Sunday, September 30, 2007

SEO tips : A good keyphrase choice is the key of a successful content

Are you tired from not being relevant to search engines. Are you spending a lot of time on writing but Google still not paying you back? These are some SEO tips that you should follow in every post you make. It's about developing a rich text with primary keywords.
Making a quality content is the main bloggers' concern. They use their writing skills to make a post that makes them feel satisfied... But for search engines ugly posts could rank first! How to prevent that from happening?

Choose your primary keyphrase.
You have just to ask yourself : what am I blogging the most about ? What ever the answer is , You will concentrate your work on ways to make your posts relevant to people on search engines results.. Put yourself in the surfer's shoes, what would you type in the google search bar to get informations about what you're blogging. Actually you should have done that during your long searches in blogs and websites to collect informations for your future posts. So you had a contact with the ranking issue and you visited your competitors (those who deal with the same subject as you). Your future goal is to make your URL rank before them for a certain keyword search. Go type this word in the Overture keyword suggestion tool . If you're blogging about "travel" type the word in it and after some seconds you'll recieve most popular keyphrases about your theme.

Two keyphrases strategies :
Once you get most popular keyphrases you have to choose between promoting your blog with the highest keyphrases and compete with well ranked blogs and websites. Or stick with lower one and try to get the first page as soon as possible. The challenge here is competition. You have to choose between ranking in the third page of google result for the most popular keyphrase or rank in the first page with non-popular one. Now it depends on your ambitions. If you have a long breath to make a long living blog, If you have the courage and the motivation to struggle in the keyword war, pick out most popular keyphrases and get to work !!

Smart coding... cater to spiders !!
Search engines use spiders to crawl your pages, 'read' your content and pick out relevant keyword. So you better read your post with the spider's eyes ! How?
<>keyphrase < / title >Spiders read from up to top. First the read the title of your page, that means what is between the title's html tag : make sure your keyphrase appear in it. Other tags are very important like <> emphasis < / em> , <> bold < / b > and <> strong < / strong > . Spiders aren't blind !! they detect blod caracters and italic etc... They detect paragraphs too, so you better break you text into paragraphs and use your keywords in it. Spiders read from the top down so you better not be late to reveal your what you're talking about : put your keyphrases at the beginning and avoid long introductions.
Spiders consider your linking and the way you describe the objects you're putting in your page ( images) so you should put the right html tag for it :

If you're linking to other site do not just put their domain name, describe the content you're linking to. example : instead of putting < title = "soechat.com" href = "http://www.seochat.com / "> < / a > you'd better put < title = "best keyphrases tips " href = " http://www.blogger.com/seochat.com "> how to improve your keyword with seochat < / a >

If your're putting a picture, rename it in order to fit your content. don't let the default name put by your camera or as you download it. for example instead of putting :
< alt = "my best photos" src = "http:photo008.jpg "> put < alt = " best travel photo in hawaï trip " src= " hawaibestphotos.jpg "> That will certainly help you getting more visitors through google images search.

Beware!! A double edged weapon
If you get lost in stuffing you're text with keywords it will end up with one of the worst webmaster's nightmare : getting banned by search engines.
If your text contain keywords more than 5% of it that will be considered as SPAMMING !! Search engines will put a filter to decrease your ranking for these keywords and will end up sooner or later with banning your URL form showing up in their pages!

Useful links :
Best search engine keyword tips
Choosing primary keywords strategies

Friday, September 28, 2007

Intel developer forum : new technolgies on the way ..!

Three times per year, Intel organizes The Intel Developer Forum. The IDF is an opportunity for Intel to announce her future products in front of developers. Last IDF took place from 18th to 20th of september in San Francisco- USA. This forum has announced several novelties :

Laptops without fans..
This is one of the most innovating technologies announced in the Intel developer forum. The laptop manufacture Compal presented a new way of coolness system for laptops completely independent from ventilators. Until now, laptops using this technology can't support processors consuming more than 10 Watts. The same for PCpokets. Thanks to their new system, Compal maid possible to extend this energy consumption amount to 17 Watts allowing laptops to have more power for better processors with no ventilation. For processors consuming more than 17 Watts a hybrid coolness system is needed using both ventilator and radiator.
Although the compal coolness system increases the laptop weight, it has many advantages : it reduces noise and protect the computer from shocks and it remarkably saves energy.

USB 3.0 ... Coming soon
USB 3.0 promoters, as Intel,HP,Nec and Microsoft found the IDF the perfect opportunity to announce the USB 3.0
It's planned to be released in the first half of 2008. The new USB is intended to reach the 5 GB/s speed. For the notice, the actual USB is limited to 480 Mb/s. So promoters are intending to multiply this speed by ten !!
This speed increase will be based on using a second fiber-optic channel in the usb port. The new device is intended to be compatible with USB 2.0 and of course the speed will be limited to the USB 2.0 version.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

how to make your pages fit most visitors...?

Making your visitors navigate easily on your website is good to obtain the loyalty and more page views. Every web developer has to take care about the fluidity of navigation on his pages and enough flexibility to fit all users. That means fitting most used browsers and speed networks. So how can we make this task easier?

Pam Hoffman, one of our dearest readers asked previously in this blog:

Something I've been wondering for awhile - how many users are on what kind of machines?
My thinking is that you optimize your website for the majority of users on the most popular machine.
For example, if I wanted to add video to a blog post. Will it be viewable by the majority of visitors?

Well to answer that, let me explain that for such compability with your visitors, it's not the hardware that counts but the software. I mean if a visitor couldn't view your website content that is because of his browser capabilities: browser, Java support, flash versions, Operating system, Screen resolutions and Color bits.
Second, the speed network has an impact on his navigation ; if your putting a video in your homepage that will make the page more heavy and slower to show up. Nevertheless, streaming this video ( as youtube or google video) will take more time if he has a slow network. So he won't wait enough to play it.

For the notice, some statistics showed that more than 65% of Internet users still navigate with a connection between 28kb/s and 1 Mb/s. That means that the majority won't have enough time to open heavy pages and play video content. They will wait and wait then they will end up clicking the "X" button ! That doesn't mean not to post videos on your pages but do not exaggerate.
Here are some statistics about connection speed :
" CONNECTION SPEEDS Less than 14.4K bps 3% 28K bps 17% 33.6K bps 16% 56K bps 24% 56K - 1M bps 14% Greater than 1M bps 26% " source


1- Get to know your visitors..
You should have an idea what kind of software your visitors are using.. which browser,OS and can they run Java and flash with it. Than what are the connection speed do most of them have ( DSL, cable , 56k Dial up...). Then try to make your pages fit these criteria ; no heavy pages, no heavy Javascripts etc..

2-How can I get these information ?
As I previously posted, a good Web analytics tool will make all this job done.. I recommend Google analytics or Xiti.. Both of them give detailed statistics about your visitors.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Firefox Security add-ons

When it comes to security, Firefox is the best browser. Not only because of the way that browser is built and how fast all bugs were fixed in it, but also because of its add-ons. Security add-ons are very effective to detect viruses before download, stop any sort of malicious scripts that could be injected to your computer. It also advice you which site you should avoid in order to be away from any bad cookies that could come from it.

Dr.Web anti-virus checker
This add-on will put an end to your doubts. If you're hesitating whether to download a file found on the Internet or not. You have just to check it with this add-on if it's virus-free or if it's infected.
Download



NoScript
IT blocks Java and javascript form being executed only for trusted websites. It's very effective against XSS attacks (cross-site scripting attacks).
Download



Mcfee Site advisor
It allows you to identify potentially dangerous websites. Mcfee rely on a bot that download files from websites and check if there are any malware.. It uses a small bar in your browser that turns into green if the site is clean, Yellow: if you have to be careful and RED if the website is potentially dangerous.
Download

Monday, September 24, 2007

How to avoid getting banned by search engines ?

It's the worst thing that could happen to the traffic of your website. Being banned is search engines is a sort of penalization of a misleading act done by the webmaster in order to improve his ranking. So you'd better not cheat the spider !!

1- Avoid bad linking :
Never link to "bad ones" like gambling sites, adult sites and Warez. Specially when it has no relationship with your content. You have to administer your visitor's input like comments and censor any type of offending words or those who try to spam you with a lexical farm related to adult content in a way to create a group of keywords thus the spider will consider it as adult site and ban it!

2-Duplicate content :
Search engines can get too severe with copyright violation specially if somebody has claimed that your using his content. Even if you're trying to make a quot make sure that you put quotation marks (") and don't exaggerate.

3-Keyword spamming :
If you mess with the spider, it will bite you !! Some people try to blend keywords with the background of their design in a way that it will be only readable by spiders when they come to check keywords content. Another way of spamming called "sneaky redirects" it's to put a huge number of keyword in a page and redirect it to home page. Once you click on it in the result page you will be redirected to another page inviting you to buy something. Annoying isn't it ? That's why search engines get too severe about it.

If you want to improve your ranking you have to do it in the right way. Any misleading acts will put an end to your website growth !

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Prevent your website from being hacked

I'd rather put : "prevent the nightmare from coming true" as a title.. anyway.. let's get to the real thing.. If you want to do

Pick a pro webhoster :
Professional webhosters are experimented in this field. There are people you can trust who know how to protect the server from eventual hack attacks.

Choose good password :
The easiest thing that a hacker would do is to get you password and use it against you.. So you better pick a good one. Good passwords are unguessable, long and contains various caracters type ( letters, numbers, puncts...etc etc), above 15 charachters. This an example of a good password : "g8@"ju$por£%99ç>llop" . Hackers usualy use software to guess your password. So you better make it hard for them as much as you can.

Never use Internet explorer :

Hackers use "Phishing techniks" to "hunt" your password from you browser. If you're using I.E you're increasing the risks of bening hacked. I.E 6.0 was a great disaster to webmasters. I highly recommend Firefox for webmasters because it's safe and contains many web developer tools.

Code properly :
You have to be careful about html and PHP forms that you put into your websites. If you're using PhP/MYSQL hackers could inject codes into your database through you comments form for example.. you can lose all your data. So you'd better learn how to code properly and disable injected scripts into forms.

Make your own backups :
Don't rely on the webhoster to keep a backup for you because it may be hacked too. So you should make your own backups and save them in your hard disk. if you get hacked you'll just change the server or password and use your backup and you website will survive.

Every Webmaster's nightmare !

It's just frustrating ! because building a website is like raising a baby : you feed him with good content, you register his "name" in directories.. and you'll have this emotional relation with your website specially if you start communication with others through it or when you get credits about your work. You'll even get angry and furious if you start to make a living with it.
I'm having problems writing this article because it's really a nightmare for me as a webmaster if some of these events could happen to me. What this nightmare is about ? and could we prevent it from becoming true?

The worst nightmare : being Hacked !

Imagine that one day you open you homepage and you find this black page informing you that you're hacked. You'll certainly have black clouds everywhere you look!! All your work : coding, writing articles, advertising, submitting into directories, communicating with visitors... all these hours of hard work will just vanish away ! Follow these tips in order to prevent this disaster from happening !

Second nightmare : Your server has lost your website data !
Most newbie webmasters choose the free webhosting.. but they don't know that they're putting theirselves under the mercy of the webhoster.. Once the server is full and the need more space for paid webhosting they'll just announce : " We had a problem with the server we lost your website data" and you'll have nothing to do about it ! So if you think about making a long living website you should think about paid webhosting..

Third nightmare : Getting banned in search engines
When it comes to this point, you're just getting what you deserve ! If you get banned by google that means that you maid something bad ! Being banned from google is like slowly killing your website. Because the visitors number will decrease and the whole thing will collapse like fall leafs..
Learn how not to get banned by search engines..

Vulnerability found and fixed in Firefox and Seamonkey

It is the reason behind the new Firefox update (2.0.0.7). It's sort of an infecting code could be excuted in the browser via QuickTime links. This vulnerability is described as critical because it could shut off your system. It allows the attacker to inject and execute codes into your computer, install malware...

On his blog Petko D. Petkov reported that QuickTime Media-Link files contain a qtnext attribute that could be used on Windows systems to launch the default browser with arbitrary command-line options. When the default browser is Firefox 2.0.0.6 or earlier use of the -chrome option allowed a remote attacker to run script commands with the full privileges of the user. This could be used to install malware, steal local data, or otherwise corrupt the victim's computer.

How to fix it? just update your Firefox browser to 2.0.0.7

The reporter's blog
Mozilla foundation security advisory
Update your browser

Web analytics tools... Why?

Every webmaster has to know how many visitors he has, Where do they come from, what are the keywords that they're using to get into his website... These kind of informations are vital to promote your website !

How to exploit my web analytics tool ?

If your visitors used Google and they opened your website. You'd better know which keyword did they use to get into your website. Then develop content about these keywords so you can be in first pages in google search results.

Second, your web analytic tool presents the browsers that your visitors are using, If most visitors are using firefox you'd better have pages that suits it. Probebly new browser will show up.. so you have to get ready to have your pages suiting all browser by following W3C rules.. The same thing with Operating systems, if you're talking about software you should offer something for both Windows and Linux users for example. That's how you'll win more visitors.. Your web analytic tool can inform you about the resolution of the monitor too... So you better have pages to suit that..

Geolocalisation : Be more close to your visitors..
Your Web analytics tool shows the nationality of your visitors.. you should follow your visitor's most concerns and issues.. If most of them are from Asia and you're posting news you'd better not to have detailed info about another part of the world! And if you presenting a service you should give informations about locations suiting your visitor's nationality..

Is there a tool that can present all these informations ??
Yes! and it's free too.. It's XITI 7.. you have just to create an account and put javascript in your pages.. It's very effective.. the graphics are cool.. the informations are detailed. I recommend it to every Webmaster.

Friday, September 21, 2007

How to improve my PageRank ?




Any webmaster or blogger has to understand PageRank and how it functions.. The best explanation I found is in the wikipedia :

"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important"."


So as you can see, increasing your pagerank is vital for your blog success. If you can make your website important in the eyes of google search engine you're saved! The main question is how...?

First of all, Google use spiders that visit your URL regularly.. So you'd better have something new for the spider or else you will be badly indexed. You have to show google that your site is worthy to be visited.. and that's by building a huge and updated content about the subject you deal..

Second, you have to make websites linking to you ? If people are linking to you that means your website is important.. But don't wait for them until they link for you ! Do it by yourself! submit your website or blog in directories and blog search engines. If you're a blogger submit your articles in E-magazines with putting your URL as the source of the article.

Third, visit other websites and ask the webmaster for partnerships. Exchanging links will help improving your PageRank and will increase the number of your visitors too..

Finaly, never copy and paste other's content. Any copyright violation could index your URL in the black list !!

You can check your pagerank using the google bar or visiting this website.

Tips for a new blogger...

The fact of making money from your blog is very motivating, isn't it? It's by putting ads in your blog and get paid for clicks like the Adsense program. But it doesn't seem as simple as that ! Because you will face the biggest Blogger challenge : Traffic !

Once you start blogging, don't expect to have dozens of visitors to read your posts and put some comments. Simply because you are unknown in this large network. Imagine that there are millions of people writing about the same subject as you. So how can you beat them first to the visitor? Do not feel that pessimistic, it's hard but not impossible! There are some tips to follow and the job will be a piece of cake.

1- Choose your blog main theme :
Just choose the nearest subject to you. Something you love talking about or you're addicted to ... that will help !! If you are a Football addict and Sport is what you like telling to you friends why don't you write about it. If you have some professional skills in some fields why don't you share it with others.. (gardening tips, cooking riecepees, computer skills ....) Something you're good at, and you can talk about it. Just don't talk about everything and nothing ! It will disturb the visitor...

2- Be Brief, clear and Informative :
Statistics has shown that Internet users are quick readers. They don't stick so long with the page.. If they don't get what they want they will click on X or get back to research page to find something else. Unless you attract them with good content ; brief, informative posts. Just get directly to the point, don't make long introductions and avoid useless chattering. Express yourself! write as you talk, because your communication with the reader counts to attract him and make him come again. Post regularly because quantity counts.

3- Help your readers :
It's by giving them some important links, be generous to show your source of information and anything that could enlarge the subject you deal . Use every way possible to explain : pictures, graphs...

4- A nice layout:
Don't disturb your reader with colorful background and don't make your pages too sad either.

This is just for the beginning and you will see more detailed tips to make your own successful blog.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

First steps in Webmastering..

Don't you feel the necessity of having your own website or blog ? The number of websites is blowing up, and it's time to give up being passive.. It's high time to be productive and contribute with a webpage. Your website will allow you to communicate with others, may be to promote your business or just to have a space to express yourself and to have people to read what you think..

The purpose is noble but you have to choose the best means to make this work done. Because once you start developing your web pages and your visitor counter doesn't move you may feel disappointed and that would discourage you to continue and the whole thing will fail. I keep on saying it everytime : " the biggest webmaster challenge is traffic". There are many things that could keep visitors away from your website , the worst reason is to have a bad web page coding !! You may say " What's with these codes, I'll just use a webpage editor like Dreamweaver or Frontpage and I'll have my work nicely done, I don't understand these codes anyway..Learning them will be a waste of time !" and there are several reasons to prouve you're wrong!

First,Your webpage is a group of codes destined to be read by your browser to convert them to text, pictures and so on.. And the biggest source of visitors is search engines which have spiders that crawl into your pages to get informations about your site and save them in the search engine directory but once you have a crowded page with heavy codes the spider will have big problems with indexing you website and that is bad for your website reputation in search engines. Just for the notice : Webpage editors are the worst code makers!

Second, bad coding will cause bowser compatibility problems. There are various browsers (I.E, firefox, Opera, Safari ..etc) and they don't convert codes the same way. So you'd better have a code that suits everybody. There are some rules to follow so you can code properly (W3C normes). Frontpage for example doesn't follow these rules. Actually it was created by microsoft to have websites that suits only Internet Explorer (Microsoft's browser) just to beat Netscape navigator its biggest rival at the time ( Take a look at "The browser wars").

Third, heavy codes will slow the connection to your page, the visitors won't spend time with you to get it opened. And you'll have maby problems with modifications and website promotion.. What if you pasted a javascript for a visitor counter and the page was spammed with popups and ads what will you do ? And how could you recognize the code you pasted in your crowded page !! What if you wanted to paste ads and to blend them with you page layout and give them the best location you want. Do you think that you will have the flexibility to manage you website with these editors? The answer is NO !

In conclusion, if you want to be a successful webmaster you have to learn xHTML/CSS coding. It's not that hard. It will be fun if you follow these lessons. They written in a very creative and detailed way. The site is called "Newbies paradise". I promess, you'll never feel bored!

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Microsoft in numbers



Microsoft, The biggest software industry on earth ! I think every computer user used a Microsoft product at least once. What about taking a brief review about this huge company!

Creation : 1975 in Redmond USA by Bill Gates.
Staff : 79,000 employees in 102 countries, 60% in USA.

Industry :
Computer software: Windows presents 92% of the operating system market. It has other products like Microsoft Office, Microsoft Servers, Developer tools...
Microsoft has other interests away from software, like the Internet industry ( Research engine and directory ; Microsoft Network) , In the world of Media with the channel MSNBC. It has other activities in hardware industry like constructing the famous Game console : Xbox.

Financial Status :
Revenue : US $51.12 billion (2007)
Operating income : US $18.52 billion (2007)
Net Income : US $14.06 billion (2007)

Website: www.microsoft.com
Wikipedia article

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Best free antiviruses... safety shouldn't cost a dime!!

There a lot of computer users who don't feel the threat of viruses.. I have friends telling me all the time that "Anti-viruses are useless. I've been using computer for years and I've never been infected by one ! why should I get one ! They just slow down my start Up... " . If you share this view, believe you are facing a lot of troubles. The Virus infection does not have explicit symptoms but once they get activated you'll be just shocked for have your system not turning on .. or behaving oddly..Specially if you're an Internet user.. Your safety won't cost a dime ! just download these free tools and set them up in your computer..

Free tools... doesn't sound like : "not enough" ?
The answer is NO ! Famous and expensive anti-viruses are not that reliable !
There is rule in picking an anti-virus : " Never pick the most famous one " why? because if you put yourself in the Virus creator shoes ; your first aim of creating a virus is to infect the greatest number of machines so you'll create a virus that can defeat the most famous anti-viruses ! So, free and unknown anti-viruses can do a better job !!
Actually.. You'll need an Anti-virus, Anti-spyware and a Firewall..

Anti-virus: AVG Anti-virus Free :

I tried it, it's very efficient, not heavy and easy to run.. it will protects you from viruses, worms and Trojans ( the feature-limited freeware version is enough to keep you away from troubles.
Download


An anti-spyware.. ewido..
it searches for spyware (programs allows their creators to get into your system, spy your private data..) it's free and a little bit hard to update but very efficient.
Download

Firewall : all in one secretmaker
It's kind of shield against intrusion attempts by spy and adware. Most of users recommend Zonelabs firewall. I was using it and i got infected by a Dialer while this firewall was perfectly working.. I just experienced his failure.. until I found this tool. This firewall is too suspicious !! he asks about every program trying to attempt to connect to Internet.
Download
Home page

A secret weapon !!
After BMW, I was never been fascinated by a German product as this piece of art : Hijackthis ! It allows you to find nasty programs discretely running in your computer and "hijack them !!" but be careful what to choose to hijack because there will be no way to get it back ! It's simple .. after scanning your disk the program will gives you a logfile.. You have just to copy and paste it in the Textbox of Hijackthis home page and it will tells you what are the most threating programs to hijack.

Home page


"Prevention is better than cure"
First,to prevent your computer from such viruses, you need to put your firewall always on, scan your computer regularly and "clean" your computer from tracking cookies and other spyware with this tool.

Second, you need to use a safe browser : Firefox of course !

Third, be careful while you download files, specially with P2P programs... never open attached files in unknown emails.

Computer Virus ! get a clue about your enemy..

A computer virus is a small program (written by a bad guy) who lands in other programs body.. When you run your infected program, the virus moves to the RAM of your computer and starts his dirty work: Data destruction, hard disk format, system errors.. A virus is a parasite who propagate rapidly thanks to Internet. Each virus has his own signature ( a sort of DNA). Such signature allows other anti-virus programs to detect this famous virus in order to erase it..and that's why you should regularly update your anti-virus.

First of all, you have to get a clue about what you'll be facing... There is many kinds of virus and you have to recognize your enemy in order to defeat him !


Worms : able to spreat through networks (Internet, Intranet...)

Trojans : creating a rift in the system allowing its creator to penetrate through it and take control.

Logical bombs : a remote virus, can be activated after certain events.

We can classify viruses as following :

Boot virus : Infects the boot sector (MBR : Make Boot Record), this sector allows the execution of your operating system.

Polymorphe virus : it changes its appearance just like a chameleon. It's an intelligent virus which can take many forms and different signatures.

Macros virus : Infects the MS.office documents macros.. It lands in a simple Word or Excel and executes a simple code once you open the infected document. It affects windows files too. This kind of viruses is usually sent by mail in attached files, easy to recognize with their .VBS extension.

that was a brief introduction, if you want to get more information check the Wikipedia definition.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Bebo and Yahoo partnership




Well used in UK and Ireland, Bebo has just concluded an advertising and technological alliance with Yahoo..

Considered as the third social network in USA.. (after myspace and Facebook) and the first in UK, Ireland and New Zealand, BeBo has just signed a partnership with Yahoo. This alliance will be about the Graphic ads, the integration of Yahoo! Questions/answers and the creation of a tool bar for yahoo..

Via Yahoo ads, BeBo will publish most of Yahoo graphic ads in two big markets, UK and Ireland where Bebo has 1.6 million users.

Finally, this social network has an active partnership politics, They have just signed another alliance with Microsoft to facilitate the implementation of Windows life messenger features on BeBo..

Monday, September 10, 2007

Best download tools

People keep on asking what best download tools to use. Well i recommend a peer to peer download tool and a BitTorrent one.

BitTorrent download tool: BitComet


BitComet is a BitTorrent/HTTP/FTP download management software, which is powerful, fast, very easy-to-use, and completely free. It contains many advanced features for BitTorrent download and extends its leading BitTorrent technology to HTTP/FTP to accelerate downloading up to 5 - 10 times faster, or more.
BitComet Website
Download BitComet

P2P Download tool :

eMule is one of the biggest and most reliable peer-to-peer file sharing clients around the world. Many developers contribute to the project, so the network gets more and more efficient with every new version.

This new version eMule 0.48a (May 13th, 2007) fixes most problems with Windows Vista, adds a spam filter for searches, includes several graphic interface improvements, fixes some bugs and adds a lot of small changes.
eMule Website

Saturday, September 08, 2007

The Ministry of French education is migrating to Red Hat OS



RedHat France has just finished the migration of 2500 servers of the ministry of the French national education to Linux OS , hosted in 30 local administration authorities. They used to work with several proprietary systems supplied by Bull ( Gcos 7, DSP 7 and AIX).

Michel Affre, the responsible of information systems for academic institutes explained this migration for better organization of these systems and their costs by distinguishing between the hardware and the software suppliers.

By including 2500 new machines, the ministry of education will be hosting 3000 servers running with Linux OS. That means 100% of their operating systems are free software !

These servers are intended to do financial management, exams administration, staff and students management and acts of daily administrative acts.

Friday, September 07, 2007

A useful Firefox extention : Foxycode


What is your text editor.. MS. Word? ...OpenOffice Writer ? imagine that you have all the tools you want in your Browser .. Helping you typing and editing texts in forms ... Like those in Wikipedia ( using WikiCode) or in ordinary forums (using BBcode for example )...


The author's Overview:

FoxyCode is an extension for Firefox, Mozilla’s Web browser. This extension offers you many ways to insert advanced tags into your forms in order to format easily your posts in forums and blog. FoxyCode supports 5 languages:

  • BBCode
  • NCode
  • WikiCode (WikiMedia/DokuWiki)
  • ZCode
  • XHTML

FoxyCode appears either as a context menu, or in the form of a toolbar. The context menu is a heritage from other extensions like BBCodeXtra. Toolbar is a more innovative concept which offers an access even faster to insertion functions. It is particularly useful in quick reply forms where there are no javascript functions to insert tags.

In addition to basic functions like centered text, bold and italic, FoxyCode offers you functions enabling youto insert combinations of tags, like a centered image with a clickable link, and this, in only some clicks, as the screen shows it hereafter.

You can get this extension for free here.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

The Browser Wars



We have to take for granted the existence of a navigators war ! And before we choose which side we will be let's take look at the history of that war...
How things got started
In 1993 , it was the first web browser that have ever seen "light". It was the NCSA Mosaic.. But it didn't last for long.. Because June 1994 was marked by the appearance of new Web browser that made an end to mosaic by recruiting most of its developers !


Netscape is taking over !
In 1995 Microsoft was preparing for the big move : Windows95 with launching the "Microsoft Network" .. In the same period of time Internet is moving with big steps.. Specially after the appearance of the JAVA language that made Netscape Navigator more sophisticated.. Microsoft felt the threat of having this navigator taking over so they bought the liscence of the "SpyGlass Mosaic" ( not to mix with NCSA Mosaic) to create the Internet Explorer 1.0 included in the Windows95 Plus Pack in August 1995 .. Three months later , the IE 2.0 was declaring the war with Netscape navigator...

The Real War (I)
:


The Browsers race went crazy for some years.. New versions were appearing every two or three months. Both Netscape navigator and IE developers were so hurried with making new version and their work lacked many essential details ; many errors and security holes appeared on surface !
The scene of war marked an act made by IE developers while the IE 4.0 release on 1997.. A huge "e" Logo was hanged in the Netscape local.. Netscape employees reacted and posted a huge dinosaur marked with « Netscape 72, Microsoft 18 » ( to show their market dominance).
IE 4.0 was a real turnover in this war.. the IE's marketplace value is boosting and that was a result of a whole intelligent strategy with illegal actions :

  • The economic model of Netscape consisted on offering the navigator and selling other server applications. Microsoft used that point so they sold the same services for free
  • Microsoft signed license contracts with hardware manufactures that obliged them to post the IE icon on the desktop. And would penalize them if they install Netscape navigator on.
  • Microsoft signed a license contract with AOL so they create a IE-only-compatible version of their product
  • Microsoft released a WYSIWYG web page editor (MS.Front page) that only gets along with IE
  • Microsoft used its monopoly on the operating system marketplace to include IE into the windows for free. Actually the Windows revenue was enough to cover the costs of developing IE unlike Netscape navigator which has no other way to cover these costs.

All these actions have as consequences the fall of the Netscape in 1998. But before it falls the Netscape company has bought her code source.

IE alone in the battle field :
After the fall of Netscape navigator, IE has no serious competitors. Therefore, there was no more important browsers innovations. IE 6.0 released in 2001 was a real mess !!
Navigators war (2) !


Late 2004, the flame of war got lit up again by the release of Firefox , based on Gecko ( Netscape navigator source code) The project was lunched by the old Netscape employees who joined the OpenSource Community with their Mozilla Foundation.
Late 2005, after 50 million downloads, Firefox started to take over IE in the marketplace by 10%.
In 2006, Microsoft hasn't updated IE 6.0 yet. It started to provoke Web developers and security managers complaints! which maid the statistics go more to the Firefox side.
Late in 2007, IE 7.0 was released , expert said that it will make another IE get back in his feet in browsers battle !

Finally, we hope this war will still be going on so we can enjoy the fruits of browsers innovations

Why should we use firefox ?



How many navigators do we have to try until we find "the one"?.. And how many time do we have to risk our most vital informations while surfing the net ?.. I'm hearing everyday about new technics of hacking VIA our navigators.. It's called the " fishing "... using injection in our navigators that brings our confidential data to the hacker's hand.
A way to prevent that ? Just use a reliable navigator that's all!

Well.. the security issue is the main problem with the navigators but it's not the only thing ! Actually we need a browser which has some extra features that make our Internet use more fluid and funny ... Actually the fact that Firefox is an OpenSource software made everybody able to take part of developing new features and Add-ons .. and I think that these addons made Firefox so special ! Imagine that You have a text-editing tool bar compatible with BBcode and W3, a mp3 player integrated with the navigator, a spell-check with any language you want, a RSS feed container and more... Nevertheless, tabs allow one browser window to contain multiple pages!

Setting up Firefox takes five minutes (and it's free!). The installation imports all your bookmarks, settings, etc. from Internet Explorer. After installing, you can download add-ons from the official site.
Are you convinced?... now what you've got to do is to is to get Firefox from the link on the right of this blog !

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Dell is selling computers operated by Ubuntu Feisty Fawn !

After an "Ideastorm" made by Dell in their blog, costumers asked for ubuntu for their new computers and notebooks.. Dell responded to enthusiastic Linux users and started to buy Ubuntu equipped products in USA, than expanded it to reach UK, Germany and France.

ubuntu.com
Dell today unveiled two consumer PCs in Europe – the Inspiron 6400n and the Inspiron 530n – with the Ubuntu 7.04 Linux operating system factory installed. Available now in the United Kingdom, Germany and France, the systems are Dell’s first steps to meet the needs of the Linux enthusiast community outside of the United States.
As it seems to be a Wild decision, but there are many reasons behind it. First of all, the industry of I.T hardware is disappointed with Microsoft new Operating system: Windows Vista . Actually that what Acer superiors said.. and dell has just proved this disappointment with acts: changing the Dell's OS ! Second, a OpenSource Lisence will help to decrease the price of the product because when we buy a hardware with Windows installed in we pay for both the hardware and the expensive software ! Third : the fact of buying Linux equipped hardware is a publicity for Dell, because it will take the headlines of I.tech newspapers for weeks !

Personly, i see that as another stab for Microsoft.. an implicit message telling them that they're not the biggest monopole anymore and if they want a product that sells they have to try harder !!

Acer is disappointed with Vista !




"The whole industry is disappointed with Windows Vista" Said Mr. Gianfranco Lanci the Acer president..
Actually, he publicly attacked Micorsoft and its new product : Windows Vista !
He seems angry ? What makes him so upset !?
In fact, he just realized that Windows Vista will motivated nobody to buy a new PC ! How is that ? Windows Vista requires a high level of hardware .. People prefer to spend less to buy a computer ( less than 1000$) and stick with Windows XP which still better than Vista in the eyes of many consumers of Microsoft products.. In fact, many hardware manufactures will stick with buying PCs and Laptops with XP installed !! It's just how custumors like it ...
Windows Vista has the image of a slow operating system with heavy graphics and requires a huge RAM and Graphic card memory to run applications.... Even Acer president sees that it still immature operating system when he said "Stability is certainly a problem".

In the other hand, Windows Vista still a best seller in the history of Microsoft.. the sold over 20 million copy in the first 100 days compared by 17 millions for windows XP in the same period of appearance of XP.. but these statistics can be misleading because this growth of sells doesn't match the growth of hardware sells that jumped up since 2004..

In conclusion, things aren't getting any better for Microsoft, and personnly I'm getting one more proof that "windows sucks" !!

Monday, September 03, 2007

A Linux newbie ...and the story begins

I've been a Windows user since 1999 .. At that time i was a real newbie in the computer world.. I didn't know that other operating systems exist ! Well I took Windows for granted.. And now i blame the hardware companies for it.. Because once we buy their product , we just find MS.Windows in it and we don't have the choice to pick the operating system that will take care of our hardware!
Anyway, I grew up with windows, I used Win98 for a long time.. as i was young i was a videogame addict so i found many problems and system instabilities that i had to deal with : Virus, Fatal errors, weird system behaviors...and i had to format and reinstall the system several times because it was , in most times, impossible to fix the problem without formatting.. In all windows versions that i used i found the most instable version is Win2000 and the most stable is WinXP...
Time comes by, and i started to hear about Linux until i saw i video clip in youtube that shocked me ! It was a demonstration of the XGL/Compiz 3D desktop running on ubuntu.. I was estonished because I've never saw such windows that get burned once we close them, Desktops presented as 3D cube.. and this is an example of it:





So i thought i have to find out how could it be possible ! I thought it's in the operating system ( I didn't know that there is several desktop versions) I googled ubuntu and i was also astonished how things work with it.. First of all i liked the fact that I could ship CD's for free !! not only this but they're praying me to share their copies with my friends! It was completely the opposite of what i saw with proprietary software that i 've been using for years! I commanded the CDs and i was so glad to get them.. it was the ubuntu LTS 6.04 i run the "safe graphic mode" and it was so useful because i makes you try it because you install it.. It was using the GNOME desktop so it wasn't a 3D desktop.. i didn't find what i was looking for but i discovered another world of operating systems... I found many features that was equivalent to windows and sometimes better.. I liked the OpenOffice . It was easy to manipulate... then i tried to play an MP3 stored in my disk but the file type wasn't known for ubuntu the same thing with .MPEG and others and that freaked me out ... Because i was thinking what if become a Linux user what will happen to my songs libraries, films , games, and all what i enjoyed
doing with windows ? And that's how i turned down the idea of installing ubuntu..

How does ubuntu started to take over Windows with me ..
I returned to the windows, and i talked to my friends about that ubuntu version..One of them was excited to know that it contains a safe graphic mode because he had a problem with his hard disks , they don't work anymore.. and with ubuntu he could run his computer by booting the whole system in his RAM ! I was so excited to see him back in our forum happy to get over his hardware problem and that was thanks to ubuntu Another event that maid the image of ubuntu get bigger. It was my cousin who was preparing his PhD and he had problem with his old scanner that only worked on WIN98 .. The drive CD doesn't contain driver for XP.. So he came by trying to look in the internet for a driver to get his work done.. We spent hours and hours looking for this soft! We found a website that offers it but we had to vote and watch and click on several products and my e-mail box got ravagated by spams, it was such a pain in the ass! While the driver was downloading i suggested to run the scanner with ubuntu in my brother's PC.. and imagine what happend! once we connected the scanner a windows showing the logo of tha scanner constructer showed up and a message saying that a scanner has been connected and ready to work.. And that's what we did!! We started scanning the pictures that he needed and editing them and we finished the work before the downloading was finished !I gave my cousin a copy in case he needed to scan more picture.. and i had more proof that Linux ubuntu is better than windows...



What comes next ?
I'm really concerned about the Internet connection because I'm using an aDSL modem , its CD doesn't contain a Linux version of the driver.. I found in the its website how to run it but it looked a bit complicated with codes i didn't understand. Second, I'll setup WInE to run windows applications specially games !
Hopefully it won't be complicated.

Related links :
Ship ubuntu CDs for free
Visit ubuntu.com

Pro6 hacks: get new changes in your favourite football game

The world of football is so dynamic ; Players are moving around, new stars are showing and new talents growing everyday.. So how can you make your game be up to date without spending money to buy new versions or spending more time in the "edit mode". We found a hack in the Internet that makes it easier.

1-change the formation of the clubs:
To get along with new transfers you have just to download this option file and paste it in its folder
example: C:\my documents\KONAMI\save\folder1
Let's take the most important transfer for the season 2007/2008 in Spain for an example : Henry in Barcelona!

Downlad
2-Get new football stadiums:
about 500 new stadium
Download

3-Get new face looks :

Some players' faces aren't really well painted in this game ..Let's take Frank Ribery for an example:
Download

4- Get new hair cuts:

1st Link
2nd Link

5- Get new clubs:
as River Plate, Sao Paulo, Boca Juniors
Download

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Remote your computer by your Cell phone

Imagine that you can use your phone as a computer mouse ; you can click with it , open windows, shut the system down, play music on, get the playlist on your phone and choose what to play.. the same thing with movies.. That kind of tricks that makes you feel more comfortable. You don't have to get up from your warm bed just to change the movie on your PC.. Well I think i'll feel guilty to make people more lazy.. but it's not me it's the "Salling Clicker"
It works with almost everything ( around 300 devices and this is a list of them). It recommends a Bluetooth dongle ..


Now you can enjoy laziness , just still one click here

How to turn your phone's camera into a Webcam

Well .. first your read the title it's kind of exciting ! Turning your phone's camera into a webcam is no more a thought of a crazy chat addict .. Well to say the truth, this kind of tricks make us save some money .. Nevertheless, your phone's camera is more "dynamic" than a webcam ; you can move all around the place, you can take your friends in a walk around the house.. your no more a slave the chair! The only thing you need is a bluetooth dongle and everything should work properly !
Let's see how it works :
Now enough talking.. let's get that thing working on our phone!
P.S: ONLY FOR SYMBIAN s60 !!
For the s60 1st edition: the "FLYCAM"



Nokia 3230
Nokia 6260
Nokia 6600
Nokia 6620
Nokia 6630
Nokia 6670
Nokia 6680
Nokia 6681
Nokia 6682
Nokia 7610
DOWNLOAD

For the s60 3nd edition : "Mobiola"

for:
Nokia 3250
Nokia 5500d
Nokia E50
Nokia E70
Nokia N71
Nokia N73
Nokia N80
Nokia N91
Nokia N92
Nokia N93
DOWNLOAD
Hopefuly you enjoy it !