6/26/2007

Amazing Matrix table tennis and food fight!

Just in time for the weekend. Some fun amazing matrix parody strips:

Matrix food fight!






Matrix ping pong!


Matrix soccer!


Karate Matrix!

Why DoubleClick is right for Google!

Most people keep on thinking why Google bought DoubleClick when they have their own AdSense network for advertisement. That is because most people are not familiar with how the advertisement market is being formed. The large portion of the web based advertisements are in display and text based advertisement where Google is only strong in text based advertisement.

The aim that Google is going for is for them to dominate the display based advertisement market as well. With help from Doubleclick algorithm, Google can optimize the advertisement delivery to each of the servers, effectively delivering relevant advertisements to people in need. Thus, complementary effect that DoubleClick can provide to Google, which can give rise to Google advertisement market yet once again!

Also, in more detail here's why Google bought DoubleClick:

1. DoubleClick's products and technology are complementary to our search and and content-based text advertising business, and give us new opportunities to improve online advertising for consumers, advertisers and publishers.
2. Historically, we've not allowed third parties to serve into Google's AdSense network, which has made it hard for advertisers to get performance metrics. Together, Google and DoubleClick can deliver a more open platform for advertisers, and provide the metrics they need to manage marketing campaigns.
3. By combining Google's infrastructure with DoubleClick's knowledge of agencies and publishers, we can create the next generation of more innovative ad serving technology, one that significantly improves the efficiency and effectiveness of online advertising.
4. To manage ad inventory, some of the largest publishers use DoubleClick DART for Publishers – but a good portion of it goes unsold. It's our view that the combination of DoubleClick and Google will help these publishers succeed by monetizing their unsold inventory.


You can find more detail from GoogleBlog on article Why we're buying DoubleClick.

6/18/2007

Programming tips round-up (2007-06-18)!

How many times when you start programming your own codes, you wish you had some of the tips that you find the solution to after many hours of debugging and many process of thoughts? No worries. Take a look at some of these references and your are all set to go!

WAMP5 and EasyPHP, both great local web server options: This site provides WAMP5 tool which provide you with all the things that you need to generate your own server including PHP, Apache, MySQL, AJAX, etc!
26 Best ways to implement AJAX, CSS and Javascript based Tabs: Shows great tips on how to implement AJAX, CSS, and Javascript based Tabs in such a simple manner.
Essential HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and miscellaneous cheatsheets: All the cheat-sheets for you to refer to during your coding days. You no longer need thick book you need to browse through to find the syntax you need!
Top Ten of Programming Advice NOT to follow: Great reference to some of the advice against the common mis-conception of some of the programming mishaps.
Good php tutorials: Provide easy PHP tutorials with examples.
Google PageRank: What Do We Know About It?: All the webmasters should know about the Google PageRank when you are interested in increasing your traffic!
30 Traffic Generation Tips Gathering!: Traffic generation tip you really need to know!

Installing DLL in Windows!

The dll-downloads.com have laid out how simple it is to install your DLL files into the windows system! It's so simple and easy to do. Now you can generate custom DLL or open source DLL without hassle and you can have lots of fun with it!

How to install a DLL file in Windows?

1. Uncompress the DLL downloaded file from DLL-Downloads.com to your system32 folder within the Windows folder. [c:\WINDOWS\system32]
2. Click on the Start button, then click the Run... option
3. In the "Open" line, type the following (without quotes) "regsvr32 filename.dll" (replace filename.dll with the actual filename of the file you downloaded), then click the "OK" button.


How to Install a DLL file?

4. If the installation was successful, you should see a message saying that your file was successfully installed/uninstalled.

How to install a DLL file? - Use regsvr32 installation command

6/12/2007

30 Traffic Generation Tips Gathering!

Daily Blog Tips had a project to gather 30 tips that helps increase the traffic on your site called Blog Project: 30 Traffic Generation Tips. Here they are!

1. Sridhar Katakam
Keep track of blogs and leave comments on them. A good way to keep the conversation going is to install a MyBlogLog widget and visit the blog of people visiting your site.

2. Ian Delaney
Nothing creates long-term traffic more than value. Consider writing posts with resources or explaining how things work. Useful things get linked to and they get onto del.icio.us, which is far better long-term than a digg front page.

3. Scott Townsend
Inform search engines and aggregators like Technorati (using the ping functionality) when your blog is updated, this should ensure maximum traffic coming from those sources. (check the List of Ping Services)

4. Kyle
Simplify. Pay attention to complex issues in your field of work. It may be a big long publication that is hard to wade through or a concept that is hard to grasp. Reference it and make a shorter “for dummies” version with your own lessons learned and relevant tips. When doing this, I have been surprised to find that the simplified post will appear before the more complex version in search results. Perhaps this is why it results in increased traffic; people looking for more help or clarification on the subject will land on your blog.

5. Grant Gerver
Try to be polemic. I write obsessively about all-things political from the left-wing perspective in the form of humorous, sarcastic one-liners.

6. Daniel
A simple tip that will probably boost your page views: install a translator plugin. I decided to use a paid plugin for this, but if I am not wrong there are some free ones as well. The translation is not very good, as you can imagine, but it helps to attract readers that are not fluent in English.

7. Rory
Submit articles to blog carnivals (http://blogcarnival.com) that are related to your niche. Your article almost always gets posted, and it must generate a handful of visitors, at least.

8. Ramen Junkie
Newsgroups. I always see a spike when I post a review to a newsgroup.

9. Eric Atkins
Create a new design for your website. Not only will it be more attractive to your regular readers, but you can submit it to some CSS gallery showcase sites that feature great designs. This will give you exposure on those sites while generating a lot of traffic and backlinks from those types of sites.

10. Megan Taylor
Participate in conversations on related blogs. Start conversations on your own blog. Don’t just post about a story and leave it at that, engage your audience, ask questions and call to action.

11. Guido
Comment on blogs, write useful content and make good friends on forums.

12. Brian Auer
You must be active to generate traffic. I post comments on other blogs that are related to mine, and I post my site link in my signature at the forums. Spread the word about your blog and it will certainly attract readers.

13. Shankar Ganesh
Just browse around MyBlogLog.com and you will surely get visitors to your blog. Also try to join as many communities as possible that are related to your topic.

14. Andrew Timberlake
A great tip for generating traffic is off-line by including your url in all your off-line liturature from business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, adverts through in-store signage if applicable. I even have our website on my vehicle.

15. Cory OBrien
Read lots of other blogs. Leave trackbacks. Make sure your blog is optimized for search engines. Leverage social bookmarking sites like digg (both for new ideas and for traffic).

16. Jester
Leave comments on other blogs. If you’re already reading them, it takes
just a couple of seconds to leave a message agreeing or disagreeing
with the author, you get to leave a link to your site, and you will almost
ALWAYS get traffic from your comments.

17. Goerge Manty
Post 3-5 times a day. Use ping services like pingomatic or set up wordpress to ping some of the ping services. Engage your readers. Put up polls, ask them questions, give them quizes, free tools, etc. Make them want to come back and tell their friends about you.

18. Engtech
Community. It’s one word but it is the most important one when it comes to blogging. The only “blog metric” that makes sense is the vibrant community of readers it has. Building a community around your blog will bring you increased traffic, but how do you start? The boilerplate response to building traffic is always “SEO, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs” but it can be simplified to “be part of a community”. The easiest way to seed your blog is with an already existing community. But the only way to do that is to be part of the community yourself.

19. Chris
Squidoo Lenses are a good way to generate traffic. By using a lense,
you can generate your own custom “community” of webpages, including some
of the more popular pages in your “neighborhood.” Including your own
webpage in such a list is a good way of generating traffic.

20. Splork
I’ve had good success writing articles and submitting them to EzineArticles. Articles that have been written from well-researched keyword phrases and accepted by EzineArticles tend to rank very high in Google for that search term. Placing anchor text in the footer of those articles so the reader can visit my relevant website has always increased my site traffic.

21. Jen Gordon
I came upon some unexpected traffic when my blog popped up on some css design portals like www.cssmania.com and www.webcreme.com. If you can put some time into the concept behind and design for your blog, I’d recommend submitting your site to a design portal not only for
additional traffic but to build an additional community around your site.

22. Kat
I’ve recently gotten involved with several “MySpace-like” community sites that focus on my target audience. I share my thoughts in their forums, post intros to my real blog on their system blog and I’ve even created a group for my specific niche. It’s been very, very successful for me.

23. Inspirationbit
Well, obviously everyone knows that social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, etc. bring lots of traffic. But I’m now submitting some of my articles to blogg-buzz.com (a digg like site for bloggers), and I always get not a bad traffic from there.

24. Mark Alves
Participate in Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers where you can demonstrate your expertise, get associated with relevant keywords and put your URL out there.

25. Tillerman
Be the first to write a post about the ‘Top Ten Blogs’ in your niche. The post will rank highly in any general search for blogs in your niche and other bloggers in your niche write about the post and link to it.

26. Nick
Participating in forums is a great way to get loyal readers. Either link baiting people in your signature or posting great advice and tips will give you high quality traffic, which will result in return visitors.

27. Brandon Wood
A simple trick I’ve used to increase traffic to my blog is participate in group writing projects. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now.

28. Alan Thomas
Don’t forget your archives. I just posted a roundup of all interviews I did over the past seven months. One of them generated a new link and a big traffic spike from a group of users that look like they will be loyal readers now.

29. KWiz
Write something controversial. I don’t think it’s good to write something controversial just for the purpose of getting traffic necessarily (especially if it’s only for that purpose and you’re being disingenuous), but it works.

30. Dennis Coughlin
Find the best blogs on your niche and contact the authors. Introduce yourself and send a link of your blog. This might help them to discover your blog, read it and possibly link to it.

Finding lattitude and longitude values from Google Maps

Article from tech-recipes, Get Latitude and Longitude values from Google Maps, shows you how you can get the latitude and longitude values from Google Map. You can just copy and paste the following code after you center the location you would like to get coordinate information.



javascript:void(prompt(’’,gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));


It had been my greatest annoyance trying to work on Google Maps API where I needed to know the coordinate information where none can be referenced from the Google Map itself! Now, at least one thing will be easier to reference to.

6/07/2007

Multi-line -> single-line in one sweep copy/paste!

Gina from lifehacker.com have done it again. She found the one of the most dreaded and seek for function! Paste multiple lines to input boxes shows how you can copy multiple lines and paste into a single line! This is most helpful when you need to copy and paste in the forms or addresses in to Google Maps! This is one of many reason why I love firefox! Boo to IE6 users!

Type "about:config" in the location bar. In the "Filter" field type "singleline." You can set the value to 2 for editor.singleLine.pasteNewlines, which will allow pasting of multiple lines to input boxes.


Originated from Another multiline request [Google Maps Help Group] by Nikolai.

6/05/2007

Easy money through online businesses? Possible but tougher then you think!

As expected, lots of new upcoming so called business models are popping out here and there. There had been lots of success stories with how people had been successful with advertisements. To certain extent it is possible through Google's Ad-Sense services and advertisement services like Text Link Ads types.

I was reading through quite a lot about other people's success stories on how they have made their first million through online advertisement business model. Most of those stories seems to be true. Like any business model, there are many people who are successful while there are many more that are not. Therefore, I think most of the success is heavily depended upon their baseline idea, timing, luck, and their resources.

The NicheGeek.com presents one of the example Why Advertising Isn't A Strong Business Model article by Dmitri Davydov. This article shows that many entrepreneurs are aiming toward pretty much the same thing. Generate an online site which attracts millions of users and generate revenue through advertisement services. I agree with Dmitri in a sense that most people will not succeed. However, I disagree with Dmitri such that most people will fail not because of advertisement revenue based but because of their lack of online popularity that is required to succeed in generating large user base services.

Truemors.com by Guy Kawasaki is one perfect example of these type of business model. Truemors.com had many *MANY* bad reputation on worst site ever built with web 2.0. However, because of popularity of Guy Kawasaki, it was able to generate traffic on Truemors.com which ultimately made it successful.

6/04/2007

How to improve your Blog and attract more people

As a newbie blogger myself, I am trying to be able to blog properly. Yes yes I know blog supposed to be opened and supposed to carry your voice.


I honestly started blogging to put together stuffs that interests me and not caring for other people’s interest. Also, I wanted to put together stuffs that I wanted to be able to quickly refer to at later time. Thus, where "Personal Reference Blog" originated from and why the title of the blog was so "boring" as someone have mentioned before.


In any case, I have asked question in LinkedIn and I was refer to two of the blog which refer to blog tips. Those are seth godin’s BLOG and how to blog by tony pierce. They both has extensive lists. Among them, here are few that I really think that all the blogger should keep in mind when they publish their blogs.


From seth godin’s BLOG


Be topical... write posts that need to be read right now. Learn enough to become the expert in your field.
Break news.
Be timeless... write posts that will be readable in a year.
Be among the first with a great blog on your topic, then encourage others to blog on the same topic.
Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you.
Write short, pithy posts.
Encourage your readers to help you manipulate the technorati top blog list.
Write long, definitive posts.
Be snarky.
Write nearly libelous things about fellow bloggers, daring them to respond (with links back to you) on their blog.
Be sycophantic.
Share linklove and expect some back.
Tag your posts. Use del.ico.us.
Coin a term or two.
Use photos.
Salacious ones are best.
Start at the beginning and take your readers through a months-long education.
Include comments so your blog becomes a virtual water cooler that feeds itself.
Assume that every day is the beginning, because you always have new readers.
Highlight your best posts on your Squidoo lens.
Point to useful but little-known resources.
Write about stuff that appeals to the majority of current blog readers--like gadgets and web 2.0.
Write about Google.
Have relevant ads that are even better than your content.
Write about blogging.
Digest the good ideas of other people, all day, every day.
Invent a whole new kind of art or interaction.
Write about a never-ending parade of different topics so you don't bore your readers.
Ping technorati. Or have someone smarter than me tell you how to do it automatically.
Write about only one thing, in ever-deepening detail, so you become definitive.
Write about obscure stuff that appeals to an obsessed minority.
Don't be boring.
Write stuff that people want to read and share.

From how to blog by tony pierce:


3. dont be afraid to do anything. infact if youre afraid of something, do it. then do it again. and again.
11. say exactly what you want to say no matter what it looks like on the screen. then say something else. then keep going. and when youre done, re-read it, and edit it and hit publish and forget about it.
12. link like crazy. link anyone who links you, link your favorites, link your friends. dont be a prude. linking is what seperates bloggers from apes. and especially link if you’re trying to prove a point and someone else said it first. it lends credibility even if youre full of shit.
15. dont be afraid if you think something has been said before. it has. and better. big whoop. say it anyway using your own words as honestly as you can. just let it out.
20. change your style. mimic people. write beautiful lies. dream in public. kiss and tell. finger and tell. cry scream fight sing fuck and dont be afraid to be funny. the easiest thing to do is whine when you write. dont be lazy. audblog at least once a week.
22. when in doubt review something. theres not enough reviews on blogs. review a movie you just saw, a tv show, a cd, a kiss you just got, a restaurant, a hike you just took, anything.
26. dont be afraid to come across as an asswipe. own your asswipeness.
30. read tons of blogs and leave nice comments.


Submit to Social Websites

6/02/2007

Rise and Fall of Google?

I can remember the time before Google became so popular. There were few search engines that were not very good but dominating internet searches. Those were AltaVista, Lycos, Remarq, and Yahoo. Most of you wouldn't remember any of the search engines other then possibly Yahoo which is still standing against Google as one of it’s major but lagging competitor. When internet itself was fairly new, I even remember reading a book on how to use internet of which basically covered how to use Yahoo search engines!

If you want to read bit more on old search engines, I have found an article Dead Search Engines by Greg R. Notess covering some of these stories on this topic alone. Please do visit and indulge yourselves.

Like those old competitors who have perished within a short period of time after the introduction of Google, for all we know, Google can perish also. There is no such thing as forever dominance in any business models. Provided how fast the information travel after introduction of internet which gave rise to growth of Google, it can also work against itself when the new niche online search engine which can do better job then Google does.

There had been many startups which invest themselves in search engines. I have found two which looks very promising, hakia beta and Mahalo Alpha.

The hakia beta concentrate and distinguish itself with their new search algorithm accounted for their own search methods. You can read in more detail from their site but here are quotes on their technologies:

Different than a familiar R&D agenda in a search engine company, we undertook highly specific research tasks solely dedicated to the advancement of the core-competency in Web search. The main challenge is to make science work in a constrained deployment environment where speed, coverage, accuracy, and ease-of-use are high priority considerations.

Ontological Semantics (OntoSem) is a formal and comprehensive linguistic theory of meaning in natural language. As such, it bears significantly on philosophy of language, mathematical logic, and cognitive science... read more. Also available on this Web site is an interactive system to show how the words are analyzed.

Query Detection and Extraction (QDEX) system was invented to bypass the limitations of the inverted index approach when dealing with semantically rich data... read more. We have an interactive system to demonstrate QDEX operation for authorized users. You can request access to test this system, or Login using your access code.

SemanticRank algorithm of hakia deploys a collection of methods to score and rank paragraphs that are retrieved from the QDEX system for a given query. The process includes query analysis, best sentence analysis, and other pertinent operations...read more.

One of the research activities in hakia-Lab is the conversational (dialogue) systems where the search engine communicates with the user in an elevated level of confidence. More advanced forms of this function will be launched in the near future... read more. You can request access to test this system, or Login using your access code.


Mahalo Alpha meaning thank you in Hawaiian, concentrate on "human-powered search engine. It’s a fresh new concept which does not seem possible. However, they are building what seems more focused rather then being generic. I am not sure how they are planning to incorporate the fast growing internet itself. We’ll see their on-going progress. Quote from their site is available here:

Mahalo is the world’s first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides. Our Guides spend their days searching, filtering out spam, and hand-crafting the best search results possible. If they haven’t yet built a search result, you can request that search result. You can also suggest links for any of our search results.

Mahalo. We’re here to help.

6/01/2007

My Personal Google Reader Review

After I have tried Post2Blog, which I decided to use to all my on going blog postings, I started to look into other blog related tools that are popular among blogsphere.

The new tool I was looking into was not so much to help my blogging but to help me read other people’s blog posts. With my love for Google, it was natural for me to try out the Google Reader. I know this had been out for quite a while now and millions of people are already using it. However, I just wanted to add my review contribution to this for some of you who are not yet familiar with the tool.

When I logged into Google Reader and started the basic configuration with their default interest blogs and started adding some of the blogs that I enjoyed reading. Soon enough, I had literally hundreds of blogs all put together just like my gmail! You can make folders based on the blog interests for your likings and you can expand or compress them if you’d like.

When you click on the folder rather then the blog themselves, it even puts all the blog posting altogether within a long expanded view in chronological order! This definitely is a wonderful idea. You can even "Star" or share the items that you would like to make importance out of or share with other people. It even give with trend statistics of your reading habits! Like Gmail, it also enable you to add tags! Not only that, it extracts the posts only from each of the blogs, getting rid of all the annoying advertisements and other non-related items on the main site!This is all I wanted and more from blog reading experiences!

Technically, everything is very sound on the Google Reader. Only thing I found annoying is, now that everything is put together into one long expanded page, it seems like I put less importance to each of the posts and find myself simply scrolling through the posts. I am not entirely sure why. I think most of it is related to psychological effect of knowing how many new posts are posted and are there to read. The completeness oriented guy that I am, I need to get things done ASAP or read through them ASAP. When there are lot more posts to go through, my mind is not at ease. Perhaps that’s majority of the problem me skimming through most of the posts with the Google Reader.

Overall, I love the tool. Personally I hate it because of my skimming habits that I’m starting to build with this. I’m sure over time, I’ll learn to get used to it.

If you are one of those people who are using one of blog reading tools, please let me know how you like each of the tools.