccess file under your root directory, and copy & paste the rewrite rule into this file and click save. My forum system files are under root directory, so I made a minor change, from /forum/index.php?action=sitemap;xml to /index.php?action=sitemap;xml.  After doing this you can view your XML sitemap by the address http://games.dayabook.com/sitemap.xml , or you may have to use this address  http://games.dayabook.com/index.php?action=sitemap;xml The second thing is how to verify your forum in Google W

Problems of Automatically Update Wordpress 2.7 to 2.71

I use byet freehost  for my Simple Machine forum , and Wordpress blog . I feel quite happy that I can automatically update SMF forum, but had problems of automatically update my W ordpress blog, the error message is: Unable to locate WordPress directory. Installation Failed There is some discuss in byet forum , but without satisfied answers. Any help, please?

Iframe attack

An IFrame (which isn't another Apple product - it stands for "inline frame") is just a way of loading one web page inside another, usually from a different server. Malware writers can make the included page just one pixel square and obfuscate javascript which will run automatically. Frame code would be inserted by hacking web servers, or adding it to banner advertisements. Big websites often cache (store) the results of search queries run on their sites - say, the links for a search for "malware IFrame" - and then forward these to search engines such as Google, which can generate search results directly. Malware authors exploit the system by putting in a search query like "malware IFrame" plus all the malicious IFrame's text. If the site doesn't check search terms adequately for obfuscated Javascript, the IFrame data is stored and passed on. When someone then searches for "malware IFrame" and clicks a result, the attack is initiated

Browser and Adsense targeting

Will browser affect Google Adsense targeting? Different browser may display different ads, with one more relevant, the other not? I get this idea because my Chinese language site , when I use Chrome to browse this site, I only get ads in English, but when I change to IE, the Adsense ads change to Chinese! We may say that to display Chinese ads in a Chinese website is more relevant and targeted than to display English ads in a Chinese website. I haven't tried out in Firefox and other browsers.

Comments, Trackbacks, Pingbacks, and backlinks

I learned something new about trackbacks, pingbacks, and backlinks, but I am still quite puzzled by these. Trackback can be faked, and encourages spamming. Pingbacks support auto-discovery where the software automatically finds out the links in a post, and automatically tries to pingback those URLs, while trackbacks must be done manually by entering the trackback URL that the trackback should be sent to, and do not send any content as trackback does an excerpt to original post. One notable blogging service that does not support trackback is Blogger. Instead, Blogger provides "backlinks", which allow users to employ Google's search infrastructure to show links between blog entries. Which may mean  a lot of delay to find out the links if other website are not indexed quickly by Google search engine, there will not be "immediate effect", it will be "long term" to get the backlinks to show up into you comments area. Is my understanding of trackback, pingba

Google Page Creator to Sites migration

Google has stopped to accept signning up since last August, and " Creator and your pages will automatically be transitioned to Google Sites later this year." But its January, and GPC hasn't been transformed to GS. What's happening? Although I daresay that I'm not exactly looking forward to the transition, and am kept waiting for implementing Adsense in Google sites, and if my Pages in GPC are to be transferred to GS, I don't know what a mess will they become. Latest answer about the transferring is from Mike, "we'll be announcing the Page Creator to Sites migration sometime in the near future, (no, we still don't know when, so please don't ask). We're taking our time with the latter to ensure it goes as smoothly as it possibly can for everyone. " Here is my site: http://jim.sheng.googlepages.com/

Google preparing a counterattack against Microsoft

Google Chrome was designed to take on Industry leading Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and also one time Google web allies Mozilla ( Goodbye Mozilla). With chrome Google has just declared war not just on Microsoft but also to the Mozilla folks. Google is known to support open source community and Mozilla is one of those but the games has changed Google got no choice but to drop Mozilla.The competition has just started to get hotter. I like Chrome, but I can't read my hotmail, and edit my hubpage, and have troubles with many other websites in Chrome, If Google want win the battle, they have to do a lot more works. Might be this Google octopus has developed too much tentacles, it already become as ugly as giant crocodile Microsoft. Google preparing a counterattack against Microsoft

Will Facebook embrace Google AdSense

They have been rumor on the web that the leading Search Company Google has been working inside Facebook . There have been reports that the Search Company has been busy filling ad inventory on Facebook site and according to the reports things have been going well. Will Facebook embrace Facebook AdSense? The Google advertising works inside Facebook is not a joke, it is real and reports have been confirmed. http://hubpages.com/_16407gp4e44j1/hub/Google-and-Facebook-marriage

Non-English blogger post url

When we publish a post the first time, Blogger take the post title as post URL, that's permalink, Blogger, after publishing a post, changing either the post title or the date or both,  will not change the post URL. I use Chinese in one of my blogs, blogger just use post numbers as blog post url, such as "2009/01/blog-post_07.html", year/month/post-number, in this case it's the seventh post in January, 2009.  This happens to Japanese blogs, too.  Blogger use 'blog-post_XX.html' as Japanese post URL, XX is the number of the blog post. This is not very good in terms of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).   The first cardinal rule of SEO is, put key words into: blog or website URL blog title individual post URL (permalink) individual post title How about other languages, such as French or Hindi or Arabic? I browse through blogs, found this one(sorry about my ignorance, I don't what this language is): Banda Filarmónica de Monção (Post title) banda-filarmnica-de-m

Sitemap errors and warnings

All the URLs in your Sitemap have the same priority. All the URLs in your Sitemap are set to the same priority (not the default priority). Priority indicates the importance of a particular URL relative to other URLs on your site, and doesn't impact your site's performance in search results. If all URLs have the same priority, Google can't tell which are more important. This is the warning that I get after I submited a PHPBB forums_map which includes 6 forums URLs, basicly I think they have the same priority. Incorrect namespace As I have mentioned in another post , I got this warning because my sitemap XML file root element doesn't specify the default namespace. The namespace should be specified as follows: xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" There may be more reasons you may see this error are: * the namespace may be missing * the namespace may be declared incorrectly (for instance, the namespace may end in ".9" rather than in "

Google Sitemap Generator

It's not easy to find a Sitemap generator for MKPortal, so I just use phpSitemapNG , which is no good for CMS, Portal, forums and Wiki. I found xmap for Joomla, which is quite easy to install and configure. It's quite funny that I have submit a long strange string as sitemap to Google, such as this: joomla/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml&no_html=1 But it's cool to generator html sitemap, beautifully arrange and most important accurately generated, as bellow: http://en.dayabook.com/joomla/index.php/site-map And I found Google Sitemap Xml generator for phpBB forum , which generates separate sitemap for forums and topics. currently it has two version 2.0 and 2.1. But it seems that version 2.1 can only generate forum sitemap, and I got "Incorrect namespace" warnings from Google after submitting topics sitemap. I check the php code, the author uses My website structure as follow, I have to look for sitemap generator separately: index.php /mkpo

Wikiwig installation problem: http vs https

I installed wikiwig, and I went through setup and it said it was all ready to go. Then I went to index page, everything looks fine. But when I tried to click "admin" button, nothing responded. Because the browser saved the password, I was kept login, noway to logout. So I changed browser, it shows guest instead of admin. But when I click guest, nothing happened, either. I thought it might be the problem of login security check, use https method instead of http, but the free web hosting server doesn't support https, this caused the problem. I deleted the folder and cleared up the database, reinstalled the wikiwig, configure as follow: HTTP/HTTPS: HTTP New User Approval: Admin Captcha: phpCaptcha Mail Server Setup: None If your server doesn't support https, it's very important change HTTP to HTTPS, default was HTTPS. My wiki is up and running now :-)