No-Sp@m Internet!

Social bookmarking is a popular to get that badly sought-after backlinks to your sites. There are tons of social bookmarking services out there, so ideally, you should be able to get tons of backlinks to your sites if you put in some effort to do so. That’s only the ideal case and I wish that could be the case. Unfortunately, many of these social bookmarking sites have the “no-follow” rule in place and this means backlinks from these social bookmarking sites are not counted as “votes” by Google, hence pagerank and indexing are not improved for the targeted sites, from these links. While the intention of “no follow” is simple, that is to prevent comment spams, the usage of “no follow” rule has spread to normal linkings.

You can simply set your link to be “no follow” with ‘rel=”no follow”‘ and Google will not count this link as a backlink to the site you are pointing to when its search bot sees one. By default, most of the blog platforms set the comment section as “no follow”.

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Yes, finally I upgraded to the latest version of the Wordpress 2.5.1 which I like it a lot. The upgrading process was smooth and straightforward. I like to do it manually as I had done it so many times in the past. I did encounter some technical issues with the automatic upgrade plugin called “Wordpress Automatic Upgrade“, that’s why have abandoned it as I, frankly speaking, do not know how to fix it. Briefly, to upgrade manually - download the wordpress zip file, uncompress it, delete the current /wp-admin and /wp-includes and /wp-contents (*preserve the theme and plugins of course*). Next delete all the files in the / folder except wp-config.php. Next go to plugins page to deactivate all the plugins you have. Backup the database, then FTP the uncompressed wordpress files to the web server. And you are done!

Similarly, there is another recommended wordpress auto upgrade plugin, called “Wordpress Instant Upgrade” by Alex Günsche. This will automatically upgrade your WordPress in less than 5 minutes. I’d like to try it at the next version upgrade…

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Today I wish to write about a great keyword service that I am aware of but haven’t been focusing too much time on it. It is really a great keyword research tool as it breaks down your keyword terms into estimated daily searches from Google, Yahoo, MSN and WordTracker. Yeah it is the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool. Check this great keyword tool out. I do not have to make a lot of introduction of it. Use this keyword research tool and I’m sure you will find it very useful.

I realise this blog does not have a favicon yet. I would like to make one to make this site more special in its own sense. But now, I’ll tell you how to add a favicon to a site. For your info, a favicon is the little cheerful graphics shown at the side of website title display after you have bookmarked it. Or you can see favicon in action when you use tab browsers and you will see it at the left of the tab.

Adding a favicon could be simple.

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There are many video file formats around, so it could be a heachache to search for different codecs and drivers whenever you want to play some video files like RealMedia, QuickTime, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (DivX/XviD/3ivx, MP4, AVC/H264…), AC3/DTS, ratDVD, VP3/VP6, Indeo, XVD, Theora, Subtitles, OGG/OGM, Matroska….and others. It is really annoying to know you have just spent last 3 hours downloading a 600MB movie file yet your windows media player gives you error when you are trying to play it. Recently I just downloaded a Champions League match encoded in HD Xvid video format and I tried to install some codec driver but it was not able to help me.

In the end, my dearest who is quite an internet expert herself recommended to me this codec pack called Storm Codec.

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New revolutionary technology on the horizon! A Surface Computer. I thought I was watching some science fiction video when I watch this video for the first few seconds. This new digital interactive computer the size of a 30″ screen could be here in our homes very soon. It will be amazing how our life will be like then and it will throw up a whole new range of technological possibilities and new kind of digital interface. I just like the idea of taking a pic using a digital camera, throw the cam on the digital surface, and the pic you just took is instantly flashed to the board! How streamlined it is, no more wire transfers, USB, or bluetooth.. *

And you just throw away your mouse and keyboard and use your hand to control the objects or using the virtual keyboard to key in your entries…Prepare to say goodbye to the notebooks if that’s the reality soon.
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There is a cool Firefox addon or plugin called MeasureIt which I think web designers will love it. It allows you to measure the dimensions in pixels of any objects - right from your screen, and display them as if you were using an invisible ruler. It is especially helpful to those doing web design and I have used it many times during the course of my work. For example, when I want to know how big my banner should be to fix in nicely to the website. I can just measure the pixels right from my screen and then go to the graphics editor to resize the banner to the desired dimensions. It saves time somehow..

Just go to the link I have provided above and install this addon to your Firefox browser. A little ruler will show up at the lower left corner of the browser. Just click on the ruler and you’ll find that the screen somehow fades a bit. Do not be alarmed by that. You’ll find that the mouse cursor has changed to a “cross hair” and this means you can start measuring the dimensions of any web elements you come across on any website. It’s good as it helps you to efficiently estimate the size of the elements you may be putting up yourself.

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My new weight loss website has a form that prompts prospective buyers to enter their credit card information on the order page, send it over to my company for post processing. So I guess there is a need for Secure Socket Layer (SSL) as it allows visitors a peaceful frame of mind to make up their purchasing decisions. The budget is shoestring and I thought SSL is rather expensive in the range of hundreds of dollars. After checking out some information, I realise SSL is truly very affordable nowadays. There are even some free SSL certificates.

If you go to Google and search for “Free SSL”, you’ll discover there are some companies that provide webmasters with free SSL certificates. Some are permanently free while some are free for just a few months. I tried out one, and I liked it a lot as it gave excellent support and customer service. If you are looking for a trial SSL without having to pay anything for the first three months, let me introduce you to this one called InstantSSL.com by renowned SSL provider called Comodo.

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Flashlights are one of the necessities at home or when you are going for a outdoor trekking. Do you know what is the best flashlight out there? Or do you think this is just an irrelevant question? Whatever it is, today I just learn something new. Surefire flashlights are the best flashlights in the world, as the website claims. It is used by military, emergency, and police personnel and outdoors professionals. For your info, Surefire is a company that is in the business of “tactical technology”.

If you like state-of-the-art stuff which is rugged for rough usage, or you are simply a police gear collector, make sure you have it in your catalog. Now, LAPoliceGear.com has a range of Surefire new flashlights at its massive inventory. No longer an avid enthusiast has to worry about it running out of stock.

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Just simple post to announce that it is good to have a 301 redirect. It’s been long overdue! So negligent of me, all webmasters should put this step right near the top of the to-do list when setting up websites. Now, this will tell search engine that both domain.com and www.domain.com are actually the same and permanently redirected to the www.domain.com. As search engines view both as different sites, through this 301 redirect, it gives your site a big score by telling there is no duplicate content here!

So the simply way is to setup a .htaccess file by using a text editor like notepad. Save it as .htacess and enter the follow lines of codes in the file: Read the rest of this entry »