Roleli Web Talkings

virus issues

2010-04-13T13:54:00.001-07:00

expand C:\I386\explorer.ex_ %systemroot%\explorer.exe

sfc /scannow

http://www.squidoo.com/explorer-exe

http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/howto-24.html

http://www.windowsbbs.com/malware-virus-removal/91421-resolved-nothing-will-open-trojan-horse-3.html

http://www.virustotal.com/

http://spywarehammer.com/simplemachinesforum/index.php?PHPSESSID=aan48qtqdimgkrsc6o922dl1j0&topic=7328.15

http://www.avg.com/gb-en/avg-rescue-cd

http://www.threatexpert.com/report.aspx?md5=f5e8d2e4bc003eb319cb2480d7e54084

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix

find all files created in last 7 days

modified in last 7 days

Haiti, Earthquake and Twitter

2010-01-16T16:23:00.000-08:00

The tragic earthquake in Haiti has once again highlighted the usefulness of Twitter. In the minutes that followed the earthquake the first voice from Haiti was over the Twitter streams. It its not only Twitter that has stood out the ability to 'tweet', i.e. send messages, using the smartphones such as the IPhone, Blackberry, Nokia and others. What this has done is allowed not only text but images to be tweeted in seconds. The phone has become powerful too.

Useful Twitter Users

Going back to Haiti, there have have been a some twitter users whose updates have proven useful. These accounts I have found helpful in following events in Haiti

http://twitter.com/firesideint

http://twitter.com/Fonkoze

http://twitter.com/Louisoxfam

http://twitter.com/carelpedre

http://twitter.com/troylivesay

http://twitter.com/fredodupoux

http://twitter.com/RAMhaiti
http://twitter.com/InternetHaiti

A quick search of Haiti turned up users retweeting, i.e. repeating, updates provided by those users and in effect they quickly became the credible sources of what was happening around Haiti.

Twitter 101

Twitter allows users to freely sign up for an account and begin sending messages limited to 140 characters. Users can then follower other users, (twitters) and other persons can follow them. Users can communicated publicly by sending messages to each other using the "@username message" syntax , retweet/repeating messages using the "RT @username message" syntax and where a user is following you send a private direct message by typing "DM username message".

To tag messages the use is made of the hashtag (#), e.g. 'message #tag'.

In a nutshell that is a Twitter 101 and you are on the way.

Interestingly, it was only a year ago on that the United Airlines was forced to land in the Hudson after a bird strike took out the engines. The first place with the news was Twitter. When Micheal Jackson died it was Twitter again. In Jamaica, when the fire at Wray and Nephew broke out it was Twitter again and when the American Airlines crashed after landing Twitter was my first source.

This real-time up-to-minute stream has made reporters of all and Journalists in the media in Jamaica will have to accept this.

Google's Partnership

Google's Partnership with Twitter in providing real-time Twitter search results has only served to increase Twitter's audience

Lessons Learnt

CNN has championed scoial media and used it to full effect in the 2008 USA Presidential Race. Today it appears that everyone of CNN's anchors has a Twitter account, Facebook page or blog.

They have used twitter and the contacts made to good effect. Message to media in Jamaica, ignore twitter and by extension social media to your own peril.

Remember to donate to the credible place like

American Red Cross
Salvation Army
Adventist Development Relief Agency (ADRA)

CNN has a good list http://cnn.com/impact/

Spamassassin 2010 Bug Solution

2010-01-01T10:02:00.000-08:00

It seems that every year at the start of the year there is some computer related issue. This time the bug has struck Spamassassin a tool used by many web host in Spam Filtering. The bug seems to affect both Spamassassin versions 2.x and 3.x.

The bug lies in a rule, FH_DATE_PAST_20XX, that checks for email with forward dates e.g. 2010,2011... 2020. However the rule worked fine for mail with dates 2000-2009 but we are now in 2010.

Solution: (Quick Fix)

There are a few approaches

1. Add local.cf

Add this rule

score FH_DATE_PAST_20XX 0

2. 50_scores.cf
Find 50_scores.cf and edit it

change
score FH_DATE_PAST_20XX 2.00753.384 3.554 3.188 #n=2

to
score FH_DATE_PAST_20XX 0 #n=2

You might need to restart you spamd process .

Note: this is a quick fix not a permanent solution
a) if your spamassassin settings are global and not on a user by user basis. You will need to update the user settings.
b) The rule needs correcting

A bug report has been filed by users.

References

Force File Download with PHP

2009-11-12T05:55:00.000-08:00

Here is the code taken from

function output_file($file, $name, $mime_type='')
{
/*
This function takes a path to a file to output ($file),
the filename that the browser will see ($name) and
the MIME type of the file ($mime_type, optional).

If you want to do something on download abort/finish,
register_shutdown_function('function_name');
*/
if(!is_readable($file)) die('File not found or inaccessible!');

$size = filesize($file);
$name = rawurldecode($name);

/* Figure out the MIME type (if not specified) */
$known_mime_types=array(
 "pdf" => "application/pdf",
 "txt" => "text/plain",
 "html" => "text/html",
 "htm" => "text/html",
 "exe" => "application/octet-stream",
 "zip" => "application/zip",
 "doc" => "application/msword",
 "xls" => "application/vnd.ms-excel",
 "ppt" => "application/vnd.ms-powerpoint",
 "gif" => "image/gif",
 "png" => "image/png",
 "jpeg"=> "image/jpg",
 "jpg" =>  "image/jpg",
 "php" => "text/plain"
);

if($mime_type==''){
  $file_extension = strtolower(substr(strrchr($file,"."),1));
  if(array_key_exists($file_extension, $known_mime_types)){
  $mime_type=$known_mime_types[$file_extension];
  } else {
  $mime_type="application/force-download";
  };
};

@ob_end_clean(); //turn off output buffering to decrease cpu usage

// required for IE, otherwise Content-Disposition may be ignored
if(ini_get('zlib.output_compression'))
 ini_set('zlib.output_compression', 'Off');

header('Content-Type: ' . $mime_type);
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$name.'"');
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header('Accept-Ranges: bytes');

/* The three lines below basically make the
   download non-cacheable */
header("Cache-control: private");
header('Pragma: private');
header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT");

// multipart-download and download resuming support
if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_RANGE']))
{
 list($a, $range) = explode("=",$_SERVER['HTTP_RANGE'],2);
 list($range) = explode(",",$range,2);
 list($range, $range_end) = explode("-", $range);
 $range=intval($range);
 if(!$range_end) {
  $range_end=$size-1;
 } else {
  $range_end=intval($range_end);
 }

 $new_length = $range_end-$range+1;
 header("HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content");
 header("Content-Length: $new_length");
 header("Content-Range: bytes $range-$range_end/$size");
} else {
 $new_length=$size;
 header("Content-Length: ".$size);
}

/* output the file itself */
$chunksize = 1*(1024*1024); //you may want to change this
$bytes_send = 0;
if ($file = fopen($file, 'r'))
{
 if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_RANGE']))
 fseek($file, $range);

 while(!feof($file) &&
  (!connection_aborted()) &&
  ($bytes_send<$new_length)
       )
 {
  $buffer = fread($file, $chunksize);
  print($buffer); //echo($buffer); // is also possible
  flush();
  $bytes_send += strlen($buffer);
 }
fclose($file);
} else die('Error - can not open file.');

die();
} 

/*********************************************
   Example of use
**********************************************/ 

/*
Make sure script execution doesn't time out.
Set maximum execution time in seconds (0 means no limit).
*/
set_time_limit(0); 
$file_path='that_one_file.txt';
output_file($file_path, 'some file.txt', 'text/plain');

Touch Command for Windows

2009-10-08T04:42:00.000-07:00

If you every need to change the last modified date on a windows file here is a command that does so

copy /b test.txt +,,

Source:

Touch Command for Windows

Keeping your Geolocation up to date

2009-07-30T06:28:00.000-07:00

If you host Open Ads or use Geographic targeting you will realise that from time to time you need to update you geo-location data file. This is an shell script to help

Script

#!/bin/sh
# retrieve and update Geolocation database

#get date...
today=`date +%d-%m-%y`
#today=`date +%d-%m-%y` #date in this format 04-08-09
#today=`date +%Y%m%%d` #date in this format 20090804

#go to folder
cd /home/adserver/

#grab data file
/usr/bin/wget -q --limit-rate=100k wget http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCountry/GeoIP.dat.gz

# Check if file exists

if [ -f /home/adserver/GeoIP.dat.gz ]
then
#backup current file
if [ -f /home/adserver/GeoIPCity.dat ]
then
/bin/mv /home/adserver/GeoIP.dat /home/adserver/GeoIP-$today.dat
fi

#uncompress new file
/bin/gzip -d /home/adserver/GeoIP.dat.gz
fi

Cron Job
Let us say the file above is called update.sh. Add this to your cron.

0 2 7 * * /bin/sh /home/adserver/update.sh > dev/null 2>&1

Notes:

1. Ensure the full paths for mv, cd, wget are correct
you can find that by doing a whereis command name e.g whereis mv

2. Change "/home/adserver/" to the your path to where you want to put the file

3. if " if [ -f filename ] ..." does not work try "if[ -e filename ].."

4. The service is free, from maxmind.com so I try not to abuse their servers.
a) limit the download rate to --limit-rate=100k
b) update once month usually about the 5,6,7th ( the say the 1st of the month but the updates are usually late
( paid services are available)

5. you an remove the old file using "/bin/rm -f /home/adserver/GeoIP.dat " but I am one for backups

Useful

Bash Scripting Tutorial

MYSQL, Foreign Keys

2009-06-29T19:30:00.000-07:00

Here is my example and some pointers that lead a solution to my problem.

'contact_id' in table 'note' referencing 'id' in table 'contact'

CREATE TABLE 'contact' (

'id' int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment COMMENT 'Unique Contact ID',

PRIMARY KEY ('id'),

) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci AUTO_INCREMENT=0 ;

CREATE TABLE 'note' (

'id' int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment COMMENT 'Note ID',

'entity_table' varchar(64) collate utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL COMMENT 'Name of table where item being referenced is stored.',

'entity_id' int(10) unsigned NOT NULL COMMENT 'Foreign key to the referenced item.',

'contact_id' int(10) unsigned default NULL COMMENT 'FK to Contact ID creator',

PRIMARY KEY ('id'),

KEY 'index_entity' ('entity_table','entity_id'),

KEY 'FK_note_contact_id' ('contact_id')

) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci AUTO_INCREMENT=0;

ALTER TABLE 'note'

ADD CONSTRAINT 'FK_note_contact_id' FOREIGN KEY ('contact_id') REFERENCES 'contact' ('id') ON DELETE SET NULL;

Things to note

1. Tables must be same type. [in this case InnoDB]

2. The columns must be the same type.[in this case int(10)]

3. The Attributes must be the same unsigned

4. The field that is referencing must be default set to null "default NULL"

i.e. contact_id , must be default NULL. (If you specify a SET NULL action, make sure that you have not declared the columns in the child table as NOT NULL.)

5. Indexes on foreign keys and referenced keys

6. Watch your case. the FK is case sensitive

If you need to alter a table do the following

set foreign_key_checks = 0;

...

Alter table etc..

set foreign_key_checks = 1;

Useful reference:

INNODB foreign key constraint

See also:

LIME 3G speeds

2009-06-04T04:46:00.001-07:00

Testing a lime 3g Modem...

Received the following speeds in the New Kingston Area

The installation on a Mac 10.5 failed but worked flawlessly on Windows XP.

During the so far I have received burst speeds of up to 5.3 Mbps per second. The problem is this if you have to pay for the data you could run in trouble

Without downloading any programmes, just regular browsing in no time over 6 MB was consumed.

IE Tester for IE Version Testing

2009-05-22T15:56:00.000-07:00

For many web developers cross browser testing has been a pain. One of the greatest pains has been test the different versions of IE, 5.5, 6, 7 and now 8. Users of browsers like Firefox, Safari and Opera tend to upgrade regular and even in some cases the updates are automated.

The reality however is that IE still controls the majority share in the browser market thanks to Microsoft dominance of the Operating System found on personal computers around the world.

Here is a good tool for testing different versions of IE.

IE Tester

Here are some reviews

Go ahead and give it a try. Solving those CSS and JavaScript errors should be alot easier now.

Javascript Frame works

2009-04-07T11:34:00.000-07:00

Today I got a e-mail asking about Javascript frame works. I am no expert but from my little fooling around I like JQuery..

Here you can read what a few other persons have to say.

Specky Boy lists their top 10 (not in order) and the his audience seems to give JQeury the edige.
Sixrevisions they also list their top 10 (not in order) but the comments are again worth reading.

This is one promotion I really endorse

“jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript”.

As usual it boils doing to what you are doing, your style and what best suits you project

Windows Batch File

2009-03-20T06:07:00.000-07:00

I needed the get the date for batch file on Windows in this format yyyy-mm-dd e.g. 2009-03-20 so I did a little research on the internet.

The result is I found this snippet at tech-recipes.com

FOR /F "TOKENS=1* DELIMS= " %%A IN ('DATE/T') DO SET CDATE=%%B
FOR /F "TOKENS=1,2 eol=/ DELIMS=/ " %%A IN ('DATE/T') DO SET mm=%%B
FOR /F "TOKENS=1,2 DELIMS=/ eol=/" %%A IN ('echo %CDATE%') DO SET dd=%%B
FOR /F "TOKENS=2,3 DELIMS=/ " %%A IN ('echo %CDATE%') DO SET yyyy=%%B

SET mydate=%yyyy%-%mm%-%dd%

There are some nuisances so for more discussion on the top visit tech-recipes.

Google ADs Heat Map

2008-12-01T07:01:00.000-08:00

Interesting information on Ad placements

The following links are useful

Google Links

Others

Useful Marketing Sites

2008-06-12T10:15:00.001-07:00

Useful Internet Marketing Information Sites

Signing up for their newsletters are worth it

Read Write Web
Ad Age
Silicon Alley
I Media Connection
E-Marketer

Others

Biz Report
SiteProNews

YouTube: You Created the Content, Now Sell the Ads

2008-06-12T10:07:00.000-07:00

Google, Looking to Monetize Video Site, Is Letting Content Producers Sell Advertising on Their Branded Channels

Google has struggled to find the best way to monetize YouTube. The latest idea: Let content creators sell ads.

Professional content producers -- those who come equipped with their own ad-sales teams -- are now able to sell advertising on their YouTube channels. That includes the click-to-expand overlays that run across the bottoms of YouTube videos and display units on the page that hosts the video player. The revenue is split between the content creator and YouTube, just as it would be if YouTube sold the ads.

Javascript event handling

2008-06-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

http://mislav.caboo.se/js/handling-events-on-elements/

feed://feeds.feedburner.com/mislav/js

feed://www.advancescripts.com/rss/786.html

http://cssglobe.com/post/1539/css-dos-and-donts-part-1-css-selecting

http://mislav.caboo.se/js/

Mysql TIps

2008-05-24T21:48:00.000-07:00

Multiple inserts

http://www.petefreitag.com/item/379.cfm

Insert Delayed

http://www.petefreitag.com/item/430.cfm

Optimisation tips

http://www.petefreitag.com/item/613.cfm

More tips

http://www.petefreitag.com/item/455.cfm - Cheat sheets

http://www.petefreitag.com/item/505.cfm - Apache Security

Copyright Issues

2008-05-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

Every now and then someone is going to steal your content. What are you going to do?

Here are some useful links into the problem

http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/what-do-you-do-when-someone-steals-your-content/

http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/04/11/finding-stolen-content-and-copyright-infringements/

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Terrorism/form-letter.html

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/05/01/my_first_ceaseanddesist_letter

http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2001/05/legal/

http://www.webmastertechniques.com/Insight/cease.html

SSL on Apache2

2008-04-07T08:01:00.000-07:00

Here is guide and information on setting up SSL on Apache 2. The articles are very informative.

http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1818
http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1820
http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1823

No to Google Ad Manager?

2008-03-20T04:35:00.001-07:00

A few days ago, Google launched an Ad Manager for free. This came a few days after the deal to acquire DoubleClick, the largest display Ad Network on the Web.

Here are my reasons for not liking this move.

1. Google already has Adwords, Adsense(we love), Analytics, Base and Gmail( you now have to have a Gmail account)
2. With all of the above, Google already knows enough about you.
3. With the Ad Manager with its reporting capacity Google will now know your CPM rates and how other ads perform on your site, does Google need to know your CPM rates.

Will this infomation drive down your revenue or up?

There was an interesting post on the Open X blog.
http://blog.openx.org/03/why-should-ad-serving-be-open/

n.b. This Blogging Platform is also owned by Google

Google Adsense Terms and Conditions updated

2008-02-26T13:51:00.000-08:00

Google has updated its terms and conditions.

New Products and Services
1. Changes are coming to products and services Google officers. Here is an interesting line, "anticipating, for example, that future products may be priced, paid, or managed differently than current ones."

2. Publishers will have up the 3 months, i.e. by May 25, 2008 to agree to the new terms and conditions.

Privacy

3. Publishers will have to be transparent. Publishers will have to post and abide by a privacy policy. So if you do not have a privacy policy on your site, you need to post one.

You need to notify your users/visitors that data is being collected with the use of cookies and or web beacons to facilitate the ad serving process.

There are many other changes so it is time get reading.

Simple but Effective - US $10 million a year

2008-01-22T04:02:00.000-08:00

Here is a guy that has proved that simple is often very effective. His simply designed site, graphically that is, earns close to US $10 million, mostly if not all from Google Adsense

"Mr. Frind built the Plenty of Fish Web site in 2003 as nothing more than an exercise to help teach himself a new programming language, ASP.NET. The site first became popular among English-speaking Canadians. Popularity among online daters in many United States cities followed more recently, and with minimal spending on advertising the site. According to data from comScore Media Metrix for November 2007, Plenty of Fish had 1.4 million unique visitors in the United States. In December, Mr. Frind said, the site served up 1.2 billion page views, and page views have soared 20 percent since Dec. 26." - From the NY Times article.

NY Times Article

Wall Street Article

Monetise RSS Feeds

2008-01-13T18:17:00.000-08:00

Useful Blogs

http://www.doshdosh.com/monetize-rss-feed-advertising/
http://www.scottgatz.com/blog/2005/11/17/monetizing-your-rss-feed/
http://www.demc.com/marketing/article_167.shtml

Networks

http://www.feedburner.com/
http://www.text-link-ads.com/
http://www.pheedo.com/
http://publisher.yahoo.com/
http://kanoodle.com/
http://www.mediafed.com/rss_reader.html
http://www.adgenta.com/
http://www.thankyoupages.com/publishers/rss.mpl
http://www.bidvertiser.com

www.emarketer.com
http://www.masternewmedia.org/podcast_directory/
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss

Bookmarking and Feed Widgets

2007-12-20T06:27:00.001-08:00

Here is a selection of bookmarking and feed widgets you can place on your site

AddThis http://www.addthis.com
Shareomatic http://shareomatic.com/
FeedPass http://www.feedpass.com/
addtoany http://www.addtoany.com/

These widgets are gather rather interesting data
read http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/05/addthis-widget-gathering-lots-of-interesting-data/
http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mining/2007/03/addthis_the_met.html

Google Adds Ad Review

2007-12-16T08:51:00.000-08:00

Google has finally step up to the table where other advertisers have been gathered and will has begun to allow certain advertisers to review the ads being placed on their site.

This is a most welcomed move. You can read more at at the Google Adsense Blog on Ad Reivew

Google is dealing with Accidental Clicks

2007-11-18T10:40:00.000-08:00

Google is moving to reduce accidental clicks.

This post post explains it well http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-11-13-n42.html but you can read it at Google Adsense Blog. This could mean decrease in revenue for some. Despite that I think it is a fair change as it gives the advertisers better value for their money. I am not sure why it was not like this from before.

Happy advertisers are likely to keep on advertising. This quote from the the article sums it up. It says, "By reducing accidental clicks, we hope to increase advertiser campaign value and satisfaction, encouraging additional spend and facilitating higher monetization for all publishers."

wordpress and mobile

2007-10-26T07:32:00.000-07:00

Wordpress Mobile Plugin
http://www.andymoore.info/wordpress-mobile-plugin/ - best

http://lesterchan.net/wordpress/readme/wp-wap.html
http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming.php
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wphone

Monetise
http://www.admob.com/s/home/publish
http://google.com/adsense

Directing
http://www.andymoore.info/php-to-detect-mobile-phones/

Emulators
http://ready.mobi/launch.jsp

Documentation
http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/#OneWeb
http://dev.mobi/

Usage
http://www.admob.com/s/home/live

Web analytics

2007-10-25T11:30:00.000-07:00

Web analytics
http://www.clicktracks.com/product.php

http://www.webtrends.com/Resources/WebAnalyticsGlossary.aspx
http://www.webtrends.com/Resources/WhitepapersAndGuides.aspx
http://www.iab.net/standards/richmedia.asp
http://www.iab.net/standards/uap/analysis.asp

Ad Networks & Google alternatives

2007-10-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

Set up your own ad network

http://www.adify.com/
http://www.adspeed.com/

http://www.masternewmedia.org/online-advertising/online-ad-networks/online-advertising-networks-guide-20070219.htm

http://www.imediaconnection.com/resourceconnection/adnetwork.asp
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3355051 (old)

AD Networks
http://www.addynamix.com/publishers.html
http://adtegrity.com/
http://zedo.com
http://valueclick.com
http://tribalfusion.com
http://advertising.com
http://kontera.com
http://chitika.com
http://widgetbucks.com

google alternatives

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/01/adsense-alternatives-when-google-bans.html
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=100059&highlight=google+kontera&page=2
http://www.joelcomm.com/kontera.html
http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-basics/browse_thread/thread/5a6e637bf3d039/26abaa3677357e91?lnk=gst&q=
http://affiliate.business-opportunities.biz/2006/02/28/39-google-adsense-alternatives/
http://affiliate.business-opportunities.biz/2006/02/28/39-google-adsense-alternatives/
http://netprofitstoday.com/_resources/google-adsense-alternatives.html#claxon
http://www.rosswalker.co.uk/adsense_alternatives/#ClickThruTraffic
http://www.publisherspot.com/reviews/adtoll
http://www.adsense-alternatives.info/

YouTube and Adsence

2007-10-10T11:22:00.000-07:00

The Google Adsense blog has announced the launch of Video Units. Thisi a new way to enrich your site with quality, relevant YouTube videos embedded with Adsense Advertising.

Relevant Links

http://adsense.blogspot.com/2007/10/introducing-video-units.html
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=12182&sourceid=aso&subid=us-en-et_faqvublogannounce&medium=link

Video units will be live in AdSense accounts later today (10/9). Currently this feature is open only to publishers located in the United States with English-language websites.

Web Traffic Comparison

2007-08-16T15:43:00.000-07:00

Web Traffic Comparison

http://www.alexa.com/
http://www.compete.com/
http://www.ranking.com/
http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home
http://www.quantcast.com/

http://www.antezeta.com/web-analytics/web-statistics-suppliers.html#WS18

Ad & Affliate Networks
http://www.cpxinteractive.com/sign_up.php
http://www.casalemedia.com/
http://www.adtegrity.com/
http://www.oridian.com/
http://www.text-link-ads.com/
http://www.cpxinteractive.com
http://www.tradedoubler.com
http://www.cj.com
http://www.webgains.com/

Interesting Tools
http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/about.html
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/page/3/

I insert data in to multiple tables in MySql

2007-08-01T15:19:00.000-07:00

I saw this question on Techjamaica forum and noted it. Interesting question and interesting answer.

Basically here is the question. Can I insert data in to multiple tables in MySQL using one insert SQL statement?

Seems like the answer is no

Can I you insert data multiple times into the same table with one statement too.

INSERT INTO employees VALUES
(DEFAULT,'Hicks','Freddy','crew'),
(DEFAULT,'Harris','Joel','crew'),
(DEFAULT,'Davis','Julie','manager');

Examples taken from:
http://www.tizag.com/sqlTutorial/sqlinsert.php
http://www.desilva.biz/mysql/insert.html

You Tube

2007-07-24T05:08:00.001-07:00

Now that you are posting your videos and YouTube ensure that you benefit as much as YouTube(Google) does.

Here are three sites and great tips

My List

Ensure you are the first two subscribers.
URl at the beginning of the description
e.g Jamaica-elections.com: This is
RSS feed promote
http://youtube.com/rssls

FireFox Add ons Anyone

2007-07-23T15:43:00.000-07:00

FireFox Add ons

http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/07/20/6-firefox-extensions-for-web-workers/
http://nicht.untergeord.net/wordpress/index.php/2007/07/22/8-firefox-add-ons-every-web-developer-should-know-about/
http://zia.blogspot.com/2007/07/7-months-later-15-firefox-extensions-i.html

What are your top 5 firefox add-ons/extensions?

color schemes

2007-06-29T06:08:00.001-07:00

Color
------------
http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorschemes.asp?search=&category=Corporate
http://www.colorschemer.com/
http://www.articleinsider.com/article/229290
http://www.colorschemer.com/galleria_info.php
http://colorschemer.com/schemes/?start=331
http://www.webwhirlers.com/colors/colorschemes.asp
http://dianev.com/web-design-help/web_design_basics/color.html
http://dianev.com/web-design-help/web_design_basics/website_color_schemes.html
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/category/color/

examples
----------------
http://www.aviva.com/
http://www.norwichunion.com/

2007-05-31T16:44:00.000-07:00

http://mobile.ups.com
pda.sky.com
bbc.co.uk/mobile
mobile.wunderground.com
pdaportal.com
pdahomepage.com
http://www.purelymobile.co.uk/

Google (http://www.google.com/m/products)
Yahoo Messenger (http://mm.yahoo.com)
News.com (http://m.news.com)
CNET Mobile (http://m.cnet.com)
Weather.com (http://palm.xhtml.weather.com/xhtml/)
Digg (http://mobits.com/digg/)
Reuters (http://mobile.reuters.com/)
New York Times (http://mobile.nytimes.com/)
Business Week (http://pda.businessweek.com/index.html)
Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.com/wml/)
StreetIQ podcasts (http://m.streetiq.com/)
Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/h.html)
Flickr (http://m.flickr.com/)
GameGeeks (http://www.geek.com/gaming/portable/)

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=487?tag=1-1-11-0-0

http://www.mobidish.com/
Adshandy.com
http://www.enpocket.com/

http://realplayer.com/blog/?pageid=broadBandHomePage&pageregion=footer&src=realhome_bb_0_3_1_0_0_1_0&pcode=rn&opage=realhome_bb
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2008-03/0157.html
http://www.download.com/8301-2007_4-9890945-12.html

Mysql Group By

2007-05-22T04:24:00.000-07:00

More on Group By, Having, in your SELECT queries
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/3469351
http://rpbouman.blogspot.com/2007/05/debunking-group-by-myths.html

http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/newsletter/2003-06/a0000000190.html

MYSQL Documentation
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/select.html
last comment very useful
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/group-by-modifiers.html
OPtimisations
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/select-speed.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/where-optimizations.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/query-cache-in-select.html

String manipulation

2007-05-21T04:37:00.000-07:00

proper case strings
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.strtoupper.php#68340
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2005/03/15/title-case-in-php/

Mobile Stuff

2007-05-14T04:31:00.002-07:00

Mobile is back....

General information

http://forum.nokia.com/main/resources/technologies/browsing/support/xhtml_developer_faq.html
http://forum.nokia.com/main/resources/technologies/browsing/support/xhtml_developer_faq.html#22
http://developer.openwave.com/documentation/xhtml_mp_css_reference/xhtml-ref5.html
http://philip.greenspun.com/seia/mobile/
http://mobile.kaywa.com/wap/index.html

http://mobile.yahoo.com/business/advertiser/demo
http://chw.ariadne.mobi/tags/a.xhtml
http://mobile.kaywa.com/wap/wap-wtai.html

http://www.developershome.com/wap/wcss/
http://www.developershome.com/wap/wapServerSetup/
http://www.developershome.com/wap/xhtmlmp/
http://www.developershome.com/wap/uaprofRef/

http://www.w3.org/Mobile/planet
http://www.w3.org/TR/mobileOK-basic10-tests/
http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/
http://validator.w3.org/mobile/
http://www.w3.org/2006/12/digital_divide/public.html
http://www.w3.org/Mobile/
http://www.w3.org/2007/02/mwbp_flip_cards

http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/
http://www.w3.org/International/articles/serving-xhtml/Overview.en.php
http://www.w3.org/International/technique-index

http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2004/12/16/small-screens.html
http://studiohyperset.wordpress.com/2006/10/06/detecting-and-automatically-redirecting-website-visitors-who-visit-a-standard-webpage-website-on-mobile-handheld-wireless-pda-or-cel-cell-phone-devices-browsers-to-a-mobile-version-of-the-webpage-or-w/
http://www.studiohyperset.com/resources/redirect.zip

tutorials
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/04/14/mobile.html
http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/1398
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2004/02/06/mobile_browsing.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2004/02/20/mobile_browsing.html
http://www.littlespringsdesign.com/design/styleguides/
http://www.passani.it/gap/

detection
http://www.passani.it/switcher/
http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/php/index.php

validators
http://www.w3.org/2001/03/webdata/xsv
http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/#validators
http://pc.mtld.mobi/
http://www.dan.co.uk/viewsource/

emulators
http://emulator.mtld.mobi/emulator.php
http://www.operamini.com/demo/?url=[URL]
http://www.operamini.com/demo/

tools kits
http://pc.dev.mobi/node/123
http://developer.openwave.com/dvl/member/downloadManager.htm?softwareId=23
http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/db2c69a2-4066-46ff-81c4-caac8872a7c5/NMB40_install.zip.html
http://pc.dev.mobi/node/223
http://pc.dev.mobi/user/register

Google Gadgets

2007-05-14T04:31:00.001-07:00

http://www.google.com/apis/gadgets/basic.html
http://www.google.com/apis/gadgets/remote-content.html#Fetch_JSON
http://www.google.com/apis/gadgets/reference.html#Userprefs_Ref

More Character Issues

2007-05-14T04:30:00.000-07:00

Mysql

Mysql dump and character issues

PHP

http://www.php.net/htmlspecialchars
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlentities.php
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.html-entity-decode.php

http://www.dragonwinds.com/resources/html-codes.shtml
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/entities/latin1.html
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/sgml/entities.html
http://www.icemelon.com/php/htmlentities.htm
http://www.icemelon.com/tutorials.php?id=3&/PHP/Generate%20RSS%20Feeds/
http://feedvalidator.org/

https://htmlentities.dev.java.net/

character set
A character set determines which characters are allowed within a document. A restrictive character set only allows certain types of characters. For example, a restrictive character set may only allow uppercase characters, and as its name suggests, a broad character set allows many characters. For example, a broad character set may include Arabic characters.
read more at http://www.developerfusion.co.uk/show/3802/5/

Banner design Tips

2007-05-01T09:51:00.001-07:00

Banner tips from

http://www.siteprocentral.com/lessons/0082.html
http://www.businessknowhow.com/marketing/bannertips.htm
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=829391
http://www.microsoft.com/australia/smallbusiness/themes/marketing/10_tips_for_creating_an_effective_banner_ad_campaign.mspx
http://developers.evrsoft.com/articles/p_10_effective_ways_to_boost_banner_click_through.shtml

PHP E-mail Injections

2007-04-05T14:49:00.000-07:00

Sending mail from a web page using a php script is easy, but can be dangerous if not done right.

http://php.net/manual/en/ref.mail.php
http://php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php

Useful guides and tips in securing PHP e-mail script
http://www.tutorialtastic.co.uk/page/php_mail_form_secure_and_protected
http://www.nyphp.org/phundamentals/email_header_injection.php
http://www.securephpwiki.com/index.php/Email_Injection

Useful Links

2007-03-05T04:52:00.001-08:00

http://www.shoemoney.com/page/5/
http://www.pronetadvertising.com/
http://www.calacanis.com/
http://www.downloadsquad.com/
http://searchengineland.com/
http://www.dnscoop.com/

Dynamic Add html
http://javascript.internet.com/forms/adding-html-controls.html
http://www.dustindiaz.com/add-and-remove-html-elements-dynamically-with-javascript/
http://www.madirish.net/?article=141
http://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread90303.html
http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/view.phtml/aid/1785
http://www.java-scripts.net/javascripts/Dynamic-Fields.phtml

WYSIWYG
http://www.openwebware.com/products/openwysiwyg/

Form Tricks
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex11/selectform.htm
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex16/maxlength.htm

Ajax simple example
http://www.edouble-u.nl/testcases/autocomplete/index.htm

http://www.webcheatsheet.com/index.php

Html Special characters

2007-02-20T15:44:00.002-08:00

Everynow and then you need to know how to deal with some pesky little characters like copyright [©] and registered [ ®]

http://www.shopfitter.com/html-special-characters.htm
http://www.chami.com/tips/Internet/050798I.html
http://www.degraeve.com/reference/specialcharacters.php
http://www.utexas.edu/learn/html/spchar.html
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/sgml/entities.html

Robots.txt and Search Engines

2007-01-23T17:30:00.001-08:00

It is not sexy but it useful. The robots.txt is suppose to tell robots/bots/crawlers where they can crawl on a web site. The robots.txt must be placed in the root folder. The Robot Exclusion Standard (RES) is a proposed proposed that has never been agreed on. However, the respectable search engines on the web voluntarily follow it with extensions. There are however reported cases when they allegedly fail to comply with instructions in the robots.txt

Key points

# indicate that any follow it is a comment
* - wild card meaning everything
User-agent - The name of the robot/bot/spider/crawler
Disallow: - Allow access to all of site
Disallow: / - Disallow access to all of site
Disallow: /images/ - do not crawl the images folder
Disallow: /folder/filename.html - do not crawl filename.html in folder

Sample File
----------------------------------------------------

# pervent access of all user agents to the follow folders
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/

# Specific intructions for specific user-agents
User-agent: msnbot
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/
Crawl-delay: 10

User-agent: Teoma
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/
Crawl-delay: 10

User-agent: Slurp
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/
Crawl-delay: 10

------------------------------------------------------------

Allow: and Crawl-delay: are not part of the standard but supported by MSN and Yahoo

Information on what, why and how see
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html

What the Big Three plus one say

ASK
http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml

Yahoo
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp/slurp-02.html

Using the robots.txt analysis tool
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8475

MSN
http://search.msn.com.sg/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER_REF_RestrictAccessToSite.htm

Tougher action

see:

Using .htaccess for site control
http://linuxreviews.org/webdesign/htaccess/

How to keep bad robots, spiders and web crawlers away
http://www.fleiner.com/bots/

robots.txt generator
http://www.mcanerin.com/EN/search-engine/robots-txt.asp

http://www.outfront.net/tutorials_02/adv_tech/robots.htm

PHP coding guidelines

2007-01-12T13:30:00.000-08:00

We don't like guidelines but they are good.

Below are 3 useful links on PHP coding guidelines

http://www.buxaprojects.com/en/php_coding_guidelines.htm

http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/coding-standard.html

http://www.evolt.org/article/PHP_coding_guidelines/18/60247/

The 6 C's Of Marketing Unleashed

2006-10-13T16:37:00.000-07:00

Interesting from Entireweb Newsletter * October 12, 2006 * ISSUE #274

The 6 C's Of Marketing Unleashed
Okay, so we have all learned about the 4P's of marketing in undergrad: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. If not, you can open up one of your old marketing text books, blow off the dust and read about it there. The 6 C's, however, is a not a concept that replaces the 4 P's; rather, it just expands on the promotion element and provides a more granular approach to consumer marketing.
CUSTOMER:
In this day and age, a company's marketing strategy needs to be customer focused. It's about understanding the target consumer; their wants, needs and motivations. Not as demographics, psychographics or any other graphics, but as real people. Its understanding why customers do what they do (or don't do),when they do it and why they do it. Such knowledge is critical in marketing since having a strong understanding of buyer behavior will help shed light on what is important to the customer. It's about focusing on the target customer first and then working back to the brand. It's imperative that companies have mindshare before focusing on market share.
CONSISTENCY:
Companies need to maintain consistency in their message; a practice called integrated marketing communications - from packaging and advertising to sales promotion and publicity. This will maintain and reinforce a brand's personality and image in a real life context and avoid doing something brainless like changing the distinctive color of the UPS truck to orange. I am sure it's been talked about.
CREATIVITY:
Creativity is imperative to attract attention in a world cluttered with thousands of messages. Creativity means laying aside the rules, and engages in out-of-box thinking so that marketers can reach beyond logic and structure and tap into their imaginations.
* Creativity Informs: Marketing's responsibility to inform is greatly enhanced by creativity. Creativity makes marketing more vivid, and many researchers believe vividness attracts attention, maintains interest, and stimulates consumers' thinking.
* Creativity Persuades: The ancients Greeks created legends and myths about gods and heroes -symbols for humankind's instinctive longings and fears - to influence human behavior and thought. Today's marketers are doing the same thing; they are creating new myths, heroes and symbols like Ronald McDonald, the "Can You Hear Me Now" guy from Verizon, and more recently the Gecko from Geico Insurance.
* Creativity Reminds: Imagine using the same invitation, without any creativity, to remind people to try a particular product everyday for a month. The invitation would become stale very quickly. Only creativity can transform boring reminders into interesting, entertaining marketing communications. Nike is proof. Several commercials in a Nike campaign never mention the company name or even spelled it out on the screen. Each communication told a story. And, the only on-screen cue identifying the sponsor was a single "swoosh" logo inscribed on the final scene.
CULTURE:
All marketing communications needs cross-cultural research to be able to succeed. It's simple to see things from your own perspective, assuming that everyone else in the world thinks exactly like you and should understand what's so great about your product or service. Just reading about all the mistakes made by large corporations proves that even the most sizable and experienced marketers have made errors time and again.
One of the most famous examples is Coca Cola translating the name into Chinese without back-translating it ("bite the wax tadpole"), ultimately resulting in a horrible response from an insulted society. Marketing books are full of examples like these. As David Ogilvy, known as the Father of Advertising, states, "If you are trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language in which they think".
COMMUNICATION:
This one is basic. Consumers don't want to be "marketed to". Rather, they want to be "communicated with". Good marketing communication creates value with target customers, speaks in their language and tells your story. It's about building long term, trustworthy, and profitable relationships with your customers. As Seth Godin states, it's about reinforcing the lies that consumers tell themselves everyday (i.e. I look much better in these jeans from Abercrombie; they make me look sexy).
CHANGE:
Marketing is not just a business function, but a process. There is a beginning, middle, but there is never an end. Marketers must constantly CHANGE as society changes. They should never be afraid to try something new. Marketing today is not what it was 2 - 5 - or even 20 years ago. Marketing needs to be an evolving process that considers change in the world, economy, market, consumers; as well as internal change within the organization.
Conclusion (not the 7th C)
So there it is; the 6 C's of marketing - Customer, Consistency - Creativity - Culture - Communication and Change. I am sure that these will be published in every text book in the country within the next ten years and I will be a rich, well known author. Yeah right!
To read more about new, emerging marketing strategies, please visit our internet marketing blog. Michael Brito specializes in online marketing and offers web site positioning strategy services for small businesses.

MS WORD CLEANER

2006-10-07T11:59:00.000-07:00

Ms word Cleaner
http://tiffanybbrown.com/2006/03/21/mswordtohtml_document_cleaner/

Mysql Error s

2006-09-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

Handling mysql errors
http://www.planetmysql.org/entries/4067

mysql_db_query deprecated

2006-09-20T07:06:00.000-07:00

When you are not programming/scripting alot lots of things pass you by.

PHP since 4.06 has deprecated this function mysql_db_query, that actually I used a lot. Now I like this function as in one function, I pass the database name, the SQL query and the connection resource link which is optional

resource mysql_db_query ( string database, string query [, resource link_identifier] )

Instead they are now asking that we do the following. Two things that could be done in one

mysql_select_db()
bool mysql_select_db ( string database_name [, resource link_identifier] )
mysql_query()
resource mysql_query ( string query [, resource link_identifier] )

The advantage I see is that you can actually check to see if the database is present before doing the query.

if ( ! mysql_select_db (database )){
echo "database not found";
}

All three functions have been available since PHP 3.

snippet of how things change.

Config File
------------------
$dbuser="aaaa";
$dbpass="bbbb";
$dbhost="cccc:3308";
$db="dddd";

$dblink=mysql_connect($dbhost,$dbuser,$dbpass)or die("you have an error connecting your database");
mysql_select_db($db,$dblink);
/*
mysql_select_db($db);; // is ok as the resource link is optional. Function will look for last open resource
*/

Query
----------
$query ="SELECT * FROM TABLENAME";
mysql_query($query,$dblink);
/*
mysql_query($query); // is ok as the resource link is optional
*/

instead of

Config File
------------------
$dbuser="aaaa";
$dbpass="bbbb";
$dbhost="cccc:3308";
$db="dddd";

$dblink=mysql_connect($dbhost,$dbuser,$dbpass)or die("you have an error connecting your database");
/* or
mysql_connect($dbhost,$dbuser,$dbpass)or die("you have an error connecting your database");
*/

Query
----------
$query ="SELECT * FROM TABLENAME";
mysql_db_query($db,$query,$dblink);
/*
or
mysql_db_query($db,$query);
*/

Few extra lines and it is worth it. I will start doing things this way now

References
mysql-db-query.php
mysql-select-db.php
mysql-query.php

Hitwise views

2006-09-11T16:34:00.000-07:00

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/

Centering a Div [Browsers and Quirks]

2006-09-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

use tips on DIV model...
http://tutorials.alsacreations.com/modeles/
http://tutorials.alsacreations.com/centrer/
http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2004/02/css_crib_sheet_3_centering_a_div/index.php

.jm to be no longer free.

2006-08-30T06:38:00.000-07:00

The Mona Information Technology Services (MITS) Department of the University of West Indies (UWI) has decided to charge for .jm domains.

I am happy for this so long as it results in better service, including quicker turnaround time. However I find this statement in the article puzzling.

"The charge for .jm would remain competitive with international rates, as low as US$35 ($2,310) per year, said Samuels."

Internationally the highest rates are US$35 per year in most jurisdictions while costs can be as low as US$2 per year, if not less.

I would like some clarification on this.

There is another statement that is also interesting, although I am not sure they can actually do it what it says. The actual statement of interest is "analysing 'hits' to a given website". The full statement is below.

"Besides registering and administering all .jm domain names, MITS also conducts website research including domain name searches and analysing 'hits' to a given website."

Again clarification on this would be good. Privacy invasion.

Minimum Character length and MySQL Full Text

2006-08-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

Every now and then you come across some nusiance

Mysql Full Text search is lovely but it has some weaknesses. One of which is its Minimum Character length requiremnet.

Happily, the fix is fairly easy if you have access to the .cnf file

Changing the Minimum Character length

1. check what .ini/.cnf your mysql is reading
2. change your my.ini/.cnf like this:
[mysqld]
ft_min_word_len=3
ft_stopword_file="C:\\MySQL\\stop.txt"
3. restart your mysqld
4. reindex your table using REPAIR TABLE tbl_name QUICK;

Useful Resources
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/fulltext-query-expansion.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/fulltext-search.html
http://mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/fulltext-search.html
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/full-text-revealed.html

OThers
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/000576.html
http://mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/fulltext-stopwords.html
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2003/06/26/fulltext.html

2004-03-10T14:39:00.000-08:00

The Beginnning. I am doing this the second time round. Let see

I hope it works

Later