An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg

Copied and pasted from facebook, Sorry I have no say on anything here except ‘What do you expect???”

It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online.

To make this possible, we have focused on giving you the tools you need to share and control your information. Starting with the very first version of Facebook five years ago, we’ve built tools that help you control what you share with which individuals and groups of people. Our work to improve privacy continues today.

Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around “networks” — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students.

Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China.

However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.

We’ve worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone’s needs are different. We’ll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you’re sharing with online.

Thanks for being a part of making Facebook what it is today, and for helping to make the world more open and connected.

Mark Zuckerberg

Lost Insurance Because Of Facebook??

A woman from Canada lost her insurance after facebook visit from her insurance company. seems they saw her vacation pictures and said ” Hey you not so cool”

Here is the real story followed by  My take.

Lost her insurance because of Facebook Pictures

A Canadian woman on sick leave for depression said Monday she would fight an insurance company’s decision to cut her benefits after her agent found photos on Facebook of her vacationing, at a bar and at a party………..

Ok, You back from reading that? Really it is a short read so if you haven’t read it . Go read it.

She goofed by giving the insurance company the same email address she registered her Facebook account with. But that does not make her a bad person. Really it makes her insurance company practically an internet Stalker. Facebook is pretty strict and locked tight. Most profiles, you can’t see someone’s profile unless you are invited to see it, or if you request to be their friend and they accept. So somewhere in that area she made a mistake. That of course is not against the law. Tricking her into thinking she is going to have a new friend is deceptive though.

An insurance agent over-riding the doctor’s request, is foul, and well here in the united states, the doctor would probably sue the insurance company because of the claim against the doctor’s credibility.

So.. What have  we learned here?

Probably not much.

Beat the Comcast Hijack

Have you seen your computer redirect to search3.comcast.com or search5.comcast.com ? Don’t worry, you do not have a virus. Your web traffic is being filtered. Kind of like if your phone misdials a number, you get a mcdonalds commercial or pepsi commercial. Not cool, right? Read below if you want a better understanding of what that means. A cool fix of the issue is there. If you don’t want to read all of that, scroll to the bottom and look for the bold text “Simplest way I know“. That’s the way for someone looking for the quick fix.

If you do not know by now, Comcast is doing something I can describe as being the same thing they were told not to do. But not calling it what they said they would. They are throttling bandwidth and monopolizing from more than one direction. How?

Ok for starts they are filtering and snooping your internet traffic. You can see proof of this activity if you use Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, and type in a link that does not work. Now this in no way says that Internet Explorer is any safer than Firefox, in fact it says internet explorer does the same thing but by the works of Microsoft Bing.

If you type a link that should land you to an error/404 page while using Firefox, it takes you to “http://search3.comcast.com” . Now you see I will not actually link that page because the whole reason they send you there is because they actually make money from yahoo search and the advertisements on that page. Of course they affiliate with Yahoo, they tried to use Google as an example to why they should collect money from website owners because of the traffic they send them.

This move they are making is taking money from the pockets of the Firefox developers. The people at Firefox built their browser and hard coded the search to work with their affiliate program with Google, Firefox team did leave you/us the option to change to what ever search engine we want. Most of us just left it to the default page. This of course left motivation and or funding to the Mozilla group so they can keep developing and reaching more people with their creative works. The creative works of a group who is not a corporation with a desire to force us into a specified direction, to better highlight other software bundled with it, like an operating system that came forcefully attached to a crappy browser, (windows? mac? lol you figure it out) but no it was a method of freedom. Firefox was the step away from CompuServe and AOL forced browser and constant blast of advertisements. but now someone has their hooks into the money of Firefox. I have the fix

How to fix this issue is go to MVP’s HOSTS site, download the zip file to your desk top and extract all files in that zip straight to your desktop. Right click the file labeled “hosts” the one with no extension and select “open with” and find your notepad.exe file and open with that.

Scroll down till you see the list of website addresses and the ip address of “127.0.0.1” .

My trick is to make this my top line

127.0.0.1 search3.comcast.com
127.0.0.1 search5.comcast.com

This now ensures that my computer will never go to them again.

It however does not put any money back into the hands of the firefox team, but it does not profit a company who is making money off of me because I pay my bills on time, now they also want to make money off of my searches while some other team created the web browser I am using. I have a fear they will do the same that aol did with netscape, buy it up and crud it out till no one uses it anymore, causing the extinction of one last free field for us to graze in.

Another alternative is to leave Comcast all together. I am not against that really. but of course Comcast has taken every cable provider in the area I live and bought up all of their business. Leaving me no choice but to use them if I use cable. Dsl hub is pretty close, I am sure I can pay the same price for dsl and get cheaper cable with more channle and not be bothered by Comcast. but really, what good would I be in the act of toppling the monopoly of comunistcast ?

Maybe I am the only person who hears Comcast complain about increased internet use, every time they increase their internet user count by buying out another company (and all of their equipment). I mean really , if you are losing money guys, stop buying crap and just ride your profits for a while, let the customers be comfortable, you are scaring us.

but on another note, as an extra twist of the knife, since Comcast is using Yahoo for their search engine affiliate :-)

put this in your hosts file

yahoo.com search3.comcast.com

and then close it, select “save” don’t rename anything.. now from the files you saved to your desktop

locate the one labeled “hosts.bat” double click it. you will see a blue box, hit your space bar one time and you are done.

Now close all browsers and re-open them

now go to

sdhfajdhfasjdkf.com

If it takes you to “http://search3.comcast.com/?cat=dnsr&con=ds&url=www.sdhfajdhfasjdkf.com”

Then something has gone wrong, read again, try again.

There is always open dns, this of course really puts you in the same place but slower internet and someone else is filtering your net usage.

and http://www.webmasterworld.com/firefox_browser/3966582.htm

you can always drop Firefox and go for another browser of the same engine.

K-Meleon browser

It won’t fix your issue but you won’t see comcast filtering your traffic.

Simplest way I know is make your web browser go to yahoo any time some one types in the “search3.comcast.com” term by navigating to this folder with notepad (opened in administrator mode) “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc”
open the file labeled “Hosts” by using notepad in administrator mode.

That will highlight everything in that file.
Now copy this line and add it under everything you see in that hosts file I showed you how to get to.

72.30.2.43 search3.comcast.com

72.30.2.43 search5.comcast.com

Then close all of your browsers and re-open them. and try to go to this web site “search3.comcast.com” or “search5.comcast.com”
instead you will be redirected to yahoo. there . you keep comcast from further profiting on internet usage you already pay for.

 

 

Alternatively you can use a different DNS than the one that comcast provides. and this allows you to not worry about most of the comcast $$ making pages you will land on… because you are no longer 100% in their network. It allows you to use the service of the people that comcast pays to bring the internet to your area.
Primary DNS Server : 4.2.2.2
http://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm
because it works.
crap loads faster and I don’t get that stupid page from comcast when I land on a link.

Akismet Down?

Akismet has detected a problem. A server or network problem is preventing Akismet from working correctly. Click here for more information about how to fix the problem.

After clicking that link I get

The key you entered could not be verified because a connection to akismet.com could not be established. Please check your server configuration.

The key below was previously validated but a connection to akismet.com can not be established at this time. Please check your server configuration.

Since I updated to the latest version of WordPress I have been getting that error.

and below that error I get another

Server Connectivity

Unable to reach any Akismet servers.

A network problem or firewall is blocking all connections from your web server to Akismet.com. Akismet cannot work correctly until this is fixed. Please contact your web host or firewall administrator and give them this information about Akismet and firewalls.

Akismet server Network Status
66.135.58.62 Obstructed
66.135.58.61 Obstructed

Last checked 1 min ago.

On every one of my sights. The spam count is freaking high right now and everything is getting past akismet, ofcourse akismet’s count still says 100% accuracy.

Anyone got a work around ?

btw, my job blocks twitter and my posts send directly to twitter, soo I am not just yelling in the dark.

And of course after posting I get fatal error even though my posts do actually get to the web

The Blogger’s Ping and Tips Resource

First make sure that your RSS  works, and your links are all functional. Make sure that your titles fit your Posts.

Make sure that you  fill in the category, make sure you fill in the proper tags, no random tags or slightly similar. be dead on with your tags. Excerpts and captions options, use them. Now copy your rss link url and head over to these few sites and post your link when you have a fresh new page.

http://feedshark.brainbliss.com/

http://pingomatic.com/  Dead Site, No longer working

http://pingates.com/

http://autopinger.com/

http://ping.in/

http://www.pingmyblog.com/

http://www.pingoat.com/

Now if you do not feel like doing the above. Copy the links below and head to your auto ping program in your blogging  script and paste these in. will save you a world of trouble.

Auto Pingers To Encode in your blog

http://xsincome.com/?p=434
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping/
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogbot.dk/io/xml-rpc.php
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc/
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://thingamablog.sourceforge.net/ping.php
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

More of the same deal, but older list, some of these sites are gone but many remain

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

and more From “http://www.jamesbetesh.com

Ulimate WordPress Blog Ping List



http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2/
http://pingqueue.com/rpc/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://www.bloglines.com/ping
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blogping.unidatum.com/RPC2
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blogg.de/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.britblog.com/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2
http://rpc.twingly.com/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://rpc.wpkeys.com
http://rpc.wpkeys.com/
http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx
http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPingExtended.doz
http:/topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.kping.com/ping/
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Trackbacks

Use trackbacks wisely, do not send a trackback to some person who is saying exactly what you just said, send track backs to people you probably are filling holes for. So if one blog is about doors and your blog is about door knobs, you are a resource for him because he can now refference you.  Don’t send trackbacks to doorknob blogs. pointless and no hand washes it’s self.

Good luck have fun

Internet Musts Sites of 2009

There seems to be endless websites ion the internet so i have not judged them all, i can not say that my “must have” list is the be all end all list. It is however, the list I use. So I am pretty much giving you my bookmarks.

FaceBook a Place to….. hmm .. I have no idea what it’s good for. but I keep going back… you can’t meet people there. so you can’t really call it a social network. it’s more like a place to  add real friends that you already have, and then nothing… you are done. you can kinda go away now.

Myspace Used to be a great place to meet women, now it’s a place to play video games.

Twitter This place has so much potential, but really it is a place to get nailed with garbage.. but add local bands there and bam, you’re golden.

PcPitstop I go here to benchmark all computers before I repair or upgrade them, and then I benchmark after. To see a performance change.

Playlist The site I head to when i can’t remember a song, or when it is stuck in my head.

live365 What I listen to while at work.

Hulu Internet TV. to watch stuff you missed on Monday.. Kinda fumbly and awkward.

Joost a place to watch … well nothing really. Kinda dead now… Needs Trailer Park Boys.

Cnet Also known as Download.Com. Safest place to get downloads from. But be carefull, the advertisers there make stheir ads all say “download now” hoping to bait people who don’t fully read a page while getting a download.. Kind of crooked. Since they have enough volume they could prevent everyone from downloading spam filled files because they clicked some stupid advertisement.

The Jobacle Podcast Blog The podcast is great. Very motivational. Influenced my job search site

Of course there is Nvidia so I can get back up after  windows eats my  lunch and leaves me formatting.

Bing Verses Google

I started with a simple search for a friend. My friend is looking for a store, any store in Houston that has Thomas Kinkade books for sale. I did a search in Google first, and found only one location and it says Rice Village. I did the same exact search in Bing and found two locations, the next location says Galleria. I am not sure there are any books by TK. All i really find is paintings, and some company that says they have TK lights and Lamps. I personally think his paintings look like they are supposed to be on Christmas cards.

Fuzzy Snowy teddy bears.

In my frustration of searching something I have no idea about i decided to do another search that was more to my level.

My new search was “free image editing  tool”

Bing on it’s front page, never once linked G.I.M.P. but it did link a bunch of rubbish sites that talk about  image editing tools.

google how ever linked gimp second link and picassa  fifth link, it’s first link was “graphic soft” page showing gimp,photo scape, paint.net.

Actually, everything they linked in that page is found on the first page of the search results in google. Names I have heard of, Items I have used, stuff I know works.

Google won this one by far.

My follow up search. “free website flash”

First link in bing is flashmo

Flashmo has great stuff I know this for sure

The flash mo link in google is teh second, but the first is WIX, wix is for myspace flash . understandable that it is on top, more people want flash on their myspace than there are of website designers.

Again i score to google. simply because bing links wix twice in the first page. Looks like bing gets gamed easily.

my third search was “gta clans”

of course gtaclans.com is first result in both, but bing links second post as gamespy,SPAM. No one uses gamespy…. do they? i have never had anyone recomend gamespy to me.

google again

Fourth search was “discount auto parts”

Both had similar results, except  google linked some sort of carpet place on the first page. big no no.

I give that one to bing.

For the most part, these are hit and miss. it is nice to have two strong search engines. I just the lay out of bing. Otherwise it’s no worse or better than google.

Oh and all my searches  I only looked at the first page. the rest of the pages are always junk anyway.

Is Ebay Gone Yet ?

Did you ever get a PayPal account ? Buy much of anything on Ebay ? Got charged for doing the express pay and the guy collecting at the other end got charged to receive the  payment, Meanwhile the person selling the item had to pay for holding the auction. In one year, It was 04 or 05 when I last cared to hold an auction on eBay, but in that one year I got 3 notices of price raises and a free three days to hold an auction. See the issue is, they make plenty of money buy us paying for the auction, and the  7 percent (if it’s still that low, I doubt it) to sell out items using their bandwidth) to make plenty of money buy just maintaining the servers, but no, they keep trying to come up with ways to collect more money  from what they already offer.

What two months ago Ebay blamed social networks on their downfall. Really?  a social site?? The only way a social site can cause an issue with a a company is the freedom of speech. What I mean by that is, telling everyone how you got done wrong. Well dang the ability to speak your mind. Others blame it on a weakening economy. Yes it’s the fact that we do not want to give up our physical possessions that we earned and once put our hands on in trade for 7% or more fees to sell on a network full of people who have mastered the system of gaming that site.

If it was not for the over price auction and every fee they can tax to the system, it would be because the 50/50 chance of getting hit by a scammer. you auction off your item and some guy wins at a nice hefty price you ship the item, eBay contacts you and says “wait payment is not complete and has been reversed due to A STOLEN ACCOUNT” …. ehh crap. Meanwhile the scammer sends out hundreds of emails from fake email accounts like  emailer1.ebay@yahoo.com   and the emails look like legit eBay emails saying ” Item paid for you must ship item now” . Go to your PayPal account and see the money was reversed and you never received, then you get fake PayPal emails Confirming the item was paid for.

How the person won the auction was to bid $40000000 over the actual value of the item assuring no one will win but him/her. Basically killed your chance to get money for what you earned, then  to complete the screwing, tries to steal the item from you.

If you get scammed and fall for anything from an eBay scammer you are at a 80% chance of eBay saying ” there is nothing we can do about this at this time but we are looking into it” .. Great.

See for a place that actually has very little to offer, no 100% assurance, they sure do keep raising their prices a whole lot.

Oh for a heads up.

Never ever buy a car remote from eBay.   You get the remote, you set your car to match it, he just mailed it to you so he has your home address and the matching remote.. 20 bucks and a car for  $45 worth of gas.. Nice.

How To Sell A Domain Name

If you are following this from the day I posted it, you are to soon. I am working on this for a few days to get the site I am selling , sold. as I progress I will come back to this page and post a link to the next. You might want to book mark this. It’s not a fast process.

In 2008 I added  a domain name iworkwithmusic.com . to my set of websites. I also have IWORKWITHTECH and  IWORKWITHPEOPLE.COM . My intentions where to allow musicians to advertise their band and music so people would know how to find their content or when the musicians would have a show. The goal was to make it totally free for the musicians to do what they needed to get their content seen. The goal was to make that website the place scouts would eventually go to  so they could look for bands or people to sign to their label.  Sorry to say I could not come up with the money it takes to advertise such a site. I wanted to make sites that show I work with certain fields and I want to help people get known in certain categories that these people want to be known. So I was lucky to get a site that stays with my theme.

With all the chatrooms all over the internet with a dj this and dj that as screen names. Not one person would sign up. Either that means my site is not attractive, It’s hard to understand what it is, Musicians just do not get on the internet much, 90% of the people who call their selves a dj within social networks, Really are not.

Maybe I am bitter.  It really felt like I was doing this from the heart, but it failed.

So I have been scouring the internet studying how I can sell my website. There is a large number of sites that talk about buying, selling, auctioning websites. I will not be auctioning. That of course is like eBay, you could end up selling your plasma tv for a dollar. I will hold out, and I will try more ideas on  iworkwithmusic.com until the site is sold for a fair price. It has great potential.

I looked at godaddy’s auction, there is no way you will get me to post my site on there for $5 plus 5-7% . That place is for domain squatters. What is a domain squatter? people who buy a site just to sell it. like the 90000 people who buy up websites with the name of a dead star Right after tragedy hit  and try to sell it and become millionaires. Go to eBay and look at all the Farrah and Micheal sites for auction that no one is buying. It’s disrespectful and we all know that people like that do not deserve to profit from that. There are others who just steadily type  all sorts of ideas and park them with a for sale sign on them. See if you have not tried to unload a good website, you do not know that it is an option to auction or sale them. You just go to the website you  normally go to  and type in the domain name you want for your great idea, and if the site is available you get it. If it is not, you try something close.  In that case you end up with a domain like 1111iworkwithpeople1111.com and really that is completely unattractive and leaves you unmotivated.

Searches I have done.

evaluate my website That turns up a bunch of websites that you pay to tell you what your site is worth to them as a buyer. You will not be happy unless you  own yahoo or google or msn. it turns up crap. They want to charge you to tell you that your site is worth about 25 bucks. They get these prices by counting the letters in your site, not what the domain name means. Many of them also look at the content on the site and do their evaluation by the relevance of the name to the content, cool, if I was selling the whole site. Sorry I amusing a free php script from e107. Their works has nothing to do with the value of the domain by by it’s actual value.

what is my Site worth

Ok this one is a little bit more fun. but I have to warn you, it’s like playing a flash based video game… it’s not reall. but they do tell you how you rank in search engines.

Most of them use Google and Alexa.. Alexa??? really ???  Wasn’t Alexa considered bad news??  Well if it was, I guess that does not matter when you are checking the value of your sites traffic. Needless to say I failed all the alexa tests, because I refuse to put their software on my site. Most  anti-spyware programs go nuts with anything with eth word alexa in it, sooo  I will not be making my visitors uncomfortable.

This one Did not please me at all. I tried all my sites, every single site I typed in was the exact same value. $10 . I even tried the domain name for the company I work for, it’s a few years old (google way back machine). and it came up the same. A company that makes 2G a day from that website.

I have no idea what this site uses but it valued my site at …. $0  hmm. not cool so far BUT it does see truxtertech.com at a much better price. So that one is real, well at least the prices changes a bit more often at a much more broad range. Still have no idea what it does. It might read page count, since the page count is on the main site truxtertech and since iworkwithtech is a sub-directory there really are no stats to offer.

Websiteoutlook Sees the site as being worth $255 and says it gets 35 cents a day in ad revenue, hmm I have no advertisements on it, and it shows an old screenshot. May have been that long since I had advertisements. I removed them  because I thought they might have been a turn off to visitors.

dnscoop Sees the site as about 120 bucks.. Alexa is it’s biggest focus.  Selling a domain name, not a cache cookie farm.

This piece of work Saw all of my sites as 77 dollars. their php script is mis configured , but shows a nice price for it’s own domain. LOL! no thanks…  on top of that, they use technoroti to evaluate your site. it almost looks like they are using dnscoop through an iframe.

So far I am not impressed much by any of those. but we will see as this process continues.

Windows Update Keeps Re-directing To Google ?

Yep this also happened to me. While at work. AT WORK !!! sorry had to say it like it is supposed to be said, yelling.
Now at my job, I am not “The Tech Guy”. I am the drawings and images guy. I mean I know plenty, but they already have a “resident nerd” and well, he is pretty good at it. So by my wandering around on the internet doing things “my way” and stumbling into an ” Oh dang!” moment isn’t the best thing for my career. First warning was ” Microsoft is ready to install Explorer 8″ Yep you guessed it, I installed it . Not thinking one time that I was on Firefox the whole time.
Ok I started with the on board Symantec end point. It caught either 8 viruses , or the same virus kept trying to rescue it’s self. lol I have no idea, I was panicking and hurrying , I saw the word ” Trojan” in the pop up warning from Symantec, and freaked out. I decide I better go check Windows update site and see if I ever downloaded Internet Explorer 8, The page would not load, I run to another computer on the network and all is fine, I head back to mine, still nothing. So I headed to the first place I could think of. Bitdefender’s online malware scan. It never lets me down. Well this time it surely did. I take it up a notch and head to “Malware Bytes” and start doing a search in Google and search the term “windows update takes me to Google” and started reading all the people praying and begging for help. The ever so faithful “tech guy forums” turned up an unanswered request for help, wow that was surprising. After about 45 minutes of reading, I find nothing (well I actually found the right thing but over looked it like 10 times) and malware bytes is done scanning, It found nothing, nothing at all, I try and update it, will not let me, along with anything else I tried to scan with.
So now I break out A-squared, not the worst thing in the line up for sure, but it did not find anything either. Ok now I am feeling like I am losing my mind. Well as this is going on I am still reading threads in forums about the issue. I go back to this thread . The first link in the first and only response, well tried that. Second link I click it it takes me to Super AntiSpyware. First thought is ” Well crap, this place looks like it’s just going to make the issue worse. I figured that it really couldn’t get much worse if I scan the file first. So I wander off to the download area for the free version. All was fine until I get to the point that I actually try and download it. Another dead link.. “hmmm, the link is dead, it is blocked, it must be what I need” is exactly what I thought. Ok also another thing about that name, just kept making me think about power rangers. It really sounded like the slogan from some kid’s show “super anti-spyware free trial go team action go!!!” is what I kept saying and giggling.
I walked over to another one of the computers in the office and download the file and slip it onto an open space on the server.
Walk back to my computer and here comes the I.T. guy, just in time. I let him fumble through it like I did. He made a lot of the assumptions I did at first, I walked away to the store next to the office and get a soda while he does exactly what I did. I get back into the office and there he is, lol just like me.. Reading the forum posts for a second time. We agreed that super action malware scanner was the way to go. Well we install it while Spybot S&D or something was finishing it’s scan.
We reboot to safe mode administration by pressing F8 after the bios scan, just before the windows logo. Yes I was just sitting there hitting the F8 button repeatedly till I got the boot menu.
In administration mode we ran the quick scan. Within seconds it finds 3 Trojans and a dns changer, by the end of the scan Super AntiSpyware found two root-kits and two registry key modifications.
We rebooted after the scan and checked to see if Microsoft Windows Update worked, all was fine but still could not update any of the virus scanners. So we reboot to safe mode administrator, and do the full scan. Nothing came up.

So far not all of the issues are resolved, I will go through my “hosts” file and see if there are any changes there. Probably not but hopefully there are. I know how to change that. and I will add the link that I got the file from in the first place to the list of blocked sites. I may even email a heads up to the guys from mvp’s hosts file website (google it).
This is the help I have for you. I hope it works for you. Heck I’m going to run that goofy named program on my home pc now and see what it finds. http://www.superantispyware.com/
Hope it helps you get un-hijacked. I promise that program actually works, just the name is stupid and their web designer is cheesy.

Also that “Google” page I kept getting redirected to was not regular google. it was an affiliate page. Google English. So the freak was making money off of each search we did while we tried to resolve the issue.  Google needs to ban that account.