Technology buzz!!!

By submitting these pages to the sites, you are promoting them to other users. Your pages will increase traffic and google can find your blog easily, however the site you have submitted will and the link back to your page(s) may increase in value. You will often see an increase in traffic from users following the link to your pages. My readers also suggested to add more popular directories likeDigg, Delicious and Stumble upon to this list as they were missing from my list.
Technorati - They supposedly track 75.2 million blogs. Quite naturally, you would want your blog to be one of them. Register with them and submit your blog. Follow their instructions to claim your blog. They will provide you with statistics like the number of blogs that link to you. You can also invite other members to favorite your blog.
Fuel My Blog - This is an interesting directory. Unlike the usual text-based blog directories, this site goes by images that you create to represent your blog. When your visitors click a link on your site that says Fuel My Blog!, your image will move up the ranks and appear on the front page, making it more visible to directory viewers.
Blogtoplist - A blog directory listing that is sorted by the number of unique visitors to your blog. Your visitors can also cast a Vote to increase your ranking. The scores are reset every week to allow new bloggers like us a chance to be placed among the top.
Topblogarea - A blog directory that tracks unique visitors. Unlike the earlier ones, visitors do not vote at this directory.
Topblogging - Here, you are ranked based on unique visitors. Although there is a count for votes in, somehow the code provided by them did not track this vote count.
Bloglines - Now this site is great you submit your blog and basically meet fellow Blogger's.
Blog Hub offers a drop down category and member blog list. With its “new blogger” list and hot topics, Blog Hub is a great directory to list your site.
Blogarama has an impressive listing of over 65,000 blogs. The site is well designed and follows the same content categories as many other sites.Upon visiting
Bloggernity, you find a crisp, clean, and easy to navigate site. Scrolling down, you find the new blogs. As there is little advertising on the home page, it is pleasant to the eye of the reader as well.
Blog Catalog features a vast directory of categories, from academic to writing, while offering the ability to search by country, language, or user. It has a no frills design, but offers convenient member access through simple blog registration.
Globe of Blogs has too many features to list. In order to be listed on the site, the blog must not be commercial. The site may appear to be busy, but I like the features of being able to search by title, author, or subject. Narrowing the search becomes easier on this blog.
Blog Universe is the perfect place to promote your video or podcast themed blog. Its layout is easy to navigate. Although the content is limited, it is an all around good directory site worthy of submission.

1. Never click your own adsense ads or get them clicked for whatever reason. You know this one very well. This is a surefire way to close you Adsense account. Never tell your office associates or friends to click on them. Keep a check if your family or children are busy increasing your income by clicking your ads and indirectly trying to stop your income. Dont even think of offering incentives for clicks, using automated clicking tools, or other deceptive software. Adsense is very smart to detect fraudulent clicks. Check the ads which appear on your pages by the Google Preview tool if required.
2. Never change the Adsense code. There are enough means of adsense optimization & customizations available to change the colour, background or border to suit your needs. Do whatever you want to do outside the code, never fiddle within the ad or the search code. They know it when you do. The search code has more limitations to colour and placement, but you should adhere to the rules. The code may stop working and violates the TOS.
3. Do not place more than 3 ad unit and 1 ad links or 2 adsense search boxes on any web page. Anyway, ads will not appear in those units even if you place more ad units. But this is the limit they set, so it is better to stick to it.
4. Do not run competitive contextual text ad or search services on the same site which offer Google Adsense competition in their field. Never try to create link structures resembling the adsense ads. Never use other competitive search tools on the same pages which have Adsense powered Google search. They do allow affiliate or limited-text links.
5. Do not disclose confidential information about your account like the CTR, CPM and income derived via individual ad units or any other confidential information they may reveal to you. However, you may reveal the total money you make as per recent updates to the TOS.
6. Label headings as "sponsored links" or "advertisements" only. Other labels are not allowed. I have seen many sites label ads with other titles. Dont make your site a target in a few seconds gaze.
7. Never launch a New Page for clicked ads by default. Adsense ads should open on the same page. You may be using a base target tag to open all links in a new window or frame by default. Correct it now as they do not want new pages opening from clicked ads.
8. One Account suffices for Multiple websites. You do not need to create 5 accounts for 5 different websites. One account will do. If you live in the fear that if one account is closed down for violation of TOS, believe me they will close all accounts when they find out. You can keep track of clicks by using channels with real time statistics. They will automatically detect the new site and display relevant ads.
9. Place ads only on Content Pages. Advertisers pay only for content based ads. Content drives relevant ads. Although you might manage some clicks from error, login, registration, "thank you" or welcome pages, parking pages or pop ups, it will get you out of the program.
10. Do not mask ad elements. Alteration of colours and border is a facility to blend or contrast ads as per your site requirements. I have seen many sites where the url part is of the same colour as the background. While blending the ad with your site is a good idea, hiding relevant components of the ads is not allowed. Also do not block the visibility of ads by overlapping images, pop ups, tables etc.
11. Do not send your ads by email. Html formatted emails look good and allow placement of these javascript ads. But it is not allowed as per TOS. You do not want impressions registering on their logs from any email even once. They are watching!
12. Keep track of your content. So Adsense is not allowed on several non content pages. But it is also not allowed on several content pages too. Do not add it on web pages with MP3, Video, News Groups, and Image Results. Also exclude any pornographic, hate-related, violent, or illegal content.
13. Do not alter the results after ad clicks or searches - Ensure you are not in any way altering the site which the user reaches to after clicking the ads. Do not frame, minimize, remove, redirect or otherwise inhibit the full and complete display of any Advertiser Page or Search Results Page after the user clicks on any Ad or Search results.
14. Avoid excessive advertising and keyword stuffing - Although the definition of 'excessive' is a gray area and is subject to discretion, yet Google adsense with correct placement, focused content and high traffic will get you much more income than other programs, so excessive advertising is not required. Keyword stuffing does target better focused ads, but overdoing it is not required.
15. Ensure your Language is Supported - Adsense supports "Chinese (simplified), Japanese, Danish, Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, English, Polish, Finnish, Portuguese, French, Russian, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Swedish, Italian and Turkish". In addition, AdSense for search is available in Czech, Slovak, and Traditional Chinese. If your web pages language is not supported, do not use the code on such pages.

1. Make every single page on your site accessible via a text-based link as the Googlebot only speaks text.
2. Keep the number of links on a given page less than 100.
3. Do not use URLs with query strings.. Google offers the allintitle syntax, which lets users search only text that appears in a page title. Give every single page on the site a complete and meaningful title.
4. Avoid frames.
5. Make sure that the title and alt tag attributes exist and are complete and meaningful in each page's markup.
6. Make all relevant information on a page textual. Don't embed page content into images or objects like Flash movies.
7. Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since the Googlebot last crawled your site.
8. Use robots.txt and meta robots tags to show the Googlebot around your site. These standard mechanisms for directing well-behaved robots like the Googlebot will allow you to specify important things like whether or not Google will cache your page content and/or images, and whether or not the Googlebot will index content on pages that maybe you don't want available to the searching public.
9. Use meaningful text inside your tags so the Googlebot can associate that text with that href link. Meaning, if I am going to link my pictures from the war protest, I should say "Take a look at my photos from the war protest" instead of "My war protest pictures are here."
10. Include a tag in your page header to summarize your site.
11. Place more important content higher in the markup than less important content in a page.

By following these top 5 keyword research steps you will be able to dominate your competition in any internet marketing campaign you launch. Keyword research is the foundation that your entire campaign should be designed around for. Below is a list of 5 simple to follow steps that if followed will lead to a solid foundation and a very powerful campaign.

1.) Google Suggest is a great free tool which you can find for free doing a Google search. You simply start typing in a keyword and it will automatically start suggesting some great key terms of your choice. This tool can help get your juices flowing and give you some great keyword phrase ideas.
2.) Use SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool which is a free tool you can find on Google. You type in your seed keyword and it will return the most popular searched keyword phrases back along with how many times it's being searched. You want to find a few keyword phrases that drive traffic using this tool. If the keyword phrase you want isn't producing any traffic then don't waste your time any further. Find some keyword phrases getting some great results, this is the key.
3.) Now that you have a few keyword phrases go to Google and type in the keyword phrase in the search bar. This will show you how many competing websites there are out there. Next put quotation marks around your keyword phrase like this “keyword phrase” and Google will return the number of optimized results, this is the real number we're looking for, record that number. Repeat this to all your keyword phrases and select the keyword phrase which has the least optimized competition on Google with the highest traffic and do the math. A formula for this is to take the optimized results and divide that by the number of searches. This will give you the R/S value, the lower the number the better the keyword phrase. Select the keyword phrase with the smallest number.
4.) Another great free tool you can find on Google is Google Adwords Keyword tool . You can type in your keyword phrase and it will return the advertiser competition along it's search volume. You can even see the estimated average cost per click competing advertisers are competing for. If you see advertisers paying big bucks for the cost per click that's a sign that there is money to be made with that keyword phrase. Use this tool wisely.
5.) Next go to Google and type in your selected keyword phrase and study all 10 of your competition on the front page. Start by looking at each websites PR(Google Page Rank). If your using internet explorer make sure you have Google's toolbar as on it they have a feature which shows you the Page Rank of any website. If you have competition with PR's of 7 or above I don't recommend competing for that keyword phrase as it will be very difficult to beat them for that spot. The lower the PR the better chance you have of taking their position.
Any good marketer can tell you that the most important part of any campaign is doing solid keyword research. Without it you won't have any results no matter how much time you put into your campaign. Using the simple 5 steps above will allow you to completely dominate your competition on Google and provide you with the foresight to see great success in your campaign by having a solid foundation built underneath you.

Page Rank of a website is a asset for a site owner, because if a site has a larger page rank it will be more visible in search engines and can get more visitors. There are a lot of ways to promote your website and increase its page rank. Some ways require you to pay for it and some are FREE but needs extra time and efforts. Remember in www the most important thing you need to remember is the patience. Below are some points which you can follow and improve your website ranking.
1. Linking is the best and fast way to improve your page rank. Try to get a link back from higher page rank websites. There are some free ways also but they will take a long time to insert your link in other websites. But if you can pay some $$ to get a link back from higher page rank websites, they will guarantee you for your link to be approved within a week.
2. If you are planing to purchase a link back then remember this point, some websites have PR4, PR5 or even PR7 for their home page, but no PR for any of their other pages, So remember to pay for only that link which will be displayed on a PR+ page.
3. Submit to directories and sit relax. Start one by one and submit your link in all web directories. If you can, try to give a link back (reciprocal link on your page) to free directories, some directories does not need it, but if you provide them, their owners will look for your approval first.
4. Build a sitemap for your website (XML based for Google and text based for yahoo) and submit them to Google and yahoo. Get a Google webmaster account and sign in there to see your website statistics. It will also tell you if you site is indexed or not, and your page rank in Google.
5. Update your website every day by adding more unique content. If you site has some information for a visitor then it is 100% chance for him to come back to your site again.
6.Provide inside linking to your website. For example you can provide a link of your previous and next articles on an article page. Or you can provide a list of related articles so visitor can remains a long time on your website.
7. Keep in touch with your website. If you do, you will get results from your statistics analyzer very soon that you are getting visitors and your page rank is improved.
8. And the most important tip. “Trade your link with other web owners“. Put their link on your website and they will put your link in them. This is for free and the very fast way to improve your visibility in search engines.

Do the following ...

Start the registry editor (regedit.exe)

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Double click on DisableCAD (create of type REG_DWORD if it does not exist)

Set to 1 if you don't want to have to press Ctrl-Alt-Del, and set to 0 if you want to .

Click OK

Close the registry editorReboot the machine

10 Steps to prevent Fake antivirus
1. Use Firefox as your browser rather than Internet Explorer.
2. Keep your computer updated with the latest anti-virus and anti-spyware software, and be sure to use a good firewall.
3. Never open an email attachment unless you are POSITIVE about the source.
4. Do NOT click on any pop-up that advertises anti-virus or anti-spyware software, especially a program promising to provide every feature known to mankind. (Also remember: the fakes often mimic well-known brands such as Grisoft AVG, Norton and McAfee.)
5. If a virus alert appears on your screen, do NOT touch it. Don't use your mouse to eliminate or scan for viruses, and DON'T use your mouse to close the window. Instead, hit control + alt + delete to view a list of programs currently running. Delete the "rogue" from the list of running programs, and call your computer maker's phone or online tech support service to learn if you can safely use your computer.
6. Do not download freeware or shareware unless you know it's from a reputable source.
7. Avoid questionable websites. Some sites may automatically download malicious software onto your computer.
8. Reset your current security settings to a higher level.
9. Although fake software may closely resemble the real thing, it's rarely an exact match. Look for suspicious discrepancies.
10. Check out this list of rogue/fake anti-virus and anti-spyware products.
List of rogue / fake antivirus / anti spyware products
Advanced Cleaner[3]
AlfaCleaner
AntiSpyCheck 2.1
AntiSpyStorm
AntiSpywareBot [4]
AntiSpywareExpert
AntiSpywareMaster
AntiSpywareSuite
AntiSpyware 2008 XP
Antivermins
Antivirgear
Antivirus 2008
Antivirus 2009
AntiVirus Gold [5]
Antivirus Master
Antivirus XP 2008 [6]
Awola 6.0
Brave Sentry
BestsellerAntivirus
Cleanator
ContraVirus
Doctor Antivirus
DriveCleaner [7]
Disk Knight
EasySpywareCleaner
Errorsafe
free-viruscan.com
IE Antivirus
IEDefender
InfeStop
KVMSecure
MacSweeper
MalCrush 3.7
MalwareCore
MalwareAlarm
Malware Bell 3.2
Microsoft AntiVirus
PCSecureSystem [8]
PC Antispy [9
]PC Clean Pro [10]
PC SpeedScan Pro
PestTrap [11]
Perfect Cleaner
PAL Spyware Remover
PCPrivacytool
PC-Antispyware
PSGuard
SecurePCCleaner
Security toolbar 7.1
SpyAxe [12]
Spy Away
SpyCrush
Spydawn [13]
SpyGuarder
SpyHeal
Spylocked [14]
SpySheriff [15]
SpySpotter
Spyware Cleaner
Spyware Quake [16]
Spyware Stormer
SpywareStrike
Spy-Rid
SpyWiper
System Live Protect [17]SystemDoctor
TrustedAntivirus
TheSpyBot
UltimateCleaner
VirusHeat
Virus Isolator
VirusProtectPro
VirusRanger
Vista Antivirus 2008
WinAntiVirus Pro 2006
WinFixer [18]
WinSpywareProtect
WorldAntiSpy
XP Antivirus
XoftSpySE
Zinaps 2008
This list are from source by Google.

Windows XP allows you to create a password reset disk, just in case you forget the password and can't login. This is only for computers that are not on a domain. Those that are on a domain may or may not work the same way.


Go to Start->Control Panel->User Accounts and click on your user name. Under Related Tasks on the left pane, click Prevent a forgotten password. A wizard will show up. Click next and then insert a floppy disk into your floppy drive and choose to save the reset disk on the floppy.


Enter your current password and then click Next and Finish. The floppy will now contain your encrypted password. If you forget your password, you can just use the Password Reset Wizard to create a new one. Just make sure to create another reset disk once you changed your password. So if you forgot your password and changed it to a new one, create another reset disk by repeating the above procedure again.

The robots.txt file is useful in blocking off some of the pages of your blog/site from search engine crawlers. In this article, we will take a look at some of the commonly asked question about the robots.txt file, with a particular focus on Blogger blogs.

What is a Robot?

A Robot (aka wanderer, crawler or spider) is a computer program that traverses the web automatically.

Even though these names give you the feeling that these programs “travel around” the Internet, they really don’t travel from computer to computer. What they, in fact, do is to follow the hyperlinks found on web pages by issuing download requests for each of those hyperlinked pages.

What is the robots.txt file?

This is a simple ASCII text file and its name must be written in all lowercase letters as robots.txt. It should be located at the root directory of your domain. Usually, in a website, this is where you keep your index.html file.

In Blogger blogs, this is located at the following address.

http://.blogspot.com/robots.txt

For example, if your blog name is innovideas blog, then your robots.txt file can be viewed by typing the following address in to browser’s address bar.

http://innovideas.blogspot.com/robots.txt

What is the format of this file?

A typical robots.txt file consists of one or more sets of rules or directions for search engine robots. Each set of rules comprises of two or more instructions written on adjacent new lines. Rule sets are separated by blank new lines.

Here’s a typical example file from a blogspot blog. (Line numbers are added for referencing only. The actual file does not contain them)

Lines 1 & 2 form one set of rules and lines 4 & 5 form another set. They are separated by the blank line 3.

A typical rule set starts with a User-agent: line which identifies one or more robots. Then it will have one or more Disallow: [or Allow:] commands, in separate, adjacent new lines.

For example, in the second rule set above:
User-agent: * - means all user agents
Disallow: /search - means “don’t crawl any URL that starts with http://.blogspot.com/search/…. In Blogger, this rule will block off all Labels. It’s added by default, because the Label pages just display the individual pages belonging to that label, which the robots will anyway find while crawling the rest of the site.

What is the use of the robots.txt file?

As you’ve probably realized by now, the robots.txt file is used to prevent robots from crawling certain areas of your site/blog.

However, remember that not all robots respect this file. For example, spam bots, which scan the web to steal email addresses, can ignore the Disallow: commands and enter those pages. So the robots.txt file is not a good way to hide your secure information.

Can I edit the robots.txt file?

Unfortunately, Blogger users cannot edit their robots.txt file. It is maintained by Blogger itself and you cannot upload your own file instead of the default one.But, if you manage a site where you can upload files to the root domain, then you can use the tools provided by the Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) console to edit the robots.txt file. Once you have verified your blog with GWT, this is available from the Tools section of the left side navigation bar.

The Analyze robots.txt tool lets you test your rules to see what URLs they actually allow or disallow. This is good to avoid any un-intentional block offs by syntax errors in your file.

The Generate robots.txt tool has a simple user interface to create a file, even if you are not sure of the file’s syntax. Once generated, you can download the file to your machine and then upload it to your site’s root domain.

Blogger provides an option where you can edit the template directly in HTML mode. This mode allows you to do a lot more customization than possible using its standard interfaces. For example, if you want to convert your blog to 3 columns or increase the width of your post area, you can do it using the Edit HTML mode.
However, most non-technical Bloggers are somewhat afraid of trying out such changes, even by following simple step by step guides. The Backup and Restore option should give you that additional bit of confidence to go ahead and try out a bit of tinkering by yourself.
This article will illustrate how you can back up and restore your template. It's very easy.

Backup

To backup your template go to Layout -> Edit HTML. The very first option in this pane is "Backup / Restore Template". Under that click the link "Download Full Template" (See Label 1 in the above figure). Choose the option to "Save" from the next dialog that pops up. Browse to the location you want to save it (e.g. Desktop) and click Save.

The template will be downloaded to the specified location. It's a small XML file and will be named as "template-.xml" where is a long series of digits. That's it; this XML file has all the details of your current template.

Restore

Restoring is also as simple as backing up.

Let's say you tried out some changes for your template and didn't get it right. When you try to save your template you get this frightening error message in red! (Clear Edits will not work here because you have saved your changes)

Don't panic. Remember you backed up your template earlier. Just click the Browse button (Label 2 in above figure) of the Backup / Restore option and browse to the downloaded template file and click Open. Then click Upload (Label 3). Then Blogger will restore your template to the state it was, prior to your edits. Then save your restored template.

You will be back to square one. Try your change some other day. As long as you back it up properly, you can restore it until you get your change right. :)

You start a new blog and then write up some content on it. Once you think that you've got enough posts for people to hang around, you let your friends, family and colleagues know about your blog. And now you want the whole world to visit your blog! Fair enough.

But how do you know whether these people actually visited your blog? How do you count the number of visitors to your blog? Well, it turns out that there's quite a number of ways of doing that. There are many traffic monitoring services available out there and in this article we will take a look at a few of them.

I have been using 4 such services to track the visitors to my blog. (Note, however, that you don't have to use that many to track visitors. Even a single monitoring service can do the job.) Feedjit, SiteMeter, StatCounter and Google Analytics are those 4 services and all of them are free services.

Feedjit offers two widgets to track visitors; a traffic feed which shows the 10 most recent visits to and exits from your blog and a miniature traffic map. Both widget are updated real time (i.e. as and when visitors arrive). The traffic feed shows the location (country, city) of visitors, the referring URL, the entry page and the exit page for each visitor (all these details are not available for certain visits). This is ideal to know who's visiting from where, but it doesn't readily give a count of your visitors.

SiteMeter and StatCounter both provide counts of visits and page views per visit. In fact, both provide almost identical data though with different presentations. The tracking code from these services, which you install in your blog also displays a count of visitors.

Registering with SiteMeter is simple and installing the tracking code in your blog is pretty easy. It offers a very good set of statistics in a neat, compact format. The presentation of information in SiteMeter is what I like most about it. With respect to each visit, the visitor location, the referring URL, entry and exit pages, duration of the visit, time zone information and a lot of system stats such as the browser used, screen resolution, color depth etc are provided. Many bar and pie charts that summarize the visits are also provided. Absence of the navigation path of each visitor (i.e. what pages were viewed other than the entry and exit pages) is one of the disadvantages of SiteMeter.

StatCounter, on the other hand, provides the navigation path of each visitor which is very useful to see what people actually read once they get in. Other than that, it's almost the same set of data as provided by SiteMeter. My personal preference, however, is SiteMeter for its neat, easily comprehensible presentation of data. (Besides, I don't like the ugly counter by StatCounter displayed on the blog once we install the tracking code)

Last but certainly not least best of best, Google Analytics (GA) is the service which offers the most complex analysis of data. As with many Google services, the user interface (i.e. presentation) is excellent. You have a configurable dashboard and you can drill down on each item on the dashboard. Visitor trends, visitor loyalty and a lot more useful stats are provided. The difficult and time consuming installation (compared to the other 3), non real time data (stats are updated only once a day) and complexity can be stated as the primary disadvantages of GA. The complexity is because of the added focus towards AdWords customers. In my view, GA is useful if you have huge amount of visitors and you want to direct these visitors to targets such as increased sales from your site. Another problem with GA is the difficulty of excluding your visits (i.e. internal visits) to the blog whereas it is just a click of a button with the other 3 services.

One thing you must remember though is that the stats, especially the visitor counts and page views, from these 4 different services are very rarely in agreement. They differ from each other depending on factors such as the time interval that makes two adjacent visits from the same person count as two visits or one visit. For example, if the same person visits your blog more than once within a space of 'x' hours, all of that will count as one visit. But this 'x' differs from service to service.

In conclusion, I can say that I check my SiteMeter stats every so often and use Google Analytics to drill down for more complex stats.

A reader wants to link his blog header to another site. The Blog Header links to the blog Main Page (Home) on the post pages. Hence if a viewer is on the post pages he can just click the header to return to the Main Page. Our reader wishes to increase traffic to his site by making the header link to it.

For this he needs to modify the code for the header. Login at Blogger.com and click Layouts link on Dashboard. Then click Edit Html subtab of Layout tab. Click the Expand Widgets Template box at the top of the Template Code box. Then scroll down to this code in the Blog Header :

What this code says is that if it is the Main Page just show the header without the link. On Post pages link header to Main Page. To link the header to another site change above code to :



Replace 'LINK_OF_YOUR_SITE' with actual link of your site and save template.Enjoy!

Shutdown Windows faster than before

All versions of Windows have the same problem. It usually takes a little longer to shutdown when you have the Exit Sound enabled.
To disable this :

go to Start->Settings->Control Panel->Sounds and Audio Devices->Sounds.
Scroll down and look for Exit Windows.
Click on it once and then under Sounds,
choose None.

You should see faster shutdown times.