Tech Tips and Reviews
Played a bit with auto cad autodesk today.
Tech Reviews
Maybe not all of these are spammers, but Akismet seems to think that all of these are spammers. I use “WP-Ban” to ban these ip addresses simply because I am sick of the types of spam they send.
I see a list of failed attempts to come back to my sites and post again.
208.115.111.244 5,438
Total Attempts: 10,125 Reset all IP ban stats and total ban stat?
I reset the count back in April .
I don’t have the heart in me to call them all spammers. I am sure some of these i.p. addresses are Hijacked computers from some botnet spamming group. but I have to ban them because they just do not stop attacking my comments area with spam.
98.142.212.112
189.85.30.106
58.185.166.243
217.170.97.242
61.213.158.124
87.126.247.51
139.132.12.19
187.49.174.245
190.8.32.47
209.62.26.82
69.163.39.233
213.208.139.2
189.85.30.106
188.92.75.148
61.67.7.140
173.234.11.92
67.22.99.211
212.65.244.147
69.147.240.193
174.140.172.7
80.86.201.83
173.234.19.228
217.10.246.2
173.234.54.50
173.234.38.21
212.160.130.217
64.120.248.211
173.224.218.156
203.92.211.166
69.147.240.178
210.89.91.45
41.190.16.17
222.165.130.214
173.208.124.235
69.45.74.253
82.143.255.135
122.146.153.135
208.115.111.244
178.49.12.75
202.229.99.154
200.192.89.231
212.154.216.50
77.240.81.20
217.6.171.194
74.115.6.56
173.234.46.63
91.212.226.41
72.37.244.20
81.191.229.167
125.168.56.240
81.9.62.213
200.101.66.123
144.71.169.20
74.206.98.195
61.192.219.190
192.239.84.73
163.15.183.29
85.25.86.215
195.127.150.117
204.236.254.16
77.233.4.138
213.134.176.111
69.69.215.196
203.216.220.11
115.42.158.18
188.168.85.131
I just really do not see how some of the big websites can deal with spam on the levels they must be dealing with it. We have a very low Google rank at TruXterTech. I mean our name is “Budget Tech Review” not ” The hot spot for everything tech” even though we try to be. We just cover the simple cheap products, hardware and software. This by no means should be an invite to spammers. We do however request human comments on TruXterTech.com . We like to see other people’s opinions.
Is there a way to just stop this entirely? A couple years ago they created some law that nailed spammers for email spam. Why is there not someway of nailing these people who run spam bots across everyone’s website continually hitting the sites with spam ?
The search engine that creates a linking system that filters out spam programs (by crashing their computer) Will be the search engine of my choice.
if we could only still write scripts that crash bots in our websites, that would be a favorable idea. but in crashing spam bots, you stand a chance of crashing Google bot or some other webspider.
I do however have a redirect page for spammers that make the list. In the redirect there is a link to “add comment” and that link sends the spammer to some website that logs spammers and ads them to a list.
if anyone has a better method. Let me know. and yes I weed out the spam.
Well all. It has been a year since our post about switching to Adbrite and dropping Adsense. ( We dropped Widget bucks fast)
We didn’t drop Adsense because shortly after that claim, our revenue dropped traumatically.
It is true, you never let people know you are being taken advantage of.
We took some tips from a site about Adsense and posted them.
Adsense report for one year
Adsense Results 1 year
And now the comparison
Adbrite report for one year
Adbrite Results 1 yr
It seems there is no pay out for people doing searches on the Google searcher. Or at least the pay out is not what we expected.
Google’s pay has dropped (from the way this looks). A Website that made just over $100 a year, split into 7 websites and took on 5 more writers, now only makes $17 year. We have to assume that the current crunch is also on Google. That $100 Was paying for the domain storage. but now, it does not look like this will be much fun any longer.
We are considering a bit of a change though. We are looking of stripping Adbrite from all of the sites except for one, and putting another Adsense ad code in their spot. It will have to be a bit of a slow change so we can monitor the activity. If the change does not go fast enough, then the opportunity of Google Adsense having contextual related ads could be missed. That’s one thing for certain about Adsense. Is the contextual advertisements are spot on. Adbrite is only close if you select the ads yourself. and well, close is not good enough. Close ads are not showing the readers what they may be interested in.
So now we will see what adsense alone does in 6 out of seven website.
See you all next year.
Oh and fyi, the $17 you see in ads revenue was just one site with 1 adsense ad on it. And the adbrite $4.5 is across 5 websites in three spots. per site. Clearly adsense is the better choice here.
Here’s an update to what my adsense account is doing. I think it’s just broke. I know I’m broke.
If you have been looking for an SEO Keyword Analyzer for your meta tags. I have one from seo centro.
This tool looks at your meta tags and your body text to see what you have and what you expect. Then it counts for repeated items to tell you what word is said and how many time. Then it does two word phrases and three word phrases. To locate certain specific search terms.
This helps you to better target your customers or readers for what they are actually searching for when they find your item or page for what it really is or is about.
meta tag Keyword usage is very important. If your keyword meta tag is filled with a bunch of gobbledy goop, that is not on your page, then you will not get categorized for what you are. No search engine allows fictional keyword tags. Your keywords say “hey this site is about “blah blah. If your key words do not match your content, you will be labeled as a junk website and it is a hard battle to get back up from that. A very hard long battle.
How to use this tool
Locate the URL box and type in your website address. Do not forget the “HTTP://” or the SEO Keyword Analyzer will not work properly. Locate the “Access code” box and type in the symbols located in the image above (I know…. I hate Captcha also). Press Submit and watch the magic.
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Please bookmark this page and feel free to use when you feel you need .
You can then move to The Site Evaluation tool and see what your statistics and page rank with alexa rankings are on the web. This allows you to evaluate the value of your works.
For a project I am doing with a freind I am required to use a keyword search tool. I have checked a few out and see a little bit of an issue. I have a starcraft II website. I used my starcraft II website as a test site for pulling together keywords. I typed in the web address into SKTOOL. and Google it’s self recommended I use a phone name. It also recommended that I leave the II and or 2 out of it’s name because that gets 500 searches a week while adding a 2 or ii at the end will get only 25. ERm. Part ii is new and the first version is ten years old. That is why the old one gets low searches. SO Google’s Database for it’s search engine keyword tool, is old. Because Starcraft II is going on it’s second month. It will be th the most search version of Starcraft out there. My website shows it has well over 500 hits a week from Google search under the term Starcraft II crack. So I tried that exact phrase and got nothing. Squat.
Just now I did this website (truxtertech.com) and used my actual keywords, and Google recommended I use these keywords. “tech deck” and “Tech Desk”. Really, What in the blue %^&* am I going to use those for ? Other than explaining how the keyword thing is wonky.
This post is not to give any expert, pro , or novice computer person even the slightest bit of computer training. This is just a lightweight technical analysis of today’s technical writing.
What do I find to be a better method of Keyword suggestions? Well simple. Write your story, write your page, fill your content. Find keywords in the content so your keywod meta tags match your actual content. Or just write up a huge list of products your really want to sell from your website, and put those words in your meta tags, and write about each item. If you run completely from automated suggested wordings, you have a gobbledy goop website for a dog kennel that is selling cats only because they get better hits in Google keyword search. Now if you are a link farm or a spam site and don’t care about return hits, then by all means. Build your website entirely on Keyword searches. I can understand looking for suggested words or word combination, that is totally acceptable.
What needs to be produced is an Alexa keyword. I know that sounds like a shook up bottle of pew, but Alexa has trends, that fluctuate. Alexa’s count is current and more on time than Google. Clearly by months.
Now I am not bashing the use of keyword search tools. Not at all. but from the results I just got for truxtertech.com in sktool, I now understand why so many websites out there make no sense. It’s people using some tool to crank out everything that gets huge traffic. They don’t care what that stuff is or what it’s for they just want to say it or met tag it. and well…… That junk makes me nuts.
If you must use a keyword search tool or keyword tool. Use it lightly. Don’t go using everything that pops up in the keyword tool. Try more than one keyword tool. Because simply just having the keyword does not generate you traffic. You have to dominate the 1000000001 websites who are using that exact same keyword.
That my friend is the challenge.
How do you do that? by having content that works well with that keyword. You can’t change your content to match that keyword. You have to change your keyword to match your content. Making sure you have better sells of the products you actually have.
Write thorough reports of your products. and make sure you put in the customers face that what you say you have, you really know a lot about. and that you are the person to get this product from. Do not be mechanical. DO not be to human. People want to buy from corporations, Not joe’s garage sale and not from robot Robert’s garage of automated crap. You have to slide in between and sell the people an item they know is protected by more than just the word of stranger. and a product that is not made by slapping two pieces of plastic together.
After playing Starcraft ii Wings of Liberty, all weekend long, I have no understanding why anyone would ever crack this game. There is so much you miss out on by cracking starcraft ii. The website has a download for starcraft ii. If you do not get the game legally, you can not participate in any of the events.
You will not be able to do much more than play the 299 bundled missions. You will not see the World of Warcraft like gameplay Easter egg.
There is so much you can do with the registered version that you can not do with the cracked version of starcraft II. For starts you can get updates and patches. Yoiu can participate in the leader boards, you can be in the ladder challenges and online battles for higher rankings.
You can participate in the forums if you do not have the cracked version of Starcraft II.
What does the cracked version give you? Well the Number one reason I see fit in cracking Starcraft II, is you do not have to log in to your messenger every time you want to just play single player. You don’t have to have an internet connection. I mean that’s what games are great for. Times when you have nothing else to do. If you have no internet, then you pretty much have one less thing to do in your spare time. This is an arguement I will stand behind. Also there are people in other situations that need the practice and down time to play alone. This makes a good reason to crack the game. That is cracking the version you own and paid for without distributing a copy to anyone.
I am not for pirating of anything. I am about problem solving and talking the logical solution to resolve issues. If you have to modify a product to better suite your needs then by all mean do so but do not give the whole thing away as if it was your own .
Patch 2 is out for Starcraft II, you couldn’t have even got the first patch if your game was cracked.
You tell me why you would wouldn’t crack starcraft II. Make it good .
Everyone Keeps asking the same question ” Is Pc Gaming Dying?”. The answer is hard to explain but i will try and give it to you like it is.
Most games are being created for consoles. consoles have a fixed set video card. Consoles have a fixed set processor. They all have fixed set motherboards. So all compatibility issues are resolved at one time. They never upgrade. They just get replaced. This makes game creator’s job simple. This also Ruins any evolution in gaming and ruins the future of “bigger better faster”. Why? because they all have limitations and if they exceed the limitations then the console makers have to expand and evolve. Then the game makers have to start all over in their game codes and engines that they have been kicking around easily. They don’t want to ruin their “easy money”.
Games get created for the consoles first because that’s where the majority of sales are. Many of these games get “ported” (converted to compatibility) to the Pc. These ports have become sloppy and careless. These ports are becoming further and further from the original release date. If ever at all.
So Far 2 of the top Selling PC games are Blizzard Games. Both of these games have epic sales totals in comparison to the rest. One of these games had the highest sales total for many years. This game was Starcraft. Now with the release of Starcraft II finally about to be released, I can imagine the pc video game sells will be greater than ever. The cinematics should be greater than your highest resolution video and teh game play will be more fun than any game on your wii. You will be required to just have one of the most average computers to play this game. This should provoke more old game makers to come out of the woodworks, motivated to make a fun game. Of course there will be game makers making more extreme graphics, more cpu intensive engines and more Memory utilizing AI. And there will be some that use them all. If things go right, Then pc game will wander off in it’s own direction from console gaming. The way it used to be. The way it should be. The way it should have been all along.
If game makers kept in mind they are dealing with a different breed of gamers when it comes to pc games, they would understand, we like quests. We like interaction. We like a never ending challenge. We don’t like to beat the game, We like to have a reason to play it again. And when that finally gets old, we go and get the Expansion. We wait for the second version. The new engine, the new story to sit through before we jump online and mash together will a bunch of crazies. We are not the ones who hurry and finish a game so we can tell everyone it’s old news. We play it into the ground and we tell everyone we know how fun it is. We are a word of mouth crowd. We are the heavy metal music of Gaming. We are the underground difference of opinion. We like a challenge, so we play the game again to find someone who can beat us. We have no thumbs so keep your game controllers.
Is pc gaming dead? no. Is pc gaming dying? yes by the lack of resources. Can pc gaming be revived? Oh by many means , yes. They just have to entertain us. We need more Blizzard, We need more Starcraft more Warcraft more Diablo.
“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.
First and foremost, make sure you have a good website host that is dependable. powweb !!!
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.
SEO Tools
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.
Make sure that you have a place to store your material that composes your website. Make sure you have as much space as you possibly can, like powweb, they have unlimited storage at a very good price. Very good. So far I have registered for three different companies websites at powweb and all three were under $100 for two years.
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.
Have an open mind, be prepared for creative differences and be prepared for someone more knowledgeable in this field to tell you that what you want will not work. Or be prepared for someone to just build you exactly what you want and leave to to fight the internet on your own.
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 get 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.
Here is an image I found on Facebook that seemed to fit perfect.
facts about website outsourcing