In order to use your lappy in linux to it's maximum power, you need to recompile your kernel and to download and install some drivers. I've installed Debian, but it should be simillar for any distribution. If you have a good Internet connection, the whole installation & setup process should not take more than 2-3 hours.
Sony VAIO VGN-FS315S main specs
- Intel Pentium M 750 1.86 GHz, 2MB L2 Cache (Centrino) processor
- LCD X-Black 15,4 screen with 1280x800 resolution
- 1024 MB RAM
- 100 GB Hard drive
- DVD-/+RW optical drive
- NVIDIA GeForce Go 6400 with TurboCache technology (128 MB)
- Realtek High Definition Audio Soudcard
- Intel PRO/100 VE (wired network interface)
- Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG (802.11b/g standards)
First of all, grab the latest 2.6 kernel from kernel.org.
Then enable ALSA as follows:
Device Drivers -> Sound
Device Drivers -> Sound -> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
Device Drivers -> Sound -> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture -> PCI Devices
Now enalbe wireless:
Device Drivers -> Networking support -> Wireless LAN (non-hamradio)
But this is not enough, you will also need to get http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net and http://ieee80211.sf.net and follow the installation instructions for both. Reboot and you should see the wireless interfation on ifconfig -a, then you can play with iwconfig.
If you dont need 3D acceleration and 1280x800, you can use the standard vesa driver. But I am sure you wanna go for 1280x800 so you will need http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html. Follow installtion instructions, then add the next lines to your /etc/X11/XFree86-4:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
HorizSync 28.0 - 110.0
VertRefresh 43.0 - 90.0
Modeline "1280x800" 80.58 1280 1344 1480 1680 800 801 804 827
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "nvidia geforce go 6400"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth24
Modes "1280x800"
ViewPort0 0
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "nvidia geforce go 6400"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection
Now you can enjoy your notebook in Linux.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Article rewrite by rephrasing sentences
Many hire persons to rewrite certain articles and then to republish them in their own site, trying so to avoid duplicate content penalty. How legal is this? I am not very sure and I think all depends on the article author and I assume the more the article is changed, the more legal it gets.
However, if you cannot afford or you dont want to hire human rewriters, you can use this free tool.
I've seen other tools too, but most of them were commercial or hard to use so I could not really test them.
However, if you cannot afford or you dont want to hire human rewriters, you can use this free tool.
I've seen other tools too, but most of them were commercial or hard to use so I could not really test them.
Emptying Yahoo Mail bulk folder is unsafe
It should be simple, you take a look in bulk folder, you don't notice anything which may not be spam and push the "Empty" button.
But what happens if you go to toilet and push the button only after you return? Some emails may have arrived meanwhile and you will lose them. Actually you could lose bulk folder emails in the miliseconds between taking a look at the folder and decide to Empty. Some non-spam email may have arrived into it exactly at this time. Solutions? The only that comes to my mind is to delete emails manually from bulk, without using Empty button.
We know that is common for the bulk folder to contain often non-spam emails. This is because spammers become creative and they always try to create new kind of headers and content for the email to avoid anti-spam triggers.
But what happens if you go to toilet and push the button only after you return? Some emails may have arrived meanwhile and you will lose them. Actually you could lose bulk folder emails in the miliseconds between taking a look at the folder and decide to Empty. Some non-spam email may have arrived into it exactly at this time. Solutions? The only that comes to my mind is to delete emails manually from bulk, without using Empty button.
We know that is common for the bulk folder to contain often non-spam emails. This is because spammers become creative and they always try to create new kind of headers and content for the email to avoid anti-spam triggers.
Automatic and reciprocal link exchange, good or bad?
In the last years, many sites and directories started to offer automatic link exchange programs. Some ask for money while others ask for reciprocal linking. It is pretty clear that such programs and the sites involved don't have a shiny future because Google didn't introduced the backlinking system for being abused.
I tested some of these programs: www.linkmachine.net, www.monsterlinkswap.com, www.gotlinks.com, etc. The result? Getting 100 backlinks from these programs is worse than getting 1 single backlink from a PR4+ site "not flagged". By "not flagged" I mean a site which is not involved in automatic/reciprocal link exchange programs. I believe that search engines and I mean specially Google, identify the sites involved in these programs and flag them somehow. They don't get banned(at least not all of them) but their backlinks get ignored and their outgoing links too. Let's take for example gotlinks.com. They claim to have about 10,000 sites in their network. Each of them backlinks to gotlinks.com. By now, they should be about PageRank8, considering they are also promoting their service by many other ways. But they are only PR6 and I have a feeling that they gained this Page Rank only from directories, forums and blogs where people talk about the program. The 10,000+ sites involved are flagged and they don't pass Pagerank.
So if you are looking for a long term result for your site, don't involve in these "easy to gain backlinks" programs. Remember that the most effective way of getting back links is to make a site actually useful, then people will backlink to it without any incentive.
I tested some of these programs: www.linkmachine.net, www.monsterlinkswap.com, www.gotlinks.com, etc. The result? Getting 100 backlinks from these programs is worse than getting 1 single backlink from a PR4+ site "not flagged". By "not flagged" I mean a site which is not involved in automatic/reciprocal link exchange programs. I believe that search engines and I mean specially Google, identify the sites involved in these programs and flag them somehow. They don't get banned(at least not all of them) but their backlinks get ignored and their outgoing links too. Let's take for example gotlinks.com. They claim to have about 10,000 sites in their network. Each of them backlinks to gotlinks.com. By now, they should be about PageRank8, considering they are also promoting their service by many other ways. But they are only PR6 and I have a feeling that they gained this Page Rank only from directories, forums and blogs where people talk about the program. The 10,000+ sites involved are flagged and they don't pass Pagerank.
So if you are looking for a long term result for your site, don't involve in these "easy to gain backlinks" programs. Remember that the most effective way of getting back links is to make a site actually useful, then people will backlink to it without any incentive.
Friday, June 02, 2006
Penalized or blacklisted by Google?
It is easy to check if a site is blacklisted. If it is older than 3 months, you can simply check the PR, and if it is 0, then either site owner is one of the worst webmaster or the site is black listed. Another method is to search if google has indexed any pages from the site doing a site:www.domain.com search.
About penalization it is much harder. A site can be penalized, but it can still have a good PR and it is still indexed. It just don't show good on SERP. And this does not mean it is not on top for an important keyword. It means it is on the bottom of the list even when you do a very particular search.
Blacklisting can happen on cloaking, hidden text, blog spam.
Penalization usually occurs when you are involved in link schemes, link exchange, duplicate content, stuff keywords, affiliate links.
About penalization it is much harder. A site can be penalized, but it can still have a good PR and it is still indexed. It just don't show good on SERP. And this does not mean it is not on top for an important keyword. It means it is on the bottom of the list even when you do a very particular search.
Blacklisting can happen on cloaking, hidden text, blog spam.
Penalization usually occurs when you are involved in link schemes, link exchange, duplicate content, stuff keywords, affiliate links.
World Of Warcraft tips and tricks
Although it's highly recommendable to complete any quest at low levels, as the experience gained is usually worth it ( u have to grind those mobs anyway, why not gain some extra experience while doing it?) there are some quests which either should be done at high levels or , for the patient ones, completed as any other quest with the sole remark that the reward is not to be used at low levels if the benefit is a percent of some kind and not an absolute value added. You will understand this by looking at the quests i selected:
1. The Alliance "Selling Fish" started by Dockmaster Baren in Redridge Mountains, available at level 16. The reward includes 5 x Fishliver Oil, which might be almost useless to a level 20 rogue, but very useful in certain situations (pvp, instances, world bosses etc.) for a higher level character.
2. The horde quest "A Solvent Spirit", obtained at level 5 in Durotar, from Master Vornal in Sen'Jin Village has the awesome reward which consists of 10 x Really Sticky Glue, excellent for the classes which can't trap a running foe. My rogue used it successfully in pvp either for catching a mounted enemy trying to run away either for escaping from one when the situation got out of hand. When the 10 charges where all used i even bought more from the low levels, but that was in the happy days before this item became BoP....:)
3. "Gold Dust Exchange" is a quest for Alliance only and it can be obtained at level 4 from Remy "Two Times" in Goldshire, Elwyn Forest. The reward is a Bag of Marbles with 10 charges. Imagine what this item would do against a opposite faction warrior or rogue :)
4. For the hordies willing to make a trip to Tirisfal Glades, Apothecary Johaan in Brill gives the quest "A New Plague" which rewards 5 x Slumber Sand, useful for those classes without any crowd control abilities or simply for those who can't use them against particular enemies ( for example, a mage fighting 2 demons might want one asleep, or when fighting a battle on the edge, the 20 seconds of sleep would be a nice chance to bandage if the frost nova failed etc.)
1. The Alliance "Selling Fish" started by Dockmaster Baren in Redridge Mountains, available at level 16. The reward includes 5 x Fishliver Oil, which might be almost useless to a level 20 rogue, but very useful in certain situations (pvp, instances, world bosses etc.) for a higher level character.
2. The horde quest "A Solvent Spirit", obtained at level 5 in Durotar, from Master Vornal in Sen'Jin Village has the awesome reward which consists of 10 x Really Sticky Glue, excellent for the classes which can't trap a running foe. My rogue used it successfully in pvp either for catching a mounted enemy trying to run away either for escaping from one when the situation got out of hand. When the 10 charges where all used i even bought more from the low levels, but that was in the happy days before this item became BoP....:)
3. "Gold Dust Exchange" is a quest for Alliance only and it can be obtained at level 4 from Remy "Two Times" in Goldshire, Elwyn Forest. The reward is a Bag of Marbles with 10 charges. Imagine what this item would do against a opposite faction warrior or rogue :)
4. For the hordies willing to make a trip to Tirisfal Glades, Apothecary Johaan in Brill gives the quest "A New Plague" which rewards 5 x Slumber Sand, useful for those classes without any crowd control abilities or simply for those who can't use them against particular enemies ( for example, a mage fighting 2 demons might want one asleep, or when fighting a battle on the edge, the 20 seconds of sleep would be a nice chance to bandage if the frost nova failed etc.)
Some new and some old things about Google and SEO
Is SEO(Search Engine Optimizing) good?
Depends. If you join a webmaster forum, you may notice that some members there, have 30 or more sites about various topics(ringtones, mortages, pharmacy). Those sites contain no good content except some stolen/poor text and affiliate links. Such sites are definitely not good for internet for the simple reason that one person cannot maintain and keep up to date so many sites, so they are just junk, therefore one of the google's goal is to eliminate junk from their search results.
But if you already have a site, and you do SEO just to make it more friendly for spiders, so more people will be able to find your site, then SEO is good. So you should do SEO for your existing sites and not make new sites just to do SEO.
How does google sort search results?
Some say they use pigeons, others say they do it by PR(the famous green bar). But the correct answer is: all internet users that search using google, contribute to the results ranking. How is this possible? Simple, some use google toolbar, others simply help by clicking or not on a search result.
Of course, in order to get into google's attention, a site first needs a few backlinks and some good original content. Then google allows the users to transparently make the ranking.
Let's consider the next scenario with a user with google toolbar: He searches "free ringtones" and gets to a page(let's name it "site A") where there are ringtones but they are not free. He will close the page and continue the search. At some point he will find a "site B" who has indeed free ringtones so he will spend more time on it to search whatever he needs. He could also bookmark the page, or he will memorize the address. Later he will return to the page or even tell to a friend about it. Google will see that he either type-in the address or used it from bookmarks, so he will consider that site B is good to be on top for "free ringtones", google will also penalize site A. The idea is: the more type-ins/bookmarks a website has and the more time a users spend browsing it, the useful it is, so it should have a high rank. Google easily track user's behaviour if they have Google Toolbar installed. Even if they don't have it, on Javascript enabled browsers, Google can see which sites you click from SERPs.
So how can I get on top of the results?
Make a website thinking to your potential users and what they want to see. Make it SEO friendly but don't exaggerate with this, always put your visitors first. Use ethical promoting methods.
How about PR? Why aren't pages sorted strictly by PR anymore?
Because at some point, many webmasters were using unethical methods to get backlinks, such as link farms, blog spam, aquisition of existing websites with high PR, only for linking purposes (this was bad for the Internet because those sites were no longer developed, they were just abused).
The PR sort was also a little unfair for new sites, which had no change to get on top without getting tons of backlinks. With the new algo, if a site turn out to be useful and used(clicked+browsed), it can get on top positions.
What is sandbox ?
The sandbox applies to new websites, and is a kind of pending status. Google simply says: "Hey you are new, stay down and let the elders first, keep the good work and at some point you'll get into their club too".
This way google can first watch over the new sites to see how often are they updated, how they and where they get their backlinks from. If they get the backlinks at a high rate, they are probably spammers so they will never be ranked good. If their backlinks are up only for a short period, then they probably are buying links or again spam so at some point owners remove the spam or their paid links expire, so the site will be again penalized. Of course google watches to old websites too for such actions, but the elders are always considered more trusted for the simple reason that doorways and unethical sites don't live long.
What is google blacklist or exclusion ?
A site can be manually or automatically excluded from SERPs if it is found to be completely useless for the internet comunity. Such sites usually use spam to get backlinks, they have no content quality but some duplicate or stuffed keywords, and they are full of affiliate links or redirects.
Why META keywords and description are no longer important?
Because they are not seen directly by users, therefore in many cases they were unrelated to the page or outdated. A normal webmaster updates page title and content and often forgets about keywords or description. Meanwhile other webmasters obsessed by SEO, were giving much more attention to META optimization than to content itself. From the user side, the first kind of websites with outdated/missing/unrelated META was usually more useful. So google simply decided to almost ignore META keywords or description.
Is W3C Validation important for SEO?
No, take a look to www.yahoo.com, www.google.com and www.msn.com and you will see that all of them fail the validation tests with several errors. So if they dont care about their own pages, I doubt they care about others'.
Want more? Check http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
Depends. If you join a webmaster forum, you may notice that some members there, have 30 or more sites about various topics(ringtones, mortages, pharmacy). Those sites contain no good content except some stolen/poor text and affiliate links. Such sites are definitely not good for internet for the simple reason that one person cannot maintain and keep up to date so many sites, so they are just junk, therefore one of the google's goal is to eliminate junk from their search results.
But if you already have a site, and you do SEO just to make it more friendly for spiders, so more people will be able to find your site, then SEO is good. So you should do SEO for your existing sites and not make new sites just to do SEO.
How does google sort search results?
Some say they use pigeons, others say they do it by PR(the famous green bar). But the correct answer is: all internet users that search using google, contribute to the results ranking. How is this possible? Simple, some use google toolbar, others simply help by clicking or not on a search result.
Of course, in order to get into google's attention, a site first needs a few backlinks and some good original content. Then google allows the users to transparently make the ranking.
Let's consider the next scenario with a user with google toolbar: He searches "free ringtones" and gets to a page(let's name it "site A") where there are ringtones but they are not free. He will close the page and continue the search. At some point he will find a "site B" who has indeed free ringtones so he will spend more time on it to search whatever he needs. He could also bookmark the page, or he will memorize the address. Later he will return to the page or even tell to a friend about it. Google will see that he either type-in the address or used it from bookmarks, so he will consider that site B is good to be on top for "free ringtones", google will also penalize site A. The idea is: the more type-ins/bookmarks a website has and the more time a users spend browsing it, the useful it is, so it should have a high rank. Google easily track user's behaviour if they have Google Toolbar installed. Even if they don't have it, on Javascript enabled browsers, Google can see which sites you click from SERPs.
So how can I get on top of the results?
Make a website thinking to your potential users and what they want to see. Make it SEO friendly but don't exaggerate with this, always put your visitors first. Use ethical promoting methods.
How about PR? Why aren't pages sorted strictly by PR anymore?
Because at some point, many webmasters were using unethical methods to get backlinks, such as link farms, blog spam, aquisition of existing websites with high PR, only for linking purposes (this was bad for the Internet because those sites were no longer developed, they were just abused).
The PR sort was also a little unfair for new sites, which had no change to get on top without getting tons of backlinks. With the new algo, if a site turn out to be useful and used(clicked+browsed), it can get on top positions.
What is sandbox ?
The sandbox applies to new websites, and is a kind of pending status. Google simply says: "Hey you are new, stay down and let the elders first, keep the good work and at some point you'll get into their club too".
This way google can first watch over the new sites to see how often are they updated, how they and where they get their backlinks from. If they get the backlinks at a high rate, they are probably spammers so they will never be ranked good. If their backlinks are up only for a short period, then they probably are buying links or again spam so at some point owners remove the spam or their paid links expire, so the site will be again penalized. Of course google watches to old websites too for such actions, but the elders are always considered more trusted for the simple reason that doorways and unethical sites don't live long.
What is google blacklist or exclusion ?
A site can be manually or automatically excluded from SERPs if it is found to be completely useless for the internet comunity. Such sites usually use spam to get backlinks, they have no content quality but some duplicate or stuffed keywords, and they are full of affiliate links or redirects.
Why META keywords and description are no longer important?
Because they are not seen directly by users, therefore in many cases they were unrelated to the page or outdated. A normal webmaster updates page title and content and often forgets about keywords or description. Meanwhile other webmasters obsessed by SEO, were giving much more attention to META optimization than to content itself. From the user side, the first kind of websites with outdated/missing/unrelated META was usually more useful. So google simply decided to almost ignore META keywords or description.
Is W3C Validation important for SEO?
No, take a look to www.yahoo.com, www.google.com and www.msn.com and you will see that all of them fail the validation tests with several errors. So if they dont care about their own pages, I doubt they care about others'.
Want more? Check http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
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