GeekLimit

I’ve been checking out 43things.com this weekend, and I have to say - it’s great! I’ve already finished one of the things on my list - learning about Ruby. This site is great, and I highly recommend it. Everyone should make a ‘life list’ of things they want to do, but this stie goes further. For example, I added ‘Drink more water’ to my list, along with ‘See a space shuttle launch’.

Check out 43things today, it really is simple to use, and I’ve found it to be a great motivator, both to myself, and it’s nice to get encouragement from others!

Some nice commentary from the Colbert Report on how the revenue sharing of content on YouTube seems to stop with the corporate content providers, and has yet address reaching the bulk of the users on YouTube…

Read the rest of this entry »

Renald Ebert has done an excellent comparison of the top 10 most used BitTorrent sites on the Internet.

• BTJunkie
  
• BitTorrent.com
• Bushtorrent & Torrentreactor
• isoHunt
• Meganova
• Mininova
• The Pirate Bay
• Torrent Portal
• TorrentSpy
• Torrentz

As the best of them all, he chooses BTJunkie (which I have discovered and started using recently) due to the large number of torrents indexed and added each day.

You can read his report, complete with pretty graphs, over at his blog page, CompareBT

When we originally stumbled upon the method for viewing hidden myspace comments, it was because MySpace was using a very ridiculous and insecure security measure, basically hiding text by formatting it as ‘invisible’ (using CSS). Our method was used to make it visible by removing the formatting from the page. This is kind of like turning your text white when using Microsoft Word OpenOffice Writer to “hide” the information. It may keep some people from seeing it, but it is a totally insecure way of keeping your data private.

For months, MySpace didn’t bother fixing this problem. However, when they suddenly had the opportunity to become profitable, they fixed this security problem immediately. (The link between MySpace’s opportunities and their security ethics are my own guesses - the official reason it took so long is anyone’s guess)

All in all, the bottom line is that MySpace has fixed its security problems, and has stopped showing private comments to the entire internet.

Are there still ways to get private comments? I’m sure. Are we able to tell you how to do it now? Absolutely not. By finally putting in some form of security, MySpace now has reason to prosecute anyone who breaks that security, no matter how weak it may be.

To recap, since MySpace has taken even the most basic approach towards security, it is now illegal to hack them for any reason, even to see private comments. However, if you would like to see the method we used to view hidden comments in the past, Taoski has written up an incredibly easy way to do so. Feel free to try this method, but if it doesn’t work, that’s the most we can do to guide you, as any more than this method would be illegal.

So I’m teaching this 6th grade class once a week, for 40 minutes, on ‘Computer Technology’. I also happen to be reading ‘The Long Tail’, and highly recommend it.

So far, Week 1 was Richard Sears and the railroad vs. Amazon.com and the internet. basically, we talk about how the internet is a business-changing communications medium, just like the railroad was in 1886.

Week 2 was on the merits of Wikipedia vs. Encyclopedia Britainnica. We learned that Wikipedia is a great place to go first for information due to it’s great variety, but due to the unknown expertise of the authors, a more reputable source of information should also be used.

Then came Week 3.

Today we talked about RIAA’s historical role in the music business, and their right to protect artists’ work. We also talked about how the RIAA oversteps their bounds and are countered by the EFF. We finished up with a short quiz and some Q&A on what’s right/wrong with different music-related scenarios.

The thing I love is the answers to my extra-credit question on the quiz. The question was

If you were the RIAA, and your job was to promote music, how would you do so? What would you do to keep people from taking music without paying for it?

Of those who bothered to answer, there were the obvious ‘Put it on the radio, make people pay for it’ answers, but also a few great ones. Here are the standouts, but please feel free to answer the extra credit question yourself in the comments! What is surprising is that some of their suggestions are exactly the type of stuff RIAA pulls to try and enforce themselves…

“I would put a place to put your house on a website with a camera so I could see when people were stealing”

“I would make them download a popup that wouldn’t go away until they paid for the song, and after 3 days it would make a continuous horn that couldn’t be turned down”

“I wouldn’t sell it online”

“Search the internet to see if they are stealing and if they know other people [that are stealing]“

“Let them keep 3 songs for free, and sue them if they have any more than 3″

“I call the police to track them down not myself” (AWESOME)

“Sell [music] in music stores and if people steal it track them down [through the music store]“

What does Google see when it crawls your site?
What Adsense adverts will appear?
How can I get to the top of the Google results?
How can I target my Adsense adverts to my readers?

These are all common questions for website owners. Getting a site to the top of Google may not be an achieveable goal any more due to the large number of websites out there, but you can certainly give it a helping hand along the way.

Following these rules, you can help sites like Google “see” your content better and allow it to identify the critical “keywords” it uses to categorise your page. Not that this list is the “be all and end all” of SEO, but it will certainly help. Fine tuning the content on your site will also cause more relevant Adsense adverts to appear and banish the dreaded “public service ads” to the internet graveyard.

Frames
Try to avoid using frames for your site design. Google does see into frame based content but it will pay you dividends to use a CSS based layout.

Page Titles
Make sure your page titles, using the <TITLE> and </TITLE> tags contain keywords that you want Google to index.
example: “adsense and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) advertising explained for idiots” rather than just “adsense for idiots”.

Filenames
Make your filenames contain your keywords.
example: “http://www.mydomain.com/adsense-and-adsense-advertising.html” rather than “http://www.mydomain.com/article3.html”

META tags
Make sure your page has the relevant <META description=” “> and <META keywords=” “> entries within the <HEAD></HEAD> portion of your code.
example: <META description=”how to make jam on toast - a users guide”> <META keywords=”jam, toast, bread, butter, user, guide”>

Keyword positioning
Have your keywords mentioned in the page title, the meta tags, the headings and the first paragraph in the body text.

Headings
Make use of the <H1> </H1> heading tags to emphasise your keywords within your content.
example: <H1>Toast Making Techniques</H1> <H2>Toast - an introduction</H2>

Anchor Text
Be careful to put the best words on your links. Internal and External ones.
example: “<a xhref=”http://www.mydomain.com/adsense.html” mce_href=”http://www.mydomain.com/adsense.html” >Adsense For Beginners</a>” rather than “<a xhref=”http://www.mydomain.com/adsense.html” mce_href=”http://www.mydomain.com/adsense.html” >go here</a>”

ALT Tags
Always specify the ALT tags for images.
example: <img xsrc=”http://www.mydomain.com/images/toast.jpg” mce_src=”http://www.mydomain.com/images/toast.jpg” ALT=”Jam and toast”>

REL tags
Add REL=”TAG” to important links containing your keywords. This will also allow sites like Technorati to index your pages too.
example: <a xhref=”http://www.mydomain.com/jam-on-toast.hml REL=”TAG”>Jam</a>

Bold
It does’nt hurt to make some of your keywords bold to attract the attention of the search engine robots.
example: Here is a <B>Bold Keyword!</B>

Google Section Targeting
Insert some hidden code that tells Google to concentrate on the content in between when working out Adsense adverts and keyword analysis.
Example: <!–google_ad_section_start–>In this text area, talk about your keywords.<!–google_ad_section_end–>

Don’t go mad!
Google is not stupid. It will recognise that your page has overloaded on keywords and other techniques, so keep it simple. Also, sites that use Google Adsense are reviewed by one of the humans at Google HQ - so don’t try to be clever and make your whole site one big clickable advert frenzy!

Incoming Links
The more incoming links you get to your site, the higher up Google it will go. No-one really knows how they work these things out but this is certainly proved to be true.

If you can add to this list, then please leave a comment.

Tags: adsense, adwords, google, hints, tips, keywords, monetize

It took longer than I thought, but someone finally released a polished and easy-to-use plugin to help people put all sorts of videos in Wordpress posts.

If you’re interested in putting videos in Wordpress posts, you no longer have to follow my instructions to hack wordpress into this capability. Just head over toone of my personal favorite plugin guys, Viper007Bond, and download his Video Quicktags plugin. Same great functionality as my method, but with pretty buttons in the WYSIWYG editor!

Have a look around this guy’s site for a bit while you’re at it, he’s got a lot of great stuff.

edit: looks like viper007bond’s site is down. In the meantime: Viper007Bond’s QuickTags Plugin There isn’t any license info in the plugin, so hopefully he can comment on here and let us know what’s up with the site/plugin licensing…

Blogger Buzz announced a range of new features today which brings the aging blogging platform more up to date.

Being one of the oldest, free blogging sites, Blogger has matured over the years and has flourished under the purchase of Google but has lost out to more feature rich packages such as Wordpress and Moveable Type.

Enhanced Template Editing:
Blogger now supports a drag and drop interface for editing the template. Wordpress has had this for a while now with its “widgets” enabled templates and vast array of plugins. They also state that there will be a new range of templates available, although when I set up a test blog in their Beta area, only the old default templates were available, but updated to include the new additions.

They have made it easy to add information to certain parts of the blog but have still missed simple and important things like adding an image to the header!

Categories:
They have also added the functionality that Blogger users have been crying out for - CATEGORIES!!!!
Although they call them Labels, but they basically perform the same function as Wordpress and MT categories.

Who Goes There?
Blogs can be restricted to only allow certain logged in users to read the blog. Password protected posts and blogs is also something that Blogger users have been asking about for quite a while now.

Feeds:
Enhanced RSS feeds are also available with a few extra different options.

So, after all the waiting for these items to be added, Blogger pulls a few good things out of the hat, but Wordpress still leads the pack in terms of power, scale and customisation. All of the new items previewed at the Beta Blogger have been built in to Wordpress or available as a plug in for some time.

Blogger still trails the pack.

Tip 5: Update, Update, Update!

When I went for the interview for my current role, they had my CV in front of them and as the interview went on it became obvious that the version they had was not my up to date version. It even stated that I finished my previous role in May when in actual fact it was in June.

I managed to explain it away but it was a little embarrassing!

Your CV should be a constantly evolving thing. As my first few drafts were made, it changed quite dramatically from revision to revision. I had added skills that I had forgotten about, professional achievements and added my date of birth - which I had totally forgot!

I had gone mad registering with different websites and uploading my CV to them but now found that I either could not remember which site I uploaded it to - or which version of my CV I had uploaded.

Keep your CV updated. Keep it safe and keep a list of sites and agencies you have uploaded it to.

Email the updates to the agencies or re-upload it to the websites each time you make a change - no matter how small. Typing errors and omissions can stop you from getting that job! Even if you are updating it to reflect that you have been out of work for 3 weeks now instead of 2 - it’s worth it.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that some sites have a flag that registers when a CV is updated. Just a hunch really.

Well that’s the end of this little series. I hope you have found it informative and helpful. I know a lot of it is just common sense, but it sometimes helps to have things spelt out for you.

This post is part of the How to get a job online series by Taoski.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Tip 4: Playing The Numbers

This tip is really about people wanting to break into iT or finding out what to do next to further your career.

iT has fads and trends, just like any other type of business. Some skills are more in demand at times and the balance can shift at any time.

Searching sites like Jobserve and tailoring the results to your surrounding area will give you a good feel for the types of roles available. You will also be able to see which skills are in demand and also what salary you might earn from that skill.

Whilst I was searching for a job, I found that there were lots of jobs asking for the following skills:

• Java programming
• .net programming
• Linux Administration
• CISCO
• Exchange
• SQL/Databases

Now if I were thinking of changing roles or cross training, then these are the areas in which I would concentrate. A few days of sifting through the new job adverts on Jobserve will show you what areas you might want to concentrate on.

You can also use Jobserve to see where the concentration of roles are. It’s all done manually unfortunately, but after a quick search you can see that there are, for example, more Windows 2000 support roles in London than there are in Manchester.

Use the online websites as a tool to targeting you searches. You may find that if you move 50 north for example, you might earn more money!

This post is part of the How to get a job online series by Taoski.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5