Stop, Don’t hit that Delete Spam Button

These days Akismet’s accuracy have drastically reduced and its not as effective as it was couple of months ago. Akismet was designed to learn from its previous mistakes and keep improving itself, but unfortunately its taking too long to learn.

Worst of all, Akismet doesn’t even notify the commentor that his comment has been marked as spam, so its pretty hard to make out if your comment is marked as spam or kept under moderation. I and some of my friends are facing the same problem, So check your spambox before hitting that delete button.

What can you do to prevent spam?

• Use alternative Spam Filters like Spam Karma (SK2)
• Use Bad Behavior (Thou it doesn’t stop spam, it reduces the rate of spamming)
• Captcha or Anti Spam Image

Why SK2 is better than Akismet?

SK2 is considered better than Akismet mainly because SK2 doesn’t have a universal blacklist and once if a comment is accidentally marked as spam, demarking it will put the commentor’s IP address in a whitelist, so that it won’t be caught as spam again.

Although Akismet has selflessly served in blocking 19786 spams on TechBuzz, I don’t think its good enough any more, so I’m switching over to Spam Karma 2. I’ve been also considering using Captcha to prevent spam, but TechZ suggested me that, it may hurt my commentators, so I have dropped that idea temporarily.

Recently we’ve seen a Job Boards frenzy among some top class bloggers such as Darren Rowse from Problogger. Darren was the first one to start a Job Board for his blog, but now we see Job Boards springing up like weeds; TechCrunch, GigaOM…. and lots of others have their own Job Board.

Job Boards attracts lots hurry job seekers and this can make money spin. You charge only the Advertisers and not the readers, so this adds up and as a bit of value added service to your blog.

JobCoin makes is absurdly simple to add a job board to your site. The idea is simple, just get an account, setup a job board, set your price, add the widget or link in your blog. Easy isn’t it ?

JobCoin a free service, you need not pay anything to start a Job Board, but they will take 30% out of your revenue (i.e if you sell a job post for 100$, JobCoin will take 30$ and you’ll receive 70$). All payouts are made through PayPal.

Creating a job board might be easy, but finding the right advertisers is damn hard. If everything works well, its a real money making machine. Have a look at my http://www.arun.jobcoin.com, its still empty because it just took off this morning. Anyway, I’m not really serious with this new Job Board, but if your interested in posting a job, my contact form is always open

Apple Fixes Random Macbook Shutdown Syndrome

Apple has released a firmware update to fix the Random Shutdown Syndrome (RSS) which caused our Macbook to shutdown unexpectedly. Apple recommend everyone to apply this firmware even if they have sent their Macbook’s for repairs.

Last month Stammy discovered this problem on his Macbook and sent it to repairs, following his advice even I did the same.

How to Make Firefox Look & Act like IE, Opera, Flock and Netscape

Opera looks cool, but it lacks features, Internet Explorer sucks, but we still need it sometimes to check our website’s compatibility with it, Flock and Netscape are both Gecko based and aren’t used widely, so there is no point in using them, but did you ever know that you can make Firefox look as well act like all these browsers ?

Someone over at Newsvine has posted a very detailed guide to make Firefox look and act like IE, Opera, Flock and Netscape. The process is very simple, just involves installing few themes and extension. Although its not of much use to most of us, its quite fun to make one browser resemble another.

Some of the extensions and themes mentioned in the guide won’t work with Firefox 2.0, you’ll have to wait for sometime until the theme or extension becomes compatible with Firefox 2.0 or just switch back to Firefox 1.5.7 again.

Link: Make Firefox Look/Act Like IE, Opera, Flock, and Netscape

Someone has also digged it, but unfortunately it didn’t make it to the top , anyway you can digg it here

AdSense: View Earnings Since Last Payment

oday I noticed a small change on the Reports Page of my AdSense Account, ’All Time’ earnings report were mysteriously replaced by ‘View since last payment’. It shows bucks earned during your latest payment cycle.

Its quite a nice improvement, but its useful only to folks who have their payments on hold. I think they might be just testing it, anyway here’s the screenshot, just incase they revert it back

Update: Just incase you need to see your All Time Earnings, simply login to your account and navigate yourself to the Advanced Reports page.

Wordpress 2.0.5 Ronan is out

The stable version of Wordpress 2.0.5 (codenamed Ronan) is out and available for free download. This is possibly the last major release before the version 2.1 and the new version counts upto 50 bug fixes, thou none of them are major, everyone is suggested to upgrade their blogs.

Upgrading is fairly simple, refer Podz’s upgrading guide (Or refer Codex).

Download Wordpress 2.0.5

Find out if you’re a Real Geek

Do you call yourself of Geek, then take this quiz and find out if your a Real Geek or just pretending to be one. Don’t forget to share your score through comments.

This quiz is powered by wbQuiz plugin by KanslozeBagger. My special thanks goes to Afterlife69 and TechZ for suggesting me some of question in this quiz.

This isn’t a survey, so I won’t be reading or storing the information provided by you.

Take Geekness Quiz

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WINDOWS XP

Windows XP was born on this day 5 years ago. These 5 years passed by so quickly, I still remember the day I installed Windows XP for the first time, I was very excited about its eye candy looks and its usability.

Windows XP was a major leap from Windows NT, 98/ Me and 2000 both Security and GUI vise. It is Microsoft’s longest running Operating System and I guess this must be XP’s last birthday because Vista will be released by this day next year.

Earlier this week Apple’s iPod Celebrated its 5th Birthday too.

Yahoo Bookmarks to Replace MyWeb

Yahoo finally realized the need to revamp their bookmarking service to keep up with their Rival Bookmarking Services and unveiled a new Beta version of Yahoo Bookmarks.

The new Yahoo Bookmarks saves your page URL along with its content and a thumbnail for future use, so even if the bookmarked page goes offline, you don’t have to worry because you’ll have a copy of that page saved in your account. Yahoo Bookmarks has better organizing capabilities with convenient drag and drop management along with folders and tags (Pretty Similar to Pocket). Unlike MyWeb, Yahoo Bookmarks doesn’t have any bookmark limit. Cool isn’t it ?

Yahoo Bookmarks is embedded into new Yahoo Toolbar for IE, allowing users to bookmark the page with a single click.

Why Yahoo Bookmarks, when we have Del.icio.us ?
According to Yahoo Search Blog, Yahoo Bookmarks will focus on personal saving, organization, and recovery while Del.icio.us will concentrate on meeting your social bookmarking and sharing needs.

Yahoo Bookmarks sound like a All in one Bookmarking Service, but Del.icio.us still remains my hot favorite; I wonder why Yahoo doesn’t concentrate more on improving Del.icio.us, Why doesn’t Del.icio.us get private bookmarking options ?

Credits: TechCrunch

MAC PRO WITH CORE 2 DUO

Here’s a Good news to all Macbook lovers, Apple has decided to upgrade its entire Macbook lineup with Core 2 duo with double memory and larger hard disk. New Macbook’s are said to be 39 percent faster than their predecessors.

The MacBook Pros now comes in three variants; a 15-inch model with a 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo and 1GB of RAM for $1,999 USD, a 15-inch model with a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo and 2GB of RAM for $2,499 USD, and a 17-inch model also with a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo and 2GB of RAM for $2,799 USD.

And Each variant comes with expandable memory upto 3GB, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics, dual-layer DVD writer and FireWire 400 and 800 ports. Apple is also retailing MagSafe Airline Adapter for $59 USD.

Technorati tags: Macbook Pro, Apple, Laptop

Mozilla Firefox 2 Officially Released

Finally the long wait is over !!, Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Final is now officially released and can be downloaded from GetFirefox.com. Now rediscover the Web again with a new Visual Looks, Built-in phising Protection, Inline Spell Checking, Enhanced Search capabilities and lots more. Read the release notes for more details

They have completely redesigned their website, it looks pretty neat and eye pleasing. New referral banners are up at SpreadFirefox.com, Go get it now !

Off Topic: Sorry folks, This blog was down for the past three days because of a server crash. Fortunately I had a backup which saved me !!

30,000 Japanese TV videos removed from YouTube due to Copyrights Infringement

A research from Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) claimed that YouTube was apparently serving as a storage medium to about 30,000 videos infringed with copyright.

YouTube came under fire from cable TV broadcasters, the NHK public broadcaster, the Recording Industry Association of Japan, and Yahoo Japan. Finally they had to bow down and delete those 30,000 videos. This must be the first major mass removal of content in its history of Video Sharing Site and might surely hurt Japanese YouTube lovers.

Internet Explorer 7 Addons

Although IE’s market share is loosing, Its still #1 browser in the World and Microsoft wants it to retain its place, So they have adapted Firefox’s Extension like feature for Internet Explorer 7 and named it IEaddons. Its very similar to Firefox Extensions and they are classified into four categories Security, Time Savers, Browsers and Entertainment.

Each Category contains sub categories and has many Addons, but not all of them are available for free download, so of them are commercial. The have implemented Comments and Extension Rating System to give this site a bit user interaction, So check the rating and comments before downloading.

I’m personally against the idea of commercialization of Addons, but its still worth a look.

Custom Domain Names for Wordpress.com Bloggers

Every Blogger wants his blog to look more professional by having a domain name rather than a subdomain like (username.wordpress.com) and that was the main reason why I moved to a self hosted platform. Folk at Wordpress.com realized this need and now they give you a option to choose your own domain name.

Simply go to Options > Domains in your WP Admin Panel and enter your domain name in the box. If you registering a new domain, they charge you 15$ per year (all inclusive), else if you already own a domain name, you can map it for 10$ per year and update your nameservers.

Any visitors to your blog’s old URL will be automatically redirected to its appropriate new URL. If you don’t like the domain name, you can always revert back to your same old subdomain. Pricing seems to be pretty reasonable to me. What’s your opinion ?

Although I don’t have a blog at Wordpress.com, I really welcome this new feature and I hope Wordpress.com allows bloggers to place ads on their blogs in future (Consider this as my Wishlist)

Firefox 2.0 to Launch on Oct 24th

A unknown person told me over IM about Firefox 2.0 launch date, but I didn’t believe him until I read this post over at Spread Firefox. Finally the long awaited Firefox 2.0 is coming this Tuesday hurray!!

Are you ready? We’re working on the final details now, and will be finalizing the Web site updates over the weekend. Special thanks to everyone from the SFX community who has helped out with testing, marketing and outreach programs

With all goodies like inline Spell Checking, Built-in Phising Protection and many many more, I can’t wait until this Tuesday !!

Are you ready to switch over ?

Apple Hits Back on Zune, Plans to make iPod a Wireless Radio Recorder

We all know about the ongoing firefight between Apple’s iPod and MS Zune. Latest Rumors say that Apple filled a patent application to allow its Portable media Player tune into FM/AM, Satellite radio and WiFi as a source. It can also Identify the song and shows the buying options.

Say, if your enjoying a song through radio while walk across the street and if your willing to buy it, then you can cue it up, so that it can be bought once you reach home (obviously through iTunes).

Apple also has plans to integrate a radio recorder, but this simple confused me. Who will buy a song while they can record and what does RIAA say about it? If everything works well and if Apple converts this patent into Product form, this might be a cause for Microsoft to worry. Lets wait and see if the rumors are real

Credits: TechDigest and OrbitCast

Orkut now Open for All

Google has decided to lift the invite based sign up process for its social networking platform, Orkut. So now anybody with a Google Account can join Orkut. Invite based registration process was acting as a hurdle, Hopefully this move should bringing in more users to Orkut.

Here in India, Orkut is quite popular [In comparison with MySpace and Facebook]. These days I’m pretty active on Orkut, you can checkout my Orkut profile. Scraps, Testimonials, Communities… Its fun.

Opera 9.1 will Include Real Time Fraud Protection

Folks at Opera have decided to include real time fraud protection system to help protect its users from potentially dangerous phising sites. Unlike Firefox’s or IE’s Phising Protection, this fraud protection system will simultaneously access GeoTrust’s fraud/legitimacy information from a database as you type to URL in the address bar, So the Speed won’t be compromised with this new fraud protection system in place.

Opera will send only required, limited amount of data to Opera’s Server in Plain Text format, So those concerned with privacy need not worry much about it. This new feature will surely bring a grin of Opera’s Fan.

Via Opera Watch

Internet Explorer 7 Final Now Available

The Final version of Internet Explorer 7 is now available for public download. This new version of IE 7 includes all the feedbacks and suggestion received from Beta Testers and promises to be a safer and better browser with built in Phising protection system and better RSS handling capabilities.

Internet Explorer 7 now has better CSS compatibility [This should make Developers happy]. Moreover IE7 has cool eye candy looks, I’m really please with IE7’s performance, but still I won’t use IE7 as my main stream browser due to the fact that I love Firefox and its Extensions. Yahoo, Weather.com, USA Today and other partners will also be offering customized version of Internet Explorer 7 to their customers.

Download Internet Explorer 7
14.8 MB [Win XP SP2 required]

Performancing Partners now open for Bloggers

I received a mail from Performancing founder, Nick Wilson this morning informing me about their new ad network called Performancing Partners. Performacing Partners is very much similar to BlogAds and unlike rest of the ad networks Performancing promises to share 70% for ad revenue generated on our blogs (This is much much more than any other ad network I’ve come across). You will also get 5% of income generated by any publisher or advertiser you refer.

You can set your own Pricing or enable ’Auto Pricing’ which sets your blog’s price based on impressions, but it will take upto 48 hours for the auto pricing algorithm to determine your blog’s value. Payout are made at the end of each month through PayPal. This new venture from Performancing sounds something like BlogAds for me. You can read more about Pricing here

Apple Ships infected iPods

Apple on Tuesday confirmed and apologized for ship iPod infected with RavMonE.exe Trojan, which made its way to iPod manufacturing plant through ubiquitous devices. The company said that over 1% for iPod shipped from September 12, 2006 were infected with this Trojan

Once this Trojan enters your system, it contacts several remote sites and notify them about the infection and allows remote access to your computer. This is a mass storage virus, so it may also infect your other devices attached to your computer such as Digital Cameras, USB flash drives and other removable media. So it is recommended to run a virus scan on all your devices recently attached to your computer. The company added that iPod nano, iPod shuffle and Mac OS X are not affected, and all Video iPods now shipping are virus free.

So if your buying a new iPod in the near future, don’t forget to run a virus scanner on it. This controversy should make MS bit feel happy because it may give some boost to Zune’s sale. What do you think ?

Import your del.icio.us Bookmarks into Google Bookmarks.

Google Blogger, Mihai Parparita has developed yet another cool script which imports all your bookmarks from del.icio.us to Google Bookmarks. Google Bookmarks keeps your bookmarks private and can be remotely accessed from any computer.

You can manage your Bookmarks through the web based Interface or Google Toolbar for IE. I don’t use Google Bookmarks as much del.icio.us, but its not a bad idea anyway.

Enable Google reader with GMAIL

The new version of Reader has been out there long enough (and is now stable enough) that I have some time to catch my breath and make this post (my post-launch post last year came only a couple of days after the big announcement). I've jotted down some of my thoughts from the past few weeks, continuity will not be high.

There were some hints that something big was coming. Chris's Twitter updates were sounding rather intense. Someone in the discussion group inferred from my lack of posts that a major update was imminent (or that I stopped caring - never!). We even invited some bloggers for a sneak peek at the new Reader* but they were nice and respected their embargo.

Reader is in Google Labs, and that puts it in the "throw it against the wall and see what sticks" product family. I'm glad that people seem to have realized that this "throwing" and "seeing" are less passive than they sound. To stretch this metaphor further, if the spaghetti starts to slide off, engineers (and UI designers, and product managers, and others) will study the problem and figure out how to increase its coefficient of friction. Usually the changes are more subtle (witness the myriad of tweaks that have been done to the Google Video homepage) which is perhaps why there is this perception that no post-launch changes are made.

A lot of people have remarked on the similarities between the new Reader interface and Gmail's. With this in mind, I've created a simple Greasemonkey script that adds a "Feeds" in Gmail. When clicked, Reader's list view is loaded on the right. To install the script (and Greasemonkey if you have never used it before):

1. Install Greasemonkey from http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
2. Restart Firefox.
3. Click on the script link above
4. Click on the "Install" button that's displayed in the upper-right corner of the page.
5. Visit/reload Gmail

You may wonder why I felt the need to write a Greasemonkey script for my own product. The answer is that integrations are hard and generally require a lot of effort before you can even determine if they are worthwhile. Greasemonkey lets you experiment with UI concepts with minimal effort necessary from either team (I had to make exactly one change to Reader to better support this script, and that was the ability to force list view to be used, even if expanded view is normally selected). I can't really say what, if any, our integration plans are, but enough users have asked for something like this that I thought writing the script was the most expedient way to provide this (unofficial) feature.

I am still subscribed to the "google reader" Blog Search feed, so that is one way to reach the team with feedback. The discussion group is also being monitored, though with the increased volume we now find it hard to respond to a lot of posts. But please keep the feedback coming, it's been great to get direct, concrete indicators for what we should work on next.

* It is rather frustrating to have to call it "the new Reader" or more formally "the new version of Google Reader." It's unfortunate that version numbers are passé, "2.0.1" is a more accurate and concise representation where of where Reader is right now.

Archos Launches 160GB Portable Media Player

Archos has gone jumbo with its new Archos 504 Media Player. Its has storage space of 160GB with a huge LCD display of 4.3 inches. Its supports all major video formats in DVD resolution and is capable of storing 450 hours of Video, 1.6 million photos or 80,000 songs. Best of all, it has a option DVR station which can record from TV into MPEG4.

There’s a range of sizes available, with a 40GB device retailing for £249.99, 80GB for £299.99 and the 160GB model selling for £479.99. All comes with headphones, USB cable and protective pouch.

Isn’t this a grand daddy of iPod?

Thanks: Modculture

AdSense introduces Multiple Channels

Now AdSense allows you to track your ad unit with more than one channel. This is extremely useful for webmaster who own more than one site, he/she can particularly track which ad unit receives maximum clicks on his site.

For instance I have single Adsense account and I use that on three or more blogs, For Ads on TechBuzz, I create a channel called “TechBuzz” and for ads of individual pages of TechBuzz, I create another channel called “Single_TechBuzz”, This lets me track my ad units more accurately.

But I still feel that stats given by Adsense isn’t enough, they should provide the IPs of clicker, So that we can monitor our own account for invalid clicks and report it back to them.

Google Adds Video Uploading Feature in Picasa Web Album

Google has added Video Uploading features to all the paid users of Picasa Web Album [$25 per year for US Customers], The resolution of the Video is same as other videos seen on Google Videos, but you get control over comments and the video is store on your personal 6GB storage space. You can see the sample video uploaded by Haochi.

If you aren’t a paid user of Picasa Web Albums, then you can certainly make use of Google Video’s unlisted feature to upload your private videos.

Although most users won’t use this feature, this should give Picasa Web Albums a edge over Flickr. Lets just wait and see how Yahoo reacts to this move from Google.

[Credits: Amit Agarwal, Phillip]

Mobile Search from Ask

Ask.com joined the league of Mobile Search providers and proved its existence in the search industry by launching the mobile version of their search site. Its designed the page to minimize keystrokes while increasing navigability and decreasing load times. They also boast that data can be accessed upto 50 times faster than their rivals mobile search products.

All web enabled cellphone users can instantly access mobile search at mobile.ask.com. I tried it on my cellphone, Its pretty neat, but search relevance is not as good as Google.

Fresh Theme for Wordpress

iLemoned has released a new theme for Wordpress called “Fresh”, It has a awesome web 2.0ish looks. I can’t really say it as three columned theme because half of the sidebar is two columned. It also has three bottom blocks for blogroll and recent comment. I rate it 10/10 !!

Demo | Download

Blog Juice Calculator

Text-Link-Ads have released another tool called Blog Juice Calculator, which checks your blog’s juice and other nutritional facts based on your blog’s Alexa Ranking, Technorati Ranking, Technorati Incoming links and Bloglines subscribers. It will show your ranking along with other blogs in the same category

My Blog’s Juice was 4.5, while Darren from Problogger says that his blog’s juice was updated twice. Anyway, it might not be accurate, but its the right tool to kill your time.

What is your Blog’s Juice ?

Feedburner Now Gives Email Subscription Link

Most readers aren’t tech savvy or they just don’t know about about Feed Readers, So Email Subscription Service is popular among these folks. Feedblitz was the first to start such service. Couple of months back even Feedburner started their own Email Subscription service. But most publishers turned towards Feedblitz because they provided email subscription link, whereas Feedburner provided only a bulky form.

Feedburner has learnt its previous mistakes and they now provide a tiny email subscription link which can be place anywhere on your template. Readers can click the link and subscribe to your RSS feed through email. You can add this link below your post to attract more subscribers

Wooden Memory Sticks

Its been a long time since I wrote about Gadgets on TechBuzz, So today I’ll write about Wooden Memory Sticks. I read about this thing on TechDigest. Memory sticks many transferring files and data easier, but this one even makes it look natural. Each one of these memory sticks are made from selected, hand picked wood, so each one of them has its own distinct beauty

In a common office environment these sticks grabs lots of attention, due to its uniqueness. Look damn cute, but they are bulky, so you would need some extra pockets to carry these around.

[Via TrendHunter]

YouTube now in the hands of Google

The official word is out, Google finally acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion. After completing the acquisition YouTube’s name will be retained and the will continue to live in San Bruno, CA will all its employees.

Why YouTube when they have Google Videos ?
Eric Says “Google Video is doing very well, integrating inside of Google, while YouTube was clearly winning the marketplace in social networking. Drummond says it is a stock transaction to be tax-free for YouTube shareholders, and somewhat cheaper for Google. He’s glad that YouTube shareholders want to be Google shareholders.”

I guess this acquisition will improve YouTube in several ways because now they have good financial backup by Google, but at the same time it will create Google’s monopoly over Video Sharing segment.

Earlier today I got my Soapbox (Microsoft’s Answer to YouTube), I didn’t try it yet. Let’s just wait and see what both of these giants have to offer in the near future.

Official Google Blog Hacked

The official Google Blog was hacked by a unknown hacker and he made a fake post that Google has decided to discontinue Adwords Click to Call project. Funniest of all, its immediate previous post was about Google’s Security Stance

Post made by the Hacker: “After conscientiously considering, Google has decided not to continue with Google Click-to-call project. The project has been in the media on last days because of the notice of Google agreement with e-Bay. We finally consider click-to-call agreement with e-Bay a monopolistic aproach that would damage small companies in the CRM area.”

Google’s Reply: “A bug in Blogger enabled an unauthorized user to make a fake post on the Google Blog last night, claiming that we’ve discontinued our AdWords click-to-call test. The bug was fixed quickly and the post removed. As for the click-to-call test, it is progressing on schedule, and we’re pleased with the results thus far.”

This is not the first time Google Blog got hacked, earlier in March Google Blog was accidentally deleted. This raises concerns about Blogger’s security. If your still hosted on Blogger, maybe you need to switch over to some other blog host like Wordpress. Nothing beats a self hosted blog !

How to Fix Google Reader in Opera

For some strange reason Google doesn’t like Opera, maybe its because they want everybody to turn towards Firefox. But due to its speed and other functionalities its gaining popularity among websurfers these days. I’ve seen lots of people who gave up IE or Firefox and switched over to Opera 9.

Like all other Google Products, Google Reader also doesn’t work in Opera, so an unknown coder has written a script which will make it work for you. All you have to do is:

1. Download Reader.js
2. Right click in the page your Google Reader page, click edit site preferences
3. Go to scripting and see the box for choosing a file there? type in this…
4. C:\Program Files\Opera\profile\cache4\reader.js
5. and make sure you place that reader.js file in the folder of opera as indicated above.
6. And you are done! refresh the page.

I ain’t a Opera Fan, but I use Opera sometimes to check my theme’s compatibility issues.

Alexa Traffic Rank Button Generator for Wordpress

it comes with a Code Wizard to generate the code you need to add to your website, so that you can generate graphs for any website, not just your blog. It also allows you to embedded you Amazon ID, so that you can earn quick cash when your visitors buys something on Amazon using your referral

Installation:

I’m feeling lucky sleepy now, so i won’t bother to write the installation instruction, but I’ll copy and paste the whole thing from Ajay’s Blog (I hope it doesn’t hurt any of you

1. Download The Alexa Traffic Rank Button Generator Plugin.
2. Extract the contents of ald-alexa-button.zip to wp-content/plugins/ folder. You should get a folder called ald-alexa-button.
3. Activate the Plugin in WP-Admin.
4. Goto Options > Alexa Button. If you are upgrading from an earlier version, it is recommended that you click Default Options so as to clean up any old options.
5. Use the Generator on that page to generate the code to add to your template file. Alternatively add
   
   if (function_exists(‘echo_alexabutton’)) echo_alexabutton(); ?>

   to use default options. Default is a Small Traffic Graph of three months.

Once you complete the above steps, you can configure its parameters through WP-Admin >> Options >> Alexa Button. Pretty simple isn’t it ?, but Ajay has poured 100 of lines to develop this plugin, so if you enjoy this plugin, please consider donating few bucks to him. It will keep him motivated to develop many such plugins

TribalFusion, WoW !!

Following LiewCF, I decided to try TribalFusion last week. I had to wait for one long week before my site finally got approved.

What is TribalFusion ?
Tribal Fusion® is the leading site representation company, serving 18 billion monthly impressions and reaching 160 million users per month. They partner with top quality web publishers to provide advertisers with targeted ad placements. Tribal Fusion’s payout is based on impressions, irrespective of clicks. Higher is your Traffic, Higher is your revenue.

First Impression: After getting approved I logged into its control panel, I found that its interface was bit confusing with terms such as ROS , Gross Rev… but their Custom Support was exceptional, So I had no problems installing their ad code.

Its two days since I started off with TribalFusion, I’m earning 12$ flat everyday (Not as good as AdSense, but not too bad). Unlike AdSense, TribalFusion provides realtime earning reports.

But TribalFusion ads are graphical and flashy, So your visitors might not like it. If they start complaining, just ask them to install Adblock if they don’t like ads (That’s what I do)

Sounds Cool, How to Join TribalFusion ?
TribalFusion has a strict Quality control over their publishers, Inorder to get into TribalFusion, your site must meet the following requirements:

• A minimum of 2,000 unique users per day.
• Highly targeted, relevant and regularly
  updated content.
• Professional site design.
• An active user base.

If your site meets the above requirements and your interested in joining TribalFusion, click here

Prepare for 9rules Round 5 Submission

9rules Blogging Network is one of the most popular destination for bloggers as well as readers, so every blogger is looking forward to get into 9rules inorder to gain maximum exposure. During the last submission round they received over 700 submissions, this time it would be even more because this is the last submission round this year. But they don’t accept all submissions because they don’t want to dilute the quality of their network. I’ve been closely watching over 9rules blog for quite a few months now, they have been indirectly telling bloggers about what they are looking for.

They want your blog to look clean and unique, so your chances of being accepted into 9rules are higher if your blog’s theme is custom built, but obviously content is the king, so your witting matters the most. Read the following, Tyme White has made everything simpler for you

• Round 5 Q&A
• Be honest, how good are your entries?
• Entry titles: think about them
• This should be obvious: don’t lie
• Does your site have curb appeal?
• Stay on topic
• Comment collectors
• Readers like to skim articles
• What is your site about?
• Can I search your site?

I think folks at 9rules don’t like ad filled blogs, so far I’ve seen only Undersigned’s blog with Google Ads in them. Oh I forgot to mention Paul’s Blog, it too contains private ads. I guess private ads are OK until they don’t hurt your eyes. Yeah, I know that my blog contains too many ads, right now I’m in the process of eliminating the least performing ad units. The guy over at Quick Online Tips has also posted few useful tips to maximize your chances of getting accepted. Best of Lucky to all those wanna be 9rulers.

Track your AdSense Earnings using Yahoo Widgets Engine

AdSense refreshes its earnings report once in every 30 minutes. I always want to stay updated with my latest earnings, but at the same time I’m very lazy, So I don’t like to open my browser and check my earnings. Instead I use AdSense Widget for Yahoo Widgets Engine to fetch my AdSense reports right onto my desktop.

Like all other Widgets, this is also written using Yahoo Widgets API and it works beautifully both on Windows as well as Mac OSX.

Jehiah has poured lots of efforts in developing it. So if you like it, please consider donating a few bucks to him (His PayPal address is jehiah@gmail.com) This widget can be downloaded from here

Or if you don’t like Yahoo Widgets Engine, try SysSense or AdSense Notifier for Firefox

Windows Vista RC2 Released

Microsoft announced the release of last public beta (RC2) before the next generation operating system, Vista will take over Windows XP. Vista RC2 includes all the feedbacks provided by beta testers during pervious betas, important improvements in performance, application compatibility and fit and finish work just before the final release of Vista

Microsoft said that Vista RC2 will be available only to a limited number of CPP participants, beta testers, TechNet and MSDN subscribers.

Thanks: Nate Mook

Sneak into Websites using Sneakyuser.com

Internet is supposed to be a repository of free information, but some places like schools, office etc block access to certain websites or some people prefer to stay anonymous while browsing websites, so that webmaster of that site can’t view information about you such as your country, browser, operation system, window revolution and more data. So Sneakyuser.com help you to sneak into any websites anonymously and browse the web without any restriction.

Unlike other proxy services, Sneakyuser has a neat layout without too many ads. Moreover, its absolutely free, you don’t even have to sign-up to use this service.

Sneakyuser provide two different types of proxies:
1) PHP Proxy - Basic browsing, nice and fast.
2) CGI Proxy - Use for login or any type of online form (like MySpace); a bit slower & heavier than the PHP.

Happy Sneaking

Is this the End of Digg.com ?.......

A pay-per-digg service called Usersubmitter.com has been launched which allows publishers promote their stores on Digg.com and at the sametime pays user who digg the story submitted by the publisher.

Digg user will recieve 10 cents for every vote they cast on the story, on the other hand the publisher is charged $20 + $1 for every vote. Isn’t that insane? Creators of Usersumbitter have struck gold !! but at the sametime I get a feeling that Digg.com is no more democratic and it might loose its popularity. Is this the end of Digg? Lets just wait and see what Kevin Roses comes out with.

If you want to promote your story or earn money for digging, then headover to this place.

Google Blog Search Pinger

You can now ping Google when your blog changed for faster inclusion in Google Blog search. You can also allow you Blogware or blogging platform to take care of pinging using XML-PRC.

If your using Live Writer, then add http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 under Tools >> Preferences >> Ping Servers.

OR

If your using Wordpress to run your blog, then login to your Wordpress Admin Panel and add http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 under Options >> Writing.

Please use any one of the above technique, because if you ping multiple times, there are chances that Google might block your forever, So better be safe than sorry.

Google Gadgets Now Can Add on Any Webpage

Google Gadgets (formerly called as Google Modules) were allowed only on Personalized Homepage or Google Desktop Search, but now Google lets you add them on any web page. It can help you make your site dynamic and content rich with complex Gadgets such as maps, date & time, jokes, games, news reports, flight status, webcams, and sports scores.

Go to webpage gadgets directory and pick any of them, customize it and add the snippet code on your webpage. If your a developer, then you can make use of Google Gadget API to build cool gadgets yourself. Cool isn’t it ?

Google Groups Revamped

Yesterday, Google Groups team announced a new revamped version of Google Groups which is publicly available at groups-beta.google.com. This announcement comes a week after Google Reader was given a new UI.

The new homepage is now bit sleeker and cleaner than the previous one. Group owners can now create a welcome message, upload a group logo and customize fonts and colors; Members of the group can also collectively create a group webpage using integrated Google Page Creator, Google Groups now boasts a file section where users can upload all their files and share it with fellow members.

This move from Google gives me a feeling that the gap between Yahoo Groups and its Google counterpart is reducing. I was expecting Google Groups to get some AJAX goodies like Google Reader or Gmail, anyway its still usable. File upload and Page feature sounds cool, hopefully it will give some interaction between Group Members.

Will Google Groups kill Yahoo Groups ?

SearchMash is a new search site from Google which mixes Web Search and Image Search with a AJAX interface and some cool features. Search results can b

SearchMash is a new search site from Google which mixes Web Search and Image Search with a AJAX interface and some cool features. Search results can be rearranged according to your preference; Clicking on the green link below search results will drop down a options menu, through which you can select ‘cached copy’, ’similar sites’ etc…

I love its AJAX interface, pretty neat and cool looking, but it doesn’t work for users who disable Javascript. Since its powered by Google, search relevancy should be a problem. SearchMash might serve Google as a playground to test new features before implementing it on their main stream search engine.