I’ve had my own dedicated server for over 5 years now after outgrowing VPS solutions a long time ago.  I’m with my third server provider now – my first server was with PowerVPS (good), then liquidweb (bad) and I’ve been with WiredTree for nearly 3 years now.  I’ve recently added a bit more RAM and better HDDs to my server and the spec is now:

• Dual Intel Xeon E5420 Quad Core CPU
• 24GB Ram
• RAID 1: 2×120 Intel 320 120GB SSD
• mysql: X25-E 32GB SSD
• cpanel, litespeed, APC and Varnish cache

One feature of my server package which I’ve never appreciated before is multiple IP addresses.  For years, I’ve ignored these and just hosted all my sites on the same IP address.  I decided to research this last month, and I learnt that hosting all sites on the same IP address is bad for SEO, especially if you link between sites:

I run windows7news.com and windows8news.com jointly with Martin from ghacks.  These sites link to each other extensively for both natural and deliberate SEO reasons.  By hosting them on the same IP address we weren’t gaining the full benefit of these links, so I’ve now moved all my sites to separate IP addresses.

SEO TIP: Use Separate IP Addresses If You Interlink Your Sites is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

Last month I did a lot of work to make my sites load faster.  One of the easiest ways to improve site performance is to remove unnecessary plugins, and one that I removed was Disqus.

Disqus is a great, sexy looking comment replacement for wordpress that is easy to install but I decided it wasn’t worth all the additional external javascript it was adding to my pages.  My pageview:comments ratio is masssive, with probably 1-2 comments per thousand pageviews, so I couldn’t justify offering a good experience for 2 users and a worse experience for the other 998.

Another reason why I removed Disqus is because for visitors without javascript, all comments are displayed, even spammy trackbacks and pingbacks.  This is really bad, as this is the version of  pages that the googlebot sees.

After removing Disqus, I also realised what a poor job it had been doing with blocking spam so I had to spend some time removing these.  Here are some of the steps I took.

Close All Pings/Trackbacks On Posts

In the wordpress dashboard there is an option to stop all pings and trackbacks.  Unfortunately this only works on posts written after you choose this option.  To apply it to all posts, go into your sql database and run:

This will close pings/trackbacks on all posts.

Mass Delete Pingbacks & Trackbacks

Some may disagree, but I see no value to displaying pingbacks and trackbacks on a post.  Most of these are spam anyway, so to delete all pingbacks and trackbacks:

to delete all pingbacks, and:

to delete all trackbacks.

The other steps I’m taking, unfortunately I haven’t found an easy way to fix.  Re-importing my comments back to WP has left me with lots of duplicates, which I’m having to delete manually..it’s a long term project…

The other problem is all the spam that Disqus missed.  What I had to do here, was use the updated word block list that akismet uses and search and delete offending comments.  Doing this also highlighted additional words to add to the filters, so I think my site is pretty much spam free now.

To stop any future spam, I’ve also set WP to make pending any comment containing a link.

SQL Commands To Help Manage WordPress Comments And Spam is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

Did you know that if you look at the html behind the default WordPress RSS widget, it doesn’t just show the titles from the RSS feeds you enter – the full feed text is added to the page, even though only the titles are visible to readers.  This probably isn’t a good idea for your keyword density, as this text is visible to search engines, but it’s easily fixed.

One Tip A Day have found an easy way to fix this using the Linkable Title html and php Widget WordPress Plugin and some inbuilt WordPress code.  Clink here to learn how.

How To Only Display RSS Titles In WordPress Sidebar is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

Google recently made a change to its search engine results, where author images will be shown next to search results for sites that are correctly setup.  The aim is to help search engine users identify good content and to learn more about the author.

This is a great way to make your results stand out from other listings, and adding support to your blog is simple to ensure that all your posts show your Google+ profile image.

Add rel=”Author” to Each Post

To let google know who wrote each post, you simply have to add rel=”Author” to the link to the author post page.   Just open your single.php file (or equivalent for your theme e.g. content-post.php) and add rel=”Author” to the template.  The finished result should look something like this:

<a href="http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/author/everton-blair/" title="Posts by Everton" rel="author">Everton</a>


Add rel=”me” To Your Author Bio Page

In stage I we ensured that all links to your author page included rel=”author” – now we need to ensure that on this page you link to your google+ profile using rel=”me”. This is a bit trickier as WordPress removes all rel attributes from the author bio section.  To overcome this, add the following code to your functions.php file:

function allow_rel() {
global $allowedtags;
$allowedtags['a']['rel'] = array ();
}
add_action( 'wp_loaded', 'allow_rel' );

Now, you can add the following additional line to your bio info:

<a rel="me" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/113220466779656520745/about">my Google+ Profile</a>


Add Links To Your Author Pages On Google+

The final step is to add links to your your author profiles on google+ – you can do this for as many sites you contribute. Just open your Google+ profile and in the links on the right, add links to your Author pages, not the site homepages, in the other profile or contributor sections.

Check It’s Working Properly

To check your google+ authorship is working properly, go to Google’s rich snippets tool and enter in one of your urls. If there’s a problem, the tool will tell you how to fix your authorship.

How To Add Your Author Image To Google Search Results is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

Smartphones have forever changed the way we interact with the world. Previously, blogging was done from the comfort of one’s home or at the most, an internet café. With the convenience of a cell phone, users can instead use the apps for their favorite blogging platforms in order to update their blogs while on the go.

This is handy for uploading pictures and capturing video of live events that would otherwise have to wait until you get home. Here are the top blogging apps available for iPhone and Android phones:

WordPress

WordPress is the number one blogging platform in the world. It is used by millions of people across the globe, both as the self-hosted downloadable version and the managed version provided for free by WordPress.com.

The WordPress app works with both of these services and makes it easy for bloggers to check their stats and update blogs while on the go. WordPress supports uploading pictures and video from your phone and you can even schedule posts directly from your phone.

The application is completely free for both iPhone and Android and is continuously updated by Automattic, the maintainers of the WordPress platform. Comments can be managed from within the app as well, so you can quickly follow the discussions generated by your blog throughout the day.

Blogger

While Blogger is not the most popular platform for blogging, it was the first and is the reason the term ‘blogging’ exists. The Blogger interface is simple and easy to use and allows you to update your blog instantly. You can also interact with comments left and add comments to any threads that have been started.

The only downside of the app is that it doesn’t allow you to make any changes to your blog, so if you want to edit the sidebar or any other information you will have to access the site from a computer.

Tumblr

Tumblr has grown in popularity as a quick-blogging platform for posting pictures, small snippets of text or bits of audio that people will enjoy. Most Tumblr’s are designed around a specific theme, while others are used as a professional catalog for artists and writers.

Since Tumblr is based around its own social network with the ability to follow other people’s blogs, the app also lets you catch up on all of your follower’s activity. You can quickly browse their updates and favorite them, or even leave a note to tell them what you liked about the entry.

Mobile Tethering 

Since these apps are designed to post to your blog on the go, if you need to make changes to the design or other interface options, you will need to access your site from a real browser on a computer. Mobile tethering can help with this, as it allows you to use your cell phone as a modem to bridge your data so that your laptop can connect to the Internet. If there are no wi-fi hotspots available, then mobile tethering is often the only way you will be able to get Internet on your laptop.

Some carriers charge extra for mobile tethering and require you to have a plan specifically designed for tethering, so if you want to tether your laptop or tablet with your cell phone you will need to check your carrier policy to determine whether or not you are violating the terms of service.

Using Cell Phones for Blogging Mobility is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

Over the last couple of months I’ve worked hard to increase the loading speed of this site.  Part of this process was stripping out as many WordPress plugins as possible and I’ve managed to get down to using just 15 WordPress plugins.  Below you can see the 15 essential WordPress Plugins that I use.

After The Deadline

Adds a contextual spell, style, and grammar checker to WordPress. Write better and spend less time editing. Visit your profile to configure. See the Proofreading Support page for help.

Better RSS Widget 

Replacement for the built in RSS widget that adds an optional link target, shortcode_handler, and page conditionals.

I use this instead of the default WordPress RSS widget as I spotted that the WordPress RSS Widget pulls in the full text feed, which is a lot of maybe useless content for SEO purposes

Custom Post Templates 

Provides a drop-down to select different templates for posts from the post edit screen. The templates are defined similarly to page templates, and will replace single.php for the specified post. 

Dean’s Permalinks Migration 

With this plugin, you can safely change your permalink structure without breaking the old links to your website,and even doesn’t hurt your google pagerank.

I moved from blogware to WordPress many years ago, and this plugin ensures that links to old posts still work.

Disqus Comment System

The Disqus comment system replaces your WordPress comment system with your comments hosted and powered by Disqus. Head over to the Comments admin page to set up your DISQUS Comment System.

This plugin allows me to eliminate a handful of other WordPress plugins.

jQuery lazy load plugin

a quick and dirty WordPress plugin to enable image lazy loading.

I use this plugin to speedup the loading of my pages, by delaying when images are downloaded.

NextGEN Gallery 

A NextGENeration Photo Gallery for WordPress.

Redirection 

Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors

SEO Auto Links & Related Posts

SEO Auto Links & Related Posts, a combination of related posts plugin and auto links plugin. The auto links feature will automatically convert related posts title, meta keywords and post tags into internal link. 

This is a new addition, replacing my old YARPP plugin.  It does everything I need like adding related posts (with thumbnails if so desired) to posts and feeds, but it also allows me to auto link important keywords to improve SEO.

SEO Friendly Images 

Automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes them W3C/xHTML valid as well.

SEO Slugs 

Removes common words like ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’ from post slugs to improve SEO.

The Slide by SimpleReach

After installation, you must click ‘Settings ? SimpleReach Slide’ to turn on The Slide.

The results of this plugin have been fantastic and I’ve been achieved >5% CTR on some of my sites.  The team behind the plugin are very approachable, and even added in the ability to display the plugin on Pages as well as Posts after I requested it.

W3 Total Cache 

The highest rated and most complete WordPress performance plugin. Dramatically improve the speed and user experience of your site. Add browser, page, object and database caching as well as minify and content delivery network (CDN) to WordPress.

This plugin can be painful to use and configure, but is worth the effort.  If (correctly) configured it will significantly increase loading times.

WordPress SEO 

The first true all-in-one SEO solution for WordPress, including on-page content analysis, XML sitemaps and much more.

WP Smush.it

Reduce image file sizes and improve performance using the Smush.it API within WordPress.

Do you have any WordPress plugins that you can’t live without?

Reduce Number Of Plugins Used To Increase WordPress Speed is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

One of the most difficult aspects of professional blogging is remaining on task and focused on your work. As a freelance blogger, you tend to work from home and on your own schedule. While this is one of the major ploys for making a living as a blogger, it can also be the downfall for the easily distracted. Much of successful and therefore profitable blogging is about self-discipline and motivation. However, when the heart of your work relies on the use of the internet and a computer, it can be fairly easy to be under focused and highly distracted. As writers, we need quite, calm, and minimal platforms that are inspiring and motivating in which we work. Using a busy and complicated platform to produce our work can be frustrating and time wasting.

So many individuals enter the world of professional or hobby blogging thinking they can succeed with only their computer and mouse. While this is true to an extent, it can become difficult to stay on task and productive after a long period of time using distracting tools. Blogging is a difficult task to perform truly successfully. For this reason, blogging hopefuls should utilize every helpful tool they have available to them. Try one of these three blogging applications aimed to help bloggers stay focused on their writing process without too many distracting bells and whistles.

QuietWrite

QuiteWrite is a free web app that allows users to have a full screen writing experience. Easily eliminating any distracting buttons, backgrounds, colors, and more, QuietWrite enables writers and bloggers to fully focus on their writing without having to worry about setting templates, using formatting, and styling text. This application is one of the more minimal writing platforms available and comes at the right price free. You can access QuiteWrite as an online workspace or download it for regular use. If you find that you become easily distracted with other elements of your computer or you are wasting your time trying to carefully format your writing before you actually finish writing it, QuietWrite helps de-clutter your writing experience.

Ommwriter

Available only for Macs, Ommwriter is one of the strongest writing platform tools available. Focusing not only on distraction-less writing, Ommwriter also seeks to calm and relax you as you work. With several different fonts, sizes, colors, and backgrounds, Ommwriter allows each individual to personalize their workspace while still keeping it minimal. So, if staring at a completely blank screen is a daunting task, try personalizing your space with Ommwriter. With a consistent and soothing typing sound, Ommwriter enables bloggers to create a rhythm with their typing and become immersed in the flow of their work. You can also choose to play music gently in the background as you work. This app is perfect for the individual who seeks some sort of inspiration and interest in their work station, but still wishes for a clean and uncluttered space.

Pages App

Every individual has a different preference for their writing environment. While some may prefer the soothing and inspiring environment that Ommwriter offers, others may find the sounds, colors, and fonts too distracting to be worthwhile. For the individual that truly wishes for a blank slate, the Pages App is for you. This application provides a full screen experience, where the background of your computer is black and the page you are writing on is white. There are no buttons, font choices, colors, or sounds. This application cuts out all distraction and leaves the writer to just his mind and his page.

Three Useful Blogging Tools for the Easily Distracted Blogger is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

One of my favourite features of Google Chrome is the extension synchronization.   Adding extensions to Google Chrome from the chrome web store is easy, and because Chrome adds new extensions in a very sensible way your toolbar never gets cluttered.  That is, unless you add dozens of extensions…..

If you are a Google Chrome user, here are Five Essential Google Chrome Extensions For Bloggers.

Webpage Screenshot

Quickly capture screenshots, including whole webpage.  Drawing tools available allowing annotations to be quickly added.

More: Webpage Screenshot

Click & Clean

This plugin is principally designed as a security tool to remove your browsing history, cookies etc but I use it to check site changes have been applied correctly, which can be difficult if your site uses caching plugins or software.

More: Click & Clean

Picnik Extension

Picnik is a great online tool for editing images.  With this extension you can automatically transfer images from the current page to Picnik.

More: Picnik Extension For Chrome

SitezMeter

Checking out the competition?

More: SitezMeter

RSS Subscription Extension

I’m amazed this isn’t a default part of Google Chrome.  This extensions adds a RSS icon to the addressbar/omnibox allowing you to subscribe quickly to RSS feeds.

More: RSS Subscription Extension

Five Essential Google Chrome Extensions For Bloggers is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

Google announced yesterday a new service designed to help speed up websites, Google Page Speed Service.  The new service works in a similar fashion to Cloudflare or a CDN, where requests for your website are diverted to Google rather than to the actual server where your site is hosted.

By doing so, Google are then able to control how your webpages are loaded and can apply several tweaks to improve the speed with which they load:

The beauty of this service is that although webmasters can apply most of these fixes themselves, it can be quite fiddly, and this could be a quick and easy way for novice webmasters to access these tweaks.  Google claim that speed improvements of 25%-60% can be achieved.  If you’re not sure if your site will benefit, then Google have provided a url to test your site.

The results page for this site is below:

According to the tests you can see that this site would load faster on repeat page views with the Google Page Speed Service.  A word of caution on these results though – although this site isn’t the fastest mainly due to the adverts I have to serve, in my own testing it loads a lot faster than in 6 seconds, so I don’t think this test is very accurate.  The overall test result is generally correct though as this site is already heavily optimised, and it was unlikely that Google Page Speed Service could improve upon this.

I have a suspicion though that it might still be beneficial for even optimised sites to be delivered via Google Page Speed Service.  Why?  Well, by signing up to the service all of your traffic will be going via Google, so Google should get a better view of visitor behaviour on your site, which I’m sure at some point will filter though to their ranking algorithms.

The service will be chargeable and Google say the price will be competitive; whether this will be in the $5-20/pm range of services like Cloudflare remains to be seen.  During the testing period Google are opening the service up to a limited number of webmasters free of charge. You can request access to the service by filling out this web form.

More: Google Page Speed Service

Google Page Speed Service Launched is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

I’ve tried several plugins to try and increase page views per visit over the years, and this month I think I’ve found one that works.

The Slide from Simple Reach pops up a very discreet little window in the bottom right of the screen, with a post recommendation related to the post that is currently being read. The Slide works with Wordpress, Drupal, Tumblr, Blogger and other sites by manually installing the code.

I’ve been running the slide for around 2 weeks now, and the results have been very good so far with an average CTR of just under 3%.  Of course, this doesn’t mean that my site traffic has gone up by 3% as some of these users might have clicked on another link anyway.  But, somewhere in that 3% is a genuine traffic increase which is good when you consider (i) The Slide is free and (ii) it doesn’t slow down pages as the javascript loads asynchronously.

The CTR continues to improve and I believe what is happening is The Slide is learning which posts have better response rates on which pages, and is adjusting over time what posts are promoted.  I believe this to be true because my sites that have more traffic have the highest CTRs due to there being more traffic for Simple Reach to analyse.

In the latest version of The Slide WordPress plugin, users can now customise the ‘Recommended For You’ text and also the colour of the link.

One disappointment I have with the slide is that it isn’t registering on all my pages and I’ve sent an email to the Simple Reach team to see if we can fix this.

More: Simple Reach

Increase Page Views By Installing The Slide is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

A web site’s presentation is everything, especially at a time when a growing number of companies are committing more of their resources to different online approaches. This is due to a growing demand, among consumers and business, for more effective online business solutions.

Simply having a web site isn’t enough anymore. An online approach needs to be as multifaceted as any real world business model. The same can be said when a site is trying to add a multi-layered face to their site. Multimedia is a growing necessity for web sites, but before including these features, it’s important to take an intelligent approach to its inclusion.

Web sites often fall victim to using poor integration methods. If you are wanting to put videos on your site as an available feature then, by all means, do so. However, never have the video set to auto-play. Many sites do this as a way to actively engage the viewer, but this is a really poor approach. If a person feels as though they’re being forced to watch a video, they’re going to do everything they can to stop it from playing. This is just a natural instinct to unsolicited information. You want a user to use the media naturally. They have to choose to watch it, otherwise you’re going to lose many potential customers to what they see as annoying media that relates far more to a pop up ad than useful information.

Another big novice mistake that even some of the big guys make is not making their media assessable across several OS platforms. This issue comes in when a video is built on a specific OS. The video will work great for anyone using that same system, but if they try to use anything else, it’s not going to play right. Most businesses and individuals don’t know that videos are not platform independent. Before you launch a video on a site, play it on as many operating systems and browsers as possible. You also have to consider smartphone users now, so keep that in mind. If you don’t, and a majority of people can’t get to what you’re posting, it will make your site look amateur.

Applying Multimedia is much different from setting up a normal web site. Multimedia takes up far more bandwidth than a site without media, and causes problems when video files are larger than the image files causing the video not to load. If you’re worried about hosting or size needs, you should use a San Diego Online Video Platform that will help you fulfill your media and bandwidth needs. Video platforms are great to use because they keep your site’s bandwidth free, allowing it to continue to run properly.

Employing multimedia features on your website will also be worth the investment. People, as the years pass, crave more and more interaction with technology, and a multimedia site satiates that craving – keeping users engaged and your site traffic increasing.

How To Intelligently Apply Multi-Media To Your Web Site is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

Over the last two months I’ve made numerous changes to this site to improve the time it takes to load pages.  My pages aren’t superfast because of the time it takes to load the ads I need to load to generate income, but they do now load in a respectable amount of time.

I’m going to write a series of posts sharing the changes that I’ve made.  The most recent change I made was to implement Lazy Loading.  When you visit sites such as mashable.com or browse via your iPad or iPhone, you may have noticed a brief shimmer around images as you scroll down the page.  This is because images that are below the fold i.e. below the initial visible portion on your screen, are not loaded until they are visible on the screen.  This makes the initial pageload faster for users as they don’t load images below the fold until they reach them.  It will also save on bandwidth costs, as unnecessary images are not loaded.

There are a few wordpress plugins that implement Lazy Loading, but the one I’ve used is the jQuert Image Lazy Load WP Plugin.  I chose this particular plugin the other plugins caused issues with some images loading; the lazy load plugin allowed me to control which images were lazy loaded by opening the “jq_img_lazy_load.php” file in the plugin editor and changing:

jQuery("img").not(".cycle img").lazyload{

to:

jQuery("#div1,#div2").find("img").not(".cycle img").lazyload({

Where div1, div2, div3 etc are the IDs of the content divs or sections of your site that you want the lazy load plugin to work in e.g. for my site I have:

jQuery("#entry,#lazybottom,#lazybottom2,#disqus_thread,#woo_embed-2,#woo_embed-3,#footer-widgets,#footer,#lazymagazine,#archiveimage").find("img").not(".cycle img").lazyload({

As you can see, I created a few extra divs just for the lazy load plugin to further control when the plugin is utilised.

If you have an image intensive site, then I definitely recommend that you implement this tweak.

More: jQuery Image Lazy Load

Faster WordPress: Lazy Loading is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

Blogging has become a tough business, particularly in popular niches like make money online or credit cards.

If you are blogging in a crowded niche, it can seem impossible for your blog to rise above the noise and make an impact. This isn’t necessarily so, and we’ve compiled a list of tips to help you get your blog noticed.

Be persistent

Nothing worthwhile happens overnight. Chris Guillebeau and the Art of Non-Conformity took nearly a year of constant effort to become “an overnight success.” Some blogs take even longer, especially in a popular niche.

If you believe in what you are offering, and honestly want to help people, success will come. It will be tempting to shift gears when things do not work out immediately. Remain committed and disciplined, and don’t slack off.

Focus on the needs of your target audience

Many bloggers make their blogs about themselves. This is fine if your blog exists to chronicle your life to your friends and family (or if you’re Brad Pitt). However, if you intend your blog to appeal to a wider audience, then you need to be quite specific about who you are trying to reach and what their needs are, and make sure that every word you write addresses these needs.

Marketers (and you are a marketer) learn as much about their target market as they can. They know their age, geographical location, gender, household income, educational attainment, and the brand of cereal they prefer. You’ll need to approximate this as best you can for your audience.

A great way to do this is to develop knowledge of your blogging ecosystem – the network of blogs in your niche. Think of it as your neighborhood. If you get to know these bloggers, and comment on their posts and contribute guest posts, you will not only be spreading your name around, but you’ll be learning more about your target audience. Case Western Reserve tells budding bloggers to join blog networks and submit posts to meta-blogs in order to reach more niche readers. Depending on your niche, this might be a great way to get included in weekly roundups or lists of important blogs.

Focus on quality

Probably the best piece of advice I can give is to focus on creating useful, high quality articles, posts, tweets, and paid content. In any crowded niche, there are literally thousands of craptacular blogs populated by keyword-stuffed content and spun posts. Google is constantly working on ways to lower the ranking of these sites, and hopefully, they will one day disappear.

By developing a reputation for quality, you’ll make it more likely that readers will come back, other bloggers will accept guest posts, or post for you, and that you might get mainstream media attention for your blog. You’ll be delivering a solid product that you can be proud of.

You also need to provide the best customer experience possible. Even if you’re not selling anything, it’s important to think of your readers as customers.

• Reply to every comment left on your blog.
• Respond promptly and engagingly to emails and questions.
• Follow readers back to their own blogs and leave comments there.
• Link to other bloggers’ content and share it on social networks.
• Thank your readers profusely and always help them out.
• Offer favors freely and return each one you are granted.

Be different

Seth Godin encourages people to be Purple Cows – extraordinary, unique, game changers – in whatever they do. This philosophy is very important for bloggers. If you follow the same recipe as everyone else, your blog will never be different and never rise above mediocrity.

Come up with something different and people will remember it. If you can couple that with persistence, quality, and a great experience – why, you might just have something, then.

Whatever niche you’re blogging in, try and remember that there’s always room for a better blog in it. Stick to your guns, create quality content, and success will come. Welcome to the world of competitive blogging, we hope to see you around.

If you’re a successful blogger in a competitive niche, we’d love to hear your advice in the comments!

How to Get Noticed in a Crowded Niche is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

In part I of my increasing Adsense Revenues series, I covered how to optimise revenues if you are using more than one adsense banner per page.

In Part II, I’m going to explain how DFP helps you maximise revenue from unsold inventory and how this can allow you to run more than 3 Adsense units per page, without breaking Google’s T &Cs.

DFP is a fully fledged ad serving platform that allows you to run multiple creatives with various targeting and pricing mechanisms:

• Pricing: CPM, CPC, CPD and Sponsorship mechanisms are all supported
• Targeting: Creative rotation, frequency capping, geotargeting and custom variables all supported

You can have more than three ad slots enabled  for AdSense on a single page if the following criteria is met:1. The ad slots are not exclusively showing AdSense, and other line items are rotating through the slots.
2. If at any time, you have three slots that exclusively show AdSense, and no other line items are targeting the slots, then it is your responsibility to disable AdSense on your other slots in order to adhere to the AdSense Terms of Service. For example, say you have five ad slots on your page. All of them can be enabled for AdSense IF you have line items targeting the slots.

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Google Adsense is the advertising network of choice for many bloggers as almost every site is eligible to join, a wide range of ads are available and good geographic coverage is offered.  Used correctly, Adsense can match and even outperform other networks.

I’ve had some success using Google Adsense over the years, and I’ve decided to write a series of posts to share with readers how I’ve used Google’s DoubleClick For Publishers Small Business Product to increase my adsense earnings, as well as other tips on how to increase Adsense revenues.

DoubleClick For Publishers Small Business (DFP) is a free ad serving platform that allows publishers to serve banners from multiple sources.  It is a fully featured solution that allows geo-targeting, capping, ad prioritisation etc.

As you can see from the diagram above, DFP can be used to serve Adsense ads.  These ads are created within DFP i.e. you don’t have to go into Google Adsense to create a banner slot and cut and paste the code into DFP; DFP creates the adsense code for you.  Delivering your Google Adsense ads via DFP will increase your adsense income.  How?  Well, to explain why I first need to explain how Google Adsense delivers ads.

How Google Adsense Prioritises Ads

Let’s assume:

• We have a typical website with three sections – a header, a primary content area and a sidebar on the right
• We have 3 ad slots all running Adsense ads – one in the header, one in the primary content and one in the right sidebar
• Each banner slot contains 3 adsense links

I’m now going to explain why using DFP not only allows you to place your adsense banners anywhere you like, but why it will also increase your revenues.

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By now, just about everybody knows that using social plugins from Facebook and allowing Opengraph lets your data be mined and used.

On the one hand we have to accept that Facebook is a public platform and that privacy is a very subjective term. On the other hand, some people feel there are limits to everything – including the regular changes in Facebook’s privacy policy.

On a positive note:

• By being able to study your behavior, likes and dislikes advertisers are able to provide more targeted adverts – which are more likely to be something you may want. Your history is taken into account in order to provide less irrelevant ads. Quite the contrary in fact – you are likely to be served with tailored offers based on your unique behavior.
• The fact that the information is shared, allows you to see what your friends are interested in. To many people, this could be important – especially for someone who wants to buy an item, but has no clue about making a good choice, and needs to rely on the judgment of others.
• If you have already decided you like a product or company, you would probably welcome the benefits brought about by the targeted applications.

On the negative side:

• Knowing that your data is going to be used and possibly abused could create a psychological barrier. As human beings, we tend to be selective about what we share with whom. As such, knowing the potential consequences of allowing any application is likely to be a deterrent for many folks.
• Wherever any private information is being collected, there is always the possibility of abuse. Your information could be sold by unscrupulous companies – and you have no control over that. You may sign up for something which is taken over by another company with different views. Additionally, it is possible that you can be sent excessive information – it happened with email, and Facebook is just another medium open to abuse.
• Living in a bubble – while it might be nice to only see things you are interested in, could also cut you off from being exposed to new things that may be of interest to you. If your activities on Facebook do not include all your interests, you will undoubtedly not be served with ads relating to all of your interests.
• For some, the lack of privacy may really become an issue – not everybody wants everybody to know what they just bought or did (at least not all of the time).

How these will affect you is likely to be a matter of personal preference. For some it may be a problem, and for some it won’t. As the average user becomes better informed however, we may just very well see a reduction in the numbers of people allowing Opengraph.

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I’ve recently been getting a lot of emails from people wanting to write guest posts for Connected Internet.  I’m happy to say that I’m now accepting guest posts, and I’m hoping to publish one or two every week.

Writing guest posts is a good way to reach out to new readers, and to potentially get experience of writing for a bigger audience.  I’m opening this up to all readers, so you don’t have to be a successful blogger to participate.  You might not even have your own blog; you just fancy submitting a post or two and seeing your name on the web.

If you’re interested in submitting a guest post, then please read my Guest Post Guidelines.

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Almost everyone working with technology is aware of the problem of obsolescence. That is that your tech device is or will soon be obsolete, not state of the art, old hat, and so on. This is especially true with mobile phone devices, where the next wave of advanced technology is making an impact, and you end up saying to yourself, “I should have waited a few more months.”

Well now there is some possible relieve on hand available to deal with this. Some retailers have instituted a buy back program which will allow you to sell your device and get a new one. You won’t get 100% of the value of the old device, but if you get 50 or 60% that is better than nothing. (That might be pretty good.)

The Buy Back Program

Start with a small upfront fee that allows you to buy a contract for the re-sale of your gadget to a retailer. Then after the updated gadget comes out, you can take your existing gadget to the retailer, they will buy it back and you will buy a new one from the retailer. That’s the gist of the program. But their could be more. Here are some way that you might want to look at the buy back program.

An insurance product.

Buy-back programs guarantee a resale value, meaning they act as insurance against loss of value.  But as with all insurance programs, until there are  a substantial number of claims, it will be hard to evaluate the program both from a retailer and consumer point of view.  Some retailers may have disclaimers in their fine print saying that there are categories of gadget expectations, good, fair, and unacceptable. This can mean that if the device doesn’t meet their quality standards, they may reduce the amount of the buy back or not offer anything at all.

A loyalty program.

In many cases  you don’t get money for your item, you may get a gift card to use at the store. Instead of getting a cash amount, you get a credit, in the form of a card to use there.  That means you won’t be able to shop around for a new laptop at other places, you’ll be forced to buy from the same retailer whether it is Best Buy, Radio Shack, Walmart, or wherever you originally spent the money.

A Dispatcher Program

Keep track of all of your receipts because the buy back program starts with proof that you bought the item there, not elsewhere.  You also have to include all the other original stuff that came with the gadget — power cords, manuals, and so on;  and if anything is missing, your gift card is reduced by the replacement cost of the missing items. In other words, if your product does not have the required paperwork and other sundry items associated with the complete product, the retailer will dispatch your gift card with less than the full amount of your expected amount. You also must be aware of calendar deadlines because if you miss a return time, that could affect your gift card value. Read the fine print.

Watch the Taxes

This may be everyone’s favorite gripe but you may be taxed for buying the product, and then separately taxed on using the gift card to buy the product.

Summary

So while this program might start to sound better than not having one, remember that retailers are only interested in selling goods, that means that if they buy back your gadget, they will want to sell it again, and probably for more than the gift card amount that they gave you for your gadget. So there are little intricacies that you should be aware of by using a program like this. Remember the saying, let the buyer beware.

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The announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death last night had everyone in a frenzy, and it would seem that everyone felt the need to tweet about it on Twitter. After the announcement of his death, the whole twittersphere went it chaos. At the peak of the event around 11pm EST there was 5,106 tweets per second.

That doesn’t claim the number one spot however, the all time record is still New Years Eve 2010 in Japan when there was a staggering 6,939 TPS at its peak. However it did manage to beat the Super Bowl 2011 which only reached 4,064 TPS.

According to Twitter, the event had the highest sustained rate of tweets ever. It had an average of 3,000 tweets per second between 10:45 and 2:20am. There was an incredible 38.7 million tweets in those 3 hours and 35 minutes. At it’s peak there was an average of 3,440 tweets per second from 10:45pm to 12:30pm EST. That’s an average of 12,4 million tweets an hour.

“Last night saw the highest sustained rate of Tweets ever. From 10:45 – 2:20am ET, there was an average of 3,000 Tweets per second. At 11p.m. ET, there were 5,106 Tweets per second. At 11:45p.m. ET, when Pres. Obama finished his remarks, there were 5,008 TPS. Note: The TPS numbers we reported last night were incomplete”

To put all the events into a little perspective, here’s a list of some other notable events and their TPS records:

* The all-time record is still NYE 2010 in Japan, with 6,939 TPS at its peak

* On the day of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami (On March 11th) Twitter usage reached 5,530 TPS. (Passing the 5,000 TPS mark five times that day).

* The 2011 Super Bowl reached 4,064 TPS

* Japan’s victory over Denmark in the World Cup reached 3,283 TPS

* Final game of the 2010 NBA finals peaked at 3,085 TPS

* Last Friday’s Royal Wedding reached a peak of 3,966 TPS at 4pm London time

Were you one of those who tweeted?

Source:

Techcrunch

Twitter

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The talk about cloud computing keeps getting louder and more frequent. See: Microsoft Cloud Efforts Slowly Building Steam. Now Netflix, the online movie distributor has made an arrangement with Amazon to have its servers hosted on Amazon’s cloud computing services.

Local Problems

Two years ago, there was a database corruption event that caused Netflix’s DVD shipping system to fail. So the company began investigating ways to remove that problem and keep their shipping system fully functional. So after looking at various alternatives they decided to use cloud-computing services, and they selected Amazon for its vast inventory of redundant  servers scattered throughout the US and other countries.

Benefits

Cloud computing offers high availability, a key feature for Netflix because its customers watching digital downloads make up a significant portion of total Web bandwidth usage—roughly 20% of traffic in the U.S. from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. local time. So availability and reliability is a key issue. For that they turned to Amazon.

Data Centers

Netflix has many talented engineers who can build and run their own world-class data centers, yet made a conscious choice not to do so.  Netflix was interested in differentiating itself from other movie providers and so they wanted to focus their energy and talent on making Netflix better for their customers. They saw that operating a data center wasn’t actually providing them with that focus.  It doesn’t differentiate them in the eyes of their customers.

What Cloud Centers Offer

Cloud data centers offer flexible computer resources that can scale up and down as quickly as needed based on user demands.  So Netflix will use Amazon’s cloud to handle command and control of streaming delivery systems, as well as  preparing digital content for delivery. They will also provide personalization algorithms that help with movie recommendations. In all, Netflix will be able to stay ahead of its competition.

Source: Investors.com

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In the category of  ”You’re kidding, Right?” AOL has tapped Twitter co-founder Biz Stone as a “strategic adviser.”  He is the   ”strategic adviser for social impact.” Really.

So what will Biz do?  He will be helping AOL develop a community-social platform to facilitate people doing service in their communities. He will also be developing a video series discussing philanthropic and corporate-responsibility efforts on the part of companies and executives. That’s nice.  But really, you would think that he would be brought in to help them make money. But here is his take:

“My goal in partnering with AOL and The Huffington Post Media Group is ambitious but vitally important…Together we will rally companies to think about new ways of doing business, share best practices, and strive for positive impact at all levels–from global to local.”

It is clear what Twitter does. (It lets you convey short messages to your friends and followers.) It is also clear what the Huffington post does (it blogs political stories from a liberal point of view ). But what does AOL do? It didn’t succeed with the partnership of AOL-Time-Warner. I know what Time (magazine) does, and I know what Warner(Brothers) does. So has AOL’s mission gotten any better now that it is attached to the Huffington post?

Part of the Aol-Huffington Post connection is about “giving back” to the community. Arianna Huffington created a Huffington Post Media Group and with AOL they together launched a “30-Day Service Challenge” to try and get employees to work in their communities. Even Arianna Huffington and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong are getting in on the effort by teaching a class to schoolchildren at the Urban Academy of Arts and Letters in Brooklyn.

This is all well and good, but investors are wondering what has this got to do with AOL? How does AOL benefit?

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Why are movies a success? Because they are good? Because of the publicity? Because of the main actors? Nope it’s because of the word of mouth. If you like a movie, you tell your friends, and they tell their friends, and so on. That’s why movie studios don’t advertise a movie beyond the first week of its launch. Word of mouth takes over. So it  is no surprise that Steven Spielberg and Paramount Studios will be using Twitter to launch the publicity campaign for Super8, which will be released in June.

Super8 is a story of a catastrophe. After a terrible train crash, a group of kids who must endure the arrival of an unknown force wreaking havoc on their community.

Paramount says that this is the first time it has launched a trailer on Twitter. By the same  token it’s also the first time Twitter has been the original home to the first run of a theatrical preview. But what this says about the rise of the social media is that it can be influential in more ways than previously envisioned. Film studios are starting to realize that social media could play a central role in the popularity of movies from now on.

Just think, within moments of the end of a movie, your friends are twitting the outcome. “You gotta see the movie.” or “Steer Clear.” Even if it is not a four star movie, it can benefit from the twits making their way through the social network. This says that if this process is a success, then wait for Facebook or other networks to become players in the Hollywood delivery system.

It also means that Hollywood will start looking for different ways to advertise their upcoming movies. The standard ways are for the stars to go to Letterman, The Tonight Show, etc. But now there may be Interviews on Facebook, or short YouTube videos.

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Google announced that it was changing some of its search algorithms to reduce the rankings of content farm products.

What Do content Farms Do?

Like most websites, content farms have a main goal, which is to generate revenue, and some do it with advertisements. So a content farm, is a company that employs large numbers of often freelance writers to generate large amounts of textual content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by automated search engines.

The articles in content farms often get information from other  sources, which can lead to copyright disputes over copyright infringement. They are written people who are not specialists in the area. On the other hand the advocates of the content farms claim that from a business perspective, it is better to look for some expertise, which can be developed one article at a time. Traditional journalism, they claim is inefficient because stories are chosen by a small group of people that frequently have similar experiences and outlooks. (That in fact is the claim by most conservative commentators, that the mainstream media is too narrowly focused with the same ideas and perspectives.)

Content farms often commission their writers’ work based on analysis of search engine queries that proponents represent as “true market demand”, a feature that traditional journalism lacks.

Google’s Shift

Google launched a big algorithmic improvement to ranking, which will impact just under 12 percent of queries. Google raised the awareness level with this change. Because, according to Google, this update is “designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites–sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites–sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

The end result is that splashy articles, that don’t have sufficient content will not appear at the top of the rankings.

Source: PaidContent

PBS

Image: Business Insider

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While Superbowl 2011 has come and gone, along with it’s glitches and hickups, it did break a couple of records. 111 million people tuned into Fox to watch the game, breaking last years record audience of 106.5 million. And while it broke every single viewing record on TV, it also broke some records on Twitter too.

Fans who were watching the final few moments of the Super Bowl last weekend managed to set a new record for Tweets-per-second (TPS) for a sporting event: racking up an incredbile 4,064 Tweets which were sent at 10:07:16 p.m. EST.

This information was published in a blog post by Twitter and the below image gives a breakdown of how the tweets per second developed throughout the game.

The previous tweets per second record set for a sporting event was 3,283,  during Japan’s 3-1 win over Denmark during the World Cup soccer tournament last summer. However the Superbowl game was so popular that it managed to surpass the previous record 6 times throughout the game, especially during the half time show and with the early touchdowns.

Usher managed to grab the spot for the second highest peak when he made a surprise appears during the Black Eyed Peas Performance at half time. Usher in fact managed to grab the number one spot for being the most discussed person throughout the game, The Black Eyed Peas were next on the list of most-discussed people, followed by Slash, Eminem, and Christina Aguilera. Aaron Rodgers, the most mentioned player, was sixth.

However all this tweeting didn’t manage to set the incredible record of 6,939 TPS set in Japan just after New Years Eve.

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Twitter has really taken off in the last two years or so, and with 25 Billion tweets so far this year, it doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of slowing down. Twitter have announced the top trends from this year to give us an insight into what the whole twitter universe is “tweeting” about.

Twitters Jodi Olson said

“These trends indicated the things that are most meaningful in our lives,” Twitter’s Jodi Olson said in a blog post. “Each day on Twitter, people tweet about news, sports, entertainment, and cool new technology – and everything else in between. The list of 2010 Twitter Trends reflects what’s happening in our world, demonstrates the power of turning any event or story into a shared experience, and underscores Twitter’s value as a real-time information network.”

Twitter released not only the top trends overall, but also split up the top tweets into categories. These include news events, people, movies, television, technology, world cup, sports, and hashtags.

Twitter

So without further ado, here are the top tweets!

Top Tweets

1. Gulf Oil Spill

2. FIFA World Cup
3. Inception
4. Haiti Earthquake
5. Vuvuzela
6. Apple iPad
7. Google Android
8. Justin Bieber
9. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows
10. Pulpo Paul

News Events:
1. Gulf Oil Spill
2. Haiti Earthquake
3. Pakistan Floods
4. Koreas Conflict
5. Chilean Miners Rescue

People:
1. Justin Bieber
2. Dilma Rouseff
3. Lady Gaga
4. Julian Assange
5. Mel Gibson

Movies:
1. Inception
2. Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows
3. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
4. Despicable Me
5. Karate Kid

Television:
1. MTV Music Video Awards
2. Pretty Little Liars
3. True Blood
4. Walking Dead
5. Grammy Awards

Technology:
1. Apple iPad
2. Google Android
3. Apple iOS
4. Apple iPhone
5. Call of Duty Black Ops

World Cup:
1. FIFA World Cup
2. Vuvuzela
3. Pulpo Paul
4. Dunga
5. Diego Maradona

Sports:
1. Lebron James
2. Wimbledon
3. Manchester United
4. Brock Lesnar
5. Celtics

Hashtags:
1. #rememberwhen
2. #slapyourself
3. #confessiontime (Hashtag started by Usher)
4. #thingsimiss
5. #ohjustlikeme

There has been some people questioning why the likes of Wikileaks hasn’t managed to make the list, but Twitter have ruled out any censoring and say there is no bias in the way their trends are worked out.

“Twitter Trends are automatically generated by an algorithm that attempts to identify topics that are being talked about more right now than they were previously,The Trends list is designed to help people discover the ‘most breaking’ breaking news from across the world, in real-time. The Trends list captures the hottest emerging topics, not just what’s most popular.”

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Twitter has gone from nothing to one of the worlds biggest websites and social networking platforms in just over a year, it’s quite impressive and fair play to them, it’s still going strong. At a recent NewTeeVee conference Robin Sloan of Twitter  talked about Twitter and also the role it’s playing with TV.

He started off by letting us know that Twitter get’s approximately 90 Million tweets per day, that’s an incredible 1000 + a second! And apparently many of them are TV related as well, he even called Twitter the new EPG (electronic program guide) Twitters peak times are happening during real-time broadcast TV events. He elaborates on this point

“We’ve been talking about ‘interactive TV’ for 20 years, waiting for the magic box or platform to finally emerge. But maybe Twitter is actually the platform for interactive TV? It’s simple, increasingly ubiquitous, works on any platform… and everybody’s already using it to talk about TV.”

He has a valid point, Twitter has become the chat platform for TV, the social side, no more do people actually have to text or call in to shows, they can just tweet there opinions. Sloan gave us some examples of how Twitter is being used now on TV.

Shows like “LIFE” on the Discovery Channel prompts people to go and tweet out their own discoveries using the #mydiscovery hashtag. He called this “Synchronous show tweeting” He also noted that the cast of Jersey Shore were also tweeting during the recent series which provides a running commentary for the shows.

Twitter also played a prominent part in this years VMA awards with Justin Bieber playing host for the online chat room mainly fueled by Twitter. As a result, this years twitter fueled VMA’s raked in an impressive 11 million viewers, MTV’s largest numbers since 2002.

So twitter is playing a huge part in our lives and seems to be part of everything now a days. I think it would be great if we started to see it integrated more and more into TV’s as well, enhancing the whole user experience.

Source:

Techcrunch

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Hundred’s of thousands of twitter users were hit Sunday with a Javascript code that redirects users to a site with a goat. Then it displays an obscene message.

The url and Javascript code is

http://pastehtml.com/view/1b7xk3b.html

var el1 = document.createElement(’iframe’);
var el2 = document.createElement(’iframe’);
el1.style.visibility =”hidden”;
el2.style.visibility =”hidden”;
el1.src =  “http://twitter.com/share/update?status=WTF:%20″ + window.location;
el2.src =  “http://twitter.com/share/update?status=i%20love%20anal%20sex%20with%20goats”;
document.getElementsByTagName(”body”)[0].appendChild(el1);
document.getElementsByTagName(”body”)[0].appendChild(el2);

The  code snippet above appears to affect only certain Windows-based browsers. Apparently  if you have Chrome on Linux you may not be affected.

The tweet starts with “WTF”. So avoid that link.

To See some of the remarks about this tweet go here. (Note: it is safe to view, but may be embarrassing. )

How it Works

That WTF link opens two iframes. But  It doesn’t technically hack your Twitter account. Instead it uses your logged in browser session to tweet.  From a security format,  this is  called  “cross-site request forgery”.

Cross-site request forgery,  is a type of malicious exploit of a website whereby unauthorized commands are transmitted from a user that the website trusts. This is unlike cross-site scripting (XSS), which exploits the trust that a user has for a particular site, CSRF exploits the trust that a site has in a user’s browser.

The exploit is actually easy – the main ingredients are:

• Twitter allowing updates through the API via IFRAMES and GET thus being vulnerable to CSRF attacks
• PasteHTML.com being vulnerable to render code without a secure site around it and executing it
• Clients or Twitter automatically applying the t.co link shortener

The code is nothing special.  You create two SCRIPT files that point to the twitter update API and send a request to do a post.Then as the user who clicked on the malicious link is authenticated with Twitter you can send them to the site on his behalf.  This is the same trick that worked for the “Don’t click this button”  exploit.

Source Social Media

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Unfortunately with blogging, you have to take the good with the bad, and I’m afraid I know just as well as any other blogger how much spam you can get on your blog. When your site is small, spam isn’t too bad, however, you will find that the only comments your getting on your blog, are actually spam ones.

The amount of comments I get on my blog which are either pointless comments ( ie. Hey, Nice Site, I’ve bookmarked it for future reading) or an annoying spam link which links back to a site which will try and sell you something is really annoying. Now I do get legit comments on my site, however it’s a tough job filtering out the legit comments from the spam ones when your getting over 100 spam comments a day.

At first it wasn’t too bad, I was easily able to sort out the odd spam comments from the legit comments, but as my site has grown, so have the numbers of spam comments.

By default, all WordPress blogs come with the Akismet plugin. Now if it wasn’t for this plugin, your blog would be overrun with spammers comments right from the beginning. Akismet does a fairly good job at preventing spam comments, however sometimes if an author has been flagged before or if the Aksimet algorithm doesn’t agree with their comment, you may find that your missing out on legit, beneficial comments.

So I’ve managed to come up with the best solution for preventing spam on my blog.

You wil need to use two plugins, the first is Akismet which comes as standard on your wordpress blog. The second plugin you need to grab is the Conditional Captcha plugin.

Once installed and activated, this plugin will work in conjunction with Akismet to prevent spam comments. Basically, when Akismet thinks a comment in spam, it then gets sent to the Conditional Captcha plugin, which will ask the commenter to fill in a captcha field to confirm that they are in fact human. Since spam comments generally come from spam bots, they all fail at this final hurdle and get sent to the trash.

It’s great because if someones actual legit comment is marked as spam, it still gives them a chance to save their comment from the spam pile by filling in the Captcha field.

I’ve used this plugin with much success over the last few weeks, and so far I’ve saved my blogs from over 1000 spam comments!

So if you’re having trouble with spam on your blog, be sure to have a look at it

Condition Captcha

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Social Networking and Microblogging have enjoyed tremendous success. As proof, Evan WIlliams, co-founder of Twitter revealed a number of statistics about the Twitter network. For example, Williams said Twitter is seeing on average 90 million Tweets per day. Plus 25% of tweets contain links to other sites. He also mentioned that since the beginning of the year Twitter users on mobile devices were up by 250%, with 16% of new users working the service on mobile devices. Furthermore, there is on average 370,000 new sign-ups per day.

Privacy

Well aware of the problems that Google is facing in the privacy Williams said that 90% of Tweets are available to the public. Apparently, the privacy issue is very different since users can be followers of others and have followers themselves. The point of the social networking experience is to let people know what you are doing.

Registered Users

Williams recently wrote in a blog post that Twitter now has over 145 million registered users with nearly 300,000 registered apps. Other big numbers thrown out there by Williams include:

 Mobile users have jumped 62% since mid-April

 16% of all new users to Twitter now start on mobile

 46% of active users use some sort of mobile Twitter experience

 78% of people who interact with Twitter use twitter.com

 m.twitter.com is the second most-used Twitter interface at 14%

 SMS and Twitter for iPhone are tied at 8%

What it means

The social revolution that is taking place on 140 characters seems odd. But, in a time when wordiness is questionable, Twitter somehow found the right approach. “If you have something to say, say it!” That seems to be their mantra and it has taught others that a shortened approach to communication can go a long way. Microblogging and texting get to the point immediately and that is what makes this approach so energetic. Now if we could just get Congress to react the same way, that would be great.

Source: Techcrunch

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A recent article in ZDNet “Is the American tech industry oiling its own guillotine?” discussed in detail what Andy Grove, former president and CEO of Intel had to say about the decline of American manufacturing.

The upshot of the argument is something that has been said for the last 20 years, that many manufacturing jobs have been transferred overseas where labor costs are cheaper, (not only payrolls but also benefits…no health insurance, or social security to pony up, or time off, like vacations, and corporate taxes are less.)

The question is, are manufacturing costs too high in the US, and also countries like Great Britain or other western countries?

The jury is no longer out on this, because yes they are too high. So many companies, like Apple, and Dell, and others have raced to the low cost countries to keep their stock value high by having high production at low cost and yielding high profit margins.

But like anything else, the chickens will come home to roost. When manufacturing costs are high in foreign countries, then what? Will the manufacturing come back to the US or other western countries? Not if these countries have lost their manufacturing backbone, which is what Andy Grove is suggesting.

Perhaps this tendency might not happen. I mean the manufacturing may not come back to the US, and it will abandon Asia; but not all of it.

With a world population of 6 billion people, there are still many countries that can be the low-cost bottom-end totem pole country that will benefit for a few years with new factories and plants to make the next next next next generation of iPhone, or iPad or the like. This could continue for another 50 years, where companies keep moving their manufacturing facilities around the world trying to find the lowest cost location to build their immensely popular gadget sold to drooling Americans.

This sounds cynical, but it is true. The problem is that companies must be aware of what their shareholders will do, where quarterly reports and daily Wall Street stock prices reflect how the company is doing. One solution is that companies will abandon quarterly reports and the like and look to something like a “5 year” plan like in the old communist days (boy that didn’t work, did it). That doesn’t sound very promising.

So what is the solution? Business can’t fix the problem because they work in an environment that dictates how they have to behave on a daily, and quarterly basis. The solution is having a responsible government that changes the environment and provides quiet but viable alternatives for   business to operate in.

We’re talking about a new model of business in a different environment. So are there any economists, finance people, or investors, or professors of business that know how to do that, or make it happen?

See: Is the American tech industry oiling its own guillotine?

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I’m sure most of you are already jealous just after reading the headline of this story, I know I am and i’m 17. Well first things first his name in Christian Owens from Corby, Northamptonshire, England he is just 16 and made his first million in just two short years. Here’s how he did it.

At the age of 7 he got his first PC, then 3 years later he got himself a Mac and taught himself web design at the age of 10. Then 4 years later in 2008, he started his first company at the age of 14! It was just a simple very Appleish site which he used to sell bundled applications for the Mac OS. He says he was inspired by Apples CEO Steve Jobs, and hence his loyalty to Apple products.

His site, “Mac Bundle Box” sold a package of handy little Mac OS X apps for a discounted price for a limited time. He would contact and negotiate with developers to try and get a discounted deal on their apps. The resulting bundle that he sold would normally retail at around $400, be he was selling it off for a tenth of that price.

What’s more, if enough people bought the package, a new application would get unlocked for all buyers, so this pretty much guaranteed good promotion via word of mouth for him, and led to more and more sales. And to really top it off, he donated a percentage of the sales to charity.

His idea did very well, so well in fact that Mac Bundle Box made $100,000,000 (£700,000) in it’s first two years. So by the age of 16 he was already a millionaire.

But of course as any great entrepreneur is, he wasn’t happy with his success and since then has started up a new venture called Branchr. a pay-per click advertising company which distributes 300 million ads per month on over 17,500 websites, iPhones and Android apps. The company, which claims to deliver “contextual, behavioral, publisher-defined, and geographically” targeted ads in those platforms, has already made $800,000 in its first year and currently employs eight adults one of which is his 43-year-old mother, Alison! Can you imagine being employed by your own son!

So where does he see himself in 10 years? Well he’s not really sure but what he wants to do next is make 100 million pounds with Branchr! Ambitious but he already seems to be on his way there. Branchr is growing strong, and has already bought out another company.

The secret to his success?

There is no magical formula to business, it takes hard work, determination and the drive to do something great.

So there’s something for this teenage generation to live up to.

Source:

SWNS

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A few months ago, Google admitted that it had accidently picked up personal information from wireless accounts as their StreetView cars roamed around Britain’s neighborhood’s.

The StreetView cars are Google’s way of collecting information about cities, streets, neighborhood, and the like, They feed the information into their servers and becomes part of their Google Map.

So far so good, but as they were pursuing their quest, they are picking up information about users. One question is “Why?” What can they hope to obtain? The street view picks up information at the street level. The detail afforded by this helpful to users who are traveling. They record pictures, take videos,and apparently also pick up WiFi signals. This last part is what got them in trouble.

The signals they picked up were either encrypted or unencrypted. They threw the encrypted ones away but kept the unencrypted ones.

The UK’s Information Commissioner Office (ICO)

As the story broke last spring, Google went into an “I’m sorry” mode. “I didn’t mean to do it.” Subsequently they deleted the information that they picked up. The explanation given originally was that there was a technical setting that should have been turned off, but was unintentionally left on. It was this mistake that caused the data pickup. That must have convinced the ICO. Here is what they reported to the press:

“As we have only seen samples of the records collected in the UK we recognize that other data protection authorities conducting a detailed analysis of all the payload data collected in their jurisdictions may nevertheless find samples of information which can be linked to identifiable individuals. However, on the basis of the samples we saw we are satisfied so far that it is unlikely that Google will have captured significant amounts of personal data. “ A follow up by ICO added that it had not seen any evidence there was a compromise of personal information; the data captured by Google did not cause or could cause any harm to individuals.

Source: Google

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Now I’m sure most of you know all about these affiliate schemes, advertising networks and paid reviews that are available to us all. They all require hard work and dedication and there’s a lot of competition, but this post isn’t about that sort of stuff. For more on that check out our Guide To Making Money Online

So I’m taking a slightly different angle on this post this time, here are some weird ways to make money online.

1. Sell your hair

No, I’m not joking here. Honestly, some people will pay good money for a nice set of locks, as strange as it may seem. Sites like TheHairTrader.com, will let you post a listing for free, of your hair. And then it’s kind of like Ebay, potential hair-buyers can then bid on your mop of hair and then once it’s been sold, you chop it off and send it away. Personally I haven’t tried this service out, but apparently the average mop can go for $500 with the best ones going for thousands!

2. Become Part Of A Virtual Jury

Every think of becoming a judge? Well maybe now’s your chance, while you wont get paid as much as real judges do, you can actually take part in a virtual online jury and get paid for it. A growing number of sites are offering cash if you help lawyers simulate a trial so they can practice and train.

“Attorneys for years have thought they’re kind of psychologists when it comes to picking juries,” explains Chris Bagby, founder of eJury.com. “The more demographic background we can get them about each juror, the better off they are.”

Now you won’t be racking in millions with this, but the average case can earn you around $5 to $10

3. Send Text Messages

I say some of you are sitting right up now that you’ve read the title. Yes you can in fact make money sending text messages online. How? Well this applies to users in the states only I’m afraid, but a service called ChaCha lets you text in a question and get an answer back in a few minutes. But who do you think texts back the answers? Well it could be you!

There called ChaCha guides, and they simply sign in and answer as many questions as they like, whenever they want to and get paid between 10 and 20 cents for each one. You won’t make a living out of it, but it can help cover the day to day cost of living, or let you save up for that special something you’ve always wanted.

4. Become A Virtual Gold Miner

While real gold may be more valuable, you’d be surprised how much hardcore gamers are prepared to spend to succeed in their virtual worlds. Over half a million Chinese now earn an income by acquiring and selling World Of Warcraft Gold to gamers in other countries. People are even making money from Second Life and other MMORPG games as well.

So there you go, 4 odd ways to make a bit of extra cash online. Let me know if you’ve ever tried any of them out, or are planning to in the comments below

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The Google Pagerank is one of the most talked about terms on the blogosphere. Bloggers can spend hours researching and reading up to find out how they can get themselves a good Pagerank, thinking that it will automatically mean they get more traffic, and therefore make more money.

We’ll I’m afraid this isn’t always true, I have two of my own sites, Techinfo-4u has a page rank of 3 and NextiPhoneNews has a page rank of 2. My iPhone site has traffic that is 3 times that of Techinfo-4u, even though it’s got a lower pagerank.

However my iPhone site is only recently set up compared to my other one, so it will be interesting to see how the pageranks change the next time Google updates them (which is due anytime now).

But don’t get me wrong, your pagerank can be very important. You’ll find the more your pagerank grows, the higher the number of opportunities you will get from people to review products, link to them and advertise with you etc… When people are browsing the web, quite often they will look at a sites pagerank quickly and may make a quick assumption based on it as to whether or not they stay on your site. You will also rank better in Google searches with a better pagerank.

So it is important, but how do you go about getting a good pagerank?

Well it’s calculated on many many different factors, but in general it’s the number of sites linking back to your own. The more sites the better, and the higher the pagerank of the sites linking back in the better.

This interesting table below which I found on tnx shows how the Google pagerank is calculated. It shows you how many backlinks you’d need from sites of a certain pagerank to achieve whatever pagerank your looking to get.

Now I wouldn’t take this as the actual method that Google uses for calculating your pagerank, it does depend on your traffic somewhat and other various aspects of your site. But it is a good reference and quite beneficial and let’s you see just what you need to do to get a good pagerank.

Be wary however of paid link exchange directories as Google doesn’t approve of these “link farms” you won’t get any real traffic from them and Google is known to penalize sites with too many links from paid link sites and directories. Avoid these and instead spend your time producing great content which sites with a high pagerank will want to link back to.

Too many people spend too much time worrying over their pagerank, I never work on improving my pagerank, you should just let it improve itself naturally. There is no point in wasting your time trying to get half a million links from sites with a pagerank of 2 just so you can get a pagerank of 8. These sort of things happen naturally over time, you can’t expect your pagerank to just jump up without any great content.

So instead of begging sites to link back to you, spend your time working on producing great content and let sites naturally link back to you.

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I am a just a couple months away from marking my third anniversary writing for Connected Internet. According to our feed stats and Twitter followers people are reading. Back when I started writing here there was a pretty active following of commentors. I have seen some of my articles go into pages of comments. However, in the recent past I have noticed a drought of normal comment activity compared to the type of interaction we used to enjoy.

I have been told that it takes a lot to get people out of their feed readers and into the comments section. That could account for some of it. I can understand if we are regurgitating something you already read elsewhere that it would adversely affect comments. I can also understand if you feel that the quality of posts isn’t justifying your interaction.

I can’t speak for the other writers here, only myself. There is no reason why the community here at Connected Internet shouldn’t be as active and collaborative as it is at Blog X or Blog Y. Obviously something is amiss. Tell us. We can’t fix it if we don’t know what is broken.

I write this article every week to connect to YOU. If you’re not there, there really isn’t any point and I will have to reconsider the time I spend writing for the web. I do not write a weekly article for X number of dollars and that is the end of my investment. I write a weekly article because A) I enjoy writing for the web, and B) to interact with you. We may not always agree, but I am glad to discuss it with you, and who knows? Sometimes one of us may change the other’s perspective.

So this is what I need you to do: visit the site if you are in an RSS client, and if you have any opinion about why you don’t get involved in the comments on Connected Internet, let me know. I don’t care if you are a new reader or have been reading for the last five years, I just want to hear you weigh in on this.

This is far more interesting for both of us if the conversation is two way. I would like to interface with the reader far more than I have been for the last eighteen months or so. Help us turn Connected Internet into the active, thriving community it should be.

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Intel has announced that they will support Google’s WebM high definition video format if the format becomes successful in establishing itself in the smart TV domain. Google released the new format based on the open source VP8 codec and intends to use it on its Google TV format. Google gained rights to the VP8 format when it acquired the company On2 Technologies earlier this year.

Google’s attempt at blending live broadcast TV with internet Media has yet to see real life execution but the project is supposed to come to a fruition later this year with the support of Intel and Sony. Intel has developed a highly optimized version of the Atom especially for this purpose — the Atom CE4100. The CE4100 will be used within the hardware that will be used for accessing the Google TV platform on TV’s.

Sony is building a few models of its TV’s that will have support for Google TV. There will also be set top boxes and Blu-ray players with Google  TV integration. However, the first generation of these devices might run into performance issues thanks to the current state of the Atom CE4100 chip, which lacks hardware acceleration support.

Intel has expressed their interest in VP8 by saying that they will integrate it into their chip just as they did for H.264 and VC1. H.264 is currently one of the most common codecs used in Internet videos but it might cause monopoly problems if it becomes too popular. That is because H.264 is a proprietary format that might later have its terms changed so that the revenues associated with producing video in that format suddenly goes up.

Google, with its open approach to most things it does, will probably push the VP8 while emphasizing on the ‘open’ license of the format. Also, Google runs YouTube — the largest video sharing website on the internet — and might use the massive website to leverage the use of VP8.

At the moment, Intel’s CE4100 chips will not have problems playing back WebM format videos. It will simply use a software decoder for the job. But hardware decoders are always faster and more efficient. So it is always more desirable to have them instead of software decoders.

Intel’s CE4100 is a pretty powerful chip otherwise. It is capable of running at clock speeds of 1.2GHz and has the ability to decode two 1080p high definition videos simultaneously. Intel has been trying very hard to sell this chip to TV makers while highlighting the faster video decoding capabilities with less consumption of power. According to Intel, the chips are currently in production and have orders amounting to over one million units.

Coming back to Google’s WebM format — their partner Intel might not be interested in supporting it at the moment but there are several other software and hardware vendors who have announced that they will support the WebM format in their products. Mozilla, Microsoft an Opera are some of the larger software vendors who have become early adopters of this new format. On the hardware front, chip-makers Brodcom have declared that their VideoCore IV smartphone processor will come with support for the WebM format. That means hardware acceleration for WebM for devices using the VideoCore IV chip from Broadcom.

Looks like Google is busy making strategic moves to live up to its hype of creating an open environment for new-age media on TV sets. Google TV uses the Google Android OS and supports access to the marketplace. It also allows developers to make apps specifically for the platform.

[read]

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Ever wanted to know what the top sites on the web are? Well now you can thanks to our good friend Google! Yes there are other lists floating around the web (Alexa etc…) however there are none as accurate as Google, the number one search engine. Google have gone and created a page which lists the top 1000 viewed sites on the web, which you can see here.

The sites are organised into categories, and you can see its number of monthly unique visitors, page views, and whether or not the website accepts advertising.

Google announced this new list on its official Adwords Blog, in fact it’s been put together so advertisers can see which sites are available for advertisements.

According to Google itself “the list excludes adult sites, ad networks, domains that don’t have publicly visible content or don’t load properly, and certain Google sites,” so keep this in mind. According to Alexa “google.com” has the highest number of visitors and has a reach of over 40%

So once you take Google out of the equation, Facebook.com is crowned the king of the web. The social networking site receives over 540 million unique visitors a month with a massive 570,000,000,000 page views each month and a reach of 35.2%

In the top ten sites on the list, only Wikipedia.org and Mozzila.com are the only ones that don’t display advertisements. Facebook is a clear winner on the social networking front, with Twitter fighting it’s way into 18th position with an impressive 96 million visitors every month.

Have a look at the list yourself here and see what you think of it.

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Twitter recently purchases Twittie from Atabits as an iPhone Apps. Twitter for iPhone has jumped to the position of number 1 App in the App Store. This App has been the receiver praise from Apple. It is the iPhone App of the Week in the App Store.

Twitter

Exactly why did Twitter made the purchase? Perhaps they wanted to further their brand on mobile clients. The name changed from Twittie to Twitter for iPhone, so users were not confused. On BlackBerry and Android phones, Twitter designed their own apps from scratch. However, it would be hard to top Tweetie, so they added it to their collection.

Tweetie, the app was made by the company Atebits until Twitter acquired them in April. Tweetie itself was already very popular, but its popularity will hit a whole new level now, first because of cost. The Tweetie app used to cost $2.99, but Twitter for iPhone is freely available for download. Secondly, and maybe more importantly, the new branding, “Twitter” in the App Store, adds much more visibility to the consumer masses looking for the best Twitter app available through a search.

As Apps go, the Twitter for iPhone App still remains the best Twitter client for the iPhone.  Here are some of the features: ”

• Search has been reorganized, now you can search all tweets and find users in the same spot, view Top Tweets and Browse Suggested users.
• Search results now include Top Tweets, try it with Trends.
• You can now use Twitter without an account! Search, Browse uses, view trends and top tweets.
• Sign-up is now availabile within the application as well, complete with Suggested user list.
• More tab has been re-organized to accomplish all this. Users with one account can add a second account under the Accounts and Settings button here.
• Actions we’ve found people use most, like Retweet have been moved to the main actions bar.
• Minor tweaks were made to tweet rendering so they match Twitter.com tweets”

There are other small changes. The App seems faster overall, and the new features certainly make it easy to use. Again, the price is now well, free; it does not get any better than this.

Source: Twitter

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Two different opinions on the future of Firefox have recently come to the forefront. In a post on Quora, two people who have intimate knowledge about Firefox publically disagreed about the future of the company.

Here is the question posted on Quora:  ” Will Firefox have double-digit market share in 3 to 5 years?” The answer?

• Yes, says (outgoing) Mozilla CEO John Lilly.
• No, says Firefox co-founder Blake Ross.

So here is the take:

Co-Founder Ross had this to say:

“I’m pretty skeptical. I think the Mozilla Organization has gradually reverted back to its old ways of being too timid, passive and consensus-driven to release breakthrough products quickly.”

CEO Lilly, on the other hand, said this:

“I’m hardly an unbiased observer, but am confident that it will. Product is getting better all the time, and especially with 4.0 approaching in the fall. We’ve got 400M users and are growing that number. And we have a huge community of committed people around the world working on making it better. It’s more competitive than ever, but I feel pretty good about our chances, not only on the desktop, but also on Android, which is already looking good.”

A little bit of history is needed here to put this in perspective. Firefox appeared in the market at a time when Internet Explorer had almost complete control of the browser market, with over 90% share. However, over the past 5+ years, Microsoft’s share has dropped to below 60%. That is largely due to Firefox which now stands between 25%-30% of the market. Yet, by many accounts, Firefox is not the light, open browser alternative it once was. It probably could not be as there have been revisions of it, and browser technology has certainly changed over the past five years.

But it does look like Mozilla, once on the fast track is now lagging behind in technology, certainly as compared to Google Chrome. This conversation is indeed interesting because you can see how insiders are looking at the future of this product, as well as the future of the Internet.

Source: TechCrunch, Quora[need an account to access]

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The internet has become an integral part of how we communicate in such a short period of time. From the early days of BBS and email, through the era of IRC and web forums, to today where social networking has become a part of everyone’s life.

I am so connected I swear, somedays I fantasize about unplugging and moving to a remote cabin with a wood burning stove. If I am not on a computer, I am near one. If I am not on a computer, chances are pretty good there is a smartphone in my hand. The upside is that communication and information are free and fast. The downside is that, well maybe we don’t mind our manners when communicating on the internet.

Usenet was a fertile ground for communication in the nascent days of the web. It’s also the place where the terms “troll” and “flame” originated. Usenet soon devolved into a worldwide food fight where noise was the norm, and sooner or later everyone left.

I really felt that web forums and blogs did a much better, if extremely decentralized, job of providing platforms for discussion. The ability to moderate discussions, when used, eliminates the noise and removes the fun for those less socially developed. However, you can’t moderate to the point of censorship.

Social networking sites also provide a platform for communication with your friends and acquaintances. Facebook is a useful tool, as important as email really. It’s also an area where bad behavior is exhibited. Some people can not discuss a topic with someone on the other side of an issue, and Facebook is no different from any other platform. I have defriended people who displayed that they were incapable of intelligently carrying on a discussion. You don’t need to agree with me, but you do need to present your argument rationally, listen to the other side attentively, and then politely deconstruct those areas you disagree with. It’s a harsh enough world. I don’t need the aggravation of getting flamed on my own Facebook wall.

Is the problem people in general? Are some of us simply so incapable of empathy that we can’t even speak to each other?

Or is the problem the platform? Do people on the web feel a sense of imperviousness sitting safely behind their monitors? Is the lack of confrontation and consequences a license to be an ass? Is anonymity a shield for cowards.

I don’t know. I can relate to some degree. I know that sometimes you read something that is just so blatantly wrong or stupid that it feels great to say so. I do this all the time, crafting often witty and always cutting replies.

The difference is that as an adult and a responsible citizen of both my real and virtual communities I delete those replies after I have written them. It’s called taking the “high road”, and as an adult you are better off doing so. Maybe someday Gawker Media will figure that out.

We all know that employers are increasingly turning to the web to find out more about prospective employees. Do you communicate on the web using your actual identity, or an alias? If, like me, you use your actual identity, there is a document of everything you say out there. Think about what kind of person someone who doesn’t know you is going to think you are if they Google your name.

Most of all, take the high road. The web is such a more useful place when people talk like they would if you met them in person.

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Yeah you figured it out, I am going to skewer Gizmodo. Now read on and see why.

Freedom of the press is one of America’s promises to its citizens. I realize not everyone reading is from the States, but if you aren’t the chances are still pretty good that your government has an equally enlightened attitude toward a free press.

Like everything else in the information age, we are all money shot and no foreplay. My problem stems from a lack of conscience in the people publishing the stuff they think we want to read. The American press is, for the most part, a joke. Our news is a combination of harmless information, salesmanship, and local interest. If you disagree, watch an hour of CNN and then read the latest issue of the Christian Science Monitor. Does it make you feel like they are sanitizing the news for us? Does to me. Americans get a Readers Digest condensed version of the world. It’s enough to stay on top of local and national events, but as a populace we are pretty out of touch about what is going on outside our borders.

So our mainstream press is a bit suckish, and even they are guilty of selling their souls for a byline. Don’t agree? Bill Clinton. Ask Bill Clinton how he feels about the mainstream press. I mean c’mon. They never would have done that to ANY previous President of the United States of America. I kind of like to think that the guy who occupies the top political position in one of the world’s most important countries is above being outed about who he likes to get a blow job from. I mean really. Do we need to know? Sure, it’s a big story. It is also devisive, hurtful to the Clinton family, and frankly just not of any consequence to his ability to run the USA. It’s a big story that should have gotten buried, except the press whores who got a hold of it saw the story as being more important than the consequences of breaking it. Well, you all got 8 years of George W. Hope you’re happy.

So blogs are now a big part of how we get information. Why not? I have about a dozen or more gadget and smartphone blogs in my feed aggregator, and the information I get from them is light years ahead of what I would get from a mainstream source. The mainstream press may turn their nose up to blogs, but you and I both know that there is a lot of good stuff being written by normal people. To dismiss blogs is ludicrous.

Then again, with people like Brian Lam on our side, who needs enemies?

Brian Lam. You know, the idiot with the remote control at CES 2008.

Brian Lam, the guy who doesn’t understand that theft by receiving is a crime.

Unbelievable.

Yes, beating everyone else to the punch with anything on the next iPhone is a big deal to Gizmodo. You have to draw the line at breaking the law. There are rules the game is played by. No one at Gawker had the presence of mind to say “hey, wait a minute. if I paid $50 for a stolen car stereo it could put me in county jail”. Who defends their intellectual property more jealously than anyone? Apple. You’re telling me there isn’t one single smart, not even responsible-just smart, person working for Gawker? Good God.

Here is what I hope happens. I hope Apple sues the crap out of Gawker Media. I hope they cost Gawker Media more money than Gawker has ever made. Then I hope Gawker has the epiphany that you can’t let a bunch of spoiled kids supervise themselves if you want to stay in business. Hopefully at the end of the day we won’t have any more idiots like Brian Lam taking remote controls to industry tradeshows and buying stolen property for the sake of a scoop. When the dust settles it would also be great if Brian Lam were looking for a new job.

When Did Freedom Of The Press Start Meaning Total Lack Of Conscience? is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

If you have ever wondered how you could use your e-mail to send or receive tweets. A new application, Tweety Mail, lets you do just that.

TweetyMail is Twitter over email. Yes, it’s simple. You can even eliminate using the Twitter client. So how does it work? Well, its all about shooting off an e-mail. So if you want a Twitter list of the latest tweets from the people you follow, you just send an email. Soon you will get a reply with the tweets. Tweet yourself? Just shoot off another email. Or what if you want to follow someone new? That’s another email. Retweet? That’s another e-mail.

Tweety - e-mail

This operation works because every Twitter action has a different TweetyMail email address. If I want to send a Direct Message to a user, I would email that username to message@tweetymail.com. And if I want to unfollow a user, for example, I would simply email that username to unfollow@tweetymail.com. And so on.

How To Tweet

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For this operation to work, you need to connect your email account to TweetyMail. When you have done that and verify the connection, the Tweety Mail becomes your address, you’re good to go. Yyou can also hook up multiple addresses if you want.

You can have improved follower and direct message notifications. TweetyMail gives you a special address that you have to enter as your main email address on Twitter.com. In TweetyMail’s new follower notification email system you will get things such as a one-click follow, a full biography, and the most recent tweets. It’s a better system than what Twitter itself gives you.

Follower Notification

You can set up alerts for tweets from a certain user, or mentions ,or search terms. These will all be sent to your email address until you deactivate them.

Source: Tweety Mail

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Mint.com a California company delivered an Android App for finance. The App lets Mint.com users access a complete snapshot of their financial picture and manage their finances on the go. Mint.com,  was acquired by Intuit for $170 million last fall. Last November it initially announced the development of the free app.

Building on the success of the iPhone app, the Android App includes the ability for users to see real-time account balances, check recent transactions; compare their spending against their monthly budgets, and edit transaction details. However, the app also contains a few features that are exclusive to the Android connection. These include an easy search for recent transactions, a widget from Mint.com that includes snapshots of overall cash flow in real-time. It also includes Android live folders that provide users with a financial updates on the phone’s home screen without launching the Mint.com application.

There is a potential problem with security, as some of you are probably thinking. What if the Android phone is lost or stolen? You have all of your financial information in one app. Hmm. It can pose a potential security threat (remember last weeks cultural blowup about the Apple iPhone left at a bar!). However, Mint.com says that the application is password-protected, and the home website allows users to immediately disable access to the app.

Mint does a lot more beyond reporting and budget tracking. It has a patent-pending search tool. So the program makes the round looking through hundreds of offers from a number of providers to find the best deals on everything from bank accounts to brokerage accounts to credit cards, and financial matters.

Mint makes secure connections to almost all US banking financial institutions that have Internet banking operations. Your account information is frequently updated. Mint will categorize all of your purchases. It will show you where you spend your money and how much you spend. Your purchases on gas, groceries, parking, rent, restaurants, DVD rentals and more will be listed.  And all of this will now be available on the Android App.

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Yesterday I wrote about an open letter from Steve Jobs detailing his reasons for not allowing Adobe’s Flash player software on the iPad or iPhone.  Today the war of words heated up as Adobe’s Chief Technology Officer, Kevin Lynch, has responded to Job’s attack.

Clearly, a lot of people are passionate about both Apple and Adobe and our technologies. We feel confident that were Apple and Adobe to work together as we are with a number of other partners, we could provide a terrific experience with Flash on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

However, as we posted last week, given the legal terms Apple has imposed on developers, we have already decided to shift our focus away from Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices for both Flash Player and AIR. We are working to bring Flash Player and AIR to all the other major participants in the mobile ecosystem, including Google, RIM, Palm (soon to be HP), Microsoft, Nokia and others.

We look forward to delivering Flash Player 10.1 for Android smartphones as a public preview at Google I/O in May, and then a general release in June. From that point on, an ever increasing number and variety of powerful, Flash-enabled devices will be arriving which we hope will provide a great landscape of choice.

Clearly this nasty affair has rattled Adobe’s cage, and it’s reasonable that they should be angry.  There is, let’s face it, no reason why Apple should deny their millions of users the choice, and let’s not forget it is a choice, to install the Flash player should they want to.  If it then doesn’t work properly then it’s the user who is at fault for installing it.

The problem is that Apple don’t see it that way.  They’re convinced that Adobe has written some bad software that won’t run properly on their hardware, and it’s possible that they’re right.  Even so though it’s not up to Apple to be so protectionist about their platforms for the sake of “quality”.

Adobe will now be shifting their focus onto other mobile platforms, all of which are up and coming, and I’ve heard a great many iPhone users who will seriously think about switching away from the phone now this news is out.  They simply like using websites such as YouTube too much.

Ultimately the loser in this is the consumer.  There’s still plenty of choice but not, sadly, for the people who have already invested their hard-earned cash in an iPhone or iPad.  Steve Jobs, and I don’t say this lightly, needs to grow up a bit and realise that alienating his customers in this aggressive manner won’t win his company any fans.

Written by : Mike Halsey www.connectedinternet.co.uk

Source : Adobe

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Last week Gizmodo reported that they had paid $5000 for a prototype iPhone 4G that had been left in a bar.  In itself this wasn’t such a bad thing, but the website’s editor has now had his computers seized by California Police.

The reason being that there is strong suspicion that the prototype was stolen and, obviously, handling stolen goods is an offence.

This was inevitable after the bad-press that Gizmodo had brought upon themselves by publicly outing the name of the poor Apple employee who had lost the handset (we won’t repeat it), his Facebook account was active on the phone, and NOT the guy who had found / stolen it.

So if he had just found it what’s so wrong about that.  The problem lies with the fact that this individual, whoever they may be, sold the handset on for a significant sum, rather than try and reunite it with its owner.  Any sensible person would have left it with the bar staff, as fairly obviously the owner would go back there to look for it.

Gizmodo aren’t currently able to comment for obvious reasons, but this is a good example of how the frenzy to obtain ANY kind of information about new products from Apple can cause people to cross the line and break the law in order to do so.

We wish Gizmodo’s editor Jason Chen well, he was acting as a journalist and enthusiastic geek after all and obviously had no criminal intent, but this is a warning and reminder to others in the blogosphere of where the law lies.

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The New York Times reported today that a break in that occurred last December into Google’s private network may have come from China, and that a password program called Gaia may have been stolen, among other software items.

Gaia was only described once at a technical conference four years ago. It is intended to enable users and employees to to operate a range of services by signing in once with their password.

What the intruders did was get code that could expose Google to weaknesses that they were not aware of. As of now the theft does not appear to be about stolen passwords of Gmail users or other Google accounts. Nevertheless, after the cyber attacks were discovered the company began to make important changes to the security of its networks. But getting source code to reverse engineer a system as widespread as Googles password system leave Google management perplexed and nervous.

The origin of the raid started when a Google employee in China received instant message. The employee was using Microsoft’s Messenger program. What followed was a natural action that almost anyone would have done. He clicked on a link in the message. This link connected to a controlled Web site, which permitted the intruders to gain access to employees personal computer. The intruders then found the computer system of a group of software programmers at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Finally, after two days in the system the intruders gained control of a software bank that the development team used.

It was shortly after this that Google began changing its relationship with China. On January 12, Google first publicly disclosed the theft in a posting on the company’s Web site. It also noted that Google was modifying its policy towards China in the wake of the theft. That and the fact that China had been pressuring Google to censor search activity in China was propably more than they could stand.

A full story can be found at the New York Times web site.

Source: 04/20/2010 New York Times

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The internet phenomenon that is Twitter doesn’t seem to be letting up any time soon as it continues to grow and grow with more and more tweets every second. Up to now Twitter has been content to just let users tweet out their every meal,movement and emotion without ever looking for anything in return. Twitters venture capitalists just kept investing the money without any source of immediate return, but now it looks like Twitter has a couple of new tricks up it’s sleeve to make a bit of cash for itself.

Promoted Tweets

Twitter is looking towards “Promoted Tweets” as a means of making some money. At last weeks “Chirp” conference, Twitter announced this new feature that shouldn’t affect users too much. It’s fairly unintrusive compared to some other traditional ad units.

Businesses and the like can create a campaign of tweets which will be shown in search results. For example say you do a search for “iPod Touch” then in the search result of tweets, you may get a sponsored tweet from Apple with a link to buy an iPod Touch.

These tweets will more than likely appear at the top or towards the top of search results and will be judged by their resonance. It’s kind of like CTR but also includes favourites and retweets. If a tweet is found to have resonance, it will remain; if it doesn’t resonate, it will quickly fade away, to be replaced with another, even from another vendor in another campaign. “Resonance” is dictated by the number of times users interact with the ad, how often they’re retweeted, favorited, and interacted with, including coming up in topics and other metrics.

Mobile Apps

Twitter are also working on getting their very own Twitter apps out there. While there are a whole rake of third party applications out there for iPhone, Blackberry and Android, Twitter want to have their very own. They have just announced a Twitter app for Blackberry and they also have plans for an iPhone and Android one further down the road.

Geo-Tagging

Twitter have now also unveiled a new feature called “Places” which will allow users to better see where tweets are coming from. Twitter will keep a database of restaurants, bars, parks, stations and other public arenas and will then try and work out where a tweet is coming from. Users will also be able to tag the location of tweets.

Archives

Twitter has decided to sell it’s archive of tweets to the Library of Congress, making them searchable on Google. So that means that every single tweet you have ever “tweeted” will be available, you may learn to regret some of your tweets!

All public tweets, dating back to the very first one on March 21, 2006, are now hosted in the government’s Library of Congress.

Live Search

And finally, Tweets from twitter will now start showing up in Bing as live results which continually update, this feature has been available in Google for a while now as well.

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You know, it’s easy enough to churn out a blog article if it’s about something that is of interest to you. Writing about something fun, something you have passion for, isn’t work at all.

What about when the writing is work? What if you really aren’t interested in the subject matter? What if you HAVE to write the article? Good God, it’s like a homework assignment, and there are about a million things you’d rather be doing.

Ever sit in front of your monitor, tapping the keys, listening to iTunes, hoping some idea, any idea, would pop into your head?

This is a bad situation for anyone that has to write an article. If you care about your work, if you care about what you put your name on, you just can’t throw x number of words down and call it a day. It doesn’t have to be Pulitzer material, but it can’t be crap either.

If this situation is frequent, perhaps you shouldn’t be writing anyway. I can’t give advice for writing content you’re not personally invested in, because I believe writing should contain passion, or at the very least, interest.

Here are some tips to keep your content from sending you and your readers to sleep:

• Write about things you like duh. You can generally pull an article out of thin air when it’s on a topic you care about. I wouldn’t be writing this if this were always possible, but the obvious is always worth stating for those who don’t pay attention.
• Write about what you have been doing What could possibly be easier to write about than whatever your recent pursuits have been? You already have your research done. Here’s a little secret, just between you and me: My entire career of web writing has been based on this principle. Want to know what is going on with me at a given point in time? Just look up my articles and you will know exactly what I was doing or interested in for any given time. If I wrote an article about software RAID, it’s because I spent a day or days researching, then implementing, software RAID on one of my boxes. That’s our little secret, ok?
• Keep a healthy feed list Nothing is more important for someone who writes for the web than to know what the best sources of news for a given niche are, and having those web site’s feeds in your aggregator. I’m not talking about plagiarizing some big name site, I am talking about keeping your ear to the ground for relevant news. For any topic there are sites worth bookmarking. Make reading feeds part of your daily routine.
• Don’t be afraid to speculate or tell people what you think Look, it’s a blog article. You aren’t writing for the New England Journal of Medicine. Don’t be afraid to be more editorial and inject some of your personality into your writing. I tell you what, I can list a bunch of big name sites whose feeds I read, but I could not tell you the name of a single one of their writers. They are faceless, interchangeable, replaceable. It doesn’t change the fact that I may find that particular site a valuable addition to my feeds list, but on the other hand, I find that personality-devoid, soulless writing style tiresome. It’s like drinking weak coffee out of a styrofoam cup.

  If you can successfully impart a sense of familiarity to your reader you have created a relationship. People relate to people, not to web sites.

  Hopefully part of the draw for your audience is YOU. If you inject some of yourself into your writing, people will come to know you to a certain extent. They will certainly relate to you better. They will become familiar with you. What’s one of the really attractive things about familiarity? It’s comfortable. I would think all of us would like a readership that feels comfortable on our sites. Everyone can sell information. Can you sell a place on the web that people want to be at? YOU are a big part of that equation.

• Don’t procrastinate Set a writing schedule and stick to it. If you write at the same times every week it will become part of your normal routine. If you write whenever you can squeeze the time in, you will find yourself in big trouble those times when inspiration is scarce. The next step is to get behind. Now we’re off schedule AND in the hole. Being at a loss for words is bad enough. Don’t compound the problem with horrendous time management.
• Just walk away The flipside of the above maxim. Sometimes you just have to walk away and come back later. This usually doesn’t produce the results you want, but you just may come back to the keyboard armed with a dynamite article that was totally worth writing and reading.

Hopefully I have provided some useful ideas. If you are at a loss and don’t know what to write about, no one can help you but you. If you improve your writing habits you may find that the instances of this happening to you lessen or disappear altogther.

Write as yourself above all things. I would far rather read a bad article from a human being than some stock piece that reads like it was computer generated.

Obviously I do not expect a tech writer to season their prose with as much personality as I do a humor writer. While I advocate the creation of familiarity between writer and reader, remember that less is more.

ps.

did you guess that I came to the keyboard without a clue what to write about today?

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If you’ve been to Craigslist, you know that one of its best features is that different cities or states are identified so you can access goods or services in that region.  Now imagine Twitter, with it’s 140 character limit, and the hundreds or thousands of followers; all looking at each other or at least that is the theory. But what if you could break down your Twitter followers by region so that in some ways it was like Craigslist. Well that is what Anttenna is trying to do.

The Anttenna service, which is in limited locations like Seattle, San Diego, Las Vegas and Austin is a free iPhone app. It is like Craigslist, Foursquare, and Twitter all rolled into one. The business goal is to create a new form of classified advertising, something like “mobile microlistings” that are targeted to a user’s location.

Anttenna in Action

For example, if you are looking for tickets for a sporting event in your city, use the app to communicate with other local users of the app, to buy the tickets.

Like Twitter, the listings through Anttenna are limited to 140 characters. The company has designed the program service to follow Twitter. Complete strangers who are not following one another on the social networking site can interact with one another in order to facilitate a deal. This is called ”Anttweeting.”

Anttenna Examples

The company plans to make money through a premium subscription service in which “power sellers” are able to predetermine the times that they want listings to automatically appear in the Anttenna marketplace.

The basic plan is free, followed by a mid-tier offering of $15 per month, and a higher-tier set costing $25 per month. Other pay systems are being looked at like a system similar to eBay, or a paid listing service where users could pay an extra fee to highlight their listing within the app.

The small number of locations using the service is is few todate. The went live in San Diego a few weeks ago and launched in Seattle last week; the company is targeting a larger nationwide push in early May.

Source: Anttenna

Anttenna – like Twitter, Foursquare and Craigslist is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.

On Tuesday, if you were an apps developer for Facebook and also for iPhone, you suddenly found your credentials deleted by Facebook, without explanation. As reported on C-net developers, without warning, found that their apps credentials had been removed, so their apps on Facebook were no longer working.

The problem is with apps using the name “Facebook.” Facebook did not like that especially if tied to an iPhone app. Developers suddenly could not access their API’s leaving the apps in a non working condition.

Some developers  tried to contact Facebook. A few were told about the word problem but not given any time to fix it. Others were not given any time at all. Others changed the name of their app to comply with what they were told about the name issue. One developer changed the name of his app from Emoti for Facebook to Emoti.

The app was changed from Emoti for Facebook to Emoti

How the problem started

For the most part, Facebook simply took the position that it was acting to protect it’s own interests on the matter. Apparently this goes back to the day that the iPad was released.

“On day one of iPad there was some app called “Facebook” for $3 which wasn’t really the app from Facebook itself, but some dude making a quick buck. Apparently some big wig then issued instructions “clear up our name usage on iPad/iPhone” and someone else implemented it via:

SEND_TAKEDOWN_NOTICE(query(“SELECT * FROM apps WHERE name LIKE ‘%facebook%’”)).”

That got the ball rolling.

The real issue with this application is that people who went and downloaded the application might believe that they were getting an official Facebook application. But they were not. The problem was compounded in that it not only starts off with the Facebook name it also had a similar logo. Additionally, it did not specifically state that was not an official app. While Facebook may be considering the development of an iPad app, this one is certainly not it. Apparently a developer made money from selling this app since it was in the top 10 paid iPad applications for the past a day or so.

The Facebook logo on the App that caused the problem

Source: HackerNews

Source: AllFacebook

Source C-Net.com

Facebook and iPhone Apps – One Cuts Off the Other is a post from Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. - Updated daily with the latest news, tips, tweaks, social networking, wordpress tips & tweaks, windows optimization help and more.. Visit Connected Internet - tech, mobile and gaming news. for more articles.