Askimet, the anti-pollution plugin

Originally posted on 2008-10-12

Another cool observations from, of course, one of my sites. The site this time is, yeah, divyun.com.

What’s anti-pollution?
It’s just a term created in the honor of askimet, which protects your site from dirty comments which pollute your blog.
So my request to each and every blogger is simple and straight- Use askimet, it helps you prevent unnecessary work.
Askimet comes preloaded by default. But if you have deleted it by default, get it at askimet.com.
This plugin is not only available for wordpress but for some other softwares too like mybb, etc. But you need a askimet key from wordpress.com.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Your own free Orkut, Facebook, twitter- the newest era

Originally posted on Tuesday 24 February 2009

Ever wondered- we’ve been using these social networks* for quite a long and still using them even when we can have a personal one.
Now how??
ELGG

Just almost an year back I came across a software called Elgg which can be found at http://elgg.org.
What is Elgg?
It was the first opensource social networking script as far as I remember. Well, it comes with a hell lot of functionality and is damn easy to use as:
1. The social networking engine handles it all.
2. It has a community to help you out with problems.
3. It has well documented tutorials.
For requirements and features check these pages:

http://elgg.org/requirements.php

http://elgg.org/features.php

Well if you are seeking a demo. Maybe you can try my upcoming site: http://futureiitians.com
BUDDYPRESS

Buddypress turns WordPress MU(multi user) into a social networking site. Though still in beta but all set to take over the others. From the makers of WordPress, buddypress comes with all the functionality of WordPress MU and the extras.
It has a big community behind it. It is the easiest one around.
Only things it lacks are a a little more functionality and themes. But I know they are only a few months away from success.
No special requirements btw.
For a demo visit http://testbp.org.
btw, both are based on PHP and MYSQL which are also open source and have most of the servers supporting them.
Why social networking?
I know you know answer to that. Its the best way to interact with people.
Why do I need a personal one?
Well, the sites like Orkut, Facebook are for general public. Yours could be on a specific topic. Call your friends and start an online club. Think a little and you’ll find a reason on why to do this.
For your information,the above two mentioned are not the only ones out there. We also have Peopleaggregator, pligg, etc. Elgg and Buddypress are the best and surely have the maximum potential, and the only ones under constant development.

Popularity: 15% [?]

How does piracy affects opensource..???

Originally posted on 08 December 2008

Piracy affects open source in several ways. Below is my one hour hard work discussing few points about open source, piracy and its affect on open source.
What is open source???
You heard about open source softwares like wordpress, linux, audacity, etc. Well these softwares are free and the their source code is readable and available to all.
A free software may not always be open source. Some softwares run under there own propriety licence and the source is closed(and are known as closed source). Similarly open source softwares may not alwas be free. If you are a blogger and use WordPress then you should know about the Revolution templates. They are now open source but are paid.
How does source code helps programmers?
Well, using the source code, programmer can modify and distribute it in his/her own way. But you gotta keep the copyright license.
“Piracy”??
Most of us are familiar with the word “piracy”. If legal words are to be used out here, I mean “Copyright infringement”. The word refers to illegal or unauthorized use of some kinda of material in a way it violates the owner’s rights. In short words, piracy means stealing or simply a crime.
Some popularly pirated softwares are Mircosoft Windows, Adobe Photoshop, vBulletin, etc.
How does piracy affects the free and the open-source?
Let’s start with examples.
Case 1 Are you a graphics designer?? If you are, you must be familiar with Adobe Photoshop. Now, I can bet that more that half of the designers would not have heard about GIMP. GIMP is a free open source software alternative to Adobe’s Photoshop.
Case 2 ~ 90% people out here are still MS Windows users. Linux is
1. better than Windows.
2. is free and open source.
3. has hundred of sub distributions.
4. it has better support professionally and from a large community.
From the above two cases it is clear that piracy is killing the scope of the open source softwares. Well, if you’ll surf the internet, you’ll find hundred of such examples.
These days piracy is widespread and is done on a large scale. You’ll see markets full of pirated items which you could get for free or for <1/10th cost of the original. This has become a business of its own. Today on every corner of a street, you’ll be able to find somebody selling pirated stuff.
Use of pirated softwares are not only illegal but they cut down the market of the open source softwares. When user can have a paid expensive software for free why the hell in the world would he/she use a open source software? The person will not even try to find a free alternate to that software. Some of the examples are listed above.
Open source getting popular??
Well, actually in the past few years the open-source has taken the lead in few sectors.
For example, wordpress is a software used by bloggers to host their blogs on their own. The software is open source and rules the blogging market.
Another one, Mozilla Firefox is best the internet browser out here and is going great guns is ready to take over Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (closed source) as the most widely used browser. Adding to competition are Opera and Google’s Chrome.
Does piracy affect the Giants??
I suppose, not much!!
An example again. Adobe Tools ( like Photoshop, DreamWeaver, etc. ) and Windows are widely used and pirated. But I don’t think Adobe or MS minds this at all. Actually Adobe/MS doesn’t have much expectations from people whom they know can’t afford the software. Their main target are large companies which buy their products in bulk.
Now the biggest question- Encourage piracy or open source? I’ll say, ” Its on you. . . . . “
P.S.
This is the biggest post of mine so far.
MyBB went open source a few days ago. It was under a propriety license but free.
MyBB is a free open-source alternative to vBulletin. btw, my site

Popularity: 2% [?]

Alexa Rank! What’s the trick?

There are quite a lot of prestigious ranks on Internet, desired by a webmaster. These ranks include Page Rank, Techronati Rank(for bloggers), etc. And on of them is the Alexa Rank?

Alexa.com is a service provided by amazon.com to provide webmasters with info about where they stand in the world. A good Alexa Ranks means you receive a good portion of Internet traffic!

What’s the range for a good rank??

Well, I suppose if you could into top 200,000, you’ll be pretty well off.

On the topic:

I have been observing my site’s Alexa Rank for past so many months and have come to the following conclusions for the fluctuations that take place.

From my experience:

I get almost 85% of traffic from India at the moment! Just a month ago my site’s daily reached to its max. of some thing around 78,xxx. After that time, my traffic stats kept increasing but still my Alexa rank showed decrement. I was baffled.

My observation on this:

I observed that the percentage of my traffic from India was falling and traffic from other countries was increasing. My US rank jumped on from somewhere 1,xxx,xxx to somewhere around 5xx,xxx.

What affected my Alexa rank?

The sudden shift in the traffic sources led to a temporary decrement in my rank. My weekly rank reached as low as 6xx,xxx.

Now that my rank has started to increase again, I am feeling happy.

Now a few tricks which will help you increase your Alexa rank:

1. You should have heard of forums, that’s the place to advertise. Just place a link in your signature and welcome people to pay a visit.

2. Put your site on review in as many places, e.g., forums, social networks,etc. Public opinion is what which helps you learn what they want. And actually this will help you drive a lot of traffic to your site too.

3. Ask your family and friends to visit and leave a line, comment, sign up, etc. on your site. Remember family and friends are a great asset when it comes to increasing traffic.

4. Love your site and feel good about it! Be confident.

Remember, a lots of hard work doesn’t pay if not done cleverly.

……….Plz, be my friend and leave a line…………. lol :P

Popularity: 1% [?]

Oh my gosh! You can spoof google pagerank :O

PageRank

Well Oh my google! instead of god! Pagerank can be faked. I knew this before but came across this again.

Now, how is it done? and how to check a website for fake PG? Here are answers to such questions!

First to clarify the truth in this, a quote from wikipedia:

False or spoofed PageRank

While the PageRank shown in the Toolbar is considered to be derived from an accurate PageRank value (at some time prior to the time of publication by Google) for most sites, it must be noted that this value is also easily manipulated. A current flaw is that any low PageRank page that is redirected, via a 302 server header or a “Refresh” meta tag, to a high PageRank page causes the lower PageRank page to acquire the PageRank of the destination page. In theory a new, PR0 page with no incoming links can be redirected to the Google home page – which is a PR 10 – and by the next PageRank update the PR of the new page will be upgraded to a PR10. This spoofing technique, also known as 302 Google Jacking, is a known failing or bug in the system. Any page’s PageRank can be spoofed to a higher or lower number of the webmaster’s choice and only Google has access to the real PageRank of the page. Spoofing is generally detected by running a Google search for a URL with questionable PageRank, as the results will display the URL of an entirely different site (the one redirected to) in its results.

Direct link => http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank#False_or_spoofed_PageRank

Amazing right! a 302 server head and done, you have PR 10.

Another way of doing this is from http://www.monetizers.com/fake-pr.php

Faking Pagerank

Sites fake PR by looking for the Googlebot, then redirecting it to a high PR site, like Yahoo.com. Google sees that users actually land on Yahoo.com and the PR Bar in turn reflects the PR of the Yahoo.com rather than your site.

Here is an example of what Fake PR code looks like:

/* insert a cloaking script here to detect whether the visitor is
Googlebot */
if (Googlebot) {
echo ‘‘;
exit();
}
else {
echo “

My PR10 page!

“;
}
?>

So its not that difficult fake a PR.

Now where did it all start from?

It was started by SEOdarkteam. This trick doesn’t work anymore but is worth reading. http://seoblackhat.com/2005/07/26/how-to-fake-a-google-page-rank-10-or-any-pr-you-want/. I don’t know how but their demo at http://www.pr10.darkseoteam.com still works.

So how to check a site for fake pagerank?

use Google’s cache. It always shw the real PR.

Don’t get scammed. Check for fakes before buying links on a site wth high PR.

Well Oh my google! instead of god! Pagerank can be faked. I knew this before but came across this again.

Now, how is it done? and how to check a website for fake PG? Here are answers to such questions!

First to clarify the truth in this, a quote from wikipedia:

False or spoofed PageRank

While the PageRank shown in the Toolbar is considered to be derived from an accurate PageRank value (at some time prior to the time of publication by Google) for most sites, it must be noted that this value is also easily manipulated. A current flaw is that any low PageRank page that is redirected, via a 302 server header or a “Refresh” meta tag, to a high PageRank page causes the lower PageRank page to acquire the PageRank of the destination page. In theory a new, PR0 page with no incoming links can be redirected to the Google home page – which is a PR 10 – and by the next PageRank update the PR of the new page will be upgraded to a PR10. This spoofing technique, also known as 302 Google Jacking, is a known failing or bug in the system. Any page’s PageRank can be spoofed to a higher or lower number of the webmaster’s choice and only Google has access to the real PageRank of the page. Spoofing is generally detected by running a Google search for a URL with questionable PageRank, as the results will display the URL of an entirely different site (the one redirected to) in its results.

Direct link => http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank#False_or_spoofed_PageRank

Amazing right! a 302 server head and done, you have PR 10.

Another way of doing this is from http://www.monetizers.com/fake-pr.php

Faking Pagerank

Sites fake PR by looking for the Googlebot, then redirecting it to a high PR site, like Yahoo.com. Google sees that users actually land on Yahoo.com and the PR Bar in turn reflects the PR of the Yahoo.com rather than your site.

Here is an example of what Fake PR code looks like:

/* insert a cloaking script here to detect whether the visitor is
Googlebot */
if (Googlebot) {
echo ‘‘;
exit();
}
else {
echo “

My PR10 page!

“;
}
?>

So its not that difficult fake a PR.

Now where did it all start from?

It was started by SEOdarkteam. This trick doesn’t work anymore but is worth reading. http://seoblackhat.com/2005/07/26/how-to-fake-a-google-page-rank-10-or-any-pr-you-want/. I don’t know how but their demo at http://www.pr10.darkseoteam.com still works.

So how to check a site for fake pagerank?

use Google’s cache. It always shw the real PR.

Don’t get scammed. Check for fakes before buying links on a site wth high PR.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Variety that comes with an Ubuntu installation

What is Ubuntu?
Ubuntu is an operating system that is available for free or is open source. Ubuntu is actually a Zulu word which means “humanity”.
The OS is build on Linux and is one of the best so far. It uses GNOME as the default desktop interface.
What’s the variety?
Ubuntu has 40+ official and unofficial distributions.
Let us discuss the major ones:
1. Ubuntu- This is the default one. It is complete as an Operating system. Ubuntu people provide both community and professional kind of support. This is also the most used one. Its runs GNOME.
I have used this and have to say it is the best.* Enblend – an image compositing program
* FontForge – a typeface (font) editor program
* GIMP – a raster graphics editor
* Inkscape – a vector graphics editor
* Scribus – a desktop publishing application
* Synfig – a 2D vector graphics and time line-based animation program
7. Ubuntu Mobile – It provides “an uncompromised Web 2.0 experience: Web browsing, email, media, camera, VoIP, instant messaging, GPS, blogging, digital TV, games, contacts, dates/calendar, simple software updates…”
8. Goubuntu- Its main aim is to to provide the user with software which are free. Rest is Ubuntu.
And many more.
2. Kubuntu- The major difference from the latter is that it uses KDE as the default desktop environment instead of GNOME.
I also have a little experience with this. Some people feel its better than the default one.
3. Xubuntu- This one uses Xfce instead of GNOME or KDE. It is meant to “provide an easy to use distribution (…) with a focus on integration, usability and performance, with a particular focus on low memory footprint (…) based around the ideals and values of Ubuntu.” Though both use the Gtk toolkit; both look a bit similar.
I am using it now and have to say its like cutting butter with a red hit knife.
4. Edubuntu- Well, as the name suggests its for students and schools. It uses GNOME as the default interface but separate versions for KDE are also available.
5. Ubuntu JeOS- JeOS is just enough Operating system and is pronounced as Juice. It is”an efficient variant [...] configured specifically for virtual appliances“.
6. Ubuntu Studio- My favorite. It is mainly for people who like or wanna edit images, music and videos in a professional way. It has all the needed software:
Audio
* Ardour – a hard disk recorder and digital audio workstation application
* Audacity – a digital audio editor application
* Hydrogen – an advanced drum machine
* JACK Audio Connection Kit – a sound server daemon that provides low latency connections between applications for both audio and MIDI data
* JAMin – the JACK Audio Connection Kit Audio Mastering interface
* LilyPond – a program for engraving sheet music
* Mixxx – a digital DJ-style mixing program
* MusE – a MIDI/Audio sequencer using JACK and ALSA
* Rosegarden – a digital audio workstation program
* TiMidity++ – a software synthesizer that is able to convert from MIDI to various formats
Video
* PiTiVi – a video editing program
* Kino – a non-linear digital video editor
* Stopmotion – a stop-motion animation movie creator
* VLC media player – a free software media player
Graphics
* Agave – a color scheme generator
* Blender – a 3D animation program
Edit: Thanks to my friend Vishno for helping me with a few corrections.

Popularity: 2% [?]