Increasing unique hits on blogs
I have been watching my StatPress statistics in my WordPress dashboard since mid month with great interest. Since first installing the plugin a few months back, it has given me a pretty good idea on the number of unique hits I have been getting on all my blogs including most popular posts, referring sites, geographical locations, types of browsers used to view my blog, screen resolution size down to the operating system.
It’s a fair bit of useful information if you know how to process it and predict the trend of your blog stats too. Personally, I find the statistics most useful in understanding what my readers like to read most about and even search related results on major search engines.
Of course StatPress is not the only statistics tool I use but it gives me a pretty good idea of my blog traffic. To my new visitors and all of my readers, thank you for stopping by. I hope you like what you read here. You can subscribe to my RSS feed by entering your email address in the field below. It will send you updates from this blog.
Nicholas M Ong reaches PR5
For almost 2 weeks now, Google has updated PageRanks of sites. The first time I saw the new PR, I thought maybe Google was just fooling with me. After 2 weeks, NicholasMOng.com is still on PR5 so that is good news.
It took me less than 2 months to reach PR2 when I started this blog. I believe it reached a high of PR4 and suddenly dipped overnight to PR2 again after a few months. I started looking for reasons why and learnt that a number of the bigger blogs faced the same issue. It had to do with a number of reasons and one of them being ‘paid-to-post’ programs.
I have since removed any affiliation to those and quite subtlety switched the focus of my blog posts. I have to admit that over the past 12 months, I have lost some readers who did not like the new focus and gain more readers who liked what I blogged. So, I’m happy and I must say I have made some friends on this blog in the past 6 months.
Well, this blog will remain true to itself (me) and raves and rants of just about everything will continue as it has. To everyone out there, thank you for your support! Have a great weekend!
Messing around with Box.net Facebook, MySpace and twitter
So I finally decided to mess around with Facebook. I’m still not sure exactly what I can do with this application though I’m sure many folks have many uses for it and even the marketing gurus have come up with more than a few uses. Well, if you have suggestions, feel free to let me know. All I do know that they are social networking sites but haven’t yet a clue how to leverage on them. Your ideas might even be useful to the rest of the readers of my blog. I could use some help on MySpace and twitter too. So, suggestions anyone?
I just placed the Box.net widget on my blog again. Man I got to update the files on that. Probably try to do it sometime next week. In the meantime, you can check out some of the music on the sidebar.
WordPress Plugins – WP-Cache – Put the kick back in your WordPress
I was over at Simon’s and reading his post on ‘How to speedup your WordPress blog loading time’ and it reminded me of something. I had to turn on caching on my own blog. WordPress caching is useful for dramatically reducing load times of your WordPress blogs. What caching really does is that it creates and stores a ‘ghost’ image of your blog on your visitors’ browsers. Caching is useful and recommended in the following scenarios:
- Noticeable lags and increase in load times due to huge database activity/queries (especially common in huge blogs will numerous posts).
- Too many javascripts running in the background thus affecting load time.
- Your hosting provider informs you that your blog is exceeding the server load limits for you hosting plan.
Caching on websites are largely not encourage for a simple reason. Visitors see the old ‘ghost’ image they saw yesterday when they visit your site the next day. Unless they clear the cache of their browsers, updates may not appear on they browsers even though you are sure that you have made the updates. With pinging capabilities, these errors have been eliminated on blogs.
I’m not sure as I have done little research on this but my gut tells me that the performance of geo-targeting, advertising and other codes of the same nature running on javascripts may be affected with caching turned on.
If you prefer to use a plugin for WordPress for advanced caching instead of messing around with your wp-config.php file, My suggestion is to use the WP-Cache plugin. I run this on my server too. I have to agree that caching does put the kick back into your WordPress blog with significant improvements.
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Ok, I finally finished moving servers. The main domain was straight forward then it came down to guess work on the add-on domains. Everything seems to be working fine up till this stage though. A few more scripts to move around here and there.
I will most probably have to wait till the weekend. Until then, the support and services at Bluehost are pretty good till this stage. The knowledge-base could have been a little more comprehensive. Otherwise, I’m a happy customer for now. Happy Valentines Day to everyone out there.
Google vs. Microsoft on Yahoo
Ok, so now we have it. Yahoo has rejected Bill’s offer and Eric jumps at the opportunity. In all honesty, Having to live with Windows already has Bill in my face at work and at home. Think what would happen if Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo goes through. Choosing between a Sony PlayStation 3 and an XBox 360, make a wild guess what I’d pick? In many ways, tyranny or not, I would rather Google ally/acquire Yahoo if I had a choice to choose between the two.
February 4, 2008, 7:37 am
How Google Could Keep Yahoo From Microsoft
By Saul Hansell
Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, is offering Yahoo — and, it seems, anyone else — whatever help he can to make sure Yahoo isn’t swallowed by Microsoft.
What sort of help could that be? Lots of money for the right to sell ads on Yahoo’s search results, most likely. Google would have a very hard time buying Yahoo outright, for antitrust reasons. But if Google offered a long-term guarantee for advertising revenue on Yahoo’s search pages, there would be a pot of money that could help finance a bid for Yahoo by a private equity firm or a media company. Yahoo also could try to stay independent by cutting such a deal and giving part of the money from Google back to shareholders in the form of a share buyback or special dividend.
There is a lot of money at stake. Since Google earns more for every search than Yahoo does, such a deal would immediately add money to Yahoo’s bottom line.
Here is a back-of-the-envelope way to look at how much is involved. Google agreed to pay a reported $3.5 billion to sell advertising for IAC/InterActiveCorp’s Ask.com unit. In December, according to comScore, Ask handled 1.1 percent of all search queries worldwide, while Yahoo had a 12.8 percent share. That means Yahoo has 11.6 times the volume of Ask. If you multiply the $3.5 billion figure by 11.6, you get a theoretical $40 billion over 5 years. That may be a bit high, as Yahoo had a total of $6 billion in ad revenue in 2007, split between search ads and graphic display advertising.
Regardless of the exact numbers, there are tens of billions of dollars in play that could be used to enable all sorts of financial engineering meant to keep Yahoo out of Steve Ballmer’s hands.
I’m not so sure any of these is likely to happen. What’s more, they are almost all really bad ideas, if you look at the long term value created by what is now the Yahoo business.
The reason gets to the challenge of running Yahoo, as well as Google, Microsoft and AOL: A company can make the most money at the highest margins if it has the biggest network of advertisers, the biggest network of sites on which ads run, and the largest group of sites it owns and operates. But those economic forces push companies to almost unmanageable sprawl.
Advertisers value both reach and effectiveness. That means they will pay higher rates for their ads to be shown to the most targets; broad media, like network TV, get a premium over targeted media like cable channels. But in search in particular, they do also value ads that are shown to the most likely prospects. Having the biggest network, and the right technology, allows a company like Google to offer both broad reach and effective targeting. As a result, ads on Google command a premium over ads on other ad networks, like Yahoo’s.
The way to get the biggest network is to negotiate for the rights to sell ads on lots of other sites. But the problem with this is that ad networks like Google give away about 80 percent of the money spent by advertisers to the sites on which ads appear. For sites that the ad company owns outright —Google’s own search pages, for example — it can keep all of the ad revenue. That’s why AOL’s new management has rejected, so far, proposals to sell off its portal business so it can concentrate on its growing advertising business. When it looks at this, it realizes that owning sites on which it can place ads is the best way to reap the profits from the ad network.
All of this means that if Yahoo splits its ad network from the rest of the sites it operates, it will erode the value of both halves of its business.
Lots of very smart people disagree with this assessment. Many current and former Yahoo executives, and lots of others in the Valley, argue that Terry Semel made a terrible mistake in trying to take on Google in search, and that it would have been better to double down on parts of its site that were most conducive to brand advertising, where it had been the leader. It certainly is true that the race to build Yahoo’s search engine and then the Panama search advertising system diverted resources from what could have been other initiatives that didn’t compete head on with Google.
But for Yahoo not to be in search or in search advertising, I think, would consign it to a much smaller role in the future. Search is so much a part of how people navigate the Web that it is hard to imagine being a successful Web portal without search at the center. Moreover, there is no longer a strict difference between search ads — sold in a huge auction — and brand ads — sold by a sales force over lunch. Rather, there is increasingly a smooth gradation, with even some graphic ads for big brands placed through automated systems and, soon, advertising exchanges. I suspect — although I’m not sure — that one big system that can handle all sorts of ads will have advantages over narrower advertising networks.
That’s why the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo in theory has the best likelihood of creating real value. It will have the second-largest ad network and a vast array of sites on which to place its own ads. Microsoft, moreover, has resources to pay for the development of lots of corners of the business at the same time in a way Yahoo did not.
The caveat here is management: If Microsoft and Yahoo cannot actually build sites and ad technology the market wants to use, none of this theoretical profit will wind up in the bank. And one of the few advantages of a complex arrangement that gives Yahoo’s search business to Google is that the remaining company would be easier to run.
Buy.com – Deal of the Day – Microsoft Zune 30GB Digital Multimedia Device (Brown)
My first post on ‘Deal of the Day’ offers at Buy.com. Each day, Buy.com offers up to 20+ items going at great prices offering you fantastic savings. On top of that, first time users who make their purchase via Google CheckOut enjoy an additional $10 off the final price. Cool deal if you ask me.
Today’s top pick by me will have to be the Microsoft Zune 30GB Digital Multimedia Device (Brown). This excellent piece of hardware boost an Audio Player, Video Player, Photo Viewer, FM Tuner – 3″ LCD – 30GB Hard Drive. You also get FREE Budget Shipping so there isn’t any additional cost involved. The digital media player is going at a very ‘Special Price’. You will kick yourself if you miss this offer!
The above offer is valid from 11/01/2007 to 11/03/2007. Singapore residents can can first sign-up at vPost.com.sg before they purchase and have item delivered to their vPost address in Oregon with no additional taxes.
Tags: Microsoft Zune 30GB Digital Multimedia Device, Buy.com, Deal of the Day
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Hosting Zoom Sucks – Get AN Hosting, BlueHost or Network Redux
We were having problems with our hosting company about 2 weeks ago when one of our websites was suspended without warning. The excuse they gave was “overload abuse” on the server. When asked what needs to be done to rectify the issue and have our website back online, the response was “what are you going to do about it?”!
Which company suspends websites without warning? Well, if you are even considering it or have friends thinking about it, stay the hell away from Hosting Zoom! Sorry to folks that I used to recommend this company to. their level of service used to be really good. Over the last 3 months, it has dropped tremendously and there is much left to be desired.
If you are looking for a reliable webhost, I have websites hosted with other companies. The ones that really impressed me in terms of personal level of service experienced or through what my associates and friends have told me about are either of these 2 at the moment.
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AN Hosting – Web Hosting: Won numerous awards including from CNET and Webhost Directory. Their “Mega Plan” offers users 250,000 MB of webspace and 2,500,000 MB of bandwidth. Not that you will need all that.
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Reliable, Affordable Business Hosting from Bluehost: As the text says it, bluehost does in fact host websites for a large number of businesses. Over the last 9 years, they have built up a rather good reputation for their hosting service. For obvious reasons, bluehost would be my first choice recommendation.
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I am testing out another hosting company called Network Redux at this moment. So far so good and no complains. Services has been rather good in fact.
DreamTeamMoney Certified Informative Blog Award
Today marks yet another milestone for the SurfAdsInc Community Portal just 7 days after it’s re-launch. We are happy to announce that we have won the DreamTeamMoney forum’s “Certified Informative Blog” award. This is the second of such awards won by the SurfAdsInc Group of sites; the very first being the “Seal of Approval” issued by the NoBS HYIP Blog on 27th July 2006.
As we move forward and continue to provide our members and readers with up to date info “Minus the Bull$hit”, we will like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for your constant support ever since this blog was started in late July 2006.
The full article on the award is available HERE.
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Anti-Virus Software – Kaspersky (ZoneAlarm and STOPzilla!)
Getting online these days without a good anti-virus software can put your computer at extreme risk. Today’s viruses can come in many forms. Malicious malwares, trojans, key loggers, spyware to name a few are the most common threats. A number of anti-virus software today claim to offer protection from such dangers on the next. unfortunately, not all of them live up to what they promise. With new viruses detected everyday, your anti-virus software definition files need to be updated regularly in order to keep your computer protected from such threats.
Working with anti-virus software, the inclusion of a good firewall and anti-spyware program is recommended to ensure maximum protection.
Kaspersky Internet Security is undeniably the best anti-virus software available today offering end-users maximum protection while being extremely “low-weight” in terms of system resources required to run the active protection and scanning systems in the background. what this ultimately means is that leaving Kaspersky Internet Security to run and protect your system in the background doesn’t slow your machine down to a stage where running other programs become a drag.
Unlike Norton (Symantec) or McAfee anti-virus software, Kaspersky Internet Security offers excellent protection by updating their virus definitions files numerous times a day. On average, new anti-virus files are made available for automatic downloads every 3 to 6 hrs. Because your copy of Kaspersky Internet Security is left running in the background, your computer stays updated as long as you are connected to the internet. In fact, most other anti-virus software companies update their definition files on an average of 2 to 3 days instead.
To complement your anti-virus software, ZoneAlarm Pro (Firewall) & STOPzilla! (Anti-Spyware Software)
are highly recommended. There’s a myth that you should use the same publishers for such softwares. It’s not true. As an end-user, it’s important that you choose the software based on the level of security and protection that it offers you. Different software publishers have different advantages over their competitors.
Kaspersky Internet Security started offering anti-virus protection until in recent years they added an additional anti-hacker software to their line of key products available. Also in their line of products is an internet security program which is basically a firewall.
ZoneAlarm began as a company offering probably the best firewall softwares available. today, in order to provide their customers with a suite of other solutions, they have added anti-virus and anti-spyware programs to their line up.
STOPzilla! till today has chosen to remain focus on their key and primary product. anti-spyware protection. Till date, STOPzilla!
offers end-users one of the very best solutions in anti-spyware protection.
If you are getting security softwares to protect your computer from online security threats. you really should only settle for the very best and know which publisher to choose for which type of software you are looking for.
Having tested and used various softwares ranging from Symantec’s Norton – SystemWorks Professional 2005 which claims to offer you the best protection at the an extremely steep price to free versions of software, i’ve learnt that cheapset or free isn’t the best. In fact, the biggest names that demand a ridiculous price tag are the worst choices.
I managed to lay my hands on a zip file loaded with 30 variants of available malwares, trojans & viruses some time in early 2005. Unzipping the file, i was able to test my anti-virus software in a controlled environment. Norton detected and removed 3 of 30 threats. Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0 detected all 30 of 30 threats and removed them from my system. So big doesn’t mean better. Know what you are getting and get the best protection you can.
Personally, i’m never ever gonna spend another dime on SlyManTec’s NorToons SystemWrecks ever again. You might not know that many other popular anti-virus software out there used the same definition engines as Norton. It’s just re-branded and repacked. Kaspersky Internet Security offers consumers the very best from their proprietary anti-virus engine.
