Apple, Google Race for Internet TV Technology

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The old Apple TV will be replaced by iTV.

Top technology giants Apple and Google are both racing to get their own versions of an Internet TV appliance out to the market before the end of 2010 (if not early the following year). Apple's iTV is silently buzzing around the rumor mills while the Google TV already has a presentation preview over at their Google TV website.

These new platforms will definitely change the way people experience television. You can think of it as the latest upgrade to TV since cable or TiVo. Apple is reported to launch iTV in September with a $99 price tag while Google TV is slated for release by the fall of 2010.

Although the concept of Internet television is nothing new, competition between Apple and Google is expected to raise interest for the products going into the holiday season. This is completely different from simply hooking up your computer to the TV via HDMI cable. A rough analogy would be having Apple and Google taking the place of cable and satellite television providers through your ISPs. This also opens up fresh advertising opportunities for companies and of course, more revenue for these top tech titans.

This is going to be a wild new frontier for television in the years ahead. So, will your next TV run on Apple's iOS or Google's Android? Share your comments after the video.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Apple and Google Battle for Your Remote (thenextweb.com)
• Kevin Rose - blogg - Why Apple's iTV Will Change Everything (dccrowley.posterous.com)
• Should You Buy Google TV or Wait for the New Apple TV to Launch? (nytimes.com)

PrizeLive - Play, Win, Enjoy!

If you're looking for a new way to whittle away the time while you're online, drop by Prizelive.com. Play games, win prizes and earn some cash in the process. Not a bad way of marking the minutes as you do your other tasks on the Web.

Everything you do on Prizelive earns you points which you can use to play premium games and contests or swap for cash. The other good thing about Prizelive is its members. The Prizelive community is very active with everyone contributing to help out a Prizelive fellow. Build your buddy list and connect with old and new friends as you continue to build up your points and game credits.

So go and hang-out at Prizelive -- Where it pays to have a good time!

Buzzing The Buzz

Google's Buzz service is clearly hyped to counter the dominance of Facebook in the realm of the Social Web. Their site's main page states "Go beyond status messages" -- an obvious reference to the once obscure social networking website, which is now the top Internet phenomenon ranking a threatening second to Google's number one spot.

While competition usually breeds good things for the rest of the population one can't help but wonder whether all these buzzing (intended or not, the pun is there; deal with it) would actually amount to anything beneficial. What is buried under the trillions of posted messages is the online advertising dollars at stake. Clearly, economic advantage is what these networks are fighting tooth and nail over.

Quick to the draw are the privacy groups crying foul to the launch of Google Buzz. Previously the default settings on Buzz was too revealing for most people's need for privacy. Every Gmail contact signing up to Buzz were automatically set to follow and was available for the rest of the world to see. While Google has since made changes to Buzz's default setting to incorporate such privacy concerns, many are still wary that the latest social networking service is just too square a peg to fit in a round hole.

Personally, I signed up for Gmail for the email service and I simply love it. And if it weren't for the ease of keeping in touch with my football team I wouldn't even have the need to sign up for Facebook. My first impression of Buzz is that Google's attempts at making an email service look and act like a social networking service is just too darn clumsy. I didn't know what to make of it other than being an aggregator. Buzz's claim of going beyond status messages by posting photos and links and what-nots... well, you can do that in Facebook already.

If there's anything that can be learned in favor of Buzz at this point in time it's this; I realized that the people I email are not necessarily the same people I want to constantly keep in touch with. One cannot simply override the differentiation of social circles -- families, close friends, acquaintances, business contacts -- by simply trying to integrate one technology platform with another.

Google Chrome: Reinventing The Browser

Internet technology giant Google recently released the beta version of their latest effort towards Web dominance which they call "Chrome". Google Chrome is being touted as the next generation Internet browser designed from the ground up to accommodate the future of Rich Web Applications. With Google Chrome now available, Google seems intent on placing itself firmly as the leader in providing web-based applications.

Explaining their motivation for creating Google Chrome, the development team at Google had this statement posted at the Google Chrome download site.

...We needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.

Google started out as an indexed search engine in the late 1990's. Today it provides dozens of Web apps from the online email service Gmail, to the Google Docs and Spreadsheets, the Picasa Web Albums, the Orkut social networking site, and online video platforms Google Videos and YouTube, just to name a few. Oh, and by the way (put sheepish grin here), Google also runs the web logging platform Blogger also (duh).

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Keeping that in mind, it is easy to see where they are going with this new Web browser. the folks at Google Chrome say that they have built "the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex web applications much better." It is also claimed that they have developed new methods to power future web applications, which are not at all feasible with the Web browsers existing today.

Without going into a detailed review, some of the new features of Google Chrome include the Dynamic Tab, Crash Control and the Incognito Mode. All in all these features aim to serve up an easy and secure browsing experience centered on getting users off locally installed desktop applications and to have them avail of the growing number of online users for their various Web applications. 

There are certainly more to come from Google Chrome in the months and years ahead. Currently, Google Chrome is a beta release so expect some bugs and issues to appear. Learn more about Google Chrome's many features and other stuff about the Web at our partner blog Sandbox Central.

Catch the Olympic Fever

With only less than 3 days left before the biggest and grandest sporting spectacle the world has ever seen, just about everybody on the Web is all in wild anticipation about the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Mark that date if you haven't yet, 08-08-08.

To get you sprinting off to everything Olympics here are some smashing sites that are right on target to pole vault your online experience of the Games of the 29th Olympiad.

www.olympic.org

If you want to dive right into what the Olympics is all about, this is the official website of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). When I first visited this site about a year ago, it was more of a corporate presentation. Although, it contained a very rich history about the Olympic games (and still does), it was back then somewhat in the doldrums.

Now, it is a very interactive resource for all things Olympic -- from an exhaustive database of all Olympic records and medalists since its 1896 beginnings, to the most current news about the Beijing 2008 Summer Games. There is a digital magazine called the Olympic Express that's very informative. Then if you want to learn more about the basic rules of the various Olympic events, browse over to the Sports Animations section and go over the games in a flash (pun intended; you will need Adobe Flash to watch the presentations).

Then if you want a taste of the competitive Olympic spirit, try out the Olympic Mini Games. Its a fun preview of the Sega video game Beijing 2008. You can rack up scores in three events -- archery, weightlifting and diving. Then see how you fared against the best mouse-clickers in the world. I tried my hand at the archery event (see accompanying image). Though I had a perfect 10/10, I only ranked 159. Not bad for a first try though.

There's more to explore at the Olympics.org website. Be sure to check out the stunning multimedia gallery and the Olympics quiz contest for a chance to win the Beijing 2008 video game.

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The Beijing 2008 Official Website

This is your ultimate web destination to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Know the news, view the sights, swim in the intricate details that surround this enigmatic event, the biggest ever Olympics in Asia.

Follow the footsteps of the most controversial Olympic torch relay in history, one that was marred by protests at every major city in its world route and even scaled the heights of the highest spot on Earth at Mt. Qomolangma (Everest). See blogs contributed by common folk at My Olympic Story, showcasing their interest and passion for the Olympics.

Discover the feats of engineering that transformed Beijing to become Olympics central this year. Enter the infamous National Stadium or "Bird's Nest", and the magical "Water Cube" that is the National Aquatics Center.

www.nbcolympics.com

Watch the 29th Olympiad online through NBCOlympics.com. This is the first live Web coverage of the Olympic games, thanks to the global growth of broadband Internet, and MSN/NBC got the exclusive go to broadcast the games online. The NBC Olympics site contains news and information about the games, the individual sporting events, key athletes, country profiles as well as photos and videos to give you a comprehensive ring side look at the Beijing Olympics.

Lastly, stay tuned here at Daily Dotventures for more Olympic updates.

Firefox 3 Launched

Mozilla's much maligned yet more beloved web browser launches it's third full version June 17th worldwide as the Firefox 3 tries to set a new Guinness World Record for the most downloads in a single day.

Before the start of Download Day 2008 it already had over 3 million pledges for downloads from Firefox fans around the world. The campaign ends June 18th at 5PM UTC. With a few more hours to go it looks like its well on its way on hitting its mark. However, a handful of pledgers have expressed disappointment for the lack of organization for the Download Day event with complaints ranging from the availability of downloads being late by as much as 17 hours to "Page Not Found" errors for certain language versions at the official download site. Some have even stated that their installation crashed.

Personally, I've beta-tested the FF3 prior to Download Day 2008 and it worked with no hitches thus far. I've thus made my download June 18 Philippine time and it's so far working fine. What I appreciate most about this version is the Bookmark Tags feature which lets you organize your bookmarks with keyword tags. So you can have for example a bookmark folder labeled "Blogs" but you can still tag individual blogs into regions or topics like say "Blogging Tips" or "Cooking". Entering the keyword tag on the address bar will bring up all bookmarks tagged as such even if they were saved under different folders.

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Another interesting feature is the full-screen mode which is really full-screen. Previously when pressing F-11 (full-screen mode short-cut) the navigation toolbar and tabs remain on screen. Now everything hides off your screen's edges, leaving only the unobstructed website page in all it's glory.

Pity though, Firefox 3 is no longer available for lower versions of Windows. So I'll have to be content with the FF2 series for my other ancient P-III Win98 machine.

Firefox as we know it have been around since 2004 with its 1.0 release. This latest Firefox 3 is boasted to contain more than 15,000 improvements and is expected to be faster, smarter and more secure with the latest anti-phishing, anti-malware and pop-up blocker technologies.

Go get your Firefox 3 today.

Here Comes The Holidays!

For several weeks now I've been griping about my snail-paced Internet connection. I couldn't get any work done online. Needless to say the Daily Dotventures suffered as a result.

I missed quite a few events which I wanted to write about. Like Chinese beauty Zhang Zilin winning at home for the Ms. World 2007 pageant last December 1, same day as the commemoration of World Aids Day.

Or the Hatton-Mayweather fight which saw the returning WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather retain victory over the challenger with powerful head shots that knocked Ricky Hatton down twice in succession in the 10th round, urging referee Joe Cortez to stop the fight in favor of Mayweather.

Then there was that ill-conceived siege at the Manila Peninsula Hotel by frustrated-mutineer-turned-Senator Antonio Trillanes IV that miserably failed (again) to overthrow incumbent Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Don't forget the Spice Girls' ongoing reunion world tour. Love them or not, they're back in a big, gingery, scary, sporty, baby and posh way.

Well, like I said, I missed quite a bit because my ISP is, in a word, c-r-a-p! The significant slow down may also be attributable to the oncoming holiday season. More people are sending emails to their loved ones, surfing for bargains, doing online purchases, booking flights, making VOIP calls, uploading video greetings, and so on and so forth.

Your Ads Love It Here!

Not only that, apart from the slow down in Internet connectivity due to increased demand in bandwidth, the holidays are also a time for the hundred-fold proliferation of spam. Every online marketer and their brother are making their mailing lists and checking them twice. It doesn't even matter if you've been naughty or nice. You'll get the spam and chances are there's a "free" gift along with it - READ: malware.

So do protect yourself online this hoiday season. Deck your Internet halls with a safer browser, an anti-spyware, an anti-virus and a firewall. And while we patiently bear the holiday lag online, perhaps its a good opportunity for all of us to ponder the true meaning of the season.

Here's wishing everyone a less-stressful and a happy online holiday.

TCP Optimizer: Jumpstart That Internet Connection

When I bought my first modem way back when Windows 3.1 was the "meanest ever" operating system (remember that good ol' File Manager?), I became an addict at IRC trivia chatrooms. I'd spend hours online and that's saying a lot considering everything back then was on dial-up Internet. I swear I could not get off the Net.

Nowadays however it seems I could not get ON the Net. The past weeks I've been frustrated by a slow Web. Sites loaded like sloths, connections dropped off frequently. "Could not connect to Blogger.com" - familiar ain't it. Don't even get me started on file uploads - it just seems never ending.

I called up my ISP and ordered for an upgraded service. I'm supposed to be running on a 512-kbps service for crying out loud. My old dial-up seemed faster. Anyway, guess what my ISP said. It will take a while; about two to three weeks. The Internet had become for me a long waiting game.


Internet Gridlock by 2010

According to a recent report, things can get a lot worse. The increasing demand for broadband may bring the Internet to a screeching halt as capacity can be overrun as early as 3 years from now. Admittedly though, the report may be a tad too alarming. However I am inclined to believe the plausibility of the scenario. Already many of us experience the many boos and bahs of a bandwidth-lacking global network.

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Optimize The Net

In the meantime, while the powers-that-be line up undoubtedly expensive propositions how the rest of us may continue to enjoy the Internet when that time comes, we have to make do with what we have. There's a nifty tool from speedguide.net which I tried recently and it seemed to have given my connection a corrective slap. SG TCP Optimizer aggregates a slew of Windows system settings that is supposed to improve your Internet connectivity. It's similar to other net optimizers and boosters in the market, except that SG TCP Optimizer is freeware. And as far as I can see, it's free from malware as well.

Just download the program (see resource link below) and enable it. Select Optimal Settings at the lower left-hand side of the dialogue box and ok it. It automatically creates a backup of your registry although it is always best practice to manually backup your system before fiddling with it. It will then ask you to restart your system.

Personally, it was not a jaw-dropping change for me but there was a noticeable increase in some Web operations. I'm ok with that for now. Until my connection upgrade anyway.

Freshen Up Your Blog: Making Sure Your Readers See Your Latest Post

"Is it number 1, 2 or F5?"

When I started this blog back in August putting up posts was a breeze. Grab a topic, do some research, write up the piece then just click on "publish post". That was it. My blog article is up and running for the whole world to see.

However, a few weeks ago I started noticing delays. Upon publishing, it takes quite a while (something like six crazy hours!) for my latest posts to show up. The same issue crops up when I perform some changes on the layout of the blog.

Pardon to those eating their meals in front of the computer, but it seemed that my blog is rather constipated.

Seeking Relief

Now I thought this was just a problem with Blogger and it was reinforced by a recent slew of support request at the Blogger Help Groups. Take this particular case in point - "Latest Post Not Showing Up At First Pages".

The symptoms would be that your latest posts won't appear at your blog's front page, however the entry exists at the archives or at the "Dashboard>Posting>Edit Posts" lists. Or, in the case of updating layouts or when adding a new widget or page element, the layout changes appear on the "Template" tab but only your old blog layout shows up when you go to your blog's URL (aka web address).

Furthermore, if you try a simple refresh, deleting your browser cache (read: Temporary Internet Files) or a complete reboot of your pc, the problem would still persist. Then after waiting it out for at least 30 minutes, all of a sudden your changes appear to your relief. Often times however, the updates will not come up for hours.

Languishing in Long Lines

The culprit is not Blogger (although it has its other faults... other many faults) nor is it your browser (though they may have other faults as well). Most likely the problem lies with your ISP.

With the growing demand for broadband, an ISPs primary problem is network congestion. Competition is fierce, broadband costs are going down, bloggers and virtual world populations are going up. These are the signs that bandwidth is taking a beating - the pipes are about to burst and your Internet Service Provider is probably already turning blue from holding it in.

Before this problem of "stale" webpages came up, I often had intermittent disconnections from my ISP. I go online on a wireless broadband network. A few months ago, I often get unplugged from the Web for 2 to 3 days. No use complaining to my ISP as all I get is a recorded message saying that there's "network restoration ongoing".

Then it just passed unnoticed. My connection is a-ok, no disruptions anymore. Business as usual. Only to later succumb to non-updating blogs.

As many join the broadband wave especially households, ISPs scamper to relieve the pressure off their networks. One method apparently being leveraged extensively by ISPs is the use of proxy caches. These are servers that temporarily store the contents of your site so that those seeking your webpages (it works on a per URL basis) along your network can get to your content faster, which in turn frees up bandwidth to be made available for other uses. Unfortunately, the cache may not refresh its stores for an unfavorable amount of time.

Thus the mystery of the unchanging blog sites is solved. However, things remain unresolved. It is sadly a solution that leads to another problem. The question now therefore is, how do we bypass the network cache?

Push, man, push!

There are several ways to clear the cache according to Ron "the Rat" Southern of Most Frequent Blogger Questions (MFBQ). First off, how do you determine if you're behind an ISP proxy cache? Add a question mark to your web address. If you're latest post gets returned, it means you're behind a proxy.

Remember that cache retrieval works on a per URL basis. So if you append a "?" followed by a unique random string (e.g. www.domain.tld/?asdf), the cache will see it as a new URL request on your domain and if there's no match to the string the latest instance of your webpage will show up instead. However, that would be a new webpage stored in the cache for your domain. If you make another update, you would have to supply a new random string. Now that's a very clumsy way of doing things. Effective, yes, but very inconvenient.

Don't despair, there's another way.

Dumping The Load

Now, you might have already performed a browser refresh before but just to again "refresh" us, for Internet Explorer the shortcut is the "F5" button. For Firefox, its "Ctrl-R" (apparently F5 works too... at times anyway). Some say doing refreshes several times in a row works. But to be sure, try a "forced refresh" or "forced reload" instead.

This is done by pressing "Shift" on your keyboard along with the refresh combination. So for IE it's "Shift-F5" or "Shift-Ctrl-F5" (sometimes Ctrl-F5 works by itself). For Firefox, the key combination is "Shift-Ctrl-R". Forced reload effectively sends a command (no-cache or cache-control) along the network to bypass the cached copy and retrieves the webpage directly from the host server.

This knowledge helped me tremendously in seeing how my updated blog shows up on the Web (I hope it works for you too). Unfortunately, not all blog readers know how to do a forced reload. If they're sitting behind a proxy cache (many of them don't even know it) which doesn't refresh properly and sees you're archived blog post instead of your fresh entry, your readership is bound to dip.

Don't Forget To Flush

Only two options are left for "blogists" at this point to make your blog "cache-free". One is to post a conspicous notice for your readers to regularly do a forced reload to get fresh updates to your blog. That's extra work for them but at least they know.

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Another one I've come across recently is to use a meta-tag in the headers section of your template. Copy and paste this between the "HEAD" tags on your Blogger template.

<meta equiv="CACHE-CONTROL" content="NO-CACHE">

This in effect would direct cache servers to always have requests directed back to the original web server. Note that these http-equivalent header tags may not always work as not all proxies recognize HTML headers. But since we don't control the Blogger servers (lucky you if you run your own) we can't program the web server to provide http headers to this effect. Any way, I advise you do your own search on the said meta-tag and decide for yourself whether you will implement them on your own blogs.

What Kind of Blogger Are You?

According to the blogactionday.org quiz, I'm a "Purist Expert Socialite" blogger. Now I don't know what that means but I've got the badge to prove it!





Click on the badge to know what "kind of blogger" you are and sign-up for Blog Action Day on October 15! No matter what kind of blogger you are, you can help make a difference.

Get involved!

What Me Splog?!?

IN A RATHER LAUGHABLE TURN of events, Blogger's anti-spam technology recently (not to mention mistakenly) identified Daily Dotventures as a splog.

A few days ago I noticed that I was prompted for word verification whenever I made a post to my blog. And here I was thinking all along that I was simply experiencing improved security measures, what with the previous Blogger trojan spam storms.

Out of curiosity, I clicked on that small orange circle "thingy" with a question mark in the middle. I was expecting to see a message heralding the remarkable Blogger security standards but to my bewilderment, I was led to a page stating that my blog was identified by Bloggers' spam prevention measures to be a spam blog.

It was like downing a half-gallon of espresso at 2AM!

Your Ad Here

Personally, I think that word verification or "CAPTCHA" features should be made mandatory across all current social platforms especially blogs. Today's Web - 2.0 and beyond - is all about interactivity and user contribution. So why not implement a challenge-response mechanism to ensure that the contributor is indeed human and not a program? He or she should've been typing away at a computer for several minutes already; why would it be such a bother to exert a couple of more keystrokes?

Security and laziness do not mingle in the same circle of friends. You don't want word verification? You might as well send your email address to spam central.

Unfortunately, Blogger thinks word verification should be the exception and not the rule. So despite my unwillingness, I requested for "unlocking" of my account since I do not want to be identified as a splogger. Thus, I received the following in my email this morning:

Hello,

Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so that
it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and
sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your
patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

Well, obviously them spambots are posting "as normal" evidenced by the proliferation of spam blogs within the Blogger community. That there is the greater inconvenience.

To the Blogger Team, apology accepted but really, you won't have to apologize and look like schmucks if only the measure was in place prior and not after the act.

There must be a reason you guys call it spam "PREVENTION". Right?

The Web Divided: US Feds Dismiss Net Nuetrality

"Net neutrality" is the principle that all Internet sites should be equally accessible to any Web user. (AP)

The US Justice Department issued a statement to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last September 6 that it cautions against regulations enforcing Net Neutrality and that it should allow Internet providers leeway to charge differently for "priority" traffic.

The statement was made based on the presumption that Network Neutrality would prevent additional investments and further development of providers' networks.

From what I gather in the reports the Justice Department is taking a hands-off stance on the issue. Something like, "let ISPs charge what they want - if the market avails the service then its settled, if not then so be it."

The move is seen by Neutrality advocates like SaveTheInternet.com to be one step closer to empowering Internet providers to become "gatekeepers" of the Web. For Internet pioneers like Sir Tim Berners-Lee, they have always envisioned an open Internet model.

In other parts of the world, like China and certain countries in the Middle East, Internet censorship is being practiced. Will a similar scenario exist for a two-tiered Internet?

In a way it is similar to free TV and Cable at the ISP level. Are you then willing to pay more to access particular web content which you would have otherwise been able to access in the first place?

Are we living in a one-web-world no more?

Facebook Releases Searchable Public Profiles

Are you a Facebook user?

The fast-rising social networking site started to implement a non-member search of Facebook member profiles last Wednesday, September 5. Currently, the public search will yield the Facebook member's full name and photo, but according to the Facebook blog posted by Philip Fung, "you have complete control of your public search listing".

Furthermore, Facebook will be allowing these public listings to be available on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. The move, while bold and presumably calculated to further leverage the position of Facebook on the Web, is being questioned by privacy advocates. Recent statistics show that Facebook has gained 1% of total Web traffic with a membership of nearly 40 million worldwide. Facebook users are being notified to adjust their respective account's privacy settings.

For Facebook users, what do you think of this feature? How will Facebook's public profile search feature affect its members in the long run? We'll have to wait and see.

Regarding Technorati...

Nearly a month after setting up Dotventures at Blogger, I finally came around to signing up at Technorati. What is Technorati? Below is a snippet from their About us page:

Technorati is the recognized authority on what's happening on the World Live Web, right now. The Live Web is the dynamic and always-updating portion of the Web. We search, surface, and organize blogs and the other forms of independent, user-generated content (photos, videos, voting, etc.) increasingly referred to as “citizen media.”

One of the first articles I've done on Dotventures touched on Technorati's tracking of the so-called blogosphere which they also refer to as the "World Live Web". Back then the number of blogs on the Web was at around 70 million. As I write this, Technorati counts 101.6 million blogs in existence. That's an increase of more than 30 million in a few months time. And Technorati is at the frontline of documenting the Great Blog Boom.

Check out my Technorati Profile.

Happy Blog Day!

August 31 is Blog Day 2007 according to the good folks at BlogDday.org. So Happy Blog Day to all!

And here's my Blog-Day-Five:
Slice-of-life - interesting posts on stuff you may never have known existed.
A little piece of me - a personal blog from an endearing "struggler".
Gaje Master Blogging - this blogger knows her blogging stuff!
RockStories - a rocker, a writer and a blogger.
Anne-thology - best performance in a dramatic blog - a very sincere writer

3l08 on people!
BlogDay2007

Flag the Splogs! Flog the Sploggers!

I am referencing this blog post from "The Real Blogger Status" which is very timely especially for Blogger accounts and the emerging Storm Worm issue.

I've always advocated flagging of spam blogs. Not that its a sure way to push Google/Blogger to take down the offending blog. In fact, some Blogger users complain that Blogger seldom, if at all, act on flags and reports.

Still, I believe that with enough flags, Blogger would take notice and act accordingly. Otherwise, they may as well just run a splog farm themselves while real bloggers migrate to a better blogging platform that cares. So I say, when you encounter a spam blog go ahead and flag it!

How do you know its a spam blog?
Most spam blogs resemble spam email. The title and text body is just gibberish. Many times the text is empty or contains wide spaces that lead to, are sandwiched, or that trails from unintelligible text. These spaces actually contain scripts which can automatically trigger a popup, a redirect or a download. Worst, it can be a harvesting script that can recover sensitive data already on the browser and even your entire PC.

The FLAG BLOG button is on the Blogger Navbar (located on top of Blogger blog sites). When you find a splog, just click the button ONCE. Then alert your blogging circle to do the same. The more flags the better the chances Blogger would actually do something about it. When you can't find a Navbar follow the directions on the link of the Full Post below.

PRECAUTIONS
1. When blog surfing, use Firefox and enable the built-in popup blocker. Otherwise, install a reputable popup blocker.
2. Ensure your system has adequate security - anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-rootkit and formidable firewall are essential.

As for flogging the sploggers, maybe that's a bit medieval. But with the way splogs are taking over the blogosphere it may not be long before we do get thrown back to the dark ages.

Read the Full Post:
The Real Blogger Status: Get To The Root Of The Problem - Blame The Spammers

Also check out the following:
Storm Worm Hits Blogger
Warnings Active

Blogger.com Targeted by Trojan Spam

This report got my attention, being a Blogger.com user. Its such a pity since Blogger is quite an excellent blogging platform. Unfortunately the feature-filled and user-friendly facilities of Blogger has become the workshop, or perhaps even a playground, for malicious hackers out to leverage the rich information resources provided by the exponential growth of the global blogging community.

It is said that the main point of delivery for these trojan splogs exists with Bloggers' Mail-to-Blogger feature allowing users to e-mail their posts without having the need to log into the Blogger Dashboard.

Therefore, it would be advisable for Blogger.com users to disable this feature in their respective accounts. Otherwise remove the supplied email address from the address books of email clients (e.g. Outlook Express) so that trojan infected PCs will not inadvertently send a virus-laden spam message and post it onto your Blogger account.

As "webizens", it is our responsibilty to protect the integrity of our respective blogs and the blogosphere as a whole. Some measures we can take to safeguard the blogging experience include:

1. Reporting/Flagging errant blogs.
2. Ensure that links and scripts pasted on your blog come from reputable sites and organizations.
3. Regularly inform your audience to take security measures when going online.

Share your experience and tips on safe blogging. What other ways can we contribute to a safer cyberspace?

Gmail Releases Collaborative Video

Some time ago Google's Gmail service invited users to participate in a collaborative video project with the theme "how an email message travels around the world". The rule was to print out the Gmail M-velope and shoot a 10-second sketch with the Gmail-logo-bearing-prop entering the frame from the left and exiting to the right.

After 1,181 YouTube clips from 65 countries, the folks at Gmail finally released the "Gmail: A Behind The Scenes Video".

I so wanted to send a clip myself. My idea was to pay homage to Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather". After all, with all the spamming and phishing and whatnots going on in and about cyberspace, a mafioso figure checking out emails is not so far fetched.

Picture this (in a single tracking shot, no cuts):

Henchman in black suit enters screen left, opens a wooden door, approaches a balding figure behind a finely varnished desk with the back of his plush armchair toward the camera. Henchman moves closer to the "Don" and whispers into his ear, the Don still not visible to the camera. The henchman moves slightly off-cam as the armchair swings around revealing a Brando look-alike staring quizically at the standing henchman. Henchman presents M-velope. The Don smiles a be-moustached grin and nods approvingly as he passes on the M-velope to screen right onto another henchman. Don mouths off "bene, bene" as he waves a traditional goodbye (palm facing himself), as cam dolly's back out of the room, wooden door closes. Fade to black.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get any convincing enough Marlon-Brando-wannabe in my cast. Besides, I doubt whether the Gmail fellas will risk copyright issues when using Nino Rota's "Speak Softly Love" soundtrack theme. Anyway, here is the final "Gmail: A Behind The Scenes Video". Enjoy!

Bloggers Unite! - Blog Against Abuse on 9-27

On September 27, 2007, the blogging community at BlogCatalog.com is spearheading an initiative as part of its ongoing blogging challenge. Its called "Blog Against Abuse".

For the entire 24 hours of that Thursday, 9-27-07, bloggers worldwide are encouraged to blog about an important cause relating to an abuse issue. Its up to the blog author to determine which issue he or she would like to write about.

The goal of the originator is to rally the largest number of bloggers who will post about important issues for one day. While the exercise is certainly not unique, it has already merited the commitment of a few hundred BlogCatalog members.

Organizing a blog-about-something day has been done perhaps since the early days of blogging. Doing a specific search for the term "Blog Day" will yield over a million webpages off Google. There's a "Blogosphere Day" on July 19, another "Blog Day" on August 31, and a "Blog Action Day" on October 15.

Whether or not "Blog Against Abuse" Day becomes a continuing tradition is yet to be seen. Some comments on the related thread at Blog Catalog already shows some sentiments of taking the initiative as a joke or otherwise something that is to be taken lightly. Others have questioned whether the exercise would actually yield any discernible change. Still a few are willing to participate with the simple thought "what's in it for me?"

For me personally, it would be interesting to know what would be the relevant issues common among bloggers come September 27. Would it be domestic violence, child trafficking, unfair labor practices, drugs, environment? Or do blogists even care about any cause at all?

Mark it on your calendars, September 27, Blog Against Abuse Day.
Read about abuse, Blog about abuse, Stop all the abuse.

Making Sense of Adsense for Blogs

One of the advantages I mentioned in "Writer's Blog: A Newbies Primer on Blogging" is the opportunity to earn money through your blog site. Most likely this is the reason that best resonates for many, motivating them to start and maintain a blogging account.

Over the years, the proven way to generate income for blogs is through legitimate implementation of advertising or sponsorship programs. One such advertising program is Google Adsense.

Adsense became Google's main advertising program after its purchase of a then up and coming search engine company known as Applied Semantics in 2003. Since then, it has become the ad server system of choice for many who wish to monetize their respective sites, blog sites included.

If you were to run your own industry standard online advertising program, you will have to figure out which of your website pages would most likely be read by the appropriate audience targeted by your advertisers. You would then have to encode the ad in full layout on the webpage.

In addition, you will have to monitor your ad impressions - defined as a measure of the the visibility of the ads as determined by its size and placement on the page as well as the number of times the webpage has been accessed. Take note that ad impressions is not the same as page impressions or page hits.

You will also have to take into account your click-throughs which essentially is what will make money for you. Your CTR or Click-Through Rate is the percentage of clicks made by your visitors on the ads on your site for each one hundred ad impressions.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more to deal with in online advertising than this article would allow. Unless you really want to be an e-marketing professional knowing all these complex terminologies, as an alternative you can just simply link up with a number of establishments and introduce a monthly or annual site sponsorship program in exchange for ad spots and being featured on your blog.

Nevertheless, Google Adsense simplifies the ad process with a packaged system for website owners. Whether with a full-fledged commercial website or a personal blog, Adsense participants are referred to collectively as web publishers or simply "Publishers". It's free to join the Adsense program.

Incidentally, if you have a Google account via Gmail, Blogger or its other services, you can easily tie up your Adsense account with your existing Google account for easy single-sign-on access.

Adsense will provide you with a backend site accessible at http://www.google.com/adsense. Here you can setup which Adsense ad units you can place in your blog. There are numerous layouts to choose from, the techniques to determining which we will reserve for another time. You can select among three existing programs namely, Adsense for Content, Adsense for Search, and recently their Referrals program.

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This is the first part of a series. Part 2 of "Making Sense of Adsense for Blogs" will follow shortly.