Tech Review - TruXter
Budget Tech Review, Computer parts, Webdesign, software
How Bing Could Squash Google
Jul 27th
Adsense. What is the easiest way Google makes certain their people who pay to be in the search engine get seen ? they share the wealth.
Bing has yet to even begin to try that. all they have to do is make an affiliate program to share the adverts with the websites out there.
Totally remove the whole Silverlight program. That and adobe air have got to be the clunkiest pieces of garbage. I don’t care how you improve it. A perfect turd is still a turd. Quit forcing people to hold that turd. I don’t want it in my computer, I don’t want a turd in my hand. Simply put, If I have to install that program to use your software, I will stop using your software.
Get yahoo off of Clicksor. I used to clicksor with all sorts of hopes of having an alternative to the goliath. I never made one red cent. Not one penny. I had a relative call me and tell me they clicked some ad on my old site, they said they bought something from one of the ads and never got their product. They thought I controlled it all. Clicksor never even noted the click. I did not tell my relative 700 miles away to click it. it was months later when I found out they did. Once they got tired of waiting for their products.
Clicksor then dropped me and said I didn’t have enough traffic. I had 200-2000 people a day. It fluctuated.
So having yahoo tied into something like that, surely isn’t helping them at all. Having a program where websites serve their ads for them will profit Bing and the website owners and would allow competition to Google’s adsense. Truth is adsense needs competition, they are getting a bit diva/spoiled princess.
When a person uses a search engine, they don’t want to be told how to search. People do searches like they think. They type it like they expect it to work. Not like they are told a search engine should be. Bing can do this if they just look at the most common searches. They all look like a question. Bing has this information. Google has this information. Yahoo, I have no idea why yahoo quit like that.
If you have suggestions for Bing or Yahoo post them here in a response.
The Official TruXtertech Toolbar
Jul 18th
Got tired of Googling all of the tools I use on a regular basis and decided to put these all in one toolbar. Since I am of the two I.T. guys at my job, This tool bar will come in super handy.
There are antivirus tools. Virus scanner tools and Search Engine optimization tools.
so now when building website, there is tons of media to listen to and SEo tools to ensure the website being designed is properly optimized and handily ready for Bing, Yahoo and Google to crawl about it.
Grab a copy of this toolbar and see for yourself it is very much useful for Most of your IT needs and wants.
Boxee
Jul 18th
“Watch computer stuff on your tv”
Really we already can.
Could for some time now.
But ok.
Boxee Beta from boxee on Vimeo.
I saw the Boxee box on Mashable and it looks pretty cool. It’s functionality I don’t get it though. I understand it uses your WIFI to access the internet. Then what? it’s not a web browser. So you have to actually locate the stuff first from your computer (watch it) and then store it locally on your computer and then walk over to the couch and change tv source and finally watch this video from the comfort of your couch.
In the preview video they mention a few places you can watch videos from. They mention “Digg” . Really? you want to risk that? unless they mean revision 3 with Diggnation. That would make plenty more sense. To bad Diggnation is calling it quits.
Probably the coolest device I have yet seen for watching pc media on TV was a USB connection on a DVD player. This made a lot of things a ton easier.
I do understand that Boxee will read feeds. i also know that stuff happens on websites and Feeds get rerouted or changed, or just fouled up. Heck the TWIT feed has changed at least 6 times in it’s 5 years.
Maybe it’s just not for me. I bet you plenty that it’s too technical for the common public and will have sensible errors (meaning not boxee’s fault) and those who bought one will write and post about how crappy it is. This of course will prevent the rest of the world from getting one.
Sling box.
Nuff said.
Gaining Rank In Google
Jul 16th
I have no idea how companies do it. I have been working like a dog to gain rank for some of the sites I work on. I do all of the optimization I do all of the meta tagging. I find that social sites are a poor source. I mean 3-5 years ago, it was the best snowball. Now, not as much as they still claim it is worth. advertising on sites seems to do nothing for me. I mean it is good while you pay for the advertisements. As soon as you stop paying, your rank plummets. The whole time you pay, it seems no one clicks the links.
I work hard on alexa ranking, Compete ranking and MozRank. Alexa moves really fast when you try hard, but compete and Moz not near as fast.
Web ring. So far the best assurance to gain rank at either site, is to be in the good old fashion web ring. A web ring is a bunch of sites with similar interest who link back to each other. That of course is very hard to achieve. Most of the people who are in the same field as the site I am working don’t want to give up some potential customers by having them click my links and see better stuff for cheaper cost. Or what ever. There are a bunch of sites that have “submit link” button on their site with a code that you put on your site so people can find them better, much like a web ring. Downside to that is, if your competitor crawls your website to see what gets you so many people, they will see that stupid link and use them also. Now you are right back where you were before you resorted to that method.
Originality. Many of the sites I work on, I can copy almost every sentence the owner wrote up and find it in Google. Word for word. Google will not accept that. Why would they link to a re-run ? So now I have to explain the importance of originality to the site owner without talking to complex and without sounding like I think they are a moron, yet still keep their attention so they allow me to fix it.
Updating and creating new content. I do it all the time, but you can only have so many pages before your website is to much. You can’t have customers trying to look through a website of greater than 10000 pages. It’s just insane. Unless you have a detailed search feature. Getting page rank is a bit more costly that it needs to be with this method.
Generating traffic. Well you can’t force people to go. you have to have people say “no it’s cool and all of the cool people do it” otherwise everyone everyone refuses to follow advertisements. Yes we are that simple of a species. Good idea to try is find a social site of some sort and make like 50 fake accounts and mention your site. but not spammy, just find topics that relate and chime in. Of course one person calls you spam and your i.p. addy is banned and your site is submitted to your dns and Google dns as spam. BLACKLISTED.
I do what I have to do. Sometimes I have to do everything. Just not so much it jeopardizes my domains. Gaining pr is no easy task, page rank shouldn’t be easy. Otherwise Google would be full by now. Alexa, mozrank, compete, search engines like, Google, bing and yahoo would practically be useless. you would just type stuff and see where it lands you. So getting page rank is a validation of your site’s worthiness. Only thing is to get page rank you have to get someone’s attention to prove you are everything you need to be. So how do you get the needed attention to gain page rank? well…. just keep at it. It will happen.
Things to Consider When you Hire Someone to Design Your Website
Jul 12th
Okay we all know that web-design, Some people can do it, some people can not do it. (wait, I am not selling you web design, simply because i am sick of it) I know it’s not actually an art . but you really have to think of it like you think of art. Try and not think of it as construction. You can not just lay out blueprints and say “hey this is how it goes, this is what i want and this is exactly what you will give me”. Ever try that crap with a guy that just draws cartoons or caricatures ? You can’t go and grab someone who draws realistic drawings with perfect angles shading lighting and life like appeal, to just draw you on a rocket ship with a rodeo clown shirt on. It’s just not his thing, and well, he has his certain fields he has focused on really well. It is best you let him utilize his abilities to his best interest.
You are not a web designer. So having a lay out or a design that you want, well you are going to have to do it yourself. If you do not lay out your website yourself, be certain that what he will make for you, will not be to your liking on the first round. It’s just a fact.
A person that knows about web design is doing everything with full optimization in mind. This person has this thing laid out with full SEO integrated in their design. The more you toss ideas at them and the more you incorporate a third party web designer in this project, the more you throw this guy out of his field of operation. You will also start to make a complete professional web-designer look like a total amateur. Let him finish his project and you will see what he gave you will have tons of great cooperative segments of the site’s design.
1. If you have a specific idea that you want done and must have, then be clear about what you want from the start. Draw it on paper, show each page individually and fill in the exact text you want or need that explains that page. He can not read your mind. He is not in your business, or you would have more competition. Be prepared for the designer to re-word your text to handshake his SEO portion of the design.
2. Give all logos you need for the design.
3. Be ready for some of your ideas to scratched. They may be obsolete or to complex for the average user to enjoy. Or they just may screw up the Search Engine Optimization portion of your design. Some of your idea may be unrealistic.
4. Be certain that your site’s topics cover what means the most interest in your company. If you sell airplane door hinges, don’t make your company website talk about what your company started as, what it is becoming and what it is now. Make your website about airplane door hinges. It would take a pretty submissive web-designer to not tell you that you are goofing by using the wrong content.
Don’t ask the designer of your website to copy another website. Do not go to the nearest search engine and steal pictures off of the internet and ask your web designer to design your website around them. Do not under estimate the power of proper Search Engine optimization. Do not expect SEO work to happen over night. It takes most search engines two weeks to set your site in rank order. Heck it actually takes that long just for them to get around to noticing you are there. Do not look at a crowded Navigation bar/ menu and request more in there without a bit of a remodeling.
You can have the site you want. Just have your wants and needs laid out already. save a copy for yourself and give a copy to the web guy. If you already have a web guy then by all means, let him do the work. just be ready to hire someone else for SEO and make sure your web guy is ready to comply with the SEO person. It’s hard for one web guy to go back behind another web designer and figure out what they changed and how to make it work with the full plan. Improper communication ends in crazy results.
Split Second for PC Review
Jul 10th
Split Second for pc
The graphics are really nice. Fire looks brilliant. Car skin looks like fresh real paint. All of the cars are beautiful and fast. From the street to the tops of buildings, the city looks amazing and real. This is a pretty game. I mean it in the sense of it looks great and is built to fit today’s computer world. This is in every sense, a Racing Video Game. Menu area is a pretty cool new looking format. They went all out on this racing game.
On the down side, this was a game that was created for a console. Clearly. You have limited control mapping. You have limited Resolution adjustments and tons of current gen console “motion blur”. On the upside, for this high end of resolution, it is very light weight on your hardware. I never once felt lag or lack of response with my 3 gig tri core AMD, Nvidia 250 and 4 gigs of ddr2 pc6400 memory.
I did sense this game looks and feels a lot like Need For Speed Most Wanted with better textures and slight engine add on mod. Added gun thingy and some sort of change to the slow motion . Drafting is there like in Need For Speed Carbon and Undercover. I love all three of those games and wish there was more to them, so this is perfect.
I will be wasting many hours completing this game, even though I have no idea what the story is. Is there a story?
I finished first race hit escape. Totally lost my win. Re-started game and had to enter my user name again. Had to do most of my video settings. Screen resolution stayed but not video quality. Had to enter all of that again.
Not much to the steering. Can’t explain much but will say, you can smash them buttons, you aint turning any sharper.
Textures- 10
sound-10
control-7
entertainment- 8
Driver Parallel Lines Review
Jul 10th
Driver Parallel Lines PC
After way to long, I finally purchases Driver Parallel Lines for pc. I was reluctant to purchase this game while I was waiting for Grand Theft Auto IV to be released for Computers. Many of the online communities rated driver PL really bad. So you see why I never bought Parallel Lines.
Today I was at the electronics store with my son looking for him a game and me a cooler for my recently acquired laptop. While walking around killing time as my son picked out Fear2 for his Xbox360 I rummaged through the pc games section. I came across Driver Parallel Lines for pc on sale at $9.99. Well that went into my basket pretty quick. I also grabbed Split Second at $39.99. (crummy control Need for speed mock up). We made our way back home.
On first inset of the game DVD, The first pop up message looks pretty bad. It looks like I am running a windows 98 program.I noticed the install never prompted for a cd key. but it did as me if I wanted to register, I selected a reminder of 15 days. Cutscenes ate the start of the game reminded me of grand theft auto iii and Vice city. When I could finally start the game I was sitting in front of a boxy looking city with a skinny lanky looking fellow with long hair as my main person. I started to walk and his hair started swinging back and fourth in an exact repeated motion. it was kind of goofy. I was getting really disgusted with the game. I jumped into another car and chased down my car (which was being pushed down the street by the police car that was supposed to be chasing me). In chasing down my car, I hit a pedestrian. Ok I am cool with it now. The way I know the game driver, you couldn’t get out of your car. I switch cars and begin running from the cops again. I ran over another pedestrian and they did the exact same thing the last pedestrian did. I tilt my head a bit to the right in confusion and nail another one. Yep exact same motion. So the physics sucked.
I later grab a motorcycle and decide to go for a joy ride. I first search everywhere and can not see how to do a wheelie. I jump what looks like a ramp and barely get any air. I get to top speed and try to power slide. the slide was pathetic. I came to an instant stop with no drift.
I do a custom search in Google for “mods texture Driver Parallel Lines PC -xbox -ps2” and find plenty of skins for cars and peds. So I go to work on resolving the issues that bugged me. (I clipped off that hair so I don’t have to see that stupid swinging)
After I get good and settled in, I start playing the game for real. The game is really fun. Yeah the cars handle just like they did in the first driver game, and the controls have limited functions but hey I am here just for the fun. Right? This game has all of that. The back end story you get in the cutscenes is probably ten times better than any other game I have played. it is a memorable story. I realized that driver was out long before GTAIII and True Crimes. In GTAIII you are the driver of gangs, in driver you are a driver so it would only be expected that you can change cars as you do in GTA. The textures well they clearly reflect EA. ok back on topic, I had more fun playing the missions in Driver Parallel Lines than I ever had in GTAIV. The action is fast and hidden humor is abundant. The cops do not let go of you man. When they chase you, expect to spend 5 minutes minimum trying to shake them.
Wish I could turn the radio to another station. or honk the horn. Or power slide.
Ubisoft made a pretty fun game here and it is well worth buying at it’s current price.
I have to categorize this as a racing game because it has more than 60% of it’s action in a car. Typically they call those racing games. I call em action if there isn’t a drag strip or illegal street racing as the major part of the game. So it’s a racing game. :-)
Racing Game Score
ragdoll- 1
AI – 3
texture- 5
sound- 5
entertainment- 10
This is not video game for showing people how cool your graphics card is. This a game for showing your friends a fun game.
