November 22nd, 2007 § § permalink
Elvsoft, a romanian company, has released a free DNS analysis service called IntoDNS. IntoDNS checks the health and configuration of DNS servers and mail servers. It’s designed as a tool that helps server and network administrators in day to day job, to identify and fix DNS and mail issues.
The service has also an associated blog that will let the users know all the latest development so don’t forget to subscribe to their feed.
November 4th, 2007 § § permalink
If you have a MFA in your closset, here are two tips that may lead in an increase in CTR:
Decrease normal text vizibility through:
October 29th, 2007 § § permalink
1. “Intelligent” comment spam
The classic, automated, blog spamming seems like is living it’s last days. This is basically the result of two factors:
Because of those two factors a new spamming industry is on the rise and I think that’s here to stay. Human comment spam. This consists of companies that deliver medium quality comments in niche blogs for those interested in getting quick links. Lately, with no activity on this blog, I got a lot of those. My choice? Let it be. They provide unique content for the posts and might encourage genuine readers to interact. In the future? No ideea
2. The nofollow scare
Latest Google PR update has hit pretty bad on some of the SEO industry ego’s. What really surprised me were the denial reactions and later the cowardness. Search Engine Journal, if my memory is good, was one of the first and only SEO sites that removed the nofollow tag from their comments. A pretty brave and intelligent step, not because they were against Google’s rules but because they figured out the way to get more people interacting. Today, to my total dissapointment, I saw that they have added it again. I have no ideea when that happened but I bet that this came after they were downgraded by Google. I just hope that DaveN won’t do the same under Google’s pressure.
Note: I have removed the nofollow tag from this blog a while ago
3. Comment spamming protection fee
If I said previously that automated blog commenting is dying, for the Mafia it might not be true. Just look at the following (non-) spam comment I got:
hello , my name is Richard and I know you get a lot of spammy comments ,
I can help you with this problem . I know a lot of spammers and I will ask them not to post on your site. It will reduce the volume of spam by 30-50% .In return Id like to ask you to put a link to my site on the index page of your site. The link will be small and your visitors will hardly notice it , its just done for higher rankings in search engines. Contact me icq 454528835 or write me tedirectory(at)yahoo.com , i will give you my site url and you will give me yours if you are interested. thank you
This was beyond hilarious and this dickhead qualifies for sure for the Idiot of the Year Award.
P.S. It seems like the “Mafia” is pretty busy, a simple search for the idiot’d ICQ number returning 10.900 results. Or for the black hats 10.900 blogs with comment moderation turned off 
October 28th, 2007 § § permalink
Well, this blog has been ignored by me lately and I’ve decided to change this. The roadmap is as follows:
May 27th, 2007 § § permalink
Amazon’s aStore is one of the newest affiliates tool provided by Amazon and one of the most successful if we take into consideration profits and the enhancements that are periodically added. Astore is (in their description):
Associates can configure an aStore in Associates Central by navigating through a forms-driven set up process. The store can be built and configured within minutes and Associates only need to copy a line of html code into their web pages. All data will be served from Amazon Web Services and therefore will always be up to date. Once set up, it does not require any maintenance from the Associate.
Recently (and very quietly in fact) they have launched 2 new features:
1. First is a small one, and is a feature that allows you to optionally add to the navigational menu an “About Us” page. Even though is not specified it allows basic HTML formatting to the text (inserting links for example). Basically I see no purpose to that, and perhaps what you could do with that is to provide descriptions to your categories and insert links to some products.
2. The great thing is the addition of “Astore Widgets”. Those are JavaScript ads based on your aStore products that can be embedded in other sites. Right now they come in 8 formats and are as customizable as Google’s Adsense for example. What do you need to know is the fact that the ads will provide products from your aStore’s homepage. If no homepage is set, than the ads will be generic Amazon Ads not related to your store. What is great about the widgets is that on most cases, discounted products are presented and that is made very clear, by that increasing the chance of creating a buy.
Best practice with Astore Widgets:
Even though Astore is great and has a pretty good conversion rate (might depend on your niche though) is not as efficient as Adsense. Because of that, I suggest you not to waste your space with the widgets, but to use it as an alternative to Adsense’s Public Ads.
In order to do that, prepare a blank page that:
1. Has the background of your Adsense Ads (as you might know by know, in general try to blend the ads in your page background)
2. Create a centered aligned div where you will place the Astore widget.
3. Upload the created page to a server and provide the link to that page when you generate your Adsense code.
4. Due to the constraint that you can display on the widgets only products from the aStore’s Homepage, make sure that you vary its content until you find the most attractive one.
An alternative to this is to use Openads, and to attach to a zone both Adsense and Astore Widgets.
By doing this you’ll have the following benefits:
1. You increase your revenue chances by removing those pesky Adsense public ads.
2. You decrease banner blindness by varying the content.
This new enhancement comes as a big hit to small companies like Blogger Kit that provided similar features through revenue sharing with the users.
Example of implementation of Astore & Astore Widgets:
Metal & Rock Videos has an attached Astore that sells metal and rock music related products (CDs, DVDs, Accessories). Astore widgets are added to all the Adsense areas. For example you can look here and if is not visible just browse through more obscure bands and you’ll have the chance to see them in action.