BlogHASH » Internet

Beware of this Twitter phishing scam

Raj — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:13:26 +0000

If you are a Twitter user, beware of an ongoing phishing scam that attempts to trick the user into revealing their login credentials. You might receive an email notification asking you to check something very funny and provide a link. When you click on the link you shall see a site masquerading as the Twitter front page. If you closely look at the URL, you shall see that it’s actually another domain. If you don’t notice this and type in your credentials, someone else will have access to your Twitter account.

If you are currently unable to login to your Twitter account, here is the reset password link to regain access to your account. For more information, visit the official Twitter blog page.

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How to search and view a registration protected forum thread without registering?

Raj — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:00:36 +0000

There are many a times when we search for something on a search engine and hit a registration protected forum page that won’t allow us to view its thread without registration. This post will show you how to bypass the forum registration process and still read the forum thread.

What a waste of time, I searched for something in a search engine and hit a registration protected forum thread/page. It requires me to register myself before I can even read the discussion in the thread. I am not even sure if the thread will solve my problem. I am forced to register to view just one thread. This is what exactly happened today with me when I was looking for a solution to fix a problem that I have with my broadband modem. Anyway, here’s how you can get away with registration and still view the thread.

Goto Google and type the search string and search it against the forum that requires registration. Example – your keyword site:theforumwebsite.com

You should then be looking at the results page with links to various forum threads from that forum. All you have to do is click on cache link below the search result instead of clicking on search result link itself. This will show you the cached version of the forum thread without the need for registration in the forum.

How this works? – Most of the forums allow Google and other search engines to crawl through them freely but don’t allow people to browse without a registration. Meaning, only members can access the thread. When viewing cached version, you see the page that search engines crawlers captured without registration in the forum.

This trick helped me a lot today. I not only viewed the forum thread but also found that the thread did not offer any solution to my problem. I saved myself from registering in the forum. So can you, just follow the trick.

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Google offers free IM service for everyone at your domain

Raj — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 06:00:11 +0000

Familiar with Google Apps? You now have another good reason to start using Google Apps for your organization, if you haven’t started yet – it’s time now, and that’s the free IM service (Google Talk) offering.

You can now use the IM service for all the employees in your company. Not just plain text messages, Google’s IM service for your domain also offers free PC-to-PC voice calls anywhere in the world. That alone will save thousands of dollars in phone bills for your company. Also, exchange files with your contacts using Google Talk, with no file size restrictions. Your sales team and field staff will now be able to boost their productivity.

You as a company will not have to worry about hosting the IM server or anything like that. Just setup the service for your domain, use the admin panel and get going.

The following are the important features of Google Talk for your domain.

Web-based chat from the start page.
Free PC-to-PC voice calls (VOIP).
Real-time file transfers and text messaging.
Integrated contact list.
Integrated into Gmail.
Mobile access – Access Google Talk on your mobile devices.

Other communication and collaboration applications that are available for your everyone at your domain from Google Apps are:-

Gmail
Google Calendar
Google Docs
Google Sites
Security and compliance

» Get started @ [Google Apps]

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IE7Pro: A MUST to have add-on for Internet Explorer 7

Raj — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 05:30:58 +0000

Are you looking forward to tweak your IE7 and expand its functionality? Look no more, IE7Pro is all you need.

IE7Pro is a must to have add-on that will take your browsing experience with IE7 to the next level. The add-on has tons of useful and powerful features and it tempts me to move away from Firefox, my favorite browser.

This add-on has over 15 powerful features and are as follows:

Tabbed Browsing Management
Web Accelerator
User Agent Switcher
Webpage Capturer
AD Blocker
Flash Block
Greasemonkey like User Scripts platform
Support for User created Plug-ins
Spell Check
Inline Search
Super Drag Drop
Crash Recovery
Proxy Switcher
Mouse Gesture
Tab History Browser

Brief overview of IE7Pro add-on

The super drag and drop features lets your submit the selected text to a search engine of your choice.
To configure the features of IE7Pro, you can either use the IE7Pro preferences in the tools menu to access some of the options or via the IE7Pro icon in the status bar of Internet Explorer.
Proxy switcher feature lets you switch between different proxy servers of your choice and availability.
IE7Pro lets you save screen shot of an entire page as an image. This is of one my favorite features in IE7Pro.
Ad blocker in IE7Pro blocks unwanted ads and makes your browsing experience better.

This makes me think if Microsoft doesn’t has enough people to create these features as defaults in browser or they just don’t have innovative thought process? Anyway!

To download IE7Pro, click here. Or, visit the website of IE7Pro. Also, they have a forum, in case you need some help.
[tags]Internet Explorer, Firefox, Tweak, IE7Pro[/tags]

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OpenDNS introduces DNS-O-Matic for Dynamic IP address management

Raj — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:42:26 +0000

OpenDNS has introduced yet another free, powerful and reliable service called DNS-O-Matic for managing your dynamic IP address announcements much easier than before. DNS-O-Matic lets you announce your dynamic IP address changes to multiple services with a single update. You can chose the Dynamic DNS service that you currently use and DNS-O-Matic will do the rest. Some popular Dynamic DNS services are NO-IP.com, DynDNS, EasyDNS etc.

How does DNS-O-Matic Dynamic IP address announcements work?

People interested in using this service will have to download and install a free client side software on their computers. The client software initializes and detects changes to the IP address of client system. As soon as a change in the local system’s IP address is detected, client software sends an update request to DNS-O-Matic service. DNS-O-Matic will then acknowledge the update and propagate the update across all the user subscribed services.

To be able to use this service, you must run the client on a computer that has a public IP address. If your computer is behind a firewall that gets an IP address from a router or broadband modem, you may not be able to use this service as the client software of this service uses the operating system’s network stack. However, if your computer exposes the public IP address when requested via a web detection method, you will be able to use this service without any problem.

To determine if your computer shows the public IP address even if it’s behind a firewall, visit the ip address lookup website and check the IP address shown on that page.

What are you waiting for? If you are already a user, sign-in here, or create a free account with DNS-O-Matic.

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Tips to make money with Adobe PDF Ads

Raj — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:37:32 +0000

Adobe and Yahoo! have teamed up to bring PPC [Pay per click] ads to PDF files that are distributed over Internet and emails. The Ads served by Yahoo! inside the PDF viewer of Adobe will be contextual in nature and based on the content of the PDF file being viewed. Via [News.com]

How does Adobe PDF Ads work?

Publishers will have to upload their PDF files to Yahoo’s ad system and when those PDF files are downloaded and viewed, publishers earn for PDF views and clicks. The performance of the ads and clicks can be tracked through the Yahoo’s ad system. Mind though, Yahoo! currently allows only US publishers. So if you are from a country other than US, you might have to just wait for Yahoo! to open up their ad system to other countries or Adobe to switch to a different ad company such as Google.

How can you make money from Adobe PDF Ads?

The key to making money with Adobe PDF ads is large circulation of your PDF content on Internet and emails. This further boils down to content that has potential to get attention of users and getting circulated amongst users. The type of PDF content that’s usually downloaded and viewed many times are as follows:

Cheat Sheets – Games cheat sheet of various games, programming languages etc. Create one for each game, language etc.
Technical/non-technical guides – Could be anything as long as it’s useful and helps people.
Reference guides – For programmers, engineers, HTML color codes etc. Also, HowTo guides are very popular amongst people on Internet.
White papers – They don’t last very long, but are frequently downloaded.
Manifestos – Checkout ChangeThis.com, there are other sites similar to ChangeThis. Create a Manifesto and submit it. If you write a good one, it can quickly start circulating and keep going around for a very long time.

Now that you know what type of content gets attention, go for it. Create those cheat sheets of games, programming languages, one sheet lookups, white papers, tech guides and reference guides and make money from Adobe PDF Ads.

Got more tips? Please submit them in the comments section below.
[tags]Adobe, PPC, Yahoo, Google, Adobe PDF Ads, Make Money Online[/tags]

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Why advertising using keywords you rank # 1 is bad?

Raj — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 14:59:53 +0000

The topmost common mistake most advertisers do is to advertise using the keywords for which they already rank in top position in search engines. But why and why not use such keywords when advertising online?

Let’s use an example: If you type ATT in Google search, you will see that AT&T already ranks # 1 for that keyword. There is no need to advertise using ATT keyword when they naturally appear in topmost position. Moreover, it’s their brand name.

But why not? – When someone types a particular keyword in the search engine, it can be safely assumed that they know what they are looking for. And when such keywords are the actual names of your product, website name or your brand name, you don’t need to advertise in the search engine for these keywords. Most people will click on the first result that shows up in their search. But if you do advertise for such keywords even when your website shows at #1 position for those keywords, people will end up clicking on the advertisement instead and you will pay for the click which you don’t need to. At this moment, I would like to bring your attention to an earlier post – How one line of javascript earns a billion dollars for Google? That will make things more clear to you!

What should you do then? – If you can avoid using such keywords while you advertise online, you will save a lot of money. Don’t advertise with keywords for which you naturally show up in top results and also don’t use your domain names and brand names while advertising, this will save you a lot of money over a long period of time. Remember – Every dollar saved is a dollar earned.

When should you not follow this tip? – When your competitor shows up at second and subsequent spots in search engine results and you don’t want a user to click on your competitor’s link, it would then be advisable to advertise for even those keywords. Another situation when you want to advertise using your brand names and websites is when you are running a promotional.

So, if you have been advertising for such keywords, think about it! Consider running an experiment for a week or a month and check if it affects your sales or conversion ratio in anyway? If it doesn’t, check how much have you saved by not using these keywords for your campaign. That’s what you saved by following this tip.

Please post your feedback and suggestions in the comments section below. If you consider using this tip and conduct an experiment, please share the results with us.
[tags]Advertisement, AdWords, Google, Keywords, Search Engine[/tags]

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Will Facebook Ads take over other advertising platforms?

Raj — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:30:04 +0000

By now you must be pretty aware about the Facebook Ads concept which in itself is a superior advertising platform in my opinion. In this article I would like to get your attention towards the kind of advertising platform Facebook is evolving into and if it’s capable enough, by its concept, to take over other advertising platform? Please note that, in this post, I am not considering Facebook Ads as just a social ads platform only but treating it on par with any other popular advertising platform.

There are many intelligently built advertising platforms for advertisers and are widely used by many advertisers from all over the world. Those platform are doubtlessly robust and flexible in functionality but Facebook Ads is many steps ahead of them. When I make that statement, I am talking about the ultimate outcome of advertising, the conversion ratio.

Similarities between other ad platforms and Facebook Ads

Different advertising platforms have varied set of features and functionalities that benefits the advertisers. There are only few common things between these ad platforms:-

Choice of either Cost per Click (CPC) or Cost by Impressions (CPM)
Ad targeting by location, say countries and cities

Difference between Facebook Ads and other Ad networks

Other ad platforms delivers ads to its own publishers, in search engines whereas Facebook Ads shows ads within its own platform
Audience reach for other platforms is comparatively much larger than Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads can deliver ads to very specific set of people based on their age, gender, interests etc. Others don’t have this kind of specific data to accomplish advance ad targeting.
Facebook Ads can show ads specifically to people based on their educational qualification, workplace, relationship status. AdWords doesn’t has this capability yet.

Can Facebook Ads beat other ad platforms then?

In my opinion, not quite yet. There are areas and places where Facebook ads will simply not work but then there are specific situations where Facebook Ads has a clear edge over other ad networks. With Facebook Ads your conversion ratio will be much higher provided you do the right kind of ad targeting.

If you want to target your audience based on their age, location, educational qualification, relationship status, political views then Facebook Ads is what you should be using. For everything else, there are other ad networks.
[tags]AdWords, Search Engine, Advertisement, Facebook Ads, Social Ads[/tags]

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Make more money online with Rubicon project and 300+ Ad networks

Raj — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 11:21:05 +0000

If you are a publisher who hasn’t been able to make the amount of money you have always dreamt of making from your website’s ad space, your frustration is about to be over. Rubicon project is about to shake up the Internet advertising industry very soon and it will affect you too!

What is Rubicon project?

Rubicon project combines the ad inventory from over 300 ad networks and serves ads on your website by automatically optimizing your website’s ad space on the basis of a variety of parameters such as demographic information etc. The project was created with the main focus on providing an efficient advertising platform that benefits both publishers and advertisers alike. The founder of adMonitor is also the founder of this project.

Some of the prominent Ad network inventory that Rubicon serves includes Google AdSense, YPN, ValueClick media, AdBrite, Chitaka and Comission Junction.

Right now Rubicon project is in BETA and accepting requests from publishers to get an invite into their beta program. But, the wait to receive an invite into their beta program is little longer. I highly recommend that you sign-up today and be amongst the first publishers to use their program when they go live! You may also want to watch their 3 minute presentation.

If you are interested to sign-up into their Beta program – Rubicon Project
[tags]AdSense, Google, Internet, Rubicon Project, Advertisement[/tags]

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4 things to consider before submitting your site to web directories

Raj — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 09:00:07 +0000

We’ll know how important it’s to have as many as quality links from different websites to your site and most of us tend to rely on directory submission to get back links from high PR directories and its pages. But you should know that submitting your site to every directory doesn’t really help you in gaining more PR or any kind of benefit. Why? – Because, search engines have started to scrutinize web directories and their website inclusion process. The chances of a web directory getting penalized is very high when it doesn’t follow certain quality guidelines and hence your backlinks could be considered paid text links.

For the benefit of those who are interested in submitting their websites to various directories hoping to get some link love from search engines, here are 4 major points that you should consider before you decide to submit your website to a directory.

1. Does the directory accept paid submission? If a web directory accepts paid submission, that is, you pay the directory certain amount of money to get listed in their pages, someday that directory could get banned from search engines and you will stop receiving any kind of benefit from your listing in that directory. Why? – Because there could be no quality guidelines that the web directory might follow to list your website for a fee, wherein that fee is not used to main the software, web servers, payment to people who manually review a site etc. It could be just a money making directory but not a directory of genuine websites having good content.

2. Does the directory require a compulsory backlink if they list your website in their directory? If yes – This MAY be ok to a certain extent. But if a directory lists all sorts of websites and require a backlink before a site is listed its pages, think again. Such directories are only looking at getting as many as sites listed in its pages to get more backlinks and then use the traffic to make a lot of money. They could get banned any day in future. And since you are linking out to them, you may also suffer the penalty to a certain extent.

3. Are there any quality guidelines that the web directory follows to list a website? Is there a manual inclusion process or links are automatically placed in the directory? There are tons of directories on Internet which accepts websites from online/offline tools and that too without any kind of manual review of the website submitted, so, every site that’s submitted is listed. Such directories do not really offer any benefit to you in short/long term. Think again!

4. Consider the quality of URLs in the directory before you submit your website for getting listed in it. Lookup the category and sub-category in which you want to list your website and then browse the links of those websites that are already listed there. Check to see if those websites have good content and are genuine. There is not point in getting listed in a directory that consists of only low quality links despite manual review process.

I am sure, SEO experts might add more points to the list above. If you have something to say, please write in the comments sections below and share your thoughts.
[tags]Directory Submission, Internet, Search Engine, SEO[/tags]

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Another simple way to increase Alexa ranking of your website

Raj — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 09:00:32 +0000

If you had missed on my previous post on a trick to increase Alexa ranking of your website and blogs, don’t worry. The new way that I have discovered to increase Alexa ranking is simple and better than the one I had mentioned before and it works without having you install the Alexa toolbar on your system.

Increase Alexa rank of your website with Alexa Traffic Rank Button

This traffic rank widget allows you to place a Alexa traffic rank button/widget anywhere onto your site. It’s been over two weeks since I have placed this widget on my blog site. You can see it on the right hand sidebar. And my observation is that, this traffic rank widget serves the same purpose as that of the Alexa toolbar, that is, count every unique visitor to your website for a credit towards your ranking. In two weeks, my traffic rank has seen a gain of close to 40,000 ranks. It was somewhere in the range of 220,000 to 230,000 and now it’s around 188,000.

If you want to know how the Alexa traffic rank affects your website, I recommend you read my earlier post on how to increase Alexa traffic rank of your website.

Sounds interesting? Place a traffic rank widget on your site too. It’s here!
[tags]Alexa, Alexa Rank, Alexa Toolbar, Blog, How To[/tags]

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Google’s Health Platform Coming in Early 2008

Raj — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 07:01:42 +0000

Google will unveil a new health platform in early 2008 that will provide a lot of health related information to its users. Google will offer personal medical records, health care-related search features, diet and exercise regimens, a localized “find a doctor” application, and other related features. They have already built an online prototype and is currently undergoing beta testing. Google as a search company, is in a perfect position to organize the vast amount of health related information and data by leveraging their existing resources. This alone gives them an edge over competitors who have similar online health platforms.

Google’s health platform, when launched, will be useful to both end users and doctors. Users will spend less time finding the health information and doctors will spend less time in looking up patient records.

» via [InformationWeek]
[tags]Google, Health[/tags]

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Play an online game to improve your vocabulary and donate free rice

Raj — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:19:58 +0000

I usually receive chain emails asking to click on links that would donate some money in charity and before I tell others about it, I do some research on the claims of such websites offering donations. Almost every site I have seen so far is not really donating any money but making money by displaying ads on their pages. But, this one is different and is genuine.

Freerice is a sister of the world poverty site, Poverty.com with two goals.

Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

From Freerice.com’s FAQ section:-

FreeRice has a custom database containing thousands of words at varying degrees of difficulty. There are words appropriate for people just learning English and words that will challenge the most scholarly professors. In between are thousands of words for students, business people, homemakers, doctors, truck drivers, retired people… everyone!

FreeRice automatically adjusts to your level of vocabulary. It starts by giving you words at different levels of difficulty and then, based on how you do, assigns you an approximate starting level. You then determine a more exact level for yourself as you play. When you get a word wrong, you go to an easier level. When you get three words in a row right, you go to a harder level. This one-to-three ratio is best for keeping you at the “outer fringe” of your vocabulary, where learning can take place.

There are 50 levels in all, but it is rare for people to get above level 48.

How do you donate rice by playing the vocabulary game at Freerice.com?

Everytime you get one answer right, you get 10 grains of rice to donate. The rice is paid for by the advertisers whose names you see on the bottom of your vocabulary screen. This is regular advertising for these companies, but it is also something more. Through their advertising at FreeRice, these companies support both learning (free vocabulary for everyone) and reducing hunger (free rice for the hungry).

The rice is distributed by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). The World Food Program is the world’s largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries. In addition to providing food, the World Food Program helps hungry people to become self-reliant so that they escape hunger for good. Wherever possible, the World Food Program buys food locally to support local farmers and the local economy.

I initially said that Freerice.com is a genuine initiative, you can read more about them on WFP.

Start playing the vocabulary game at Freerice.com and help end world hunger. Also, if you could, please tell your friends about it and let your kids start playing this game. We all can make a difference!

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ShoppingAds – New CPC Program from Text Link Ads

Raj — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:03:28 +0000

Text-Link-Ads has launched a Cost Per Click (CPC) Ad program called ShoppingAds. I received a private invite to this program and if you are a TLA publisher, you might have received it too. I have made quite a few observations that might be of your interest if you are looking at trying out new Ad networks for making money from your websites.

Here are my initial observations about ShoppingAds.

Similar to Chitika and AuctionAds- This new program is very similar in appearance to chitika and AuctionAds, except that the Ads from ShoppingAds look much better than those of Chitika and may yield in higher CTR just because of their good appearance. The clarity of images of the products that appear in your ad unit is excellent. Note that these ads are not auction ads.
Higher CPC – When I last experimented with Chitika on my website, the CTR was low (due the nature of content I post) and also the CPC value. On an average Chitika paid $0.02 per click whereas, ShoppingAds claims to offer upto $0.20 per click on an average.
Variety of Ad formats – ShoppingAds offers almost all the Ad formats that AdSense offers. Customizing the look and feel of the Ads that will appear in your site is very very easy in the panel offered by ShoppingAds.

Overall – I am very pleased with the appearance and overall design of their control panel. It’s simple and good. I am yet to arrive at a conclusion if this program will perform better than AdSense on my blog and when I am ready, I will write another post to tell you more about it.

Currently ShoppingAds is running through private beta, when they launch it for public, do give them a try. If your site’s niche is electronics, you will like ShoppingAds.

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Using Digg as a linkbait tool

Raj — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:39:56 +0000

Digg, the news site, is very popular amongst website owners for lucrative Web traffic. Bloggers have posted tons of articles about advantages of getting your site on Digg and the kind of long term impact it can have once your site is there.

A recent article on Forbes.com re-highlights the fact that Digg can be an effective linkbait tool. On an average, an article that reaches Digg’s home page, receives 129 links and some can get you hundreds of back links from websites and forums. This can dramatically increase your rankings in Google and other search engines that consider the number of backlinks to your website as an important factor while determining your search engine ranking for a particular word.

What should you do to get your page on Digg?

Write articles that has a list of things. Such as a list of things to do before you design your website. Any kind of list will not do, you have make the list worthwhile and include information that is not so common.
Write articles on topics such as iPhone, Apple, latest technology. These topics are very popular amongst Digg users.

» Via [Forbes.com]

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