by DB on February 25, 2009
Amit Agarwal (Digital Inspiration) recently presented some of his Google Adsense optimization techniques and tips at the WordCamp conference. He lists out some excellent points on his blog post, which i think every blogger and webmaster should make note of. Adsense Optimization or optimizing for any other ad network is always a trial and error method. There are no fixed set of rules that dictate how and where ads should be displayed. Here is the slideshow that Amit used at the WordCamp conference. For full explanation, please go to his blog post.
by DB on February 24, 2009
Yes, I have found the perfect recipe to making money online. This perfect recipe has put me on the path to reach my goal of making a million dollars this month. But today i have decided to give away my recipe for making money because i want people like you to also prosper and making a living online. First off, here is some proof that i have indeed made all this money.
Oh Boy! How i wish this was true. Sorry guys, i was just trying to have some fun here. The image you see above was generated using the fake Google Adsense Generator at www.googleadsensegenerator.com. The fake generator can be used to build an image like this with whatever numbers you would like to show as earnings.
You should always treat claims of making big money online with some suspicion. We see many fake offers and scams that entice unsuspecting folks into buying something by showing fake images like the one above. You now know how easy it is to generate fake images like this.
So always Remember – there is no shortcut to making money.
by DB on February 20, 2009
The Google Adsense team announced on their Blog today that publishers can now also change the font face on Adsense ads. The available font faces for publishers to choose from are Arial, Times & Verdana. Fonts can be set quickly for all your ads by choosing a account wide font face in the ‘Ad Display Preference’ section of ‘Account Settings’ page. The other option to individually select the font for each ad unit by going to the ‘Manage Ads’ section.
Here is a screenshot of the ‘Display Preference’ option:
‘Manage Ads’ Option:
What about Link Units?
Looks like the option to change fonts is not available on Link units. I don’t know if this option will be rolled out to Link Units in the future, but it is weird that this is not available with this new feature rollout. There was no particular mention about Link Units in the blog update from the Adsense team, so i guess it will be a mystery for sometime.
by DB on February 11, 2009
Yet another new feature has been added to Gmail Labs. You can now opt to automatically add your current location to your email signature in Gmail. This feature was created by Marco Bonechi, a Software Engineer at Google, during his 20% time that Google allows employees to work on personal projects. Marco says that your public IP address is used to figure out your current location and also warns that the location may not be accurate. To get a more accurate location, make sure that you have Google Gears on your Browser.
This is what your signature will look like after your turn on ‘Location In Signature’ feature in your Gmail settings (Signature preferences->Append your location to signature).
A word of caution if you are a cheating spouse or a lying employee – you will probably not want to turn on this new feature.
by DB on February 10, 2009
I have thought about this many times before. Would it not be cheaper for me to host my websites and blog on a web server in my basement? Isn’t it more cheaper to do it this way? It might be cheaper, but it definitely brings more trouble and stress with it. You will end up spending more time on the hardware, configuration, backup & other server related activities than on creating quality content for readers/users of your blog/website.
PCMech’s Rich Menga also thinks it is a bad idea. The reasons he outlines are:
- US based ISPs (& maybe other countries too) say “No Servers” in their Acceptable Use Policy for regular consumer grade broadband connections.
- The Web Server at home will run slow and choke in the face of some heavy traffic.
- The Web Server at home will be an open target. In other words, you will probably spend more time and money securing it from hackers.
Rich explains each of his reasons in detail. Make sure you check them out at PCMech.
by DB on February 10, 2009
Microsoft is giving a free domain and free web hosting for one year if you sign up for their Microsoft Office Live Small Business program. You will be charged $14.95 per year at the end of free first year hosting. You can also create up to 100 email accounts with your custom domain. The domains are only allowed in the .COM, .NET, .ORG & .INFO group.
Also being thrown with free domain and hosting are site-building tools, reporting tools, project and document managers.
If you are a small business and would like to harness the potential of the Internet, you should take advantage of this offer.
[via:CNET.com]
by DB on January 20, 2009
Change has come! Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States today. What a proud moment for all Americans to witness an African-American in the White House for the first time!
Among the first things that changed after Obama became president was the Whitehouse website – www.whitehouse.gov The newly redesigned official Whitehouse website will be extensively used by President Barack Obama and his administration to “connect with the rest of the nation and the world.” In a blog post Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House, announced that new media efforts will center around three priorities – Communication, Transparency & Participation.
Also in the news is unofficial endorsement of Google’s GMail service by the Obama staff. According to Obama staffer, Reid Cherlin, Obama staffers are using GMail till they get their official Whitehouse.gov email addresses. Cherlin also threw in a word of caution that “any e-mail sent to the Gmail accounts ‘could be forwarded to White House accounts and subject to the Presidential Records Act.’ “
by DB on December 20, 2008
The first ever movie to be made available on a Blu-Ray/DVD disc combination will be a Japanese movie. The Hybrid disc can be played on both traditional Blu-Ray disc players and DVD players. The disc would contain two regular DVD layers with a 8.5 GB capacity and will have a blue laser layer on the top. The blue laser layer can hold about 25 GB of data. This innovative idea of combining of both the formats on a single disc was developed by JVC about two years ago.
According to crdinfo.com,
"Using a single layer for the Blu-ray content required the use of a new efficient video-encoding algorithm, since the provided capacity (25GB) was not enough. Provided that the specific title is not very demanding in terms of bandwidth, it was decided to use JVC’s "Intelligent HD encoding technology", a technology based on the MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) specifications. According to JVC, the technology compresses a full HD image of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels and 24p/60i into about 12-24Mbps.
However, the first hybrid releases will be quite expensive. Pony/Canyon said that the fist movie package to be released in February would include a set of four hybrid discs (MPEG-4 AVC, Dolby Digital, 534 minutes in total) that will cost around 36,540 Yen ($406), while the DVD version (7 DVD discs, 534 minutes, Dolby Digital) will retail for 23,940 Yen ($266)."
A whopping 406 dollars!! I think I will stay away from these till the prices of these discs drop.
by DB on October 27, 2008
Google is not abandoning non-Android devices to concentrate on its Android operating system. Today, Google announced that it is bringing its popular Google Earth product to the iPhone. The announcement was made on the official Google Earth Blog, LatLong. Google Earth application for the iPhone and iTouch is free and available via the iTunes App store. The announcement also had an interesting piece of information in it – The Google Earth application has had 400 million unique downloads from across the world!! Expect it to touch the half a billion mark soon with this release for the iPhone.
Here is a video tour of the Google Earth on iPhone:
