1. It’s confusing to use, unlike other Gmail products. Facebook had that effect on me at first but it went away with time. Hope the same happens with Buzz
2. It’s another Google program. I’m already worried about my dependence of Big G and wonder if their ‘do no evil’ saying won’t lose the ‘no’ word at some point
3. It looks like Google doesn’t have a strategy for their social media hub (as all their services will probably try and integrate into Buzz at some time). They don’t get that the center/focus point in social media is the person and his relationships. In Buzz is hard to add new friends, catalog them in categories, import contacts and such. There are no complex choices like you get in Facebook (sorry for bringing this up again, but Buzz is meant to compete with them after all)

I believe those three things will put a lot of users away from Buzz once the first buzz wears off. I’m afraid Google Buzz will become another Wave, but only time will tell if I’m right.

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All Google needs to put every piece of data to a special profile is cross-referencing. They’ve already started to do that with the new Dashboard and by starting I mean displaying that data, as the gathering process surely started a while ago.

A theoretical example of what might happen to you

Imagine this scenario: you’re building a business online and heavily rely on Google services. All those services have Terms and Condition, which once broken will almost sure deny you access to that service, or even worse (here’s the evil part) access to other Google services.

Imagine that one day, because you placed too much Adsense units on your blog’s pages or placed them too close to post pictures of used any other practice that breaks their rules you get your Adsense account blocked and all your income is lost (or a significant part of it). This is not fiction as it happened to many people. Maybe you’re innocent, maybe not, but one thing is certain: contacting Google support might not help you at all as billions others are contacting them on many topics. If they respond and help you in a few weeks you may be already out of business.

Now, for those with bad intentions like selling links, buying reviews, black hat SEO and other wrong tactics be sure you can get caught by Big G if they start cross-referencing data about you. If you speak by email for a link sale and the other person uses Gmail or forwards email to Gmail (as I so for example) then Google might find out what you’re doing.

Imagine that you want to build a network of sites and link to/from them. If Google knows they’re all your websites the value of a single link is lowered automatically. And you can’t just create 100 Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools accounts without Google knowing they’re all yours. You don’t have that many IPs and supposed you create those accounts, once you log in from the same 2-3 IPs you’re busted.

And examples can go on and on, but the reality is the same: if Google wants to catch you, it will, but that maybe is not such a bad deal for the rest of us, the good guys.

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RSS Logo

What is RSS

First, RSS comes from Really Simple Syndication which means a really simple way of distributing content on Internet. RSS appeared as a response to the need to simplify the process of keeping in touch with news from multiple websites, a method that was meant to get rid of the habbit of visiting the sites you like once in a few hours to see if something new was published.

If you like, RSS is the opposite way of checking news on multiple URLs. RSS notifies you which website has new content and gives you links to that content. You then decide what is worth reading. You just have to check in one place to see what was published on 10 other places: your RSS reader program.

You have two options: install an RSS reader program (FeedDemon is free and one of the best), or use an online one (Google Reader shines here). After this step all you have to do is gather feeds and start monitoring them for new articles.

RSS feed signaled in Firefox

A feed is the URL where your RSS reader checks for new content on a given website. You can get that address by checking for the RSS logo on the websites you like and copy that link and paste it in the field that appears in your RSS program when you make a new subscription. Alternatively you can press that button that opens a dialog in your browser asking where you want this subscription to go (in which RSS reader program from your computer), or you can check for the RSS logo in your browser’s toolbar or Adress bar.

Why should I use RSS?

There’s one big reason: it saves you time, as you don’t have to visit every site you like to check for content: new articles show up in your RSS reader. Plus online RSS readers like Google Reader synchronize what you’re already read all over the Internet, so you won’t read stuff twice because you’ve accessed it at work and then at home.

Video tutorials about RSS

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Google Analytics is one of the best ways to monitor your visitors, plus it has the advantages of being free. In this post I’m going to present the main functions of Google Analytics, how it works and what are the main concepts of web traffic analysis.

How Google Analytics or any other web monitoring service works

First you have to sign up for a Google Account, if you don’t already have one, login to Google Analytics, and create a new website profile. The code that’s being given to you has to be inserted on every page of the website you’re monitoring. Google recommends you put it in the footer, so it loads after the whole page, giving you better statistics as it doesn’t include users that get bored and close the page before it loads completely in their browsers.

After Google Analytics validates the code you’ve inserted into your website’s pages you have to wait a few hours till stats gather up and then you can start learning more about your visitors. The stats are gathered thanks to the code mentioned earlier that registers data about every user loading a page from your site. This data includes, but it’s not limited to IP, Operating System, browser type, screen resolution, time on page or page impressions.

What are the main concepts of web analysis

Even if different monitoring systems give different numbers that has to do with the data gathering methodology, the way information is processed, the code placement and so on. Although, there are a few common metrics that are widely defined the same way, so here’s a list of them:

• A visitor: is a person that enters your website in a given amount of time. Same person can make multiple visits to your website the same day.
• An unique visitor: is an unique person that visits your website throughout the period you’re getting the metrics.
• A page impression (or pageview): any page loaded from your website is called a page impression. The same page can be loaded multiple times in a period of time and is counted every time it refreshes.
• Bounce rate: the percentage of people that exit your website from a page without loading another one from the same domain.
• Time on site: is counted as the average time a visitor spends on your website during a visit.
• Time on page: same as above but refers to time spent on a single page.
• New visits: this is the percentage of new people that have never visited your website before.
• Referral: is the domain/site/service previously visited by an user, which pointed him to your website through a link.

What are the main statistics provided by Google Analytics

Once you select a website in your Google Analytics profile to see its stats there are 5 important types of statistics you can browse, and those are:

1  – Dashboard

Hare you can see the main stats of your website. It defaults to past 30 days (not included current day) but this period can be set in the upper right part to any date interval. The main metrics are easily displayed here: visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, time on site and new visits. You can also see a top of your most visited pages, referral sources and geographical location of your visitors.

Google Analytics Dashboard: where it all begins

2 – Visitors

Here you’ll learn about your visitors geographical location, screen resolution, operating system and browser used, connection speed, language used by their system, loyalty (number of times they visited your website in a given period) and so on.

All about your visitors

3 – Traffic sources

This is the tab that tells you where your visitors come from (referring sites), which keywords they used in search engines to get to your pages. The keywords tab is a very important piece of information to better understand what your visitors are interested in, so you can better cover those topics in the future. Also you can understand which pages you need to push in Search Engines to get better traffic on them.

See who sent traffic to you

4 – Content

It’s the place where you see what are your most visited pages, entrance paths to those pages, the referring source and bounce rate for every page and site overlay, a function that shows you where people clicked on any of your pages, so you can better understand how they navigate in your website. Top exit pages (pages where the most users left your website) are also monitored here so you’ll know which pages are the worst in the eyes of your visitors.

Most visited pages are displayed here

5 – Goals

This is a more advanced area of your Google Analytics stats. Before info shows here you have to set up goals in your site: set up visiting patterns that start with one page and lead to an end page. You set up also an amount of earnings for each successfully completed goal. This is an useful part of GA that can be used by online stores to record the number of people that had put products in their basket and then completed the checkout process.

I tried to keep this guide about what is and how Google Analytics can be used in your interest to monitor and analyze your websites from traffic and visitors point of view. Hope you like it. If you have any questions post them below in comments.

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URL shortening become popular when Twitter begun his ascent because people wanted to share links and a message into the 140 characters limit imposed by Twitter. When your URL is 100 characters long there’s not much you can say in 40 letters, so you have the main benefit of URL shortening: it makes links small enough to be used in communication when the length of the message is limited.

Long versus Short URL

Benefits and uses of URL shortening

1. Short URLs are useful to communicate using protocols where message size is limited. Ex: Twitter.
2. It’s aesthetically pleasing to the eye to see a short URL rather than one filled with session info and command structures.
3. You can keep track better of who clicks on a link, because many URL shortening services give you stats on the links you’ve send if you register with them. This is particularly useful when you have affiliate links on your posts and want to double check the stats given by the service you’re using.

Dangers of URL shortening

As expected there are dangers when using short URLs. The problem occurs when you access those links as you can’t see what’s behind them. It may be a page that infects your computer with malware. Using normal length URLs have the advantage of trust: you know from the name of the domain if it’s trustworthy or not, if you’ve visited it the past or not. Antivirus manufacturers say that currently short URLs are the biggest threat to user security.

What to look for when choosing an URL shortening service

Choosing a website to shorten your URLs might seem easy but there are things to consider before declaring your favorite service and those things are (list made using this post):

• Is there a way to get stats for my links?
• Does it have 301 permanent redirect? This helps in SEO if you’re getting a lot of short links pointing to your own blog or site.
• Is it stable enough to redirect all short links, without downtimes?
• Twitter client support, if you use Twitter, of course.
• Minimum size of the URL
• Does it support custom short URL, or it generates one for me?
• Sharing options. Does the service I use have a list of popular URLs that are recommended to other users?
• Country of origin: some domain names don’t play nice with Google, so better check the origin of the domain name the URL shortening service uses
• Does it handle long URLs with strange parameters?

Popular URL shortening services

• TinyURL
• Bit.ly
• List of 68 services

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I don’t want to say that Google Wave is a bad thing, not at all, but don’t expect it to break the 20 + years of daily sending emails (email was invented almost 40 years ago) in just a few weeks. Email is not only in our blood, but also in the DNA of the Internet, being integrated everywhere, plus there are tons of applications using it, for desktops, laptops or mobile devices.

Google Wave

Google Wave might prove itself to be a very good conversations archive or collaboration tool but won’t replace Email anytime soon, nor it intends to do so (I don’t think Google is enthusiast enough to make this kind of grandiose plans). It might be Google’s answer to social media, that I believe.

Now that I bored you with my ramblings, what’s your take on this and do you have a Google Wave invitation you don’t need?

Google Wave presentation

In case you don’t know much about Google Wave here’s a short video presentation.

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What’s new in Opera Mini 5 Beta

Opera Mini Beta 5 on Blackberry Storm

There are a few things changed from the older version, new function and a big change in interface, that now looks more like 2009 and makes Opera Mini one of the best looking mobile browsers around. Practically, Opera just borrowed some of the top features of its bigger Mobile version and desktop client like tabbed browsing, customizable speed dial for preferred bookmarks, touch and keypad versions for both smartphones with or without touchscreen and password manager.

What seems to be missing in this version is the Opera Link feature that integrates with an Opera account which allows for bookmark synchronization between multiple Opera browser installations, no matter what version. Maybe this is only true for the Beta version or it’s just me unable to find it.

Opera Mini Beta 5 short video presentation

Note: I’ve installed Opera Mini 5 on my Symbian Nokia E71 and it seems that it works without issues. General feel is that the interface is a little more resource consuming and it’s more sluggish than the previous versions, but let’s not forget we’re talking about a Beta version here.

On the other hand pages load as fast as in previous Opera Mini’s and complex websites seem to look as neat as on desktop versions.

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Picnik

http://www.picnik.com is the first website that captured my attention because you don’t even have to create an account to modify a picture. You simply access the website, upload the picture you want to modify, by clicking the Upload button and in a few seconds you’ll have it ready to process. From this out, only your imagination and aesthetic sense will dictate, because in rest, you have at hand a lot of effects like black and white on the picture or just on part of the picture, sepia, pixelation etc., you can modify color characteristics, contrast, you can take-off red eye in a portrait photo etc. Then you can apply a lot of writings, photo frames and decalcomania picture with all kinds of stuff. You can even whiten someone’s teeth in a picture.

Picnik photo editing website

All effects that I’ve mentioned can be found on the Create tab, not on the Edit one. Of course, there is the AutoFix function that only adjusts luminosity and contrast and it actually makes it pretty well. After you’ve finished processing a photo you can save it back on your hard disk. If you want to keep a copy on the website, they invite you to create an account in order to have them there every time you access the website. Some of the processing functions and effects can be found on the Premium category, which means you have to pay so you can use them, but I haven’t seen anything indispensable. I’ve liked this website the most, because it’s really user-friendly. And if you create an account, you can upload on Picnik any picture you have on those accounts where you keep pictures, such as myspace, flickr, facebook etc.

Advantages: easy and likable to use, has a lot of effects and options
Disadvantages: not all of them are free

FotoFlexer

www.fotoflexer.com doesn’t look that good graphically, meaning the website wants to look like a desktop software. All tools are militarily disposed, in order of utility and importance. The creators rave about FotoFlex, as if it is the coolest online website in this domain. Uploading your photo is made just as on Picnick, only a little bit slower. It puts up a menu that shows you it’s trying hard to join resources and other stuff. It took about 10 seconds before the picture was ready to process. The same thing happens when you want to save it. Admittedly, on FotoFlexer absolutely everything is free and also has some pluses for pros: working with layers and animations adding.

FotoFlexer is a nice alternative

The utilization is a little bit more complex, and the effects apply pretty intense. You must pay attention at their quantum. In another train of thoughts, nobody forces you to get into complicated things. You have the Basic tab for the main characteristics of the picture settings, and of course, Auto Fix. On FotoFlexer, you can also process pictures from another accounts of online photo album.

Advantages: everything is free and you have a bunch of options and effects
Disadvantages: pretty hard to use

Adobe Photo Express

Did you know that Adobe also has a free online photo editor? It’s called Adobe Photoshop Express, and you can find it at here and you must create an account to use it. I’ve heard it only works in the USA, but I’ve managed to create an account without any problems. After doing this, either you mention the accounts where from you want to take the pictures to process (Flickr, Facebook, Picasa or Photobucket), or you upload them directly from the hard disk, as I did.

Adobe Photoshop Express looks nice

Pictures will appear somewhere on the upside of the window, and below them there’s a menu that gets you to the Edit function. Big disappointment over here. You can only play with some basic effects, color adjustment, distort…pretty empty. Even though the website looks pretty professional and aesthetic, the content is mediocre. Of course, for a basic process you don’t need much, but after creating an account and confirming it, I was expecting something more spectacular, more complex.

Advantages: good for basic process, re-dimensioning, luminosity, color and contrast adjustments
Disadvantages: you have to create an account, there are a few tools you can access

I’ve only given you a few ideas about how to modify online a picture in a few seconds. Happy? Good luck and keep up the good work! Disappointed? Check out the free image processing software I’ve described over here or go for a more advanced photo management software.

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I personally don’t really believe in conspiracies or in the expression “if everybody says so it must be true” but that doesn’t mean some conspiracies aren’t true. My guess is that really good conspiracies are the ones you never hear about, that’s why I don’t trust unmasked conspiracy theories. In Google’s case I don’t really think they have an evil background plan, other than maintain monopoly in certain areas of interest. But this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be afraid of Google, or better said about your addiction to Google, and I’m gonna make a list of reasons for this.

Google can turn evil

Reasons you should be more careful when it comes to Google

• Google drives traffic to most new websites. Even if in time proportions change at first you only grow because of Google (not a rule, but a statistics). What if Google starts charging for this sometime in future
• Google helps you monetize your website or promote your products through AdSense and AdWords. Many businesses depend too much on those two products
• Email is delivered by Google. Gmail is so nice that it’s addictive to use. It even allows you to check other email POP3/IMAP accounts. When Gmail doesn’t work (and that happened a few times lately) you can’t work.
• Online Office via Google Docs. Same as Gmail, if GDocs doesn’t work you can’t access your documents
• Ultimately Google knows everything about you. This is a fact, as you use enough Google services for them to make a perfect profile about you. They can use this info to provide you with better content, but what if they decide to use this information for wrong causes or, more plausible, information leaks and ill intended people get their dirty hands on that info, like is happens to credit card records that get stolen.

The thing is that the more you get online and divulge personal information, not just to Google, there’s a risk that info can get into wrong hands, that’s why you need to be careful all time time. Online you’re like a star: exposed to public.

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I’m not traveling a lot but when I do both my phone and my laptop connection comes in handy: I can check my email or browse the latest news in Google Reader when I catch a break. All seem perfect, right? Well, it isn’t as always the maximum advertised speeds in your contract are far far away from what you’ll get in reality.

The mobile Internet dream

Imagine that my 3G modem is rated for 7.2 Mbps download and 2.0 Mbps upload: I never see those numbers in reality, not even close as I believe 30-35 % of the maximum speed is far away from 100%. And someone at the shop had the nerve to tell me that the contract determines the maximum speed, not the modem, which is only true if the modem’s speed is higher than the contract stipulated maximum, which it isn’t in this case. Plus the maximum real speed is only reached in ideal conditions and not in every corner of my country. Now for example I’m writing this article from a GPRS connection and I get 30-40 kbps top speed and 20-25 kbps average. That’s low even for Opera Turbo mode. And now they’ve announced 21 Mbps subscription plans. Why?

Practically I can’t browse more than one website at a time, and I really have to be patient or else I’m getting crazy. What’s worse is that I know I didn’t choose the worst provider as all of the available providers in Romania have the same coverage and speed problems. And that’s true also for US, Canada and every other country on this planet.

I don’t know why they get out with it but they shouldn’t. I know the contract doesn’t states the minimum speed but they rely on marketing for people who don’t know how things really are. I knew what I was getting into before buying the 3G modem and contract, but that doesn’t stops me from being annoyed.

Mobile broadband Internet true speed

The really problem is that you can’t have broadband Internet speed on a 3G mobile connection everywhere you go and at a decent price. You don’t have a choice and that’s what bothers me. And as websites are now built without taking in consideration slow network connections you get stuck with email (maybe) and text messaging. There’s no way you could work in this conditions.

If you have a different story I would like to hear it, but I doubt it’s so much different than mine.

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Google search is primitive

Well, when we talk about search today I think Google results are not that good, where good is defined by the quality of the answers people get. What Google does is match the search term with results in its internal database and returns the user a list of results it thinks are the best. It does that rather efficient, fast and manages to get regular website in its index very fast (better than the competition), but that’s pretty much it: many times results are not what you’re expecting and are the base for further personal investigations.

It’s like you go to a library, ask for a particular Jules Verne book and get his entire work on the desk, all books without titles. Then you start looking into each and everyone to find what you’re looking for.

What can’t Google do?

• search into picture contents with advanced filters for color and so on
• search into videos
• search into other content than your birth language and automatically translate relevant results
• compose similar pages with the same topic into one single document (text, images, video and social media mentions)

The future of search as I see it lies in the quality of the results, not the speed. That was also the case when Google enter the market and was more relevant than the competition at that time (competition that now has narrowed down significantly). If Google doesn’t do something to stay ahead of the game and come up with something evolved (I’m not talking about Caffeine) we’re looking at a dead man walking, don’t you think?

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This tool I’m talking about, that can help predict the future is Google Trends, a tool often forgot and used only by experts. I’ve recently started using it to get ideas about a new websites that will target new IT products that will grow big in sales in the future. I’m trying somehow to replicate my friend’s success with a netbook website, a relatively new hot IT trend, that he started a few months ago and already gets him a few bucks every months and rising.

How to spot trends with Google Trends?

It’s easier that you might think: just enter a term or two (each term must be separated by commas). Hit Enter and see what comes up. In the screen that now comes up you’ll see how many searches for these terms were performed in pasy years. You can see which countries got the most search volume for those trends, which cities and languages used.

This is crucial data that can make you discover things others will read in newspappers after a few months. Now all you need is patience and a few ideas to narrow down your trend search. Check out what Google Trends tell us about “past”, “present” and “future”: nobody cares about present and you get more chances of making money thinking about the future. But that we all knew, don’t we?

Google Trends search evolution

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The basic rules

Be a friend, not a jerk

Now let’s see some of the basic rules of social media netiquette:

• don’t send friends invitations without a proper introduction – they don’t know who you are in most cases and they shouldn’t guess
• don’t abuse sending invites to everyone in your address book and don’t send those invites every day
• use your real name, not a fictional one – this way things can get personal
• humanize your profile, add real info about you, make people know who you really are – if they don’t like you for who you are then it’s not worth being friends with them
• don’t get too personal or divulge confidential information – remember that the Whole World Wide web can see you now
• don’t submit just articles on from your own blog in social networks based on sharing links and don’t over promote your company (unless you’re on a business oriented social network)

There are of course a lot of social network etiquette rules that apply to certain social networks. That’s why below you have a list with a few articles that treat in details those topics.

List of social media etiquette articles

• Social media to-do list for Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, Stumbleupon
• Etiquette in social media age – Email, Facebook, Blogging
• The 11 rules of social media etiquette
• Social media etiquette roundup

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What do you want WEB 3.0 to do for you?

Don’t tell me that I should come back from time to time and update the price. That doesn’t hold when you have a few hundred posts on your blog and it shouldn’t be a solution, at least not an optimal one. Then I got thinking about content that updates itself. Don’t confuse it with content that writes itself, but regular content with small pieces of information that are updated automatically when things change, things like price, availability or address.

I don’t know how to call those pieces of information, but I bet you’d want your store address to be updated automatically everywhere on the Internet where someone mentioned it. It’s useful for other things too, not just from businesses point of view. This is what I would like to see in WEB 3.0. Definitely.

Think that content that updates itself automatically will make older pieces of content worth reading again. Will also clean up the garbage in many search engine results. Update means in this case up to date. So, what do you want WEB 3.0 to do for you?

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Opera logo

Maybe not all of you have this issue but I’ve found myself in such a position a few days ago when I needed to use the computer but my data connection was GPRS and signal quality was very low at a  few kbits per second. That’s when I’ve remembered about Opera Turbo mode (available in Opera 10.3 beta and in future versions).

Opera 10.3 beta doesn’t come with Turbo mode activated by default but it’s not complicated to enable it. To do so go to menu Tools – Quick Preferences – Enable Opera Turbo and you’re set to go. You’ll notice a general slow down before the page begins to load because of the fact that the information is being processed by Opera servers and then sent to you’re browser. Thinks ramp up in speed when it comes to pictures which are compressed a lot. This has the advantage of low transfer times but as a downside you’ll see visible artifacts, buy if low bandwidth is what you seek then you’ll live with it.

This is how you enable Opera Turbo mode

Opera Turbo allowed me to browse for a few hours and only consume about 30-40 MB of bandwidth. That’s excellent as I have a monthly cap of only 4 GB of traffic plus when the connection is slow Opera’s Turbo mode makes browsing possible.

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Google chrome beta 3

Don’t try and search for “google chrome” to find it as it will point you to the “regular” version. Go here if you want to install Google Chrome Beta 3. I’ve done so last night and now I can tell you from my point of view what it does that previous version didn’t and if it is worth downloading.

Google Chrome Beta 3 improvements

First thing you’ll notice is the New Tab page, where you can customize the position of most visited websites and even can pin a tab to a specific position. The recent activities window moved down and there’s a new mystery window that says: ‘What will we put here?‘.

The Address Bar is now called Omnibox and it’s more like Firefox’s combined search/history/address bar. It seems the logical step here, why don’t copy something that’s proven to be efficient.

Visual improvements were something Google Chrome lacked and Google addressed that with a themes gallery with a few dozen visual skins to choose from. It’s nice but I wouldn’t get too excited as the styles are not so inspired.

Speed was also improved by 30% (as stated by Google), but that wasn’t an issue with Chrome. And finally, Google Chrome Beta 3 brings HTML 5.0 capabilities, a thing to look for in future websites.

New tab page in Google Chrome 3 Beta

Is it worth installing?

I think it does as it seem stable enough, not less than any Google Beta program or service. The improvements are OK, but I’m still waiting for extensions support. Till then I’m gonna stick to Firefox as my main browser.

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Posting a tweet with Twitterfox

Twitterfox’s functionality

• displays the number of new tweets from the last update (update interval can be set by the user)
• displays a balloon with new tweets (can be disabled)
• can manage multiple accounts (but only one can be active at a time)
• can update your Twitter status directly from the interface and URL’s are shortened automatically
• can retweet/reply directly from the interface
• displays replies and direct messages addressed to you
• uses sounds for notifications (fortunately this can be disabled)
• uses keyboard shortcuts for fast access to important functions
• can be customized using themes

Twitterfox context menu

If you want to give it a try you can install Twitterfox from here. If you know a  better extension please feel free to tell me in your comments. I’m looking for something that allows me to be logged into multiple accounts simultaneously, but for now I’ll just use Twitterfox.

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Because the Adsense blog is a blog with many readers and commenters I’ve received a lot of email notifications this weekend. To my surprise today I’ve also received a few SPAM comments. I can’t believe that Google doesn’t moderate every comment or use a reliable service like Akismet. Besides the fact that it’s not professional, it show that the Blogger platform isn’t one of the best choices when it comes to blogging, WordPress being a more suited option.

I'm not the only one observing SPAM comments on the Adsens Blog

I think it’s time for someone to do something about this SPAM issue and Google doesn’t lack the power to do so. But I think they prefer to focus on other money bringing issues and the competition.

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Opera Mini main screen

What makes Opera Mini special

The engine: most important thing about Opera Mini that you won’t even notice. That’s why I’ll tell you how Opera Mini works: the URL you enter in the address bar is processed by some Opera servers that will send your browser the resulting page, formatted for your screen size and compressed to just a few kilobytes.

It’s simple, it’s fast and takes little bandwidth.

Other Opera Mini advantages

The best part about Opera is the way it works with the websites you want to visit. But Opera Mini as other aces in its sleeves that makes it a must have mobile browser:

• skins: you can customize its looks to your own taste
• speed dial: access your favorite websites with a push of a button
• sync bookmarks with your Opera account so that you have the same bookmarks in your desktop Opera browser and other mobile phones you might have. Also helps migrating to a new phone
• save offline web pages for later reading when you’ll have the time or don’t have an Internet connection

My blog on Opera Mini - full page

My blog - zoom on header

How well does it fares with limited data plans?

I’ll give you my example: I have a 25 MB monthly data plan (it’s low, I know) and I’m using Opera Mini two hours a day during workdays plus email checking and using other bandwidth consuming apps, and I’ve never went over the 25 MB I have. I think this speaks well in the name o Opera Mini. Please give it a try and tell me what you think. They even have a special simulator to see whow Opera Mini works – check it out here.

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Automatic translation

At this point come to me the idea of automatic translation for audio, not just for text. I think this needs to be developed in two stages: one is the speech recognition feature, that transforms the original voice into text and then a text to speech technology that, in this case, will analyze Schumacher’s voice, extract enough samples which are then used to reconstruct its speech in the destination language of the translation. An easy to implement solution would be to display captions on the video.

I know this is practically impossible now, but that’s a direction I want translation services to take in the future. Once the language barrier will no longer exist, Internet penetration will get close to that 100 % perfect rate (given that everyone could afford a PC and an Internet connection).

Maybe the future will suprize me, as it did in so many occasions.

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The Key to Success

What I want to share with you are my view on things to do if you want to be a successful blogger:

1. start blogging, don’t spend all your time researching
2. blog constantly, if you know you won’t have Internet access it’s a good idea cu have some articles already written and set to be published once you’re out
3. practice a lot, that will improve your writing skills a lot, you won’t be an authority if your grammar sucks
4. write down article ideas when they come to you so you’ll have a list with things to write about when new topics are hard to find
5. content is king, write useful articles, don’t chase SEO subjects (very true if you are not a SEO guru). If people like your articles they will come back for more
6. don’t copy others ideas, get you own vision on a topic, even when you have  a completely different point of view about a topic (or especially when you do, as controversy makes people comment more)
7. don’t forget about social media, read what other blogs on your same niche write, comment, get people to talk to you, interact like you do in real life
8. write about something you like, not just think about the money as without passion you won’t get far
9. be patient, as they say “overnight success takes a few hard working years”
10. work, work, work, there’s no other 100 % certain way to reach success

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Good and free icon sets are not impossible to find

So let’s see the list with beautifull free icon sets:

• 35 incredible free icon sets, 55 high quality icon sets at SmashingMagazine
• 40 beautiful icon sets
• fee icons at DryIcons.com
• other 96 icon sets, also free
• 50 super cool icons, or so they claim

I think those 5 resources are good enough to get you started. All you have to do is check them out and you’ll surely find something to your liking.

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First let’s see what MailChimp can do for your website:

• manage multiple email subscriptions lists with sign up forms
• manage email campaigns for various email lists and websites
• design your own templates of you can use some of the predefined ones
• deliver emails without them being tagged as SPAM by major webmail providers (Yahoo, Google are the most important)
• track reports of your mailing lists and sent emails

MailChimp main screen, a little different graphics than other similar services

What I like about MailChimp is the fact that they offer a free subscription plan that allows you to have a list/or lists with maximum 100 subscribers and send 6 newsletters per months. If you don’t like what they’re offering you can stop using their service, export your current list and go use other email marketing services.

For paid users the pricing plan is like this:

Pay per month plans

• 10 $ for 0-500 subscribers and unlimited sent emails
• 30$ for 501-2,500 subscribers and unlimited sent emails
• 50$ for 2,501-5,000 subscribers and unlimited sent emails
• 75$ for 5,001-10,000 subscribers and unlimited sent emails
• 150$ for 10,001-25,000 subscribers and unlimited sent emails
• 240$ for 25,001-50,000 subscribers and unlimited sent emails

Pay as you go plans (1 credit = 1 sent email)

• 9$ for 300 credits
• 30$ for 1,000 credits
• 60$ for 2,000 credits
• 100$ for 5,000 credits
• 150$ for 7,500 credits
• 200$ for 10,000 credits
• 250$ for 25,000 credits
• 500$ for 50,000 credits
• 750$ for 75,000 credits
• 1,000$ for 200,000 credits
• 1,875$ for 375,000 credits
• 2,500$ for 500,000 credits

I’ve chosen the free plan at first and after that I went for monthly pricing. I even offered to translate the interface for Romanian (as what they had was not correct), they accepted and then credited me with 6 months worth of subscription. I say that is nice for one hour of work.

Now, about their service let’s see that I like and dislike:

• very easy to set up mailing lists, campaigns and import/export users
• nice clean subscription forms and campaign templates
• emails seem to get delivered no matter what
• good support – they’ve answered me fast and on subject to my email inquiries
• they keep adding features at a fast pace
• I don’t like the limited number of templates they have
• editor for campaigns doesn’t have too many options
• for your own template you can chose to use a very limited WYSIWYG editor or a code editor – there’s no middle way

I know I haven’t tried other paid email marketing systems (Feedburner’s included email subscription service is very basic so it doesn’t count as personal experience) but I like MailChimp and I think I’ll be using it in the future as well.

If you want to subscribe to MailChimp you can do that here.

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But did you know that there are a lot of abbreviations, so many that it’s hard to keep up with people using them and you don’t have to be a teenager to use them so here’s a list of common used abbreviations for text messaging and other type short sentence messaging (E-mail and IM especially):

• 1125 abbreviation at Webopedia
• 1703 abbreviations and acronyms from Netlingo
• a growing list at Sharpened
• an extensive list at Txtdrop

This wouldn’t be a very helpful article if it didn’t contain a list of the most common used abbreviations for text messaging (from here):

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with Numeric Character:
* ? I have a question
* ?4U I have a question for you
* ^^ Meaning read line or message above
* 14AA41 One for all, and all for one
* 2 Meaning “to” in SMS
* 4 Short for “for” in SMS
* 4BOW For Better Or Worse
* 4COL For crying out loud
* ^5 High-five
* 9 Parent is watching

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with A:

* A/L Age/Location
* A/S/C Age/Sex/Check
* AAMOF As A Matter Of Fact
* ADN Any Day Now
* ADDY Your e-mail Address
* AKA Also Known As
* AFK Away From Keyboard
* AFK2p Away From Keyboard To Pee
* ASAP As Soon As Possible

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with B:

* BAC By Any Chance
* BAK Back At Keyboard
* BBL Be Back Later
* BBN Bye Bye Now
* BBS Be Back Soon
* BF Boy Friend
* BFN Bye For Now
* BITMT But In The Meantime
* BOT Back On Topic
* BRB Be Right Back
* BRB nc Be Right Back Nature calls (brb nc)
* BTW By The Way

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with C:

* C4N Ciao For Now
* C2C or CTC Cheek To Cheek
* CID Crying In Disgrace
* CRS Can’t Remember “Stuff”
* CSG Chuckle Snicker Grin
* CYA L8R See You Later (See ya lata)
* CU See You
* C U L8R See You Later
* CWOT Complete Waste Of Time

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with D:

* DIL Daughter In Law
* DITYID Did I Tell You I’m Distressed?
* DIY Do It Yourself
* DLTBBB Don’t Let The Bed Bugs Bite
* DW Wife or Dear wife

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with E:

* EG Evil Grin
* EMSG Email Message
* EOD End Of Discussion
* EOS End Of Show
* EZ Easy

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with F:

* F2F or FTF Face To Face
* FAAK Falling Asleep At Keyboard
* FAQ Frequently Asked Questions
* FBOW For Better Or Worse
* FIL Father In Law
* FOAF Friend Of A Friend
* FOCL Falling Off Chair Laughing
* FUBAR F***ed Up Beyond All Repair
* FWIW For What It’s Worth
* FYA For Your Amusement
* FYI For Your Information

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with G:

* GAL Get A Life
* GBTW Get Back To Work
* GF or G/F Girl Friend
* GFC or G4C Going For Coffee
* GFETE Grinning From Ear To Ear
* GFN or G4N Gone For Now
* GMAO [GMBO] Giggling My A$$ Off
* GMTA Great Minds Think Alike
* GR8 Great
* GR&D Grinning, Running & Ducking
* GTG or G2G Got To Go
* GTGTTBR or G2G2TBR Got To Go To The Bathroom
* GTRM or G2RM Going To Read Mail
* GTSY Glad To See You

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with H:

* H&K Hug and Kiss
* HABU Have A Better ‘Un
* HAGN Have A Good Night
* HAGU Have A Good ‘Un
* HAG1 Have A Good One
* HAND Have A Nice Day
* HHIS Hanging Head in Shame
* HHOK Ha Ha Only Kidding
* HLOL Hystericly Laughing Out Loud
* HLOLARAWCHAWMP Hystericaly Laughing Out Loud And Rolling Around While
* Clapping Hands And Wetting My Pants
* HTH Hope This Helps

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with I:

* IAC In Any Case
* IAE In Any Event
* IC I See
* IDGI I Don’t Get It
* IDK I Don’t Know ~ I Didn’t Know
* IGP I Gotta Pee
* IMCO In My Considered Opinion
* IMHO In My Humble Opinion
* IMO In My Opinion
* IMNSHO In My Not So Humble Opinion
* IMPE In My Previous/Personal Experience
* IOTTMCO Intuitively Obvious To The Most Casual Observer
* IOW In Other Words
* IRL In Real Life
* ISP Internet Service Provider
* ISRN I’ll Stop Rambling Now
* ITA I Totally Agree
* IWALU I Will Always Love You
* IYKWIM If You Know What I Mean

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with J:

* J/K Just Kidding
* JIC Just In Case
* JK Joke
* JMO Just My Opinion
* JTLYK Just To Let You Know

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with K:

* KISS Keep It Simple Stupid
* KIT Keep In Touch
* KMA Kiss My A$$
* KMB Kiss My Butt
* KOC Kiss On Cheek
* KOL Kiss On Lips

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with L:

* L8R Later
* L8R Later ‘Gater
* LD Later Dude
* LHM Lord Help Me
* LHU Lord Help Us
* LMAO Laughing My Ass Off
* LOL Laughing Out Loud
* LOLOL Laughing Out Loud On Line
* LSHMBB Laughing So Hard My Belly is Bouncing
* LSHMBH Laughing So Hard My Belly Hurts
* LSHMSH Laughing so hard my side hurts
* LTNS Long Time No See
* LTS Laughing To Self
* LUWAMH Love You With All My Heart
* LUVYA Love Ya
* LY Love Ya

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with M:

* MorF or M/F Male or Female, of person who asks that question
* MWAH Sound Of A Kiss
* MTCW My Two Cents Worth
* MYOB Mind Your Own Business

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with N:

* NETUA Nobody Ever Tells Us Anything
* NP No Problem
* NRN No Reply Necessary
* NTA Non-Technical Acronym

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with O:

* OIC Oh I See
* OL Old Lady (significant other)
* OLL Online Love
* OM Old Man (significant other)
* ONNA Oh No, Not Again!
* OTOH On The Other Hand
* OTTOMH Off The Top of My Head

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with P:

* PC/PVT/MSG Private Chat/ Messaging
* PCMCIA People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
* PDS Please Don’t Shoot
* PLS Please
* PM Private Message
* PMFJI Pardon Me For Jumping In
* PMP Peed My Pants
* PMTA Perverted Minds Think Alike
* POAHF Put On A Happy Face
* POOF I Have Left the Chat
* POV Point Of View
* PS Post Script
* PTSS Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome
* PU That Stinks!

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with Q:

* QSL Reply
* QSO Conversation
* QT Cutie

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with R:

* RE Hello Again
* ROFL Rolling On Floor Laughing
* ROFLAPMP ROFL And Peeing My Pants
* ROTF Rolling On The Floor
* ROTFL Rolling On The Floor Laughing
* ROTFLMAO Rolling On The Floor Laughing My A** Off
* ROFLMAOAY ROFLMAO At You
* ROTFWTIME Rolling On The Floor With Tears In My Eyes
* ROFLUTS ROFL Unable to Speak
* RSN Real Soon Now
* RUOK Are You OK?

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with S:

* SETE or SE2E Smiling Ear To Ear
* SHID Slaps Head In Disquest
* SIL or SoIL Son In Law
* SIL or SiIL Sister In Law
* SITD Still In The Dark
* SNAFU Situation Normal; All Fouled Up
* Snert Snot Nosed Egotistical Rotten Teenager
* SO Significant Other
* SOHF Sense Of Humor Failure
* SOL Smiling Out Loud (or You’re Out of Luck)
* SPAM Stupid Person’s Advertisement
* SS So Sorry
* SWAK Sealed With A Kiss
* SWL Screaming With Laughter
* SYS See You Soon

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with T:

* TA Thanks Again
* TAFN That’s All For Now
* TANSTAAFL There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
* TBD OOTD To Be Done One Of These Days!
* TEOTWAWKI The End Of The World As We Know It
* THX or Txs Thanks
* TIA Thanks In Advance
* TMK To My Knowledge
* TOY Thinking Of You
* TTYL Talk To You Later
* 2WIMC To Whom It May Concern
* TY Thank You
* TX Thanks

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with U:

* UFO Un-Finished Project
* UPGS Unfinished Project Guilt Syndrome
* URL Web Page Address

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with V:

* VDH Very Dear Husband ~ (see also DH)
* VDW Very Dear Wife

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with W:

* WB Welcome Back
* WBS Write Back Soon
* w/o Without
* WRT With Respect To
* WPYS Who Pulled Your String
* WTF What the F**K?
* WTG Way To Go
* WTH What the Heck
* WU What’s Up?
* WWW World Wide Web
* WYSIWYG What You See Is What You Get

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with X:

* XOXO Love and Kisses

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with Y:

* Y2K Year 2000, Millennium
* YBS You’ll Be Sorry
* YCGB You Can’t Get Better
* YG Young Gentleman
* YGIAGAM Your Guess Is As Good As Mine
* YGWYPF You Get What You Pay For
* YL Young Lady
* YM Young Man
* YMMV Your Mileage May Vary
* YWIA You’re Welcome In Advance

Text Messaging & Chat Abbreviations That Start with Z:

* ZZZ Sleeping

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Top 10 countries that lead in click fraud traffic

What’s the biggest growing danger for advertisers and publishers? Click fraud, which is an invalid click, on purpose (attempted click fraud) or not (innoculous invalid) to alter statistics or increase earnings for the publisher. Click fraud is also use to deceive advertisement programs (like Google Adsense) to exclude a certain publisher from the system because it uses unfair techniques to increase its earnings.

What’s the danger?

For the advertiser it’s hard to calculate its ROI and in time it will see that advertisements don’t result in sales increase. After it sees that the obvious outcome is that it starts paying less to publishers. As you can see this is a circle that affects everyone in long term as we all know that trust is gained hard and gets lost easy.

Click fraud statistics

A report submitted by Anchor Intelligence show that the percentage of click fraud in advertisements system reached a very alarming 22.9%. Vietnam is leading with a 49.7% percentage while, Canada is second with 28.7 %, while USA is third with 27.3 %, but it has the highest indexed volume of clicks and this makes it the worst.

A map of quality traffic on the globe shows that Russia, Eastern Europe, Africa and South America (minus Brazil) are the regions with less click fraud, but as traffic increases is likely the percentage of valid clicks will decrease in time.

Global report click fraud traffic quality

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