Browser Problem

It was Friday last week that I felt something weird happening to my laptop right after I visited a website for my resuscitated EC dropping. I closed all the tabs and restarted my Firefox. Slowly the browser opened but not my chosen homepage, which is Google. I clicked my toolbar and went to Yahoo! It worked fine. I opened my friend’s blog and it appeared fine too. I tried Google again but I could not access it. What in the world is happening here? And so I deleted my Firefox browser.

Saturday I attended Wordcamp Philippines. The free internet access at AIM building is quite comforting. I opened my laptop. But still, minus Google. I referred the problem to Lyle, the Filipino programmer, who was my seatmate at that time. A reboot was what he suggested. Not again, I replied. Later in the morning, I learned that Mozilla was one of the sponsors. I tried to restrain myself from opening my browser – which was IE. Remember, I deleted Firefox the night before because I thought it was the source of my predicament. I also had my virus scanner check my PC not just once but twice. A tracking cookie was detected but the antivirus software deleted it.

Sunday dawn, after arriving from the after-Wordcamp meetup with Buddy and the influenza bloggers, I opened my laptop. I scanned my PC again using Symantecs. Then I fell asleep.

Spyware, Spyware

I could not recall what appeared in my dream when I suddenly rose from bed and went straight to my laptop. I found an error sign in my screen. Not a key functioned so, despite being groggy and the slight headache, I just pushed the on/off button. I restarted. My desktop image changed and there was now a big warning sign saying my PC was infected. It was not Symantec, but another program which I could not remember installing. I began to panic. But to panic when you’re all alone is useless. So I called up our IT guy.

Later that afternoon, I went to the office to meet our IT guy and he installed some spybots and cleansed my computer. I also cleared my browser of cookies and other temporary internet files. I redownloaded Firefox and added Google chrome too. Everything went fine. Or so I thought.

Access Problem Continues

I can access Google through our company network and its proxy servers. But not when I use Smartbro. So why not make use of our company internet access instead? Nah, I’d be bringing my sleeping gears to the office by then.

I was busy Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday with meetings and work stuff. Busyness made me forget my access problem. I chanced upon another of our IT guy from HO but he had no idea how to solve it. Thursday, when I sneaked in late at a 5pm meeting, I was quite bored and all that, so I searched for the solution. Whoaah! In 5 minutes of searching, I found the solution. The spyware scanning, the clearing of cookies, etc… were all part of the suggested solution but it did not fully solved the access problem.

The Solution

For XP users like me, go to, C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc and look for the hosts file. Open it with a notepad. If there are other entries other than 127.0.0.1, or when you see plenty of lines like, 127.0.0.1 google.com , 127.0.0.1 google.ca, etc… then you’re in trouble. I was surprised to see a foot-long list. I deleted all other lines and retained one 127.0.0.1 localhost. I also confirmed this process with another of our IT guy. He added that it might have been caused by that spyware which attacked my host file.

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Am I happy now? Of course! Not because I am able to access Google now, but because I found the solution right there in the internet itself. For a non-techie like me, this is quite an accomplishment. Now I can sit back and relax.

Related posts:

1. The Next Google Page Rank Update Of 2008
2. My Blog’s New Look
3. IZEA’s PPP and Google’s PR

Here is what the Wikipedia has to say about it:

Pay Per Click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content sites, such as blogs, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system.

Websites that utilize PPC ads will display an advertisement when a keyword query matches an advertiser’s keyword list, or when a content site displays relevant content. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to or above organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a web developer chooses on a content site.

For a start, let us begin with Google Adsense, the most famous of these PPCs. All you have to do is register once, using your google account. Registering twice is not allowed and would get you banned for life. Banned fellows tried to beat the system by registering their bros, sis, parents, gfs, bfs, and spouses. I don’t know how the big G addresses that.

Now that you have an adsense account, you start displaying ads on your blog. Are you now starting to make money? It depends. If you get a click, well good! If none, then try again. But never try clicking on your own ads, nor ask others to do it. Again, you’ll be banned for life, and your earnings, however legit it is (or was), will be forfeited.

It took me many months before I reached $10. Others did it in 2 months or less. Generally, this is what you have to do when you have PPC ads all around you:
1. Snipe on keywords which you think searchers are looking for
2. Optimize for search engines.
3. Place your ads in strategic locations. (which sometimes annoys the readers)

Other bloggers come to the point of over-optimization, putting links one after another without providing the real thing. So let’s say you are looking for an online streaming of something. The legit ones offer it for a sum of money, while the others are more or less modern pirates, or point to the pirates. Yet the PPC ads that show up appear more credible. So the reader clicks on the ads and whoaah, the site owner earns.

In one forum I browse regularly, someone suggested creating a network that would click each others ads. Wow, desperate, indeed! The more experienced ones said no and warned the wannabes. Though the PPC advertising model is open to abuse through click fraud, Google and other search engines have automated systems in place to guard against abusive clicks.

How about PPC blackmail? Have you encountered someone commenting on your site saying that you should visit theirs and click on their ads or else they’ll click your ads a lot of times to a point that you’ll get banned? I received one. It’s chasing Pay Per Click (PPC) money at its worst.

Luckily, I was able to contact the owner of that blog thru another blogger. I found out that he was a fellow Pinoy. He denied having written the comment, and it seems that the IP addresses he used confirmed his innocence. Sabotage is what he called it and even posted an entry about it.

Chasing PPC money can be fun, yet the obsession without providing real content can pollute the internet, or even lead to desperate attempts of breaking the PPC system. But policing the internet is not our business and it’s up to the PPC companies to safeguard their system.

Related posts:

1. Negative SEO and Keyword Bastardization
2. Google Adsense: Success Stories Or Still Making Cents
3. Blogging For Money

Good News

Juler recently earned plenty of dollars because his optimization on the Beijing Olympics worked for him. His traffic reached by the tens of thousands, and a good percentage might have clicked on his ppc ads, hence, the earnings.

Bloggista barged into the top 50 Philippine blogs. Thanks to his ever-growing traffic and, of course, Alexa, the one used as the basis for the rankings. His optimization also worked well with him especially on the nursing board exam results which rocked his site with more than a hundred thousand page views.

Cyril’s month-old blog already breached 1k unique visitors. Plenty of Filipino accountants are searching the internet for RA 9504, The Law on New Tax Exemptions. One of his posts got 119 comments. It’s four times the most I got.

Lhurey got a birthday gift from Google. He got his PR3 back after pleading for reconsideration. How I wish Google does the same for my two blogspots!

Bad News

Iskolares got his traffic alright. But somehow, some of his visitors did more than just pay a visit. He exceeded his 100GB bandwidth limit and his webhost charged him $140 for it.

Joliber got some nasty anonymous comments in his blog. Some people probably didn’t like his optimization. He was on top of SERP in many keywords chased by other bloggers.

My News

There are no more lightning-quick visits here this month, not even from StumbleUpon. Average time people spent browsing my blog is 1 minute and 53 seconds. Fifty percent of my traffic in August comes from the search engines. The number of visitors is 20% higher than that of last month. Thanks to the Olympics! I’ve also upgraded my hosting plan to double my disk space and bandwidth. I don’t want this blog get killed by web traffic.

As to monetization, there is no good news yet. I spent more on coffee than earning from this blog. Pitiful!

So, how is your web traffic lately? Good news or bad news?

Related posts:

1. Web Traffic For Those Who Just Started Out
2. Lightning-Quick Visits and Other Web Traffic
3. Of Chasing Traffic and For The Love of Writing

Email

How many times have I won the lottery? If I believe my emails, I won everyday. What a wonderful world that would be! Oh common, let me wake up to reality. But how do we stop those spams? I list down some ways here, but there really is no way to totally stop spam:

1. Set up a dummy email, usually a gmail because it has a forwarding ability.
2. Use that dummy email when you sign up in forums, and other websites
3. Use your real email only on secured sites
4. Use filtering programs
5. Don’t immediately believe what you read.
6. If it says it comes from ebay or paypal, check the email they sent it to. Usually, they sent it to the dummy email.
7. Don’t display your real email.
8. Use the bcc feature in forwarding emails, especially if it is not business related.

Blog

Every time I check my blog dashboard, I see comments in my moderation queue. Excited I might be, but those spam comments somewhat kill my pleasure. How did they? But there’s also a possibility that these spammers don’t know that they’re sending out spams. You know those viruses and certain scripts.

So why am I not installing an anti-spam plug-in in my blog? With all those spam comments, I should do so now. I am procrastinating again. Here’s a list of 4 anti-spam plug-ins for Wordpress that you and I should try:

1. Akismet
2. Captcha
3. WP-SpamFree
4. Math Spam Protection.

Remember that spammers will never stop spamming and even make more innovative ways of doing their thing. Manual spam control is still applicable.

Related posts:

1. Did You Miss The Latest Page Rank (PR) Train?
2. Serious Blogging

History

Manny made history as the first Asian to win four titles in four weight divisions. 8 other boxing greats achieved this feat before. He started his championship rampage as a flyweight 10 years ago, moved up and captured the super bantamweight, super featherweight and lightweight belts. Maybe he’d try another weight division to make it 5. That would be a tough record to beat by any other boxer.

I remembered him fighting in the “Blow by blow” show on TV and how he easily took the wind out his opponents. I also saw that fight when was badly punished through body blows by a Thai boxing champ in their OPBF Championship, when he suddenly threw a left straight to the Thai’s temple. That was the end of the bout.

As of today, Manny is also the no.1 pound for pound boxer after the retirement of Floyd Mayweather Jr. How’s that for a Filipino athlete!

Glory

This is again a pride for the Philippines who was recently devastated by Typhoon Frank. We are all aware that Manny’s popularity even exceeds that of the President. I heard on radio that Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics is a big fan of Manny. Manny’s feat surely made each and everyone of us proud, like plenty of the bloggers who featured him on their sites.

Money

We expect that there will be overflowing cash for Manny. It must be millions worth. He promised to donate part of his winnings to the typhoon victims, and this is good news. P10 million won’t hurt his pocket. The left-wing Kilosang Mayo Uno even urges him to do that. The kind-hearted person that Manny is, no one has to tell him that. That is part of being a hero, and that is why he is well-liked by his countrymen.

Who is next for him?

Boxing experts say that the true test in the Lightweight division is a fight against Nate Campbell, the holder of the belts in the other three boxing organizations. I am not sure if that fight would suit Manny, but fearless as he is, he would not back out from anyone. Even if it is the barking Valero or the solid Marquez, Manny is ready to fight and rumble.

But I like him to brawl against the more famous De La Hoya or someone who is a Champion in a higher division. That would be another history in the making.

P.S.
On the SEO battle, no blood was spilled, and no known knockdowns occurred. If I got the same traffic as that of Mapiles.com, this blog would have crashed. That would have been worse than Diaz lying on his back on the 9th round. Sometimes, in our excitement to get more traffic, we tend to forget that what we have is not sufficient and ready for the big leagues. I’ll better upgrade fast.

Related posts:

1. Pacquiao vs Diaz Boxing Fight: A Blogging Brawl
2. Oscar De La Hoya vs Manny Pacquiao: Fight Results Predictions
3. Pacquiao vs Diaz Fight Results

The time to buy your own domain name is now. These are some reasons why you should buy your own domain name.

1. Bragging rights
2. To Stand Out
3. To Protect your name
4. To Protect your brand
5. It’s cheap
6. To make more money online

Bragging rights

If blogging puts you a notch higher among your friendster/facebook friends, how much more if you have your own dotcom! YourName.com is more brag-worthy than YourName.blogfree.com. Don’t get me wrong here. I still keep my free-hosted blogs for sentimental reasons.

I recently brought 2 domains, one of which is my real first name. As of today, when I type my first name in the google search engine, the first site that shows up is my flickr account. Next is my i.ph, then my multiply, and followed by my blogspot. I certainly want to change that.

Stand Out

As I mentioned in my previous post, not all blogs are created equal in the eyes of the more serious bloggers. Preference, as I may call it. In order to stand out, you got to have that name and register a domain. If you intend to optimize on certain keywords of a niche you do business, then you better start with the domain name that will stand out.

You may also read the WSJ article “You’re a Nobody Unless Your Name Google’s Well”. Try doing some vanity searching. Google search your own name, your friends’ names, and even that of your enemies. Whose name stands out better in the search engines?

Protect Your Name

I read in a blog months ago that the author bought all the available domains bearing the family’s name. You know the .com, .net, .info, .org, .ph and .com.ph. His intention was to protect the family name which was controversial and in the news at that time. He feared that someone might misuse the name.

Do you want to see your name abused by others? Certainly not! If you are into a business in which your name is your brand, (e.g. Consultants) you should own the site that appears first on the search engine. It could also be possible that many other individuals have similar first and last name as yours, and the search engine result will lead to someone totally opposite of you. I hope it’s not a porn star or a wanted criminal.

Unfortunately, someone else owns the dotcom of bearing my family name. I looked at their website salivating, not because they own the name, but because of the yummy premium chocolates. Theirs is a legit chocolate company which is in existence since 1891. So, the family name is safe.

Protect Your Brand

How many times have we heard stories of large corporations going to court battle because someone else owns the domain names of their corporate names or brands? Some are really good at cybersquatting. They buy domains, and sell it to legitimate corporations at steep prices.

If I buy the .ph bearing my family name, and that legit corporation expands here in RP, are they going to buy my domain? Or will I be in their war path? That remains to be seen. I’ll worry about that later should I pursue this option.

It’s Cheap

Price ranges from $1.99 to $35 annual. I bought mine at $11.24, but webhosting is offered as low as $2 a year. Even if you are not using your domain name for now, you can always find a future use for it. Buy it now, or someone else will.

Make More Money Online

I got rejected in some paid reviews site because I blogged in a free site. Also, when there are writing opps available, preference is always given to those with their own domains. Although those incidents are behind me now, I felt there is more money-making opportunities if you blog on a paid domain and hosting.

It took me more than two years of blogging before actually buying my own domain. Perhaps, I missed plenty of opportunities. But I don’t want to wait any longer. I own three domain names right now. And this is just the beginning.

Related posts:

1. Serious Blogging
2. There Are Plans, And There Are More Plans
3. For Whom Do You Blog?

Cebu, that island in the Pacific, is blessed with beautiful beaches and amazing historical sites. If you are familiar with your world history, this is the place where the famous Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, met his untimely death. But if you come to Cebu on business or just for a vacation, don’t forget to bring your laptop because there are now plenty of FREE WI-FI zones here.

If you travel 66 kms south, you wouldn’t miss your mails or your blogs. Right in front of the famous St. Michael Archangel Parish in Argao is a hot zone. You can just sit in one of the benches at the town plaza and open your laptop. The one at the far left of the picture above is me trying out the connectivity.

If you travel further south, 103 km away from Cebu City, is another wired town. In front of a heritage site, the Nuestra Señora de Patrocino Parish of Boljoon, Cebu, is a wi-fi zone. The town set up tables and chairs for tourists and users. It is one of the town’s projects to invite more tourists and visitors to their place. And while you are surfing the web, you will surely enjoy the sea breeze and the sight of their enchanted boulevard.

I hope more Cebu towns and Cities will follow what Argao and Boljoon did. It would be better if Sta. Fe, Bantayan Island, a place booming with tourists, would be the next to introduce free wi-fi. It would not cost them more that P1,500 (around $35) a month for the connection. And it is also giving a chance for their constituents (and visitors) to be connected to the worldwide web. I can just imagine myself enjoying the sand and the sight of the beach, with a laptop in hand.

Related posts:

1. Free Wi-Fi In Cebu
2. Vacation Destination – Cebu
3. Cebu, World

Max Limpag wrote in his blog (and published in today’s Sunstar) that the Municipality of Argao has a free Wi-Fi access at its plaza. It is made possible through the effort of its municipal government who wants to give tourists and residents access to the world wide web. Argao is located some 66kms south of Cebu and is famous for its beaches (including Argao beach Club), Mt. Lantoy (Maria Cacao legend) and the hometown of retired SC Chief Justice Hilario Davide. It is also my paternal grandmother’s hometown.

Now I have a very good reason to bring my laptop when I go to my granduncle’s place.

So what about in Cebu City? We are really quite behind in this. There are many free Wi-Fi hotspots in Davao, Iloilo, Cagayan and Bacolod. But not so in Cebu. I think someone in Cebu should take the lead for this. From what I know and experienced, these are the free hotspots near my home in Mandaue:

1. Sykes – all the food establishments in the building have free Wi-Fi access. But I love the food at Quadro, slush at Ela Puti, bread at Betty’s, and of course there is McDo and Bo’s Coffee. Or maybe if you just stand at their hallway you can already access the internet. I haven’t tried it though from their parking lot.

2. Mr. Coffee at Paseo – free access for consumption of at least P100. I had my car washed at Nice Day and I just walk to Paseo on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Coffee tastes great there too.

3. Creams and Bakes (AS Fortuna) – It’s fronting Joven’s Grill. The cakes are inexpensive, nicely-decorated and yummy too. They also serve great-value food for lunch and dinner. If you’re full, just try their ice cream. I really love its taste.

So, there are the 3 places that I frequent. They are very near my place. And I am promoting them here for free, because of their excellent food and beverages, and of course, the free Wi-Fi connection.

Related posts:

1. Cebu Towns Have Free Wi-Fi
2. Free Cebu Pacific Airlines Tickets and Travel Vouchers
3. Cebu Sinulog 2009: Travel to Cebu