Remove "Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance" Message

If you’ve been keeping on top of your WordPress updates using the automatic upgrade feature, you may have run into a problem immediately after upgrading. A message that prevents access to any page on your blog, “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute”. Even if you’ve already completed the upgrade, this message could still appear. It’s not a fun situation and, admittedly, I freaked out the first time I ran into that problem. Fortunately, your life as you know it isn’t over…there is salvation ahead, and it’s brain-dead simple.

Cause of the Maintenance Message

During an automatic upgrade, WordPress places a file in the blog root directory called “.maintenance” to prevent visitors from being confronted with ugly, broken pages during the upgrade process. That’s a great little built-in feature, but if the upgrade gets interrupted or fails for any reason, that file doesn’t get deleted and nobody, including you, can access your blog. No worries, this is (most likely) the simplest fix on Earth.

Removing the Maintenance Message

All you have to do is delete the .maintenance file from the blog root directory. Simple as it gets. After you’ve deleted the files you should be able to access the site just fine, but you may have to run the automatic upgrade again. How do you know if you should run it again? You’ll see a notification on the dashboard page that a new version of WordPress is available…same as you always see when a new upgrade is available. If you don’t see that message, you’re good to go.

Of course, this fix assumes the blog upgrade failure was really just a one-time occurence and not a symptom of a larger problem. If you’ve deleted the file and the automatic upgrade continues to fail, you’ve probably got a larger issue at hand, and that’s a topic far too long to cover in this article.

Top 10 Free Dictionaries for Windows

Online dictionaries are abundant. But their biggest drawback is their dependence on an active internet connection. When the internet connection is down these dictionaries become useless. This is when offline dictionaries come helpful. So here I have compiled 5 popular and very handy free dictionaries for Windows.

1. Wordweb Free Dictionary

Wordweb is probably the best freeware dictionary out there. WordWeb is available as a powerful Pro version and a cut down free version. The free version is used by millions of people from all over the world.

It sits in the system tray and can be launched from within any program. WordWeb integrates into MS Word and gives you a one click access to it from within Word. Apart from definitions, Wordweb shows you synonyms, related words and the root of the words. Wordweb has more than 150 000 words and 120 000 synonym sets.

2. TheSage's English Dictionary and Thesaurus

TheSage's English Dictionary and Thesaurus is a professional software package that integrates a complete dictionary and multifaceted thesaurus of the English language into a single and powerful language reference system.

TheSage allows you to look up words directly from most applications, offering multiple detailed definitions each coupled with its own thesaurus. It has over 145,000 references with multiple detailed definitions (over 200,000) and a complete thesaurus with nearly 1,200,000 relationships between definition. TheSage has a tabbed interface, which is a rage these days, and supports wildcard search which is extremely helpful.

TheSage can look up words directly from almost any program (IE, Word, Firefox, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc ) and is 100% portable.

3. Stardict

Stardict is a free open source dictionary program that allows you to use all those free dictionaries (at the moment more than 200 dictionaries are available). StarDict is just a dictionary shell, so when you download it you have no dictionary that comes along. You have to install dictionaries yourself.

Stardict supports an interesting search concept called Fuzzy query. When you can't remember how to spell a word exactly, you can try StarDict's Fuzzy query. It uses "Levenshtein Edit Distance" to compute the similarity between two words, and gives the match results which are most similar to the word that you input.

4. Everest Dictionary

Everest Dictionary has a total of 35 dictionaries available. It's possible to search words across multiple dictionaries. It also monitors the clipboard; in any program, a simple copy of the word to the clipboard using "Copy" command will launch the automatic search of the word in the dictionary.

5. TranslateIt! Westlanguage

Investigation in the human computer interface is not longevity still. The latest unfolding allows using your mouse to see the intention of words, with no clicks required.

Would you hit upon it convenient if you'd only fool to pass your mouse beyond a word or phrase, and see its elucidation in an instant in a familiar tooltip-cosmopolitanism pop-up? An informal survey expanse frequent e-book readers has shown that for multifarious readers this avant-garde technology of getting recklessly references was a decision-making moneylender on whether or not they would peruse an e-book in a foreign jargon!

The only transformation product that has this technology is TranslateIt! It can be obtained at: http://www.GetTranslateIt.com. With TranslateIt!, you can see the change of words and common phrases by openly moving the mouse outstanding the text.

6. tinySpell

tinySpell is not exactly a dictionary, it's a spell checker. The reason I've included this on my list is because we often look up a dictionary not to learn it's meaning but to check it's spelling, don't we?

Occasionally you need to check spelling in an application that does not include a spelling checker and you don't want to launch your word processor just for that. This is when tinySpell becomes handy. It is a small utility that allows you to easily and quickly check and correct the spelling in any Windows application.

7.1-Click Answers

While this tool is oh-so-helpful in searching for information via Answers.com without interrupting your work, results aren't always only one click away. 1-Click Answers provides two search options: you can enter a keyword or phrase into the Answerbar, a discreet bar that docks on the side of your desktop, or you can use Alt-Click to pull up a small window for a brief summary.

The great thing about 1-Click Answers is that you can search for information directly from an e-mail, a Microsoft Office program, or browser. Our searches never came up empty, and the information on Answers.com was thorough. The Answerbar worked like a charm, yielding quick results each time we performed a search. The Alt-Click function, however, was a disappointment, often producing a blank window that took a few seconds to load. Also, we found ourselves repeatedly hitting Alt-Click. It does give you the option of changing the hot key combo, but you still have to incorporate a mouse click, which didn't help the situation.

8. Lingoes Translator

Lingoes is a dictionary and multi-language translation software providing results in over 60 languages. It offers text translation, cursor translator, index list group and pronouncing text, and abundant free dictionaries as a new generation dictionary and translation software. Lingoes offers users the instant way to look up dictionaries and translation in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and more over 60 languages. With the creative cursor translator, Lingoes automatically recognizes the word and its definition as soon as you move the cursor and point to any text, then press hotkey. It wouldn't disturb your current work.

Lingoes owns full features of current popular commercial software, and creatively develop cross language design and open dictionaries management.

9. MultiTranse

MultiTranse is a simple utility for translating languages. The program impressed us with its speed and accuracy, but it left us wanting just a little more than it provided.

The program's interface was a delight. Not only was the layout intuitive, with its smartly designed command icons, but also it's helpful. A pop-up tip screen walked us through our first translation, completely eliminating any need to seek instruction from the Help file. You simply enter a primary phrase in any of the 24 languages MultiTranse handles--we chose English--and select one of the national flags representing the language you want your words translated into, in much the same fashion as many multilingual Web sites. We only have a basic knowledge of French and Spanish, but we were happy to see our translations accurately converted into those languages in a few seconds. Since we don't know any of the other languages--including Korean, Russian, and many others--we can only hope the program is equally as accurate with those translations. We were disappointed that the program didn't offer any special features, such as an audio pronunciation component. Regardless, this program performed its translations well, and we felt users of any level would be confident with its results.

10. Rhymesaurus Free Edition

This program provides a number of handy tools for working with words, but it also consumes a great deal of system resources. Downloading Rhymesaurus's 50MB installer can take a while, and once the program is on your machine it eats up nearly 100MB of RAM. Although the program's interface is not beautiful, it is simple to understand at first glance. You simply enter a term into the search box, then choose from such options as Dictionary, Thesaurus, and, of course, Rhymes. If you opt for the latter, you'll find all sorts of options for narrowing down the program's list of generated words. For instance, you can specify that Rhymesaurus return straight rhymes, reverse rhymes, homophones, or just terms with assonance and consonance. We can recommend this program to folks who work with words on a daily basis, so long as they have plenty of hard-drive space to spare.

How To Get Your Site or Blog back Into Google If It’s Been Banned

Here’s a five step plan to get your site or blog back into Google if it’s been banned.

1 – Don’t Panic and Wait

If you think you haven’t done anything wrong, the best option is to simply wait it out. Google isn’t perfect and it’s indexing system does have glitches once in a while. I’ve known many webmasters who had their sites disappeared from Google only to show back up a week later.

If you haven’t done anything shady with your blog and find it missing from the Google index, chances are it’s just a glitch and it will return in a week or two. There’s no need to panic and no need to make any changes to the blog. If the blog doesn’t come back after a couple of weeks, then you can start worrying and proceed to step two.

2 – Correct What You Think You Did Wrong

If you think Google dumped you because you did something wrong, then the first thing you have to do in order to get back into the index is to correct the mistake. This is harder than it sounds because Google doesn’t tell you why they de-index a site.

To help webmasters stay on the right side of the tracks, Google created the Webmaster Guidelines. If you’ve been dumped, chances are you’ve violated one or many of those guidelines. It’s up to you to figure which rules you violated and then correct it.

3 – Send a Reconsideration Request

Once you bring your blog back into compliance with the Google Webmaster Guidelines, the next step is to submit a reconsideration request (used to be a reinclusion request). You do this at Google Webmaster Tools.

Fundamentally, Google wants to know two things:

1. The pages that got your site banned are gone or fixed.
2. That this is not going to happen again.

Additional tips from Matt Cutts:

I’d recommend giving a short explanation of what happened from your perspective: what actions may have led to any penalties and any corrective action that you’ve taken to prevent any spam in the future. If you employed an SEO company, it indicates good faith if you tell us specifics about the SEO firm and what they did–it assists us in evaluating reconsideration requests. Note that SEO and mostly-affiliate sites may need to provide more evidence of good faith before a site will be reconsider; such sites should be quite familiar with Google’s quality guidelines.

Don’t bother mentioning that you spend money on AdWords or you’re an AdSense publisher. The person who will look at your reconsideration request doesn’t care if you have a business relationship with Google. Remember, we need to know 1) that the spam has been corrected or removed and 2) that it isn’t going to happen again.

I would request reconsideration for one domain at a time. It looks bad if you had 20+ sites all thrown out at once, and you send a reconsideration request for 20 domains in one email.

It is my belief that the quality and detail of the reconsideration request is the deciding factor on whether Google lets you back in or keeps you out. Chances are a request that reads, “I’m Google compliance now. Please let me back in.” will fall on deaf ears. Here’s a video from Google’s webspam team with more tips on filing a reconsideration request.

4 – Hope And Pray

Once you’ve submitted your reconsideration request, there’s not much to do except hope and pray Google lets you back in. While Google has guidelines for webmasters, there doesn’t seem to be any guidelines on how they decides who gets back in and who stays out.

How long do you have to hope and pray? That depends on when Google reviews your request and on the type of penalty you have. Generally, you’ll be looking anywhere from two to six weeks, and sometimes longer, to have your site reviewed and reconsidered.

5 – Talk To The Man Himself

In the webmaster world, Matt Cutts is The Man. As the head of Google’s webspam team, he can front-line your reconsideration request and get you back into the Google index within a day. If you had no luck working with Google using the normal channels, then the next step would be to talk to the man himself. However, please make sure you corrected whatever got your banned and that your site is 100% Google compliant before trying to contact Matt.

Getting an audience with Matt is easier said than done. You can try to email him (a clever blogger will be able to find the email address) but it may never get to him because of the corporate filtering system. If you want to make sure Matt gets your email, the best way would be to have someone who is on Matt’s “Safe List” facilitate an introduction. That is what I did.

If you don’t know anyone who is on Matt’s contact list, you last chance is to corner him at a trade show. Matt is an extremely fair guy and if he tells you he will look into your case, he will. You just have to decide if it’s worth the expense of attending the show.

7 Ways to See the World Through Twitter’s Eyes

Even though Twitter forces you to limit your thoughts to tiny 140-character bursts, loyal users of the text messaging network still suffer from information overload: There is too much to read, no matter how you cut it.

But maybe there isn’t too much to see.

Twitter circulates a massive volume of minute texts, but your eyes can only take in one text tweet at a time. Images, however, are a different story. You scan a page of them in seconds — to find updates about Iranian protests, planes in the Hudson River, what the food looks like at a certain restaurant, or, of course, who is having a ham sandwich on their porch.

Several utilities exist for posting images to Twitter from computers and cellphones, including Airme, TwitGoo, Twitpic and Yfrog, and others.

But unless you stumble across a given tweet and click through to the image, you can’t see it — or at least, that used to be the case. Luckily, another set of Twitter image utilities is emerging to let you search and browse these images and offer fresh insight into the world around us faster — and often with more depth — than is normally possible by reading text messages on the network.

“Literally, you can communicate a short burst of information about where you are, what you’re doing, what you’re interested in, and what kind of mood you’re in [with an image] — and you can’t say that all in text,” said Mark Levin, CEO and founder of ImageShack’s Yfrog. “Media, for short, quick communication, is very important.”

One of the best utilities is Twitcaps, developed by Jonathan Griggs, who found himself using his own service in a way he never could have predicted after a tornado appeared nearby.

“When we were having tornado warnings in Denver and the warning sirens were going off near my house, my girlfriend and I grabbed the laptop and made way for the basement,” said Griggs in an e-mail. “Once there, I looked up ‘Denver tornado’ on Twitcaps and found images of the funnel cloud moving northeast from Coors field — a good ways to the east of my house. This was far more information than was available from local news sources at the time, and was enough to set us at ease that we were in no immediate danger.”

Following news events in near-real-time is the best use for TwitCaps, he said, followed by the tracking of music, sporting and industry events; finding “aesthetically pleasing” image collections like these sunsets; and watching the image stream on the front of the site. Specifically, he added, people seem to be tweeting an awful lot of pictures of the food they’re eating, as well as, for some reason, spiders.

Snow Leopard is a Twitter trend today, as seen here on Peephole.

Scott Mills, who developed another of our favorite Twitter image viewing tools — the recently released Peephole iPhone app ($2 on on iTunes) — says the Iranian protests inspired the creation of his app. Like so many other technologies, this one stemmed from frustration on the part of a software developer.

“I can’t remember where I was that day [of the Iranian protests], but I wasn’t around my Mac, so I was on the iPhone,” recalled Mills, a co-founder of the Arkansas-based ISP IFWorld and TwitCaps developer Memetix Devworx, by phone. “I was going through clicking on individual tweets, and a lot of times I’d get the same photo — it was just a very long, manual process.

“That’s when the idea hit me — that a few of the technologies I was trying to learn and was playing around with to develop iPhone apps would fit together nicely so that you could just see a bunch of thumbnails all at once and decide which photo looks interesting, and then read the message that went with it. I guess it was just my own frustration at not being able to see the photos easily.”

As more smartphones add video-capture, Yfrog’s Levin says, video is increasingly augmenting the image as a way to get across a great deal of information on Twitter.

And soon, location will become a bigger part of the equation. Twitter plans to make an addition to its API that will allow software to geo-stamp photos before they’re uploaded, according to Mills, meaning that Peephole, TwitCaps and similar programs will be able to search and browse tweeted pics by precise location. (For now, they have to rely on users divulging location in their profile or tweets.)

Even as things stand now, there are already lots of easy ways to see what Twitter sees. Without further ado, here are seven ways to search and browse images on Twitter, in alphabetical order (feel free to visit the comments section to add whatever we may have missed).

• Peephole: This smooth, $2 iPhone app — the only mobile app on this list — lets you view Twitter images in a number of ways: trends, public timeline, nearby users, search, Twitter friends, and favorites.
• PicFog: PicFog offers the image hound a near-real-time photo stream, a breaking-news section (which you can follow on Twitter), searching by text, user or location, retweeting, and ranking by popularity (number of retweets). Its developers concur with TwitCaps’ Griggs, describing the most popular subjects followed as breaking news, weather, conferences/meetups, sports and music.
• Pingwire: By monitoring the images posted to Twitpic, Yfrog, and TwitGoo, the relatively bare-bones Pingwire service also includes a near-real-time feed (which, unlike some of the others, it has the decency to call “almost live”) and a trending-photos section. But it lacks search and many other key features offered by the others.
• Twicsy: This one gives you a near-real-time stream, search, most popular recent images, tag browsing, retweeting, a button for reporting NSFW material, retweeting and an embeddable widget that shows the top images in the past hour.
• Twipho: This Twitter search engine looks a bit like Google — spare, and focused on a search box, with trends underneath.
• TwitCaps: The service offers a near-real-time image stream (with “freeze” and “save” features), search, most popular, trends, location-based searching, filtering by language or image host (it links up directly with their APIs in addition to scraping from Twitter), and a built-in translator, as well as tools for retweeting and sharing by e-mail, IM and so on. The developer said he plans to submit an iPhone app version to iTunes in a month or so.
• Twitc: This is actually an image and video uploading and hosting service for Twitter and other networks, but it offers several tools for seeing visual media other users are tweeting: near-real-time stream, most-viewed, highest-rated, random results, and search by tag.

Internet Web Site Design Made Easy

Part of the challenge is that internet web site design has the usual demands. These include color, shape, layout, and juxtaposition.

One of the biggest limitations is that while what you see is what you get, what others see might not be the same. How a webpage is rendered depends on the kind of computer the end user has, the browser they use, and the settings that the user has on his or her computer.

One of the biggest mistakes is to choose a font that is not standard. It might look great on your machine but on my machine, it can look really bad. It might even show up as odd characters and not as letters at all. This can be disaster for you because not only can the person not read your message, your web site will look dreadful. One of the best fonts for the internet is Verdana and Georgia. These fonts that are considered optimal for internet readability.

Choosing colors is another challenge and some colors that look great together on paper may not look so good on the internet. Just to see what I mean, take a look at a site on your computer and then take a look at that same site on four other computers. You will likely notice a difference in the colors. This is not so obvious in a workplace situation where the computers are likely similar and the monitors are likely similar. However if you look at your friend’s computer and your brother’s computer and the next door neighbor’s computer, the same page may very well look different on each one.

Coming up with the very basics like font and color scheme are easy compared with the other choices. There are decisions to make about whether to use a premade template, to design your own, to use php, css, or tables. What about fancy effects like flash and video and sound?

If you are totally new to internet web site design, then your first step should be to look at sites that are popular and see what you like about them and what makes them well-liked. You will find that the look of the site and the purpose of the site are usually related. The basic Google page, for instance, is no-frills. People who go there are looking for something else and don’t want to spend time admiring Google. They want a nice simple entry into their search.

How I can Guarantee you Quality Links

Linking is a big topic in website promotion today. I think and write about linking quite a bit since venturing into the website business. Mind you, I am an amateur in all respects but I have gained a tremendous amount of experience. (good and bad).

Last month I wrote and published an article titled "Linking - This is it". Do a search on that exact group of words and you will find it at several locations. The point of that article was to identify what we truly should expect to get from good linking and a few little pointers regarding the physical aspect of placing links on our websites. Also I talked about why and how everyone can benefit and receive traffic from good linking practices. Benefits are not limited to the select 10 or 20 that appear in the first two pages of Google.

I need to talk about the practices to get all those quality links that will actually send us traffic. I like to make use of a link finding and link page creation tool. My particular choice is Arelis.

I use it to help find potential links and then I use it to create the link directories and files. I don’t use all the features available. Finding a whole big list of potential partners and sending mass emails just Does Not Work. I let the program find those potential partners and then the real work begins for me. I review every website.

I want to see three things or the site will likely fail. I want to see a clear text link that takes me to the links pages. I want to see a searchable link directory. Directories are usually large now. To have a chance at finding my service or product - that search tool is the biggest tool to accomplish the job. And the next you may wonder about.

I want to be able to submit my link directly from their website. This is the only way that you will guarantee yourself that your link gets to that website. You don’t need to rely on replies from bad email addresses. Have you ever sent out about 100 emails to addresses derived from websites . How many actually produced anything?

I will manually go through the whole list of potential link partners that my link search produced. I might find 8 out of 80 that I except. The remainder gets dumped. This is a bunch of effort but the effort you expend will not be wasted. It will produce a predictable result. That is the first method to develop good links early in your website’s life.

Once you have reached a point where you receive some traffic another capability kicks into gear. You can now move to a link management program that allows visitors to place links on your site directly. Now you can allow direct link submission to your website. There is no advantage to this feature until you are getting some traffic.

All of this might sound like a lot of work. It is a lot of work. It is not a bunch of wasted work though. The results will be predictably positive because you hand picked those links and then you submitted them directly to the partners link directory. This guarantees you a quality linking program.

The Best and Worst Things About Google's Shared Stuff

Google hunters ferreted out a new feature late last night called Google Shared Stuff. The project is obviously far from ready to ship - but it's too late to squabble about that now! I've got high hopes for social bookmarking in general but this particular project may not be worth your time to check out just yet. To save you the time I've kicked the tires and offer below some of the best and worst things about Google Shared Items so far. In the end I've got some thoughts about what Google could do with this service to make it the best social bookmarking service available.

googshare.jpg
The Good News

There are a number of things that Google has done well already. It's hard not to compare this product to Del.icio.us in particular, the Yahoo! acquired product that most people would agree currently dominates the social bookmarking world.

Compared to Del.icio.us, Google Shared Items has great user profiles. No one fills out their del.icio.us profiles and it always drives me nuts. Google has a nice big profile section that screams out for info about you. See mine here. A photo, multiple links associated with your account and more room for text to describe you are all very nice touches.

There's no direct access to cached pages. Furl.net offers a personal copy of every page you bookmark, in case it changes or goes away. Google might not want to get into that, but they have a cached copy of all public pages - why not provide me a link inside my bookmark archive?

Speaking of Del.icio.us and Furl, the team behind Google Shared Items is obviously proud of their "support" for tagging items in Del.icio.us, Furl.net, Facebook, Reddit, Digg and SocialPoster. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually cross post anything, much less to multiple accounts ala OnlyWire. It just links out to your other accounts in a new window. If you want to post to Reddit, you might as well just use a Reddit button and skip Google.

The term label isn't used, "a historical accident" the Google team recently called it, tags are here to stay. There's just an empty field for tagging, though. Did I say this was the good news section?

Finally, though the "article preview" button too often doesn't actually provide a text preview of the article, it is nice. It's a straight rip-off of Facebook's image capture feature, allowing you to flip through the images on the page you're referencing to chose one to associate with that page. To be honest, Facebook borrowed the feature from elsewhere as well.
The Bad News

The worst thing about Google Shared Items is that it doesn't really work. I know that by now, for example, lots of people in my GMail contacts have saved something using the service. They must have. Yet I only see one person's single shared item on the page for friends' items. Likewise, I don't know how to get to any kind of general page, most popular or anything. I'd guess that Google didn't want anyone to use this service yet, but it's live and emailing friends about it is quite prominent.

The private bookmarking option doesn't appear to work yet and the ability to "preview my shared items page with this item on it" is just silly.

I'm sure all of those things will be fixed. Here are some criticisms with more substance.

There's no integration with Google Reader Shared Items. Everyone's mentioned that. There's also no search. It took years before search was integrated with Google Reader.

There's no data export. This is an all-too-typical violation of Google's responsibilities with regard to my data. It's my data, if the option to take my ball off your field and go home isn't available - then I'm not even going to start playing.

The metadata is a mess. The RSS feeds look awful. Item descriptions come through as item titles, there's no easy way to see the actual title of the page or the full URL you're considering clicking through.

Why is all of this going on outside the existing Google Bookmarks service? Perhaps they will be combined at a later date.
Hopes for the Future

You know what Google could do to absolutely blow everyone else out of the water? They could offer an awesome, cross-site recommendation engine. I'd like Google to look at my bookmarks and tell me what I'm missing that people with similar archives have bookmarked. More than that, I want to know who that I don't know has interests similar to mine - and I want to know who is the fastest at finding the items that fit those interests.

Finally, if Google's going to try to play nice with other sites like Del.icio.us, Furl and Facebook (you know all of them are being indexed) then I want these recommendations from users all across all these other sites. Give me that and give me the ability to export my data and I may never use Del.icio.us again. Joshua Schacter, the founder of Del.icio.us, says that a recommendation engine is on its way there (better than before) but who could scale that better than Google?
Summary

All in all, I'm excited that Google is investing more into this space - but it's a pretty tepid engagement so far. I wouldn't recommend spending time on the service until something really groundbreaking happens.

E-mails may cause 150-200 MN euros losses to Romanian companies

Companies in Romania may lose up to 200 million each year because of the lack of control on the way employees use their electronic mail, a release from Gecad Technologies informs. Gecad Tech. is the producer of the Axigen e-mail solution.

The main effect of the incorrect use of the e-mail address is the loss of critical information through intentional or unintentional data leaks, usually due to phishing or social engineering interactions.

Contracts may be lost, or at least the confidence of customers and partners, in ways that eventually lead to compromising the company.

On an international level, some 171 billion e-mails were sent every day in 2006, the level being expected to rise to 196 billion in 2007. Out of these, 73 billions are sent from inside the companies.

A recent study conducted by Proofpoint confirms that e-mails are the main way the critical information leak from companies. At least 20% of the messages exiting the companies' servers present the risk of containing financial, regulatory or juridical information.

HotNews.ro, Jul 26, 2007

Internet Slang Big List

0-9

* 10q
Thank you
* 10x
Thanks
* 1337
From the word Leet, derived from the word elite
* 2
Too, or to
* 2L8
Too late
* 2U2
To you too
* <3
Love (a sideways heart)
* 4
For
* 404
I haven't a clue; from the code for the common "Not Found" HTTP error message
* 4GM
Forgive me
* ?4U
Question for you

A

* AAMOF
As a matter of fact
* ADN
Any day now
* AFAICR/S/T
As far as I can recall / remember / see / tell
* AFAIK
As far as I know
* AFK
Away from keyboard
* AKA
Also known as
* AITR
Adult in the room
* AIUI
As I understand it
* ANFSCD
And Now For Something Completely Different. Used to change the subject of conversation
* ASAP
As soon as possible
* ASL or A/S/L
Age / sex / location
* ATEOTD
At The End of the Day
* ATM
At the moment
* ATYS
Anything you say
* AWA
As well as
* AWOL
Absent Without (Official) Leave
* AYBABTU (also abbreviated as AYB)
All your base are belong to us (from the video game Zero Wing)

B

* borked
Thoroughly broken
* Bai
Bye
* B2B
Business to Business
* BB
Bye bye
* BBIAB
Be back in a bit
* BBIAF
Be back in a few / flash
* BBL/S
Be back later / shortly / soon
* BCNU
Be seein' you
* BF
Boy friend
* BFF
Best friends forever
* BFFL
Best friends for life
* BFN
Bye for now
* BFFN
Best Friend For Now
* Blog
Also known as web log or an online journal
* BOF
Beginning of file
* BOFH
Bastard operator from hell
* BOHICA
Bend Over Here It Comes Again
* Bot
Any type of automated software in chatrooms and web-cataloging software
* Br/BR
Best regards
* BRB
Be right back
* BRT
Be right there
* BS
Backstab / Bullshit
* BSOD
Blue Screen of Death
* BTDT
Been there done that
* BTDTGTTSAWIO
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt and wore it out
* BTW
By the way
* Bump
Increment (For example, C++'s operator.) or a backronym for "Bring Up My Post"
* BW or B/W
Between or black-and-white.

C

* CD9
Code 9
Parents nearby
* CBA
Can't Be Arsed. A term to indicate or dictate laziness.
* chown
Change owner. (used in Unix systems)
* CMIIW
Correct me if I'm wrong
* Crawl
To retrieve a web page along with the hyperlinks that reference it
* Crapplet
A poorly written computer application
* CTN
Can't Talk Now
* CU
See you (later)
* CYA
See ya OR Cover Your Ass
* Cyber (prefix)
A term used to connect the subsequent word loosely to the world of computers or the Internet or sex over a computer
* Cyberspace
Virtual reality, the Internet, the World Wide Web, and other kinds of computer systems. Science fiction author William Gibson popularized the term in his novel Neuromancer. Gibson used the word to describe a virtual world of computer networks that his cyberpunk heroes 'jacked into'

D

* DDG
Drop Dead Gorgeous
* DFTT
Don't feed the trolls
* DGAF
Don't Give A Fuck
* DIAF
Die in a fire
* DILLIGAF/D/S
Does it look like I give a flip / fuck / damn / shit
* DL
Download
* DND
Do not disturb
* DOA
Dead on arrival. Refers to hardware that has never worked.
* DW
Don't Worry.

E

* EOF
End Of File
* EOM
End of Message
* EOL
End of Life. Device or hardware that is at the end of its product life cycle
* EQ
EverQuest
* ETA
Estimated time of arrival, later (especially on blogs), Edited To Add-

F

* FAQ
Frequently Asked Question(s)
* FFS
For fuck's sake
* Flamer
Someone who makes inflammatory, abusive or directly offensive comments. Similar to, but not quite the same as an Internet troll
* FMCDH
From My Cold Dead Hands
* FOAD/FOND
Fuck off 'n'/and die
* FOAF
Friend of a friend
* FP
First Post
* FTL
For the lose / loss
* FTW
For the win / fuck the world
* FU
Fuck you
* FUBAR
Fucked up beyond all recognition / repair
* FUD
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (the purposeful spread of misinformation)
* FWIW
For what it's worth
* FYI
For your information

G

* GBCW
Goodbye Cruel World
a dramatic leave taking of a forum or site
* GBTW
Get back to work
* GF
Great/good fight; or girlfriend
* GFETE
Grinning from ear to ear
* GFY
Good for you
* GG
Good game, used at or near the conclusion of a gaming match, also used to describe a game that is very one sided and therefore considered already over
* GGF
Go Get Fucked
* GIYF
Google is your friend
* GL
Good luck, often used at beginning of a contest
* GLHF
Good luck and have fun
* GJ
Good job
* GMTA
Great minds think alike
* Godwin's Law
Dictates that the longer a thread, the more likely someone will post a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler
* Gratz
Congratulations
* GTH
Go to hell
* GTFO
Get the fuck out OR Get the fuck off
* GTG or G2G
'Got to go' or 'Good to go'
* GR
Gateway Router
* GR8
Great

H

* HAND
Have A Nice Day
* Handle
Name used in online chat, (AKA nick(name), alias, screen/user name)
* HF
Have fun/High-five
* Haxor or H4x0r (1337)
Hacker
* Hit
A request made to the web server, (noun) the results of an internet search, (verb) loading a Web page. Hits are not equivalent to visitors of a webpage.
* Home page
The website's introduction page, starting point, and guide. The technical term is "index"
* Hot list
A collection of publicly available URLs (World Wide Web site addresses), sometimes available as text files.
* HTH
Hope this / that helps, or happy to help
* H8
Hate

I

* IANAL
I am not a lawyer
* IAWTC
I agree with that/this comment
* IBTL
In before the lock
* IDC
I don't care
* IDGAF
I don't give a fuck
* IDK
I don't know
* IHY
I hate you
* IINM
If I'm not mistaken
* IIRC
If I recall / remember correctly
* IIUC
If I understand correctly
* ILY
I love you
* IMO/IMHO/IMNSHO/IMAO
In my (humble / honest / not so humble / arrogant) opinion
* Information superhighway
The Internet (AKA: I-way, infobahn)
* IONO
I don't know
* IOW
In other words
* IRC
Internet Relay Chat
* IRL
In real life
* ISTR
I Seem To Recall
* ITYM
I Think You Mean
* IWSN
I want sex now
* IYKWIM
If you know what I mean

J

* Jaggy
Aliased computer graphics
* JAS
Just a second
* JIC'
Just in case
* JFGI
Just Fucking/Freaking Google It
* JK or j/k
Just kidding, or joke
* JSYK
Just so you know
* JFTR
Just for the records
* JOOC
Just out of curiosity
* JW
Just wondering
* JFK
Just Fucking Kidding

K

* k or kk
OK
* KIR
Keeping it real.
* KISS
Keep it simple stupid.
* KIT
Keep in touch.
* KMA
Kiss my ass
* KOS
Kill on sight
* KOTC/L
Kiss on the cheek/lips.
* KS(ing)
Kill-Steal(ing)
* KTHX
OK, thanks
* KTHXBAI or KTHXBYE
OK, thanks, goodbye, used either to cut short a conversation or to express displeasure with being cut short
* KWIM
Know what I mean?

L

* L2P
Learn to play; an admonishment to new or incompetent video game players.
* L8R
Later (sometimes abbreviated to L8ER); is commonly used in chat rooms and other text based communications as a way of saying good bye.
* Lag
Slang term for slow Internet speeds or high Internet latency; Lag is sometimes due to a server problem, but more frequently due to the connection between client and server. A slow or intermittent connection may often be referred to as laggy
* Lamer
A know-nothing, one who is lame.
* Leet
Often spelled as l33t or 1337 in ASCII form. It originally meant elite
* LFG
Looking for group
* LFM
Looking for more
* LMAO, LMFAO, LMMFAO
Laughing my ass off, laughing my fucking ass off, laughing my mother fucking ass off
* LMIRL
Let's meet in real life.
* LMK
Let me know
* LOL
Laughing out loud, laugh out loud. Occasionally: lots of love, lots of luck
* LOTI
Laughing on the inside
* LTNS
Long time no see
* Lulz
A corruption of LOL, which stands for laugh out loud.
* Lurker
Someone who frequents a Usenet group without participating in discussions
* Luser
Loser + user; an annoying user from the perspective of tech support or a system administrator; also spelled luzer or luzzer.
* LYLAB
Love you like a brother
* LYLAS
Love you like a sister

M

* MMORPG, MMO
Massive Multi-player Online Role Playing Game
* MMOFPS
Massive Multi-player Online First Person Shooter
* MOO
MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) Object Orientated
* MOTD
Message of the day
* MS
Microsoft
* MTFBWY
May The Force be with you
* MUD
Multi-User Dungeon
* MUSH
Multi-User Shared Hallucination
* MYOB
Mind your own business
* M8
Mate

N

* N2M
Not(hing) too much
* N2B
Not too bad
* NE1
"Anyone"
* Newbie, noob, or n00b
An inexperienced user of a system or game, or an annoying person.
* NFW
No fucking way
* NM
(Sometimes written N/M) Not much, Never mind or no message, used on message boards or in e-mails to indicate that everything is already said in the subject line.
* NN
Night night. Used as an alternative for "good night"
* NP
No problem
* NSFW
Not safe for work. Warning about content that may get the viewer in trouble with his employer or co-workers.
* NTY
No, Thank You
* NVM, NVMD, or nm
Nevermind, not much

O

* O RLY
Oh really?
* OH OK
A sarcastic okay
* OIC
Oh, I see
* OFN
Old fucking news
* OMG
Oh, my God
* OMFG
Oh, my fucking God
* OMGWTFBBQ
Oh my God, What the Fuck, Barbecue
* OMW
On my way or Oh my word
* OOC
Out Of Character / Out Of Combat
* OP
Original poster / Operator / Outpost
* OS
Operating system
* OT
Off topic
* OTOH
On the other hand
* OTP
On the phone or One true pairing

P

* P2P
Peer to peer, or pay to play
* P911
Parent emergency (watch what you type)
* PAW
Parents are watching
* PEBKAC
Problem exists between keyboard and chair
* Ping
From the popular network monitoring tool, used as a greeting similar to "Are you there?".
* PITA
Pain in the arse / ass
* PLMK
Please let me know
* plz or pls
Please
* PM
Personal message or private message
* PMJI
Pardon my jumping in
* PMSL
Pissing My Self Laughing
* ::POOF::
Goodbye (leaving the room)
* POS
Piece of shit, parent over shoulder, packet over SONet, or Point of Sale.
* POTS
Plain old telephone service
* POV
Point of view
* PPL
People
* PST
Please send tell
* PTKFGS
Punch the Keys For God's Sake
* pr0n
Intentional misspelling of porn
* PW
Persistent World (gaming)
* pwned or pwnd
Owned

Q

* QFA
Quoted for accuracy. Similar to QFT
* QFT
Quoted for truth, Quit fucking talking
* QT
Cutie.

R

* Rehi (or merely re)
Hello again
* RL
Real Life
* Rly
Really (See also: O rly) />
* RO(T)FL
Rolling on (the) floor laughing
* RO(T)FLMAO
Rolling on (the) floor laughing my ass off
* RO(T)FLOL
Rolling on (the) floor laughing out loud
* RSN
Real soon now (often used sarcastically)
* RTA
Read The Article
* RTFB
Read the fucking binary (or book)
* RTFQ
Read the fucking/fabulous (polite)/freaking (polite) question
* RTFS
Read the fucking source
* RTFM/RTM
Read the (fucking) manual
* RYC
Regarding your comment

S

* S2R
Send to Receive (Used in online chat to request self-pictures)
* SCNR
Sorry, could not resist
* Sim
Simulation
* sk8/sk8r
skate/skater
* Smiley
Another name for emoticons
* SMH
Shaking my head
* SNAFU
Situation normal: all (fucked/fouled) up
* Snail mail
Normal paper mail service
* SOL
Shit Outta Luck
* Spider
The program behind a search engine
* SPYFN
Stop Posting You Filthy Noob, generally the same meaning as GTFO
* Sry
Sorry
* STFU
Shut the fuck up
* STFW
Search the fucking web
* Soz
Sorry
* SU
Shut up
* SWIM
Someone Who Isn't Me
* SYM
Shut your mouth
* SMYLS
Spare me your life story

T

* T4P
Tell for people
* TANSTAAFL
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, from Robert A. Heinlein's novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
* TBF
Time between failures
* TBH, TBQH
To be (quite) honest
* TFTC
Thanks for the Cache, a Geocaching term
* TG
That's great
* TGIF
Thank God it's Friday
* TH(N)X, TNX or TX
Thanks
* TIA
Thanks in advance
* TINC
There Is No Cabal, a term discouraging conspiracy theories
* TISNF
This is so not fair
* TL;DR
Too Long; Didn't Read, an admonishment that a post is too lengthy or lacks worthwhile content
* TMI
Too much information
* TOS
Terms of service
* TTBOMK
To the best of my knowledge
* TTFN
Ta ta for now
* TTT
To the top, used in forums to bump a thread
* TTTH
Talk to the hand
* TTYL
Talk to you later (also spelled TTUL, T2UL or T2YL)
* TTYS
Talk to you soon
* TTYTT
To Tell You The Truth
* Tweedler
One who has deep love for all computer related technology and gadgets
* TWIMC
To Whom It May Concern
* TY or Thx
Thank you
* TYT
Take your time
* TYVM
Thank you very much
* TPW
Top Post Whore

U

* U, Ur
You, your, you're
* UTFSE
Use the fucking search engine

V

* VB(SE)G
Very big (shit-eating) grin.
* VEG/S
Very evil grin/smile.
* Vlog
Video blog
* VWG/S
Very wicked grin/smile.

W

* w00t, w00T or WOOT
First two express exuberance, and the last is a backronym for the term "We Own the Other Team".
* W/ or W/O
With or without
* WB
Welcome back
* WBU
What 'Bout (about) You
* WD
Well Done
* W/E
Whatever
* WP
Well Played
* WRT
With respect / regard to
* WRUD
What are you doing?
* WTB
Want to buy
* WTF
What the fuck
* WTG
Way to go
* WTH
What the hell, What the heck
* WTS
Want to sell
* WTSHTF
When The Shit Hits The Fan
* WTT
Want to trade
* WUG
What you got?
* WUBU2
What (have) you been up to?
* WUU2
What (are) you up to?
* WUW
What you want?
* WWJD
What would Jesus do?
* WYSIWYG
What you see is what you get
* W8
Wait

Y

* Y
Why
* YA RLY
Yeah Really (invariably preceded by "O RLY")
* YHBT
You have been trolled.
* YHL
You have lost
* YKW
You know what?
* YMMV
Your mileage may vary.
* YT
You there?
* YTMND
You're The Man Now, Dog
* YW
You're welcome.
* YOYO
You're On Your Own.
* YOYOW
You own your own words.

Z

* ZOMG (sometimes OMGZ)
A variation of OMG (Oh my Gosh/God) used to indicate extreme excitement

Better than Google? Creator thinks so

Google is keeping a close eye on a small, suburban Melbourne start-up that claims to be developing a search engine that improves on the world leader.

MyLiveSearch, which plans to go live as a public beta in a few weeks, is the brainchild of self-taught software developer Rob Gabriel.

Mr Gabriel, 35, says his search engine gives better, more relevant results than the search king because it is a truly "live" search.

Google's search engine works by building a vast index of web pages, via automated "spiders" that crawl through billions of web pages a year. However this represents only a fraction of the enormous, sprawling internet, and the index can never be entirely up to date.

Yahoo! search and (despite its name) Microsoft's Live search work the same way.

MyLiveSearch is fundamentally different. It works through a small browser plug-in. The search terms are put through Google, or other indexed search databases, but those results are treated as "starting points" alongside the user's bookmarks and other popular web hubs.

From there, the live search takes over, crawling through hundreds of web pages connected to those starting points in search of more information relevant to the search.

Mr Gabriel says the results come back in seconds, and are almost always richer, more detailed and more useful than a standard, index-based search. His product can also search the so-called "invisible web" of dynamically-generated web pages that search engines have trouble indexing.

"This has the potential to change the way people search the internet," he said. "Google can't search every page every day (to build its index). The web is so dynamic and changes so often - MyLiveSearch turns your own computer into a 'super-spider' to search it in real time.

"This technology could be snapped onto any of the major search engines and improve them."

A Google business development representative has met with the MyLiveSearch team at least twice - once when the technology was at a very early stage, and again last week after Next made inquiries about Google's interest in the project.

Google did not want to comment on MyLiveSearch, except in general terms.

"We're really keen to support Australian developers and IT entrepreneurs," spokesman Rob Shilkin said. "Google Maps was a small Aussie start-up. And Google itself started as two guys in a garage."

The company has a history of acquiring technology that might help a competitor. In April last year Google bought the rights to an advanced text-search algorithm invented by University of NSW student Ori Allon. Mr Allon, 26, was given a job at Google's headquarters at Mountain View, California.

via brisbanetimes.com.au

101 Essential Blogging Resources

With the amount of tools and programs cropping up all over the web for every type of person imagineable, its about time that someone wrote a massive list of resources for bloggers. Fortunately, I’ve taken up that responsibility to share with you some of the tools I use in my daily blogging life. Please note that by no means is this a definitive list, so please let me know if you think I’ve missed any out !

Domain Registrars

If you’re starting up on the web, then you’re gonna need an address where people can reach you:

1. Namecheap - $8.88 per year with free WhoisGuard
2. GoDaddy - $8.95 per year (and lower)
3. 1&1 - $5.99 per year with free private domain registration
4. MyDomain - $8.25 per year

Hosting
Once you’ve got yourself an address, you’re gonna need a house to store all of your juicy blog posts - so grab yourself some server space:

1. Dreamhost - Great plans, great prices with loads of bandwidth and diskspace.
2. Frozen Webhost - Small company but only $5/month and very reliable.
3. Media Temple - Awesome recommendations, grid and dedicated hosting.
4. Rackspace - Managed, dedicated and scalable web hosting for businesses
5. Hostgator - Shared hosting at $6.95 per month

Content Management Systems
These babies are the core of your blog, so choose carefully. Take pricing, customisation and aesthetics into account for this one:

1. Wordpress - The industry standard and most widely used - and its FREE!
2. Blogger - quick blog creation, but FTP can be slow and you don’t have full control
3. Typepad - another blogging platform, but pricing from $4.95/month
4. Joomla - CMS and Web Application Framework and free

Communication
If you want to be a proper blogger, you’ve gotta communicate with your fans. Instant Messaging and Email are the quickest and easiest ways to do so:

1. Gmail - Free web-based email service that includes over 2 GB of storage (and growing)
2. Hotmail - Free web-based e-mail with 2GB e-mail storage
3. Yahoo Mail - Free web-based email with unlimited mail storage
4. Outlook - Email manager which can be used with MS Exchange Server for shared mailboxes
5. Windows Live Messenger - Instant messaging program, talk to Yahoo contacts as well!
6. AIM - AOL Instant Messenger, free online chat service
7. Gtalk - Instant communication in conjunction with Gmail
8. Yahoo Messenger - Free instant messaging with file sharing
9. Basecamp - Project collaboration, management and task software
10. Campfire - Real-time group chat for businesses
11. GoToMeeting - Web conferencing and online meetings service
12. Thunderbird - Open source cross platform email from Mozilla

Research
To be the best, you’ve got to overcome the rest, so find out what your competitors are doing, and beat their blogs at their own game:

1. Whois - Domain and registration name lookup
2. Overture - Keyword selector and traffic analysis tool
3. Google Bid Analysis - Keyword Bid Tool in conjunction with Adwords
4. Wordze - Keyword research tool from $35/month
5. Firefox Search Status Extension - see how any and every website is performing
6. SEO for Firefox - Useful research and data, with loads of other tools

Customisation
Standing out from the crowd is very important in this growing blogosphere. Take a look at these tools to help you and your blog look fine:

1. Wordpress Themes - Collection of free Wordpress themes with graphical and textual preview
2. Template Monster - Premium Wordpress themes from $50
3. Dreamweaver - Web development and streamlined coding environment
4. Adobe Photoshop CS3 - Image editing software from $649
5. iStockPhoto - Royalty free images
6. FlashDen - Buy stock flash, video, audio and fonts for as little as 50 cents
7. FamFamFam - Sets of icons available for use free of charge
8. Adobe Illustrator - Leading vector-graphics software
9. Filezilla - Fast and reliable FTP client
10. Cyberduck - Secure FTP for MAC OS X
12. psd2html - Online conversion service - does what it says on the tin!

Statistics
Track your blog’s every move with these statistics packages so you know what you’re doing right and what you should be spending some more time on:

1. AWStats - Free log analyser, normally already in your Hosting Cpanel
2. Statcounter - Free yet reliable web tracker and hit counter
3. Sitemeter - Free basic counter and site statistics tracker
4. Google Analytics - Trendy interface with detailed site statistics, integratable with Adwords campaigns
5. Feedburner - Manage and track RSS Feed Readership
6. Mint - Extensible website analytics program, all on 1 page!
7. 103Bees - Search engine traffic analysis and statistics tool
8. pMetrics - The new Performancing Metrics with detailed visitor information and clean interface

Creating Posts
Your articles are the things that will matter the most above all else. So take the time to spell-check and to make sure that they look presentable:

1. ScribeFire - full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser
2. Spellbound Spell Checker - Firefox extension that enables spell-checking
3. Microsoft Word - Industry standard word processor
4. Adobe Reader - PDF file reader
5. SlimTimer - Time tracking
6. Ta-Da Lists - Simple list making and tracking

Ranking
When it comes down to the crunch, you’ve gotta be the best. So find out if you are with the following ranking tools:

1. Technorati - The Internet Search Engine for blogs, provides popularity and authority ranks
2. BlogTopSites - Directory of the Best Blog sites
3. Alexa - Traffic rankings and graphs (sometimes can be inaccurate)
4. Live PageRank - Displays current Pagerank Value in Google index

Feedreaders
In order to build a solid readership, you’re gonna have to do some reading yourself. Using a feedreader can cut down on the time you spend going from site to site, and you can have one place where all the latest articles will appear:

1. Google Reader/Homepage - Web-based RSS and News Aggregator
2. Bloglines - A web-based personal news aggregator that can be used in place of a desktop client
3. Newsgator - Free online RSS reader
4. NetNewsWire - Award winning RSS Reader for MAC
5. Socialist - Social bookmark manager that works with del.icio.us and RSS feeds
6. FeedDemon - RSS Reader for Windows Desktop
7. NetVibes - Personal news aggregator with RSS and Atom support

Social Media
Using social networking can help market your site to a big audience which is essential for your blog’s growth. Spend some time networking yourself and submit your best articles to find more readers:

1. Digg - Stories and submitted and voted to the front page by the community
2. Del.icio.us - A social bookmarks manager. Using bookmarklets, you can add bookmarks to your list and categorize them
3. StumbleUpon - Channel surf the internet with the StumbleUpon toolbar, can be a huge source of traffic
4. Reddit - User-generated news links. Votes promote stories to the front page
5. MyBlogLog - Free site stats, and a cool widget to find out who’s been visiting your site
6. LinkedIn - Online network of 11 million experienced professionals (including bloggers)
7. Facebook - One of the fastest growing social networking sites on the net
8. Myspace - Free social networking which has blogging capabilities and ability to attract a lot of friends!
9. Squidoo - Set up your own lense (sub-site) and spread the word about your blog

Monetization and Advertising
Whether you want to or don’t, blogs can be a fantastic way to make a bit of dosh, so check out the following ways you can earn yourself some cash online:

1. Google Adsense and Adwords - Contextual advertising solution and make money through Pay-Per-Clicking
2. Adbrite - Webmasters can buy and sell text ads based on their site’s topic area
3. Yahoo Publishers Network - Contextual advertising with PPC online revenue stream
4. Text Link Ads - Sell static HTML links on your blog sidebar and post for $$/month
5. Kontera - In-Text Advertising on Cost-Per-Click basis
6. Chitika - CPC Revenue due to displaying of related products
7. BlogAds - Image and Text Ads for set prices per month
8. Amazon Associates - Link to Amazon products and earn a commission from 10% per product
9. Commission Junction - An online advertising and internet marketing company that specializes in performance-based affiliate programs
10. ReviewMe - Review products/websites and receive a flat-fee. Reviews must be nonbiased and stated as sponsored
11. Feedvertising - Sell links in your RSS Feed for set rice per month
12. BidVertiser - Make money from your Website or Blog with BidVertiser

Blogs and Forums
These blogs are forums are must-reads for every aspiring blogger, so take some time to browse through the archives and read some threads to make sure that you’ve got all the knowledge about your field and your blog:

1. Problogger - the No.1 site about blogging
2. Daily Blog Tips - Focusing on blog promotion, monetization and optimization
3. Blog Herald - Premium source of blog and blogging related news for bloggers
4. John Chow - This guy makes a lot of money through his blog online. Articles especially on monetization
5. Digital Point - Sub-forum related to blogging with other areas on SEO and Optimization
6. Namepros - Buy, sell and discuss domain names
7. Sitepoint - Web design tutorials and a buzzing community and marketplace
8. Earners Forum - Full of online earners and blogging money makers
9. DoshDosh - A blog about making money online through affiliate marketing and advertising and social media

Miscellaneous
And finally, here’s all the other tools that wouldn’t in any of the above categories:

1. Paypal - The best way to send and receive money online
2. Nochex - UK Based online payment company
3. Escrow - Third party which protects buyer and seller in larger transactions (blog sales?!)
4. WorldPay - Offers a range of e-payment and e-commerce solutions
5. CreativeCommons - You need to protect your articles!
6. Ezine Articles - Article submission website for PR and authority
7. ArticlePR - Article submission tools
8. PRWeb - Press Release Distribution for small business
9. Six Figure Blogging - Blogging course made by Problogger Darren Rowse himself and Andy Wibbels
10. SEO Book - Aaron Wall’s famous Search Engine Optimization book
11. Blog Mastermind - Yaro Starak’s blog mentoring program

The idea for this post came from FreelanceSwitch’s awesome post on 101 Essential Freelance Resources and graphic was designed by JetPacked.

via blogtrepreneur.com

Microsoft eyeing deal to buy Yahoo: report

EW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. has intensified its pursuit of a deal to take over Yahoo Inc., asking the company to re-enter formal talks, the New York Post reported on its Web site on Friday.

While the two companies have held informal deal talks over the years, the latest approach signals a new urgency on Microsoft's part, the paper said, citing unnamed sources.

The approach follows an offer Microsoft made to buy Yahoo a few months ago, the Post reported, but Yahoo spurned the advances.

The Post said Wall Street sources put a roughly $50 billion price tag on Yahoo.

Microsoft and Yahoo could not immediately be reached for comment.

Sursa: reuters.com

Google has its first consultant for Romania

Google, the main Internet search engine, announced on Wednesday the naming of its first consultant for Romania. The company's choice was Radu Tudorache, former manager in the National Communication Regulation Agency (ANRC). Google didn't offer any clear information on Tudorache's future activity.

Radu Tudorache has a long experience in telecomm economy and management. He formed and led on of the ANRC divisions and was named between 2006 and 2007 economic regulation manager of the Agency.

Tudorache has a license in business management, graduating the Bucharest Economic Science Academy classes. He also holds an MBA diploma from the French Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (CNAM) in Paris.

HotNews.ro, Mar 28, 2007

Yahoo Mail Offers 'Infinite' Storage for 10-year Anniversary

Yahoo Mail reportedly will start to offer unlimited storage as it reaches its 10th anniversary in May. On one of the company's blogs, John Kremer, the vice president of Yahoo Mail, wrote:

"I’m the lucky one who gets to announce that we will begin offering everyone unlimited email storage starting in May 2007."

Google Inc., Yahoo's archrival, rolled out its Gmail service several years ago with an initial capacity of 1G byte per user. That capacity has steadily expanded over time and now exceeds 2.5G bytes. Yahoo Mail, which launched in 1997 with 4MB of storage, upgraded to 100MB of storage shortly after Google's Gmail announcement, bumped it up to 250MB in late 2004, and then up to 1GB in 2005. Windows Live Mail offers 2 Gbytes of storage. MSN Hotmail offers 1 Gbyte for its free plan.

Dave Nakayama, the developer of RocketMail, which Yahoo acquired, is quoted by Kremer as saying: “I remember getting in a room to plan our RocketMail launch over a decade ago and worrying that our original plan of a 2MB quota wasn’t enough, and that we needed to be radical and DOUBLE the storage to 4MB per account! It’s ironic that I routinely send and receive individual mail attachments bigger than that now. Our total capacity for mail accounts back then was 200GB for all of our customers. At Yahoo!, we’re now receiving more inbound mail than that every 10 minutes.”

Yahoo Mail is the largest web mail service in the world, with approximately 250 million users, according to comScore Media Metrix. Next is Microsoft's version and then Gmail comes in third.

Kramer further cautions: "like any responsible webmail service, we have anti-abuse limits in place to protect our users," but doesn't give any details. A Yahoo spokesperson contacted by InformationWeek also declined to elaborate.

"We do have controls in place to ensure that people benefit from the unlimited storage feature, but are not able to abuse the system," the Yahoo spokesperson said to IW in an e-mail. "Our anti-abuse limits are there to monitor suspicious activity and to ensure our users have a safe, efficient and reliable Web mail experience. As always, we will require users to abide by the Yahoo Terms of Service. I do not have any other details to share with you at this time."

It's hard to say how the current capacity meter at Yahoo Mail will measure a percent of infinity, so that's probably going to go. Which also makes you wonder when that beta interface is going to reach final development. It's been around since September 2005. Maybe they waited to mark their 10th anniversary with that, too.

Premium users, like me, who now receive 2GB storage and other benefits (such as POP access) for an annual fee of $19.95, won't receive a refund when everyone gets unlimited space. "This does not change our premium e-mail strategy. People upgrade to our premium product for many reasons, with storage being just one of them." I have to agree, the only reason I pay the 20 bucks is so that I can get by e-mail through a POP client.

All things being equal, I can hardly see why Yahoo's announcement would be a big deal. I don't need INFINITE storage. I just need a large enough storage so it doesn't restrict my e-mail activity. There's no such thing as infinite storage, anyway. A real useful feature would have been something like their premium features: anti-spam aliases, POP access, etc.

"Sounds like a future without limits. Beats a slice of birthday cake, eh?" Actually, no, and no.

18 sites with Google PageRank 10

La pregunta es ¿Cómo lo logran?, y las respuestas serían muchísimas, pero es curioso saber que de los muchísisisimos sitios que existen en toda la red, solamente 18 tengan un PageRank 10, la mayoría ya los conocemos, pero por ahí se han colado algunos que nunca había escuchado, juzguen ustedes mismos:

Vía: En la Tierra Media

• Adobe.com - Adobe Systems, casa de software
• Apple.com - Apple Computer, also houses the iTunes Music Store
• Blogger.com - Blogger, a weblog publishing tool
• CSAIL - MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
• Energy.gov - Departamento de Energía de Estados Unidos
• ERCIM.org - European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics
• FirstGov.gov - U.S. government portal
• Google.com - Google, buscador y el que asigna el PageRank
• Keio.ac.jp - Keio University, Tokyo, Japan
• Macromedia.com - Macromedia, casa de Software, pertenece a Adobe
• NASA.gov - NASA, U.S. government agency for the space program and aerospace research
• NSF.gov - National Science Foundation, U.S. government, Agencia de investigación científica agency for scientific research
• NYTimes.com New York Times, sitio de Noticias
• Real.com - RealPlayer, music, video, games
• StatCounter.com - tracking service
• W3.org - World Wide Web Consortium
  • http://validator.w3.org/
  • http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
• WebStandards.org - Web Standards Project
• Whitehouse.gov - The White House

Por cierto, recomiendo mucho el clon de menéame que han hecho en WoxBlog, de nombre Noticias WoxBlog, uno se encuentra con notas muy buenas, al igual que en Chido

via Blogultura

Firefox - Advanced Settings

General

Always use the cursor keys to navigate within pages: When ticked you can use the arrow keys on the keyboard to move the cursor on the current web page. You can then use the SHIFT key along with the arrows to highlight portions of text. This is the same as if you were using the mouse by highlighting portions of text with the mouse cursor and using the left mouse button to begin/end selections. Set to suit your tastes, however note that firstly you may have to click on a portion of a site to initiate the cursor, and secondly, if enabled this option may force a flashing cursor to appear on many web pages even without being clicked on, which can be annoying.

Search for text when I start typing: If ticked, this option allows you to initiate a search in Firefox simply by typing one or more letters. That is, if you start typing the search box automatically appears at the bottom of the screen and accepts your input for a new search. If unticked, you will have to press the Find shortcut key (usually F3 or CTRL+F) to open the search box. I suggest you tick this option to begin with, and if you find it annoying then untick. See the Customizing Firefox and Advanced Tweaking sections for more details of ways to speed up searching.

Use autoscrolling: If ticked this option enables Autoscroll – this lets you scroll the page quickly by holding down the middle mouse button and moving your mouse up or down. I suggest ticking it initially, then untick it if you find it annoying.

Use smooth scrolling: If ticked, Firefox uses Smooth Scrolling. This means that when the page scrolls up or down, it doesn’t jump from one place to another – it scrolls slightly more slowly, allowing your eyes to track your existing position to its new spot. Ticking this option makes reading long passages of text (such as this page) easier. However it can also make some pages seem ‘laggy’, so keep this in mind and disable it if it makes your browsing feel less responsive.

Check my spelling as I type: A new feature of Firefox 2.0 is the built-in spell checker. If this option is ticked, the spell checker will automatically check the spelling of text entered in any text input boxes on the screen and underline in red any words which are misspelled. You can then right-click on the word to see suggested spellings and select one, or you can add the word to the current dictionary used. For the most part I recommend that you enable this option, as it is very useful. The dictionary used depends on the particular version of Firefox you’re using. This feature may slow down browsing on pages which have a text input box filled with a vast amount of text, but for the most part there is negligible performance impact. For more tips on using this feature, see the Basic Tips & Tricks section

Languages: Some (not all) web pages offer different language versions which display by default when you view them. Add/Select which language you want pages to display with by default if they offer such an option. Remember that if you want a different language version of Firefox, for correct spell checking for example, you need to install the appropriate version to begin with (See The Basics section above).

Network
Connection: This setting is very important, and if you need help configuring it correctly contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP). If configured incorrectly you will have problems accessing web pages and/or you may have relatively slow loading of pages. Click the Settings, and for most people, the ‘Direct connection to the Internet’ option is the recommended one. However if you are behind a Proxy – which is normal for networked computers for example – then select the ‘Auto-detect proxy settings for this network’. This choice might also be preferable if you don’t know whether you are or aren’t behind a
proxy. If possible, check this with your ISP or Network Administrator. If you are definitely behind a proxy, it is recommended that you manually specify your proxy settings for even better performance, but once again you require specific information from your ISP or Network Admin to do this.

Cache: The browser cache is a location on your hard drive where Firefox holds website elements such as images, text, ads etc. This speeds up browsing, because when you revisit these sites, the cached version of the unchanged elements are loaded from your hard drive as opposed to having to redownload them again over the Internet. It is best to make the cache size not too large so that it takes a while for Firefox to search through it to retrieve the right elements, and not too small so that it is constantly being overwritten by new information. I suggest something like 80MB as a good compromise value for everyone. I don’t recommend the cache be any larger than 100MB – unless you have a very fast hard
drive; and no smaller than 10MB – unless you have a very fast Internet connection combined with a very slow hard drive. See the Customizing Firefox section for more details about the Browser Cache.

Update
Automatically Check for Updates to: Here you have the option of enabling Firefox’s automatic update checker. If you tick the Firefox box, Firefox will periodically check for Firefox updates and tell you if it has found a new version of itself. If you tick the ‘Installed Add-ons’ box, Firefox will periodically check for updates to your currently installed extensions and themes and let you know when new versions of those are available. The ‘Search Engines’ option checks for updates to the built in search engines in Firefox. I suggest you tick all three of these options so that you can be reminded of updates in case you don’t manually check regularly. You should always run the latest version of Firefox software and any add-ons to ensure maximum security and stability with Firefox, and with the built-in updating features of Firefox, installing updates is quick and easy and doesn’t require manually downloading separate files.

When Updates to Firefox are Found: If you enable the automatic updates checker, you can choose here what Firefox should do when it finds an update. You can either force it to ‘Ask me what I want to do’, or allow it to ‘Automatically download and install the update’. I commend the first option, so that you can choose when to install updates at the most appropriate time, so as not to interfere with other downloads or applications using your Internet connection. If you don’t want the automatic update checker to do its job, untick all the automatic update options, and to manually check for updates at any time, regularly visit the Firefox Home Page, the Firefox Extensions Page, and the Firefox Themes Page. However this is generally not recommended.

Encryption
Protocols: The options here are ‘Use SSL 3.0′ and ‘Use TLS 1.0′. I recommend that you tick both options, as they use appropriate security protocols (SSL is Secured Sockets Layer and TLS is Transport Layer Security) to ensure secure transmission of data over the Internet. If you encounter any difficulties with a particular website, then untick ‘Use SSL 3.0′ first, then ‘Use TLS 1.0′. If you still have difficulties, avoid using the site for entering sensitive data, as all sites should support SSL 2.0.

Certificates
When a web site requires a certificate: This setting determines how Firefox reacts to a request by a website to present a Certificate. Certificates are used to verify identity and/or provide authorization for secure transmissions. You should always select ‘Select one automatically’ to allow Firefox to determine the appropriate Certificate to present. If you know what you are doing or you are having difficulties accessing certain secure sites, you may wish to select ‘Ask me every time’ and manually select a Certificate.

View Certificates: Clicking this button brings up a box which allows you to add or remove various types of Certificates – those which are yours, those of others, those of web sites you visit, and those of authorities which verify certificates. In general you shouldn’t need to change these settings unless you know what you’re doing.

Revocation Lists: CRL is your Certificate Revocation List – a list of Certificates which are no longer valid. Firefox can use such a list if you need to add one, however as with the other Certificate options in Firefox, this is not something you need to adjust unless you are familiar with this functionality.
Verification: OCSP is the Online Certificate Status Protocol, another tool to determine the validity of a Certificate. If you require advanced security, you can enable OCSP by selecting the ‘Use OCSP to validate only certificates that specify an OCSP service URL’, or if you want even more advanced security select ‘Use OCSP to validate all certificates using this URL and signer’, then select the service to use. I strongly recommend you leave OCSP on the ‘Do not use OCSP for certificate validation’ setting otherwise you may run into problems.

Security Devices: Clicking this button allows you to manage the tools which give you secure access. There are two which are built into Firefox, but you can manage or use others which are installed on your system. Once again there is no need to change these settings unless you know what you’re doing. The next section provides a range of basic – but important – tips and tricks you can use to improve your Firefox experience quickly and easily. These are perfect for the beginner and advanced user alike.

Source : Firefox Tweak Guide / Plugins & Themes