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2426

Living Room / Re: Trouble with Google as the source of traffic

« Last post by app103 on January 04, 2011, 10:03 AM »

Countless sites that pirate content from MSDN outrank MSDN. They have Google ads. Microsoft doesn't.

I think that's clear enough.

Putting Google ads on your site is the best SEO you can possibly do.

-Renegade (January 03, 2011, 03:43 PM)

Complete and total bull! That's not how they outrank everyone else. There are a lot of dirty tricks one can do to get better ranking and a few things you can do to sites that pirate your content to push them down, out, or at least cut off the income they are making off your stuff.

You find a site pirating your content and they have Adsense on it, do the following:

Click the Google logo on the ad and select the option to report your stolen content. If they get enough dings against their account, they will get cut off from earning by Google.
Send Google a DMCA taketown notice to get their listing pulled off the search results.
Send a DMCA takedown notice to their web host.
Send a DMCA taketown notice to their domain name registrar.

Microsoft isn't doing this, which is why the content thieves are outranking them.

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Adventures of Baby Cody / Re: Baby Cody arrives in Berlin, Germany

« Last post by app103 on January 04, 2011, 05:00 AM »

What is the serial number on the $1 bill?
-Josh (January 03, 2011, 08:56 PM)

You can't see it with the way it's folded.

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Living Room / Re: What would it look like if all DC visitors were gathered in one place?

« Last post by app103 on January 04, 2011, 04:53 AM »

I think it's average unique visitors per day, for the entire site....whatever Alexa thinks it is.

What a great find, app!
-timns (January 04, 2011, 03:06 AM)

Purely by accident. I have google alerts set up for anything mentioning "donationcoder.com" and this was in an alert.

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Living Room / What would it look like if all DC visitors were gathered in one place?

« Last post by app103 on January 03, 2011, 11:57 PM »

based on average daily traffic statistics as reported by Alexa...

If Donationcoder.com were a country, it would be larger than Marshall Islands

1 in every 27,624 internet users visit Donationcoder.com daily

Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, USA has a seating capacity of 65,000. A photo above is a good illustration of what a crowd of 62,771 daily donationcoder.com visitors would look like if they all gathered in one place.

http://www.sharenato.../w/donationcoder.com

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Living Room / Re: iPhone Alarms Don't Work

« Last post by app103 on January 03, 2011, 01:42 PM »

Only from her plastic surgery - she is seriously scary to look at.

The only plastic surgery that I have ever seen that was worse was Tony Curtis (at least outside of surgery's worst accidents - though I think he may have qualified on both counts).
-Carol Haynes (January 03, 2011, 11:05 AM)

Her mom played Dorothy, she is aiming for the wicked witch in a remake, maybe?

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UserQuotes.com Web Service / Re: UserQuotes spin offs?

« Last post by app103 on January 03, 2011, 02:36 AM »

Actually, with removal of some features and an addition of a few more, you could have yourself a nice social networking site built around content sharing.

But you'd really have to simplify the process of posting items. Too many boxes to fill in overwhelms people.

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Living Room / Re: Holy Pirates~! =p

« Last post by app103 on January 03, 2011, 02:29 AM »

India only came in 7th?! And China didn't make the top 12?! The data is obviously rigged.
-nosh (January 02, 2011, 10:48 PM)

I guess in China and India, they are smart enough not to pirate the payware versions of freeware when you don't really get anything much more useful than in the freeware version.

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Developer's Corner / YQL: Using Web Content For Non-Programmers

« Last post by app103 on January 03, 2011, 02:14 AM »

Nice guide to using YQL...

Building a beautiful design is a great experience. Seeing the design break apart when people start putting in real content, though, is painful. That’s why testing it as soon as possible with real information to see how it fares is so important. To this end, Web services provide us with a lot of information with which to fill our products. In recent years, this has been a specialist’s job, but the sheer amount of information available and the number of systems to consume it makes it easier and easier to use Web services, even for people with not much development experience.

On Programmable Web1, you can find (to date) 2580 different application programming interfaces (or APIs). An API allows you to get access to an information provider’s data in a raw format and reformat it to suit your needs.

The Trouble With APIs

The problem with APIs is that access to them varies in simplicity, from just having to load data from a URL all the way up to having to authenticate with the server and give all kinds of information about the application you want to build before getting your first chunk of information.

Each API is based on a different idea of what information you need to provide, what format it should be in, what data it will give back and in what format. All this makes using third-party APIs in your products very time-consuming, and the pain multiplies with each one you use. If you want to get photos from Flickr and updates from Twitter and then show the geographical information in Twitter on a map, then you have quite a trek ahead.

Simplifying API Access

Yahoo uses APIs for nearly all of its products. Instead of accessing a database and displaying the information live on the screen, the front end calls an API, which in turn gets the information from the back end, which talks to databases. This gives Yahoo the benefit of being able to scale to millions of users and being able to change either the front or back end without disrupting the other.

Because the APIs have been built over 10 years, they all vary in format and the way in which you access them. This cost Yahoo too much time, which is why it built Yahoo Pipes2 — to ease the process.

Pipes is amazing. It is a visual way to mix and match information from the Web. However, as people used Pipes more, they ran into limitations. Versioning pipes was hard; to change the functionality of the pipe just slightly, you had to go back to the system, and it tended to slow down with very complex and large conversions. This is why Yahoo offers a new system for people’s needs that change a lot or get very complex.

YQL is both a service and a language (Yahoo Query Language). It makes consuming Web services and APIs dead simple, both in terms of access and format.

http://www.smashingm...for-non-programmers/

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N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 :: The Event Closes

« Last post by app103 on January 01, 2011, 10:46 AM »

If we had started NANY at the same time we did in past years, we would have been less at least the 2 pledges from me. I just could not do anything this year.

I wouldn't look at the number of pledges at all and just concentrate on the number and quality of the resulting apps and compare that to years past.

And there is still a good chance the uncompleted apps and withdrawn pledges may result in apps at some point in the future, so while they can't be counted in the Jan 1 batch, they could be worth considering as a partial success somewhere down the line.

All in all, I think this year was great. A lot of interesting and useful stuff here.

Congrats to everyone and thank you for all your hard work!

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General Software Discussion / Re: Web alternative to Scrapbook extension?

« Last post by app103 on January 01, 2011, 10:35 AM »

I tried NetNotes, as a possible replacement for Surfulater. I wasn't that thrilled with it. Surfulater really spoiled me rotten.

You can save the selected portion of a page in Surfulater with a copy of the entire original page as an attachment. And while some people may say that Surfulater databases don't play well with Dropbox, there is always the export to HTML function that you can use to export either the entire database or just a folder. That does work well with Dropbox, although it only exports the clipped portion of the pages and not the original page attachments.

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General Software Discussion / Re: In need of security advice ...

« Last post by app103 on January 01, 2011, 08:50 AM »

For every trick you can think of to protect an image, there are at least 3 ways to get around it.

Even services you pay for, like Digimarc, can't protect you. It won't stop anyone from getting the photos or displaying them elsewhere, and the embedded "invisible" marks are really easy to remove by just creating a new blank image of the same size, copying the original and pasting as a new layer, then merging the layers.

I experimented with this stuff when my daughter considered it for her photos. Paintshop Pro comes with the tools needed to embed & read Digimarcs, and a sample key to see how it works. I just played around with some basic stuff till I was no longer able to read the sample mark. It didn't take very long. I was able to remove it on the 2nd try, without visibly altering the image. (first try was copy & paste as new image, which failed)

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Living Room / Re: Naming and Shaming Bad Forums with Bad Ethics

« Last post by app103 on December 30, 2010, 10:26 AM »

Ah. I didn't know the search here had been tweaked. I frequent 2 forums that use SMF and they both have good search. I've used many others that are less than useless.
-Renegade (December 30, 2010, 09:31 AM)

It's a tweak that Wordzilla made very easy for use on any SMF forum, so it's possible that the other SMF forums that you visit already have.

https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=9134.0

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Living Room / Re: Need help with finding info on Pocket Fujica 200 camera

« Last post by app103 on December 30, 2010, 06:27 AM »

I might actually buy it if I understood the page. Is it saying it costs 5 eur or 4 eur?
-Xenonym (December 30, 2010, 04:53 AM)

I think it is 5.83 with VAT, 4.90 without.

2439

Living Room / Re: Are You Ready to Switch to GNU/Linux?

« Last post by app103 on December 30, 2010, 02:19 AM »

Am I ready to switch to Linux? No.

Is Linux ready for me? No...it doesn't have a taskbar that behaves similar to the one in Windows, and until it does, it's not ready for full time use by me.

1. You’re Tired of Paying for Software

I buy very little software. Most of what I use is freeware.

2. You’re Tired of Upgrading Hardware

You will still eventually have to upgrade hardware, no matter what OS you run.

3. You’re Tired of Malware

What's that? I never get any.

4. You’ve Seen One Too Many Patch Tuesdays

Actually, I have seen one too many "reboot just to make sure Ubuntu is up to date, update it, then reboot back to Windows".

5. You Don’t Have the Time

Time for what? Oh yeah...see my answers to #4 and #6.

6. You Like Speed

Ubuntu is actually slower than Windows for me. Slower to startup, slower to find the shortcuts to the apps I want to run, slower to start the apps, slower to close them, slower to find valid info on how to do something I want to do, slower to shut down, slower to download and install updates, slower, slower, slower.

7. You Like Sharing

Sharing what, exactly? I can't think of anything I'd want to share that could be shared better, faster, or easier on Linux.

8. You Don’t Actually Love Internet Explorer

I don't, and that's why I can install plenty of other browsers and pick the one I like best. I currently have 10 different browsers installed and except for Firefox, none of them have Linux versions, to my knowledge.

9. You Want to Be in Control

I am in control.

10. You’re One of a Kind

And so is my Windows desktop.

2440

Official Announcements / Re: DonationCoder.com NEW SERVER ACTIVATED Dec 17, 2010

« Last post by app103 on December 30, 2010, 01:41 AM »

Things are still slow for me, with regards to posting speed. I would compare it to the speeds I had on the old server from a 233mhz machine on 33.6k dialup. (yeah, that's slow)

2441

Living Room / Re: So, when you're working, do you...

« Last post by app103 on December 30, 2010, 01:31 AM »

When working, I need to be in an environment in which I am the only human presence. This means either everyone needs to not be home, or they need to be sleeping, and the music I listen to is usually void of human voices...but that's a personal preference and not related to working. I listen to post-rock music, mostly, but only because there is something about it that keeps me calm and less easily frustrated. Prime working time for me is normally between 3-7am.

It's not that I need an environment like that. It's other people that need me to work that way because they can't just leave me alone and amuse themselves with something that doesn't include me.

I am very capable of mentally blocking out any and all distractions, but when people are awake and home they will insist on breaking that and demanding my attention. They get upset when they don't get it or I am incapable of focusing on what they are saying for longer than 15 seconds because it's not related to the task I am performing. It's really hard for me to come out of full focus once I get into it, and I will mentally slip right out of an unrelated conversation, unintentionally, and not hear a word you are saying. Bother me while I am working and you'll swear I have ADD.

I had some serious focus and filtering training in school, when I was a child. My school burned down and for a few years we were all crammed into space donated by local churches in the neighborhood, multiple classes in a single room. The noise level was not what you'd find in a typical classroom, and in order to concentrate on what our class was doing, we had to learn to filter out the other classes. Instead of a nice quiet environment during tests, we had to focus on our tests while all kinds of noise surrounded us. We all had to learn how to block it out. And we had to filter out the voices of the other teachers and focus only on our own. It was a pretty harsh environment for learning, but we had no choice and had to learn to deal with it.

As a result, you can't talk to me when I am doing things...I just won't hear you. You have to be pretty loud and obnoxious to get my attention once I block everything out. And sometimes I am capable of carrying on an entire conversation unconsciously, with no memory of it having occurred, when I am focused on something else. (I handle Q&A quite well, this way)

2442

Living Room / Re: 150 Hours of TV / Month?

« Last post by app103 on December 29, 2010, 11:48 PM »

That works out to 5 hours of TV per day, which if you think about it as 1 hour in the morning, as you are getting ready for work, just to catch the news and weather, another hour of news and junk when you come home, while making/eating dinner, then the 3 hour prime time slot between 8-11 pm, yeah, the average American does watch that much TV.

And for children, it's worse, since you have to add in the after school cartoons, too.

2443

Living Room / Re: Tags for multiple users - problems (& solutions?)

« Last post by app103 on December 29, 2010, 10:07 PM »

There is also the trending topics page and the browse page (which has a number of topics listed at the top). Browsing the questions at the bottom of the page can lead to more topics, too.

If you keep hitting those on a regular basis, you are bound to come up with some topics to follow, a little at a time. Might be best not to overwhelm yourself with 1000's of topics at once and add them gradually as you come across them. You could also add me or browse the list on my profile (I am following 200+ topics).

The site is an adventure and a treasure hunt, to say the least....bring a shovel and dig.

2444

Living Room / Re: Tags for multiple users - problems (& solutions?)

« Last post by app103 on December 29, 2010, 01:49 AM »

Just be warned, that when you allow people to tag stuff with anything they want, things like this can happen.
-app103 (December 23, 2010, 05:02 PM)

the best solution is to manually edit and adapt the tags to your website style by allowing moderators or super moderators to edit them somehow.
-adi_barb (December 27, 2010, 05:18 PM)

I wonder how Quora get on with their "Unorganised Questions" invitation to tag untagged questions.
I havent fully figured it out - it will search for your tag and suggest ones that are similar alphabetically. But then it seems to accept the tag even if it wasnt there before. Presumably new tags get moderated. Then they have what they call a context.

(I cant even find the tags in Quora. They show me a very short - & narrow - list of "Suggested Topics" - based on one topic/person I looked at. Apart from that, they suggest that I "Find People to Follow" and invite me to look at my gmail contacts.
Odd IMO.)
-tomos (December 28, 2010, 05:18 PM)

Quora tags are moderated by the community first. Anyone can edit, Wikipedia style. All edits are kept in the history for an item. If a user thinks a tag is inappropriate, he can remove it. If someone removes a tag and someone else thinks it was a good tag, they can reverse the edit to put it back. Right now Quora is very good at self policing because they have a lot of members that care about the quality of the site. They will even fix grammar and spelling mistakes in your answers! I don't know if this will work long term for them, though, especially if there ends up being more people that mess things up (intentionally or not) than people that care.

To see a tag page on Quora, enter a tag name in the box at the top and watch what happens. If the tag already exists, you'll see it in the auto-list. To see even more, click "search" at the bottom of that list.

2445

Living Room / Re: Need help with finding info on Pocket Fujica 200 camera

« Last post by app103 on December 28, 2010, 12:44 PM »

Adox, a German company, is supposedly making new 110 film, and pretty much will have the market cornered on unexpired film, with no competition.

http://www.adox.de/A.../Pocketfilm/110.html

And they say to buy it here: http://www.fotoimpex...rekt&artnr=21490

2446

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Pledge: Photo Q&A Site - askapic.com

« Last post by app103 on December 28, 2010, 08:26 AM »

Any opinions on this as a Facebook icon - design; quality
(90 x 90 pixels)

(see attachment in previous post)

-tomos (December 28, 2010, 06:19 AM)

Whatever you choose, it should become the recognizable face of your service, so you really should go for consistency across all sites where your logo will be displayed. Settle on a single design that can serve for your logo on the site, and on facebook, twitter, or anywhere else.

2447

Living Room / Re: Show us the View Outside Your Window

« Last post by app103 on December 28, 2010, 05:52 AM »

have you been able to dig your way out app ?
-tomos (December 28, 2010, 04:09 AM)

Snowed in with the most enormous pan of baked ziti ever...don't need to dig out yet. I figure by the time I run out of baked ziti, everyone else in town will have shoveled enough that I won't have to do any at all.

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