Technology Blog

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Digg.com is a famous social bookmarking website where webmasters announce new news and articles on their website and other users digg it (in other words bookmark it) and when a particular topic is dugg by a user, it gets added in his profile list. This concept was introduced due to the increase in the total number of blogs and search engines could not index the hot news from the blogs as soon as it was released. Using these bookmarking services, Webmasters can announce hot news and opinions and visitors will know what has taken place immediately.

The more an article is Dugg, the more popular it gets. Hence webmasters are always looking towards getting their articles Dugg and sometimes the webmasters use unfair methods to increase the popularity of their article. I personally believe Digg exchange is one of the unfair practices. Webmasters usually need about 30 diggs to get their article into the Hot section of any upcoming news, from there it will get a lot of exposure and may come into the main Popular section.

This is one type of spam (I gave it a shot just to see what happens and believe me I got a lot of Diggs but I can’t say the same about the visitors), articles which actually deserve some attention is pushed down and articles that don’t are brought into popular section. Digg has fought with lot of Digg Exchange websites, one of them being Diggboss.com, now the one which is popular is Diggfreak.com which pays for Digging other articles. I am sure by the end of this year Digg will target Diggfreak.com too and maybe remove all the Digg exchange websites.

You can see a clear point that the owners of Digg make in the Terms of Service

with the intention of artificially inflating or altering the ‘digg count’, blog count, comments, or any other Digg service, including by way of creating separate user accounts for the purpose of artificially altering Digg’s services; giving or receiving money or other remuneration in exchange for votes; or participating in any other organized effort that in any way artificially alters the results of Digg’s services

This shows that Digg is trying to reduce things like Digg exchange.

Recently there was a hype about Google tweaking it’s algorithm and reducing the page rank of many websites which were involved in activities like link exchange and link trading. As a matter of fact it looks like a true rumor because many websites like Engadget.com has seen a fall in the Page Rank, I don’t belong to the Google PR team so I cannot say what the actual reason was, but I’ve read about in the Blogosphere which is the source for my following comment.

Google is against website sponsors!

Well if web owners are not allowed to take money to place link of other websites then why will potential sponsors contact us? It is good that the guy sponsoring my other websites are kind enough to continue the sponsorship. But this tweak of Google Page Rank didn’t happen for the good of the website owners but it was beneficial for people using it’s search engine. Google has taken this step in order to improve search quality and prevent manipulation of it’s search results, but from the point of view of a website owner, this is not correct, we should be given the rights to do link trade! There is also a petition stating this in Google Webmaster Help Group.

With time, Google will understand that what they have done is wrong and will bring back the original Page Ranks. Maybe placing 100’s of links will be search result manipulation but we should be allowed to place atleast 5-6 links and Google should official announce that placing these links is allowed.

Download: Le Promote

This is a plugin widget which automatically adds you into our link exchange database and hooks you up with other sites (getting you links) and you’ll be linking to other sites, without having to communicate or deal with other site owners. After install, atleast 1 hour is required for your site to get indexed in the search database and then you’ll be linked.

Every week the index is rebuilt, so frauds will be automatically removed.

Looking at this beautiful thing, I was stunned. It looks so sweet and sexy and I am sure this is what I want for my next birthday, unless a more powerful phone is out here in India. Nokia N95 is a mini-computer and it’s best feature is the superb 5 mega pixel camera that works perfect. I thought there was some catch when I saw the advertisement for the first time where it stated that it had a 5 mega pixel camera, then I found out that it actually has one. You really want to know about it’s features? Well, it has every thing from bluetooth to mp3 capability. But it is a little costly, I think about 750$ now.

Better go get yourself one of this soon.

Google recently tweaked it’s algorithm and many major blogs have suffered a drop by 2 PR sometimes 3 PR points. Sites like Engadget.com saw a fall of 2 PR points, this is happening because according to the Google TOS buying and selling of links is not allowed, but they were not able to do anything. Now the Google egg heads have made a system where they can catch these activities, they may be just bragging but no one can be so sure.

This thing happened exactly in the time when my auto-link exchange script was developed and thus people were reluctant about using it and I was not able to find any sites for testing the developed code.

Blogs like Problogger.com fell by 2 PR points but then after sometime, I don’t know how, It came back to it’s original PR, wow.

To regain the lost PR rank in the next PR update, you can check this system http://tech36.com/blog/simplest-link-exchange-system-under-beta-testing, where no one can know if it’s link exchange!

Ok, here is the scenario, you have a good website based on technology and you are looking for link partners. Well this is my new project which is made for you. Conditions for this is that the page displaying the link has to be a PHP page else the links won’t come up nor will you be added in our database.

You can add in a normal php page by copying and pasting the below code, be sure you modify the ‘yoururlwithouthttp://’ part. You can integrate it with wordpress by using http://samsarin.com/files/wordpress/plugins/samsarin-php-widget.zip widget or you can place the code in the appropriate place by editing the template (Presentation -> Theme Editor).

<?php include("http://tech36.com/link/display.php?url=yoururlherenohttp");
?>

URL’s will be constant for a week and the database will be re-updated every week, so it is necessary that the PHP code is in your page all the time.

Though your server security will not be compromised, I can give no guarantee that you won’t be accidentally deleted while updating process. But if you have the PHP code, you’ll be added again.

Apple made an announcement that only 2 iphones will be sold to one customer and payment will be via credit card only. Apple claims that this move was done so that to ensure that every one gets an iphone, that’s a smart move but is that really the reason? The main reason which I think why Apple did this move was because too many iPhones were being bought, unlocked and then sold in other countries via E-bay and other shopping site, the other reason maybe is that they are not able to supply enough iPhones for the present demand and so to indirectly reduce the demand for a short time, this move might have been done. Till date Apple has sold 1.4 million iPhones.

Yesterday night (India) I looked at all the Page Rank (PR) of my sites and found that much change was not there, my websites which were not updated were having no change, I switched off the computer and went to sleep and when I came back today at 6:00 am (IST), I found out that the PR update had taken place, I didn’t concentrate much about link exchange and stuff for this website so not much difference was there but my other site http://www.stepsandtips.com had major success with Google, though the index had a PR 2 the sub pages varied from PR 2 to PR 3 and most of them had got high PR, this was a joy for me but the problem was that I intend to keep that website non-profit, meaning no ads and stuff. Thought I am getting a lot of visitors, I am not able to convert them to cash. Anyway, do tell if you observe and PR changes, until then ciao.

Background

Today when I was browsing through my Wordpress admin dashboard I was notified that I should be upgrading Wordpress. This blog runs on Wordpress and an upgrade may harm all the plugins that I have installed, so I will patiently wait for the right time and check if all the plugins are compatible and then make my move.

Plugins that I have used

For this blog I have used mainly 4 plugins:

• All In One SEO
• Related Post
• Slashdigglicious
• Popularity contest

First I will ask all the authors and then make the upgrade. If you are running on Wordpress 2.3, do keep a follow up here, I’ll tell you if the new upgrades are friendly for these plugins or not.