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Showing posts from November, 2005

Ask Me a Question

You could be very knowledgeable about computers and the Internet but lack the time necessary to go online and do extensive research for your work. And even if you have the time to research the web, you may still not be able to find the information you want because you cannot create the right query for the search engines. Don't worry, help is just a click away. Even experienced web users sometimes need help to search information on the internet. I can help you locate hard-to-find information on the web or solve technology-related problems that you are facing. Your question can be related to Tech Support, Online Map of the nearest Pizza store, how to choose the best software, Hardware Buying Guide, Where to download Drivers for my Windows 95 PC, Quotes for Wedding Anniversaries, Where is the nearest Wi-Fi Spot, Should I buy a PC or a Mac, Should I buy a XP PC or wait for Vista, Access restricted websites, locating a lost friend's email address, How to make money from Adsense,

Firefox referrals for international Adsense publishers

Google is now accepting International (non-US) Adense Publishers for Firefox Referral program . A Firefox referral is counted when a Windows user, who has not previously installed Firefox, downloads and runs the program for the first time. You can place upto one Firefox referral button on your website. Google pays $1 per referral the first time a user installs Firefox. To add a referral to your site, please follow these steps: 1. Log in to your AdSense account at www.google.com/adsense. 2. Visit the Referrals tab and choose the Firefox sub-tab. 3. Choose the referral button you'd like to place on your site and copy the code from the box to the left of your selection. 4. Paste the referral code into the HTML source code of your site.

IE 7 vs Firefox 1.5 vs Opera 9 - The gap is closing

The upcoming releases of IE, Firefox, and Opera show that innovation in Web Browser Development has just come to an end. Companies are simply integrating the more popular features of rival products into their browsers. No radical changes are planned in any of the upcoming browser releases. It is very possible that in near future - IE, Firefox, and Opera will all have similar features and similar, tight interfaces. 1. IE 7 includes tabbed browsing , a capability that Firefox and Opera have offered for a while. 2. IE 7 has an integrated search box similar to that in Firefox and Opera. 3. Both IE 7 and Firefox 1.5 offer an easy method for deleting personal browsing data (browser cache, URL history, saved forms) via one menu option. The feature already exists in Opera 8.5. 4. Firefox 1.5 offer automatic updates similar to IE. 5. Opera comes with several advanced features that you can get in Firefox only with add-ons, and that IE lacks entirely. Erik Larkin compares the three most pop

Difference between Laptop and Notebook computer

Notebooks and Laptops are portable computers but there is a minor difference between laptops and notebooks. Laptop : A portable computer small enough to use on one's lap. Notebook : A light, portable computer that is generally thinner than a laptop. Even according to Webopedia, laptop computers are more frequently called notebook computers, though technically laptops are somewhat smaller in size than notebooks. Source: Notebook Computer | Laptop Computer

Randy Morin does a Mark Cuban

In an effort to reduce comment spam,Randy of the RSS Blog has decided to delete any new comment that links to blogspot.com blogs. He will also delete existing comments (even legitimate ones) that link to blogspot.com. Earlier, Mark Cuban had declared a war on Blogspot blogs and hinted at banning blogspot.com blogs from the Icerocket blog search engine. Randy : I know blog comment spam is the most irritating thing but how about adding word verification kind of a thing. It really helps reduce spam .

AntiVirus Software: Full Virus Protection ?

What problems might the antivirus industry be facing, apart from the market headaches which plague any manufactuer of consumer goods. We all know that viruses exist, and so do antivirus solutions. It might seem that antivirus solutions are a standard consumer product - one solution barely differs from the next. Users choose their product according to design, or marketing, or for some other non-technical reason. Given this, an antivirus solution is, in theory, just another consumer product, like washing powder, toothpaste, or cars. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) this is not the case. Users often chose an antivirus solution for its technical characteristics, and these differ widely between products. Users often focus on whether or not a specific product protects against a specific type of cyber threat, and the overall level of protection offered. An antivirus solution should be able to protect against ALL types of malicious program. The better the antivirus solution, the happier

calendar.google.com goes live

It looks like Google Calendar (GCalendar) is coming really soon. The calendar.google.com domain is live now though it shows the main Google search page for the moment. I noticed this while seeing one of my website referral . Even before the launch of Google Talk and Google Base, their subdomains went live few days before the actual launch. The same can be anticipated with GCalendar since the Google calendar subdomain is now live. It'd be nice if Google integrates calendar into GMail. Yahoo Mail already supports calendar which can also be synched with Microsoft outlook. Let's hope gCal could be much better. Google calendar should also connect with the Calendar plugin in Google Desktop and even the TODO list plugin.

Rapidshare, MegaUpload and YouSendit - Unlimited File Hosting

Q: What is Rapidshare, Megaupload or YouSendIt ? A: These are free and unlimited file hosting services where anyone can upload and download large files including MP3 songs, videos, games, software, ebooks, etc. While Rapidshare and Megaupload are available only in the browser, alternative YouSendIt also has a desktop client that can resume uploads. Problem: Since services like Rapidshare or Megaupload make file sharing so simple, they are often used for sharing illegal content like warez, adult movies and software cracks. Rapidshare URLs are not protected by passwords so anyone can download that content. Q: What is a Rapidshare Premium account ? A: When you download files from Rapidshare (or Megaupload), there are certain download limits per IP address. You have to wait for some time and type a certain CAPTCHA before downloading Rapidshare files. No FTP support and it is not possible to leech Rapidshare files as the service permits one download thread per IP. You can bypass all these

Google Adsense Vs Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN)

Website owners can now earn money by allowing contextual advertisers (like Adsense or YPM) to place ads on their webpages. The more people visit and click the ads, the more money the advertisers will pay to the website owner. Richard Warren compares the two big players in the Contextual Advertising market - Google Adsense vs Yahoo Publisher Network. Relevance of Ads : YPN is not returning ads that are as relevant as the ones that Adsense users are finding. For example, one blogger reported that on a website on PHP programming, YPN returned ads for a florist and for a phone service provider. The blogger couldn't understand what words the YPN program picked up for the florist. But it was the word 'hello' that apparently signaled the ads regarding the phone service. Publisher Earnings Report and Statistics : Additionally, some users have complained that YPN doesn't seem to update earnings and visitor information as often as Adsense. So website owners have to wait to lea

Cheerioke: Create Animated Avatars with Voice (lip sync)

Users can phone in karaoke songs and send them to friends, via singing Oddcast avatars. Cheerioke is an online tool that lets people customize an animated character (avatar) and then sing along to a tune. Visitors can select one of three songs and sing along to music playing on the PC. The voice can be recorded directly to the PC with an attached microphone; alternatively, users can dial a toll-free number, sing into the handset, then save the performance to a server. Once the performance is saved, a Cheerioke user can watch the Oddcast character sing in his or her own voice. The animation's head bobs, the eyes move and the lips open and close in time to the vocals. Visit the Cheerioke Website . The Flash characters are created using technology from Oddcast. [ Macromedia Edge ]

Yahoo, MSN may offer Web Analytics like Google

Web Stats Analysis companies like WebSideStory, Omniture, WebTends and Coremetrics Inc. charge customers thousands of dollars for their analysis tools that tell Web marketers how well visitors like their site design, products, promotions and advertisements. But the future is not so bright for these Web site traffic analytics companies with the entry of Google. They may soon find themselves under pressure to slash their fees if they can't demonstrate that they offer premium tracking services that are far superior to what Google offers. According to John Pallatto, the new Google Analytics service is as much a threat to these website tracking services as Microsoft's decision to offer its Internet Explorer Browser for free to overwhelm the user base of Netscape Navigator. John's opinion is that the Google announcement could spell the end of Web analytics as a money-making business. Yahoo, MSN and AOL may also join the race by offering free Web site analytics service followin

Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts for Power Users

All features in Mozilla Firefox browser are accessible through the use of the keyboard. You can use shortcut keys to view and save Web pages, search the web, open new webpages, work with bookmarks, or find text on the current webpage. Some of the most common keyboard shortcuts in Mozilla Firefox are Ctrl+N (to open a new Firefox window), Ctrl+T (to open a new tab), Ctrl+F4 (to close the current tab) and Ctrl+S to save the current webpage. Mozilla Firefox supports many more powerful keyboard shortcuts. For instance, by pressing a simple key combination, you can manually delete autocomplete entries from the Firefox location bar or Web forms. I am sharing a list of my favorite Mozilla Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts that make web browsing with Firefox even more fun . And you also save your precious time as navigating through several layers of Firefox Toolbar menus is no longer necessary. 1. Web Search Ctrl+K moves the cursor to the Search Bar. You can then type in the terms you wish to fin

Unlimited Rapidshare Downloads sans Rapidshare Premium Account Generator

Rapidshare is the default destination for all sort of program files, ebooks, movies and audio clips. But the problem is that either you get a Rapidshare Premium Account or will face restrictions on your downloading limit. Generally people who are on dial-up or have a dynamic IP address assigned by their ISP, they'll just turn off and restart their modems to change their IP address to fool rapidshare and resume downloading. More Rapidshare Tricks The other trick to cheat rapidshare without getting a rapidshare premium account involves some sort of dos commands: 1. Clear your browser cookies. 2. Open the command prompt (Start - Run - cmd.exe) 3. Run the following simple commands:    ipconfig /flushdns    ipconfig /release    ipconfig /renew 4. Type exit to close the DOS window. Restart the rapidshare download job. Now Megaupload is even smarter and impose a limit of simulataneous users based on your country. To bypass the Megaupload limit, type the download uRL in a translate website

Strange fight erupts at Digg.com

The technology news-filtering service Digg is facing some trouble. The problem erupted after a digg.com poster (kooaidguy) submitted misleading stories about the Digg founder Kevin Rose. Now Freespeech , another digg.com spammer, is trying submit the same story on Digg in every section a few hundred times.

Free Image Hosting Sites for Blogs, Auctions, Websites

Store and share your images online without paying any fee. This is a directory of most popular websites offering free image hosting services. You can host your family pictures, avatars and signatures for message-boards, Internet forums, host images for eBay auction webpages or for posting images to blogs. Uploading new images is simple. Visit the image hosting service provide website, select browse to find an image that you want to upload and click upload. The hosting website will automatically generate linking image code (URL) to post your images in blogs, email messages or websites (html image) including eBay, ubid, WebTV, Yahoo Auctions, and EZBoard message boards. Village Photos - The free basic account allows an upload of 25 images. You can upload images straight from your hard drive or via FTP. You can give your photos titles and captions, resize or compress images. Free signup is required. GIF or JPG file formats supported. Limitations: File size limit 250KB; Monthly Transfer 6

Google Internet Cafe at London Airport

In a unique experiment to gather live user feedback, Google has opened an Internet Cafe - Google Space at Terminal One of Heathrow Airport in London. Google products being shown at Google Space include Google Earth, Google Local, Google Toolbar, Picasa and Google Mobile. Google Space will be running at Terminal 1 until 17th December, with Google staff on hand to offer advice and assistance to users . The 10 Samsung laptops in the temporary installation will be manned from 0700 to 1900 by Google employees from across the organisation, with some flown in especially to help out. Although the search specialist claims the project is primarily about helping travellers use their time more productively at the airport, it admitted that Google Space will also act as a physical testing lab for its new applications. Although the company chose Heathrow for the project, other areas which attract large numbers of people with time on their hands were considered, including train stations and doctors&#

Apple Aperture in Amazon Stores

Apple Aperture , one of the most innovative digital photography software to come around in a long time, will be available for customers from Nov 30. According to an email received by Amazon.com customers, the company has already received copies of Aperture, but is unable to release it to the public until November 30th. "Although we do have your copy of "Apple Aperture Post Production Tool for Photographers (Mac DVD)" on hand, we are not able to ship it to you until its official release date, November 30, 2005." The Aperture software appears to be a complete rethinking of the user interface for digital-image-editing software, giving users the option of seeing their photographs laid out like slides or negatives on a light table. Apple may be able to find a place on customers' desktops for Aperture even if the program doesn't displace Adobe Photoshop.

Invite Google Adwords advertisers directly

Google Adsense publishers can invite Adwords advertisers to advertise on their websites. The "Advertise on this site" link is contained in the Adsense panel. Advertisers clicking on this link are taken to the Adwords sign-up page. There is a however a downside to this approach. If Google ads system can't find targetted ads for your webpage, there won't be any advertising invitation on that page. Using some simple HTML code listed below, you can actually add a "Advertise on this site" link to your blog or website even outside a Adsense ad unit. The advertising link can be added anywhere on your website or weblog independent of the location of the adsense panel . http://adwords.google.com/select/OnsiteSignupLandingPage?client=ca-pub-xxx&referringUrl=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&hl=en&gl=IN Rembember to replace ca-pub-xxx with your own adsense client ID. The value of referringUrl can either be the location of your homepage or the current webpag

Fix for Adsense Flicker problem

In some float layout based websites (like Digital Inspiration ), Google Ads are seen to flicker (blink) when you hover the mouse over another website navigation link (non-adsense link). Adsense Flickering is normally noticed in non-IE browsers like Firefox (Gecko based) and Opera . The recently released Adsense Referral buttons are also seen to flicker. The ad panel flicker occurs for a split second, it is enough to drive new visitors away from your website because they think your website has a bad design. First impression is indeed the last impression. Sometimes, the problem in Firefox can be traced to the use of floated elements (elements inside the div tag). Obviously, the most easy solution to fix adsense flicker is to us absolutely positioning instead of floats. There are some other possible solutions for fixing the flickering google ads: 1. Make sure that all your images contain the height and width attribute inside the img tag. 2. Google displays the ad code inside a IFRAME.

Riya: Google answer to Yahoo Flickr

Google likely to acquire Riya for $40 mn Riya, an online photo service that can automatically recognise human faces and tag it with names, is being courted by Google for a potential acquisition even during its beta stage. Riya could be Google’s response to Yahoo’s acquisition of Flickr, which also uses tags to organize photos. Riya’s service, which makes use of artificial intelligence and face-recognition technology, is supposedly superior to Flickr’s. This is one step ahead of other services like Flickr and Picasa, another Google service. The Riya software can distinguish between twins (even if the resemblance is extreme) and recognise members of the same family. Munjal explains how the Riya photo recognitions system actually works : The Riya system only looks for people you train it to recognize (with one exception I'll describe later). So if you can't identify a person yourself then it won't recognize that person. Furthermore, the Riya system only looks for the people wh

Something fishy going on at Google

Indymedia has pointed out some disturbing Facts About Google. Google's immortal cookie : Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Google records everything they can : For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation." Google hires spooks : Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security Agency. Google are clearly gathering information about us but refuse to tell us why. Read the complete list of Disturbing Facts about Google .

Mozilla Firefox Video Ads

Mozilla is planning to ask amateur film makers to make 30-second video ads to promote Firefox. Through a series of online viral videos, made by volunteers who enter a competition, Mozilla is hoping to repeat the success of the last year’s campaign to promote the launch of Firefox 1.0 . The films will be judged by a panel drawn from the film industry and prizes will include high-end computer systems. Word-of-mouth recommendation and a reputation for superior security and privacy features have helped Firefox claim 50 million active users over the past year. Such was the cult status of the first Firefox browser, tens of thousands of supporters, recruited through www.spreadfirefox.com, donated money to buy a full-page advertisement in the New York Times to promote it. Mozilla which is run as a charity and relies on a global army of volunteers to build its products, is due to release Firefox 1.5 on Nov 29. It expects to roll out Firefox 2 next summer. Read full story - Film-makers asked

Disable Acrobat PDFMaker in Microsoft Office

Using the windows registry, you can easily disable or remove the Adobe PDF Creator buttons that Acrobat installs into Word, Excel and other Microsoft Office applications. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\PDFMaker.OfficeAddin] "LoadBehavior"=dword:00000000 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins\PDFMaker.OfficeAddin] "LoadBehavior"=dword:00000000 You can even remove the PDFMaker from the Add/Remove Programs panel.

Google Adsense Smart Pricing is real

Google's Smart Pricing has been a well-kept secret till now. Basically, if you are a Google Adsense publisher running a network of sites, one low-performing website could cause Google to lower the ad prices (EPC) of all sites in your account. Smart Pricing "black-box" techniques are definitely a cause of worry for Adsense publishers. I have personally seen my earning drop when I started showing Google Ads on another less-popular website. Once I removed ads from this website, it took about 7-10 days until my earnings graph hit the normal mark. I wish Google had been more open about Smart Pricing. AdSense Publisher Support did try to clear the misconceptions but that may not be enough to satisfy Publishers.

How to get Scobleized

Robert Scoble of Microsoft has a simple tip for people who like to get scobleized Don't beg for links. I immediately delete them. Never beg a blogger for links. Say, instead, "here's something you might find interesting." So if you want to get your link published on Scoble's blog, you should send an email to Scoble in the format that he won't delete immediately. But on a serious note, I think Scoble is right . I am sure all popular bloggers can relate to this issue of spammers asking for reciprocal links. Even Greg has some similar advice for link beggars: If you see something cool and want me to blog about it, send me a link and tell me what's got your interest and why. I don't care whether it's a link to your site and your comments or if it's pointing to the original info, or whatever. I agree with Robert's and Greg's suggestion. If you find something interesting or wrote something that others might find interesting, you have to s

Google Adsense Domain Name Parking

Anyone can now register a new or expired web domain for less than $10 a year. Domain-name Squatters are registering thousands of domain names in the hope that someone will buy them at a higher price. Some cyber-squatters are using Pay-per-click advertising (Google Adsense) to monetize domain names without even building a website. Google Adsense for Domains is one such domain parking service to earn money from unused or dormant domains. The service creates a HTML (or XML) webpage filled with pay-per-click ads which is served to the user visiting the parked domain. Since the webpage has only links, there is a good possibility that user will click to navigate - and this user activity translates to revenue since the clicked link is an advertisement. AdSense for domains program typically analyze a domain name and tries to match its meaning with Google Adwords' ads and related searches that are related to the domain name subject. AdSense for domains customers redirect traffic from park

How to Download Flash Games (SWF) and Flash Video Files

Here you will learn how to download and save Shockwave Flash swf files (including videos, animation movies and Flash games) from the Internet to your hard disk using Firefox, Google Chrome or Internet Explorer. If an animation video or an online video game is using the Adobe Flash Player, you can download the embedded Flash file to the computer and play it offline. The problem is that saving Flash Animations from websites is not so easy. The Adobe Flash player context menu has no option to download or save the Flash movie so here are some workarounds to help you save the swf files using your favorite web browser. How to Save Flash files in Firefox Click Tools -> Page Info  and then click the Media Tab on the Page Info screen. The media tab has a complete list (with preview) of Images, CSS Files and Shockwave Flash files that were downloaded by the Firefox browser while loading the page. Scroll down the list and locate the swf file.  Click the "Save As" button.

Tracking Adsense clicks with Google Analytics

Google Adsense program could soon be integrated with Google Analytics to track visitor clicks in Adsense Units. This was revelead in an email from the Google Adsense Support team. While Google Analytics is certainly still useful for tracking your website performance data, at this time it isn't able to track your AdSense clickthrough data, nor is it integrated into your AdSense account. We're working hard to add new functionality as quickly as possible , but are not able to say at this time whether an integration with AdSense will occur. I am actually exploring different methods to track visitor clicks in Adsense units. Google Analytics looks like the best available option to track visitor clicks since both the products come from Google. And Google has clarified that it would not violate the AdSense Terms and Conditions to use Google Analytics to track outgoing clicks. With Google Analytics, you can track clicks on links that lead away from your site. This technique can be e

Advertise on this site link in Adsense ads

Google is making it simple for website owners to find new advertisers for their websites. Advertisers wishing to advertise directly on a Website using Google advertising program can click on an "Advertise on This Site" link that takes them to a Google page where they can create an AdWords ad for the specific Web site. (see screenshot of Advertise on this site link embedded in 336x28 adsense block) Onsite Advertiser Sign-up is actually an extension of Google site targeting that makes it easier for advertisers to bid on your site. Site-targeted ads take cost-per-impression (or CPM) pricing, which means advertisers decide how much they would like to pay for every 1000 impressions the ad receives on the website. Onsite Advertiser Sign-up program could put significant pricing pressure on blog advertising vendors like BlogAds and Adbrite . To attract advertisers, Google allows you to customize the landing page advertisers see with the logo, color scheme, and site description of you

Find visitor locations from IP Address

Using some very simple maths and a IP-based geo-location reference table, you can find the exact physical location of you website visitors. This technique can be extended to retrieve visitor's IP address using ASP, PHP, JSP, Perl or ColdFusion. The first step is to convert the visitor's IP address to an IP Number. Then we can search the IP-Country-Region-City database using IP number to match a record that has the IP Number between Beginning IP Number and Ending IP Number. Then, we can search the free IP-to-Country Database to match a unique record that has the IP number fits between From IP Number and To IP Number. An IP Address is generally of the form w.x.y.z The IP Number = 16777216*w + 65536*x + 256*y + z For example, if IP address is "202.186.13.4", then its IP Number "3401190660" is based on the Formula 1. IP Address = 202.186.13.4 (w = 202, x = 186, y = 13 and z = 4) IP Number = 16777216*202 + 65536*186 + 256*13 + 4 = 3388997632 + 1218

Windows Genuine Advantage supports Firefox

Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage program is an online validation process that enables you to verify that your copy of Windows XP is genuine (non-pirated). You will be prompted to validate your copy of Windows if you request a genuine Windows download from the Microsoft Download Center or Windows Update. The initial WGA 1.0 program downloaded an ActiveX control to check the authenticity of your Windows software. Since it was an ActiveX control, only Internet Explorer (IE) users could use it. But the recent growth of Firefox has forced Microsoft to rethink their strategy. Microsoft Genuine Windows Validation process now works in Firefox and other Mozilla browsers. Firefox users can download and install the Windows Genuine Advantage validation Firefox plug-in - WGAPluginInstall.exe available on Microsoft's website to complete the Windows validation process. Microsoft WGA Plug-in for Mozilla Firefox provides the same Windows validation as the original IE ActiveX control. The Windo

MSN Leaked paper reveals a worried Microsoft

An internal confidential Microsoft strategy paper has documented a drop in sales of full packaged Microsoft software. Microsoft gets only about $2 for each copy of Works that is bundled on new computers. The standard version of Microsoft Money isn't even a break-even proposition, and the company has had to heavily discount its OneNote application in order to get computer makers to include it. Calculating that the average person keeps their copy of its entry-level productivity suite Works--a kind of "Office lite" for consumers--for about three years, Microsoft reasoned that it wouldn't take a lot of ad revenue to justify moving the product to an ad-driven model. Worldwide sales of full packaged software--which includes Works, the Encarta encyclopedia, digital imaging software and Money--dropped by 7 percent in fiscal year 2004, the paper says, noting similar trends for fiscal 2005. The MSN strategy paper argues that subscriptions are not the way to go, pointing to the

Domain Name Squatters target Google

Google has recently registered four new domain names - GoogleMagazines.com, GooglePapers.org, GoogleMicrofilm.com and GoogleLibrary.org. But Domain-name Squatters are registering Google related domain names in the hope that either Google will buy them back or another speculator will buy them at a higher price. A simple misspelling of Google's domain name could lead to a Web surfer's worst nightmare. In a new twist to the old practice of "typosquatting," virus writers have registered every possible variation of google.com to take advantage of any users who mistype the spelling of the google.com URL. The whois database reveals that the largest gooo...ogle.com domain name has the letter 'o' repeated 59 times . Infact, cyber Squatters have registered all variations of domain names that rhym like google.com See the complete list of domain names below. Some of them are owned by Google Inc. gogle.com google.com gooogle.com goooogle.com gooooogle.com goooooogle.com go

Macromedia Flash Media Server 2 for Web Video

Flash Media Server 2 is the latest version of Macromedia Flash Communication Server. Flash Media Server 2 is the foundation for delivering both recorded and live Flash video in large-scale deployments such as video on demand, live web broadcasts, MP3 streaming, video blogging, and video/audio chat applications. Playback of these media applications occurs via Flash Player 6 or higher. The Macromedia Flash Media Server operates as a stand-alone server software and can run without Macromedia Flex, ColdFusion or JRun. Macromedia Flash is however required to develop applications for the Flash Media Server. Flash Media Server 2 complements Macromedia Flash Professional 8 and Macromedia Flash Player 8. Flash Media Server 2 video experiences take advantage of the new high-quality video codec in Flash Player 8, complete with automatic detection of the client's bandwidth connection and capability to adjust the stream accordingly. Flash Media Server 2 includes a suite of secure streaming tool

Google Base: Opportunity for Bloggers

Google Base service is now live. You can take advantage of this free Google service to advertise your home inventory, archives of Playboy magzines, mom's favorite cooking recipes or even your latest ebook on "Make more money with Adsense". Your customers can pay you in Dollars, Pounds, or Euros. I think Bloggers and Website designers have a great opportunity here. They can advertise (or sell) their blog articles, website designs, blog templates and even offer consulting services. Adsense experts can offer advice to newbies on integrating Adsense in Blogs. The possibilities are endless. Google Base will host your item details and images. It will then supply a unique URL (web address) where searchers can visit and view your content. This URL will be activated within a few hours after you publish your item. You can submit multiple items to Google base using Bulk Upload. Google Base will accept bulk uploads in Tab-Separated, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and Atom 0.3 formats. This means t

Inside Windows Desktop Search Enterprise Edition

Today, Microsoft announed a business-class version of MSN desktop search meant for use in the corporate environment. In future, Microsoft plans to integrate Windows Desktop Search Enterprise with Windows Live services to search across new data sources on the internet. Microsoft Desktop Search software can now be downloaded without the MSN search toolbar . Here are some other features of the new WDS enterprise release: 1. The core of latest Windows Desktop Search Enterprise version is same as the previously released MSN Search Toolbar with Desktop Search. Just lots of bug fixes and improvements all around. [ via ] 2. Enterprise desktop search software are all about Security and Privacy . But Microsoft's idea of "Enterprise" is all about deployment and integration . The WDS Enterprise edition comes with a set of tools that facilitate easy deployment of desktop search software across the enterprise environment. There are no other security or privacy features . 3. WDS Ente

Adobe PDF Reader 7.0 Javascript Tracking

A hidden undocumented feature in Adobe PDF Reader can track how many times a PDF document has been accessed. It can also log the number of times it was viewed from the IP address of the computer on which it was opened. For the feature to be used, a PDF had to be created, uploaded to the company's server to be tagged, and then distributed. Adobe Reader 7.0 comes with JavaScript support enabled by default and this enables the tracking. The tracking failed when the PDF was viewed by other readers such as Xpdf and Kpdf, and version 5 of Abode Reader. The information is submitted over port 80 using HTTP - the standard port for web servers - which no home or office firewall would normally block. John Hogerland, the technical marketing director for Adobe's Intelligent Document Business Unit, and Mark Phibbs, marketing director for the Asia-Pacific, said they they are unaware of features in the latest version of Adobe Reader . Source: Adobe unaware of tracking claims

MSN Desktop Search Enterprise Edition

Microsoft is expected announce a business-class version of MSN desktop search for use in corporate environment at the Microsoft IT Forum 2005 in Barecelona (Spain). Microsoft says the new facet searches for information stored on individual PCs, or among clusters of computers typically found in offices. File sharing and a single starting point for any search are two features of note, according to Microsoft. Earlier, a Microsoft press release has said that Microsoft was developing a Corporate Desktop Search Solution in response to feedback from corporate customers looking for desktop searching capabilities designed for their needs. The Enterprise version is being built on Windows Desktop Search for the corporate environment. Read - Microsoft Offers Business-Class Desktop Search

OpenOffice.org Vs Microsoft Office

According to Washington Post, OpenOffice, a free open-source competitor to Microsoft Office, can do just about anything that Microsoft Office can at home, and can also read and write to Microsoft's closed, proprietary formats . You can set OpenOffice to use either OpenDocument or Microsoft formats as its default. And yet, OpenOffice is free and Microsoft is not. For many home users - people who spend most of their time writing letters in Word and putting together the occasional simple spreadsheet, but don't want to risk not being able to read the documents people send in e-mail - that's all they need. Unlike Microsoft Office, however, OpenOffice can also save your work as a Portable Document Format file that preserves every pixel of your creativity -- whether it's read in Windows, on a Mac or even on a handheld organizer. But if you need to run Outlook or you regularly work on complicated Excel or PowerPoint files with other people, OpenOffice may not work for you --

Prevent Google Analytics from tracking your visit

Webmasters will increasingly use Google Analytics (formerly, Urchin) to determine how many people are visiting their sites, where they are coming from and what they're clicking on . There are certainly good times for the website owners. The UTM is the Google Analytics Traffic Monitor - proprietary Google Analytics Tracking Code ( urchin.js ), which is installed on a web page for the purpose of collecting Customer Data, whereby unique visitors can be accurately tracked using a combination of server and client-side technology including cookies. Not all website visitors like to reveal their details to the website owner. If you are one of these visitors, you can block Google Analytics from tracking your visits by adding the following line to your Windows Hosts file. # [Google Inc] 127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com How this works : Google Analytics downloads a small javascript urchin.js (Google Analytics Urchin Module) on the client's computer which reports the all the tracking

Adobe Creative Suite 2 at 80% discount

Adobe China has slashed 80 per cent from the cost of Adobe Creative Suite 2 to encourage the use of authentic legal software as opposed to pirated goods. Adobe's price cut is part of the Sunshine Copyright Program which was launched in early November. Under this program, Chinese users that buy two or more licenses for Simplified Chinese language editions of Adobe Creative Suites 2 products will be eligible for the 80% price cut. Adobe actually cut the price of its products by 50% in another anti-piracy program called " Adobe China Storm " launched in August of this year. While China is one of the world's fastest-growing markets it is also among the world's leading country's for pirate goods. In addition to Adobe, Microsoft has also introduced price cuts for its products on the Chinese market to increase sales of copyrighted software and discourage use of pirated software. Meanwhile, you can request Adobe for a Adobe Creative Suite 2 Trial DVD by snail mail.

Good Blog Titles are short, still descriptive

When writing titles for Blogs, forget search engines and write 3-8 word long titles that describe your post and attract clicks . Keep it short: A title that's too long is just as bad as a non-descriptive title. Eye Grabbers If you're writing about a hot topic, or a contraversial topic, or even just a relatively plain topic, you need to get your eye-grabber in those magic first 3 words. 4 at most. And if you write a blog, Be Bold! It's all about the click, and after the click, it's all about trust, and reputation. Source: Blog Titles are Ads

Track visitor clicks on Banners, Files, Javascript and Flash objects

Google Analytics provides a sophisticated visitor-click tracking system based on Urchin. You can track visitor clicks on any object of the webpage including Javascript, Flash elements, Banners, Graphics and even downloadable files like PDF. Here's a quick primer on enabling tracking mechanism in Google Analytics. [source: Google Analytics Help ] Track clicks on links that lead to file downloads (such as PDF, AVI, or WMV) You'll need to tag the link itself with the urchinTracker JavaScript if you would like to track these downloads. This piece of JavaScript assigns a pageview to any click on a link. For example, to log every click on a particular link to www.example.com/files/map.pdf as a pageview for /downloads/map you would add the following attribute to the link's <a> tag: <a href="http://www.example.com/files/map.pdf" onClick="javascript:urchinTracker ('/downloads/map'); "> Track which advertisers are popular by tracking clicks on

Google Analytics FAQ - 10 Interesting Things

10 interesting facts and tricks about the Google Analytics program . 1. You can change the length of time that Google Analytics waits before timing out a visitor by adding a _utimeout variable to your tracking code. 2. There is no Google Analytics API to access reporting data. You can however exports reports to XML, CSV (Microsoft Excel) or Tab-Separated text format. 3. Google Analytics doesn't offer automatic emailing of reports. 4. Google Analytics will track and analyze as many websites as you own but you are limited to 5 million pageviews per month. 5. After you first install the tracking code, it may take several hours for report data to appear in your account. Google Analytics generally updates your reports every hour, but data can take up to 6 hours to appear in your account. 6. You can make use of the _utmLinker JavaScript function when the links on your site require users to change root domain names - for example, from www.example.com to www.shoppingcart.com. 7. Google

Google Analytics - Urchin on Demand Tools for free

Google is offering webmasters a full-featured , powerful analytics package from Urchin to determine how many people are visiting their sites, to view the source of referrals to your site and what they're clicking on. Google Analytics is the latest version of Urchin On Demand that can also track user clicks in Flash objects and Javascript code. A Google Account is required to login into Google Analytics. If you're an AdWords advertiser, you can also sign up for Analytics from within your AdWords account. Analytics' free version is limited to 5 million pageviews a month but the limit is is removed if you're also an active AdWords publisher. The urchin.com website is now redirecting to google.com/analytics/. Google Analytics is a hosted web analytics service, and is not currently available as a software application. The Google Analytics software product is currently in development and a release date has not yet been set. Once you submit your website details, Google Anal

Instant Messaging turns E-Mail into Snail Mail

The term SnailMail didn't exist until e-mail became so prevalent that there was a requirement to differentiate the two. Obviously, the term was invented by e-mail aficionados as a small barb directed at the relative slowness of physical transportation. And now, Email is Old School. According to a new AOL survey , the instant message appears to be catching up to e-mail as the favored way to communicate using the Internet. Of the 4,000 people interviewed by America Online, a quarter of them preferred IM, the electronic messages that appear unprompted on a computer screen, over using e-mail. Some 15 percent America Online surveyed in 2004 favored IM. In addition, an increasing number of people rely on mobile instant messaging, which points to the fact that people are looking to go online beyond using it only on the desktop.

Capture Pictures from DVD Movie Scenes in Windows Media Player or Real

How to take Screenshots of Movies in Windows Media Player and prevent blank black Screen Captures Quest: How do I capture still images from a movie playing in Microsoft Windows Media Player, Real Player, WinAmp or Apple QuickTime? Some users try to grab the current video frame by pressing the standard Windows "Print Screen" key (next to F12 key on the QWERTY keyboard). But when the image screenshot from clipboard is pasted into an image editor, the capture is a black blank screen instead of the actual video. Reason: When the video plays, it is actually displayed on a different surface/layer called overlay that is produced by hardware acceleration. When you take a normal screen capture, you're taking it of the normal surface where the video isn't displayed. That's why it comes out black as it is invisible to the screen capture software. Here are some common solutions to capture pictures from DVD movies currently playing with Windows Media Player Classic or other v