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Windows XP Service Pack 3 Is Here: Are You Ready?
Apr 16th
Windows XP has been around for the last 6 years. In this long time it has not seen many significant changes. XP Service packs 1 and 2 provided a few additional features and benefits and made lives of users and administrators much easier. With the advent of Service Pack 3, Windows XP will be able to integrate more closely with Vista and Windows 2008 servers. But the question is do you really need SP3 and are you ready for it?
What Is Windows XP SP3?
Service pack 3 is the next ‘significant’ update in the Windows XP family. Service pack 3 includes a plethora of windows security and performance updates in one compact package. In addition SP3 also resolves several compatibility issues between XP and Vista and future Windows versions. The details of Service Pack 3 are still sketchy and the overview only goes over general issues addressed and requirements and prerequisites. If you are interested then scroll below to see an embedded version of the overview as released by Microsoft.
What Does XP SP3 include?
Service pack 3 includes a collective of all the Windows XP Operating System updates that have been released till now. It covers bug fixes, security updates, critical updates, updated drivers – basically anything and everything covered by the XP OS. One point to note, however, XP sp3 does not include Internet Explorer 7. This may relieve some. IE 6 stays intact in this update. If you want IE7 then it is available as a separate download from Microsoft. The schedule posted on Ars Technica the consumer version of the service pack should be hitting the streets at the end of this month.
- April 14, 2008: Support is available for the release version of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP
- April 21, 2008: Original Equipment Manufacturers, Volume License, Connect, and MSDN and TechNet subscribers
- April 29, 2008: Microsoft Update, Windows Update, Download Center
- June 10, 2008: Automatic Updates
Do You Need XP SP3?
The answer to this question is – depends. If you are happy with your OS install and keep it regularly updated then there is no need to install sp3. For most home users this update will not be beneficial since their computers will never interact with Windows Server 2008 environment. In addition, if windows updates are running on your PC (as it is by default) then you wont need this cumulative update. After all no one wants to tinker with their machines if it working fine.
But the Service Pack 3 really comes in handy if you are an administrator and have multiple operating systems on your LAN. In an office environment it is best to upgrade the XP version on workstations to sp3 release. To ensure proper functioning with servers on the network and other Vista workstations you would eventually need to install sp3. This update will be of great benefit if you are installing or re-installing XP. In this scenario lets consider you just did a fresh install of Windows XP. Now instead of spending countless hours installing 100 or so windows updates you can take advantage of XP Service Pack 3. No more waiting for downloading and installing all the individual updates. SP3 is an all-in-one update in this case.
Windows XP Service Pack 3 Overview
The full copy of Microsoft’s XP SP3 overview is provided after the jump.
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Adobe Does TV
Apr 14th
Adobe has been on quite a roll lately. First Adobe launched a free, web version of Photoshop and now a video portal, imaginatively named Adobe TV. At the moment there are a few training and demo videos on the website. But it has potential to host a whole lot of different media content. At the moment all the videos are classified in to 4 broad categories of Photographers, Designers, Video Professionals, Developers and Programs.
Adobe TV is based on Air platform which is a promising technology quickly rising through the ranks with significant backing from Adobe. In a page from YouTube Adobe allows videos to be embeded. The videos can also be linked to directly. TechCrunch has covered Adobe TV in more details and names a few of the partners. “Companies that are offering content for the player include CBS, MTV Networks, Universal Music Group, PBS, CondéNet, and Scripps Networks. Adobe Media Player offers playback of streamed, downloaded or locally-stored video in Adobe Flash and can be viewed in 1080p, 720p or 480i resolutions. iTunes style the player allows users to subscribe to television shows and other content and automatically receive new episodes when they are available.”
Ad Management With OpenX
Apr 11th
OpenX, also known as OpenAds, is an open-source advertising management platform. The program is an excellent add-on to your blog or website when you want to promote private ad sales. It is also a great resource to track which affiliate offers are getting the most clicks. This way you don’t have to depend on guesses and assumptions during affiliate marketing campaigns. You can replace that with hard statistics when it comes to simple, banner-based campaigns.
Technical Details
OpenX download is a 30MB package which includes everything you want from a mature advertising management solution. The huge PHP script might look like an over sized and complicated setup. But the size is caused by template data and performance statistics gathering and reporting scripts. The statistics and reporting data that is collected is not a substitute to Google Analytics, but it is enough to make OpenX valuable. In fact, my reason behind installing OpenX was to do some split-testing and collect hard numbers on various affiliate offers.
OpenX and Private Ad Sales
Another benefit of using OpenX is private ad-sales. With OpenX you automate the process. You can assign weights to all campaign banners according to costs or any other metric and use them in rotation. For high paid campaigns you set it to show permanently for the advertising duration. After the ad term is over OpenX will automatically take it out of rotation and fill in the spot with house ads or AdSense, depending on its configuration.
Bad Side of OpenX
Support for OpenX is one of the most lacking aspects. The open-source community is helpful and supportive. Any help that you need is restricted to Googling the error messages and trolling through the OpenX (previously known as OpenAds) support forums. The OpenX Forums are a great source for troubleshooting. But it can be a difficult place to locate your exact problem and hopefully find a solution. During my experience with OpenX I ran into a couple of error which is more like bugs. I saw a couple of open forum posts on the exact same error. But only one of them was answered. I will discuss the specifics of the error and resolution in a later post. But before installing OpenX understand that it has a high learning curve. It is not like WordPress, following tutorial steps will only take you so far.
Build A Niche Store Review
Mar 27th
Affiliate Marketing is the holy grail of making money online. Build A Niche Store or BANS, for short, aims to make you a super affiliate marketer of eBay products. eBay is an amazing money making machine on its own. BANS wants to bring the power of eBay to the average internet marketer. The variety of products and the high conversion rates are enough to make everyone pay close attention to the high payout as an eBay affiliate. Now BANS makes it easy to effortlessly create eBay affiliate sites and make some money.
What Is BANS?
In essence, BANS is a website creating script which also serves as basic content management software. The simple user interface will enable anyone to create great looking websites. But the power of BANS hides in auto-generating beautiful sites wrapped around eBay auctions. But BANS is not the average single page landing pages (aka squeeze pages) that are crowding the internet. BANS delivers quality information by creating content pages alongside eBay affiliate auctions. This combo is creating search engine friendly websites which bring value to the visitor and allows the webmaster to make money with the ebay affiliate program.
Creating A BANS Site
Creating a BANS site is straightforward. Use a FTP tool to upload the content to your webhost. Then point your browser to the web address. After that follow on-screen prompt to click and create your BANS website. The BANS software script allows you to easily change colors and customize graphics. This will help your ebay affiliate site to distinguish itself from the rest. After that comes the easy part – drive traffic and let ebay do the heavy lifting. Using BANS money making becomes easy. With an average of 30 unique visitors a day expect to make about a hundred dollars within the first month. After that it will only get better. The included screenshot is of an actual website created in about 15 minutes with BANS.
The user manual is very detailed and thorough. Every step of the upload and install process is described in detail. Screenshots and step by step instructions are simple enough that your grandma can follow. Helpful support from members-only forum is an excellent source of information. Apart from customization questions you can find best practices and tips to get the most out of BANS. Most importantly the community around BANS will help you get the value out of your investment.
Benefits
The benefit of BANS are quite obvious – it helps you make money. The other not-so-obvious benefits are:
- BANS is very easy to use. Documentation is excellent and forum is an excellent source for support information and community help, tips and best practices.
- Potential to make lots of money with unlimited BANS websites. Since the license allows you to create unlimited sites there are no restrictions to the number of sites you can create. This multiplies your opportunity to make money.
- BANS websites does not cause problems with Google or other search engines. This is because the eBay auction pages are generally accompanied by content pages or sections related to the products.
- BANS promises FREE upgrade to all future software releases. How much more can you possibly want.
Cons
There are a few shortcomings of the BANS product that customers should be aware of.
- Only works with eBay product auctions. There are a few ‘hacks’ to make it work with the Amazon Affiliate program. But they are not recommended and are not supported.
- BANS costs $97. This amount can be earned back within a week with a few properly created BANS sites. If you are a complete newbie then it might take you up to a month to earn back the cost of the product.
Why you should use BANS
I will be the first to admit that affiliate marketing is not my forte. But using BANS has been the best decision I made since the launch of this website. I have been using BANS on 2 websites that I recently set up for 3 weeks now. For traffic I am using Yahoo Search Marketing. As of earlier today I have recovered my complete investment in BANS. This also includes the cost of 2 domains and campaign costs on Yahoo Search Marketing. For hosting I have used my current Hostmonsteraccount which gives me unlimited domains. I will go into the setup and implementation process in another post. But I wanted to show you how easy it is to make money with BANS.
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.