where technology is simplified
Archive for April, 2008
How Do You Code HTML Links?
Apr 27th
Linking lies at the heart of the internet. Every page points to other pages or websites and resources via html links. So how do various people promote the websites that they find interesting.
- Bloggers link to other pages very consciously and using as many options available to them. That’s why bloggers’ links use attributes of title, target, rel and whatever else they can find.
- News media link with just a href. They do not have the time, patience or need to use titles or set target to open in a new window or tab. Most of the time they do warn you that they are not responsible for websites that they are linking to.
- Internet marketers who practice spamming the internet with infinitely long sales pages (also known as landing pages) do not link to anything at all. No wait. They do link to another page on the same site – the Buy It Now page.
- Uber geeks and Seth Godin link by posting it on their Twitter feed.
- Infants link by making secretive sounds of Goo Goo Gaga. They also give out mini surprises inside their diapers.
- Teenagers exclusively link to YouTube videos, Myspace profiles and funny images from CollegeHumor.com
- Old people (pre-internet generation) link by Telling others what they find interesting. Spoken word replaces IP packets in this scenario.
Ad Overload: How Much Is Too Much?
Apr 21st
We have all come to expect advertisements in media. Be it news, TV, radio or websites. But there comes a time when advertisement takes precedence over the content. After all, ads are supposed to support content not overwhelm it. That is what seems to have happened to this NY Post story earlier today. I was surprised that the newspaper in all its wisdom let the same ad run in all 5 spots (highlighted in blue) on the same page. I am sure someone out there is looking for “OMFG – Gossip Girl” ads – but 5 ads surrounding the same story on just one page. Advertising dollars at work.
Taking Screenshot Of Long Webpages
Apr 18th
Picnik is an excellent web-based tool for editing images online. But this application has more features than what meets the eye. The Firebox browser extension for Picnik allows you to take a one click screenshot of any webpage. This feature might fail to impress at first glance. But ask yourself a question. How difficult is it to take a screenshot of a website that does not fit in your browser window. Instead of taking multiple images of different sections of the website use the Picnik Firefox plugin. After the install simply right click anywhere on the page and click Picnik. Firefox will load a new tab which takes you to Picnik with the image pre-loaded. Edit it if you wish and download the new image to your computer. This is one of the best ways to take screenshots of long webpages.
How To Rotate Banners With OpenX
Apr 17th
OpenX is an open-source ad management platform. I wrote an overall review of OpenX (aka OpenAds) in my last post which discusses the benefits of the platform and also points out some of the cons. One of the most important uses of OpenX is rotating banners. Banner rotation is very easy with OpenX. But unless you know how to do it you might find yourself lost in documentation. It consists of 2 steps.
STEP 1: Launch Your Advertising Campaign
Follow steps to launch your first advertising campaign. This is explained in details in the presentation from OpenX (aka OpenAds).
STEP 2: Banner Rotation
After you have your first ad campaign up and running proceed to this step. Create a new advertiser and create a new campaign with the proper banner-size. Then select the publishing spot where you want to display the banner. If the spot already has another ad running then OpenX will automatically enter the new ad in rotation with the old one. Based on the weights or costs defined you can control how often any particular banner is displayed.
Prevent Comment Spam With reCAPTCHA
Apr 22nd
Posted by TechVirgin in Reviews
15 comments
Recently there has been an increase of comment spam on TeqEdge blog. As much as I would love to have an increase in comment activity spamming is causing lot of headaches. A default WordPress install comes with Akismet plugin which gives basic spam protection. Akismet is a great plugin and a great way to safeguard your new blog. But when you receive more than 30 comment spam a day it is time to look for a more advanced solution. I was looking a few different captcha products to find the best fit for TeqEdge blog. reCaptcha for came out on top. reCaptcha is an excellent add-on for WordPress to easily implement captcha deterring comment spam.
What Is reCaptcha
Captcha is a distorted block of text that humans can easily read but bots fails to understand. If you have visited a few websites you probably have seen some form of captcha. They are currently being used in a lot of places – from new email account registrations to commenting on blogs. reCaptcha goes one step further. It uses the captcha outputs to digitize books that cannot be read with traditional OCR (ed. Optical Character Recognition). reCaptcha describes the process as “reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly.”
How To Install reCAPTCHA
The installation procedure described on their website is straight forward and very easy to follow. It reacts as just another plugin for WordPress. Download the plugin in zip format to your computer and unzip. Then upload and and activate to your blog. During activation you will be asked to enter a Public and Private API keys. Don’t worry – just sign up for a free account and enter your website URL. Done! For more detailed installation instructions refer to the official reCAPTCHA plugin page.
During my install process I did not experience any problems. It took 5 minutes from downloading to activating the reCaptcha plugin. Once fully activated it reCaptcha will appear directly below the comment area. I included the screenshot below how it looks.