Solution for "stop spamming us. you're wasting your time" at Hacker News / Ycombinator

If you get this message on trying to post something at Hacker News / Ycombinator (not dependently of submitting method: bookmark or site form), it means, the site you try to post is flagged by any HN admin as spam. By mistake or not is another question - i know the case, when YouTube was flagged as spam there. Anyway our intention is not to dispute with HN admins whether our list is spam or not, but rather just to post a link, what we want to post. Deleting cookies doesn't help. But the working solution is simple:
Read full article »

Dynamic Image Map that works when window is resized

Last time i was creating an image map in my website and found my self into a state where image was dynamically resized by browser to fit it into the space. But it created a problem in the image map. Coordinates of Image Map were same as before, while image was resized by the browser. In such a situation i need my image map coordinates to be changed dynamically.
I tried to find a solution to this problem and found that i am not alone facing this problem. Finally i found a solution called dynamic image map. This technique need some java script to be implemented with your image map. This technique is not a tough one. Just follow the following steps.

How to create a dynamic image map with javascript

• Copy the following code

!function(){"use strict";function a(){function a(){function a(a){function c(a){return a*b[1===(d=1-d)?"width":"height"]}var d=0;return a.split(",").map(Number).map(c).map(Math.floor).join(",")}for(var b={width:h.width/i.width,height:h.height/i.height},c=0;f>c;c++)e[c].coords=a(g[c])}function b(){i.onload=function(){(h.width!==i.width||h.height!==i.height)&&a()},i.src=h.src}function c(){function b(){clearTimeout(j),j=setTimeout(a,250)}window.addEventListener?window.addEventListener("resize",b,!1):window.attachEvent&&window.attachEvent("onresize",b)}var d=this,e=d.getElementsByTagName("area"),f=e.length,g=Array.prototype.map.call(e,function(a){return a.coords}),h=document.querySelector('img[usemap="#'+d.name+'"]'),i=new Image,j=null;b(),c()}window.imageMapResize=function(b){function c(b){if("MAP"!==b.tagName)throw new TypeError("Expected <MAP> tag, found <"+b.tagName+">.");a.call(b)}Array.prototype.forEach.call(document.querySelectorAll(b||"map"),c)},"jQuery"in window&&(jQuery.fn.imageMapResize=function(){return this.filter("map").each(a)})}();

• Paste it in a blank notepad
• Save that notepad as MapResizer.js
• Upload it on your website server. (If you don't have file uploading access, then use yourjavascript.com to upload that file and get its url in your email). You will need the URL of MapResizer.js in the next step.
• After </map> paste the following code in your HTML document.

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.0/jquery.min.js"></script>  <script src="Paste complete url of mapresizer.js" type="text/javascript"></script>  <script type="text/javascript">   $('map').imageMapResize();  </script>

Android ListView with Custom Layout

MainActivity.java

Download This Project

package com.customlistviewdemo;

import android.app.Activity;

import android.os.Bundle;

import android.widget.ListView;

public class MainActivity extends Activity {

ListView listview;

int[] img_resource = {R.drawable.apple,R.drawable.banana,

R.drawable.cherry,R.drawable.mango,R.drawable.orange,R.drawable.strawberry,R.drawable.tomato};

    String[] name = {"Apple","Banana","Cherry","Mango","Orange","Strawberry","Tomato"};

    String[] Qty = {"100 kg","150 kg","300 kg","250 kg","500 kg","300 kg", "220 kg"};

    @Override

    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

        listview = (ListView) findViewById(R.id.main_list_view);

        FruitAdapter adapter = new FruitAdapter(getApplicationContext(),R.layout.row_layout);

        listview.setAdapter(adapter);

       int i = 0;

        for(String Name : name )

        {

        FruitClass obj = new FruitClass(img_resource[i],Name, Qty[i]);

        adapter.add(obj);

        i++;

        }

    }

}

FruitAdapter.java

package com.customlistviewdemo;

import java.util.ArrayList;

import java.util.List;

import android.content.Context;

import android.view.LayoutInflater;

import android.view.View;

import android.view.ViewGroup;

import android.widget.ArrayAdapter;

import android.widget.ImageView;

import android.widget.TextView;

public class FruitAdapter extends ArrayAdapter{

private List list= new ArrayList();

public FruitAdapter(Context context, int resource) {

super(context, resource);

// TODO Auto-generated constructor stub

}

public void add(FruitClass object) {

// TODO Auto-generated method stub

list.add(object);

super.add(object);

}

static class ImgHolder

{

ImageView IMG;

TextView NAME;

TextView QTY;

}

@Override

public int getCount() {

// TODO Auto-generated method stub

return this.list.size();

}

@Override

public Object getItem(int position) {

// TODO Auto-generated method stub

return this.list.get(position);

}

@Override

public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {

// TODO Auto-generated method stub

View row;

row = convertView;

ImgHolder holder;

if(convertView == null)

{

LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater) this.getContext().getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);

row = inflater.inflate(R.layout.row_layout,parent,false);

holder = new ImgHolder();

holder.IMG = (ImageView) row.findViewById(R.id.fruit_img);

holder.NAME = (TextView) row.findViewById(R.id.fruit_name);

holder.QTY = (TextView) row.findViewById(R.id.fruit_qty);

row.setTag(holder);

}

else

{

holder = (ImgHolder) row.getTag();

}

FruitClass FR = (FruitClass) getItem(position);

holder.IMG.setImageResource(FR.getFruit_resource());

holder.NAME.setText(FR.getFruit_name());

holder.QTY.setText(FR.getFruit_qty());

return row;

}

}

FruitClass.java

package com.customlistviewdemo;

public class FruitClass {

private int fruit_resource;

private String fruit_name;

private String fruit_qty;

public FruitClass(int fruit_resource, String fruit_name, String fruit_qty) {

super();

this.setFruit_resource(fruit_resource);

this.setFruit_name(fruit_name);

this.setFruit_qty(fruit_qty);

}

public int getFruit_resource() {

return fruit_resource;

}

public void setFruit_resource(int fruit_resource) {

this.fruit_resource = fruit_resource;

}

public String getFruit_name() {

return fruit_name;

}

public void setFruit_name(String fruit_name) {

this.fruit_name = fruit_name;

}

public String getFruit_qty() {

return fruit_qty;

}

public void setFruit_qty(String fruit_qty) {

this.fruit_qty = fruit_qty;

}

}

activit_main.xml

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"

    android:layout_width="fill_parent"

    android:layout_height="match_parent"

    android:orientation="vertical"

    >

<ListView 

    android:id="@+id/main_list_view"

    android:layout_width="match_parent"

    android:layout_height="match_parent"

    android:layout_marginBottom="0dp"

    android:layout_marginTop="0dp"

    

    ></ListView>

  </RelativeLayout>

row_layout.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

    android:layout_width="fill_parent"

    android:layout_height="fill_parent"

    android:layout_marginTop="0dp" 

    android:layout_marginBottom="0dp"

    android:focusableInTouchMode="true"

    >

    

    <ImageView 

        android:id="@+id/fruit_img"

        android:layout_width="wrap_content"

        android:layout_height="wrap_content"

        android:layout_centerVertical="true"

        android:paddingRight="10dp"

        android:paddingTop="10dp"

        android:paddingLeft="10dp"

        android:scaleType="centerCrop"

        />

    <TextView 

        android:id="@+id/fruit_name"

         android:layout_width="wrap_content"

        android:layout_height="wrap_content"

        android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/fruit_img"

        android:layout_centerVertical="true"

        android:paddingTop="10dp"

        />

     <TextView 

        android:id="@+id/fruit_qty"

         android:layout_width="wrap_content"

        android:layout_height="wrap_content"

        android:layout_alignParentRight="true"

           android:layout_centerVertical="true"

             android:paddingTop="10dp"

        android:paddingRight="10dp"

        />

    

</RelativeLayout>

GoldWave Editor Pro 5.7 Serial Key

User ID:
N6RSABBTG

License:
C4HRC9CUU

Reminder: Samsung Galaxy Note 4 pre-orders open from today

As announced by T-Mobile a few days back, the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is now available to pre-order for delivery by October 17. It costs $749 full retail, or $0 down and $31.24 per month on EIP.

In my eyes, Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is easily the best looking, and best-built Samsung device on the market. Perhaps the best Samsung device ever. And as someone who traditionally isn’t impressed by Sammy, that’s high praise. The metal frame and soft-touch back combine perfectly to give you a device that not only feels sturdy and durable, but comfortable too. And that QuadHD display blows the LG G3 out of the water in terms of color accuracy and sharpness. It’s Fantastic.

Important feature of Samsung Galaxy Note 4: 

l  Dive into a brilliant 5.7" Quad HD Super AMOLED^® display

l  Do more with the most instinctive and precise S Pen^™ ever

l  16 Megapixel Camera 16 Megapixel Camera with Optical Image Stabilization (OIS)

l  Take selfies to new heights with a 3.7MP "touch-free" front-facing camera

l  Get more than ever out of your battery with Ultra Power Saving Mode and Adaptive Fast Charging technology

“T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy Note 4 pre-orders will actually ship on October 17th when the device launches nationwide.  Are you pre-ordering a Note 4, or has Apple got your money this year?

Head on over to the Galaxy Note 4 product page to pre-order.

Understanding Google Accounts

This article is about Google accounts:  what they are- and aren't, how to access them, and what the account-names look like.  

Blogger, Google and Google+ accounts

Once upon a time (pre 2006), there was a website on the internet called Blogger.   People created an account on Blogger, and then used it to make a blog - which was owned by their Blogger account.

Then Google (the company that made the search engine) purchased Blogger.   They wanted to integrate their products, so Blogger users had to change their original Blogger accounts to "Google accounts", which still had a Blogger profile.  Google were pretty nice about this:   they kept support old, unconverted Blogger accounts up til 2011, but eventually said that no more conversions were possible.

At the time, very few people understood the difference between Google-the-company and Google-the-search-engine, so most didn't have any idea of the power and importance of these "Google accounts".   However as the other applications available through Gaoogle accounts grew (Gmail, Picasa-web-albums, Google-custom-maps, AdSense, AdWords, etc), this became clearer.

In mid/late 2011, Google introduced Google+, which is a social-networking and identity service.  Originally, G+ accounts required people to use their real names, which some Bloggers didn't want to do.   But this policy was gradually weakened:

• Since early 2013 it has been possible to give a Google+ Page its own loginID and password - effectively making it a stand-alone G+ account,
• In mid 2014 Google announced that real-names were no longer required.

Blogger / Google profiles can be converted into Google+ accounts.

Or they can be left as normal Google accounts   (which are sometimes called "Google Minus" or "G-" accounts).

Getting a Google account

To make a new Google account, you just have to use the Create an Account link near the bottom of the account-selection list on the login-page of any product that Google offers (Gmail, Blogger, AdSense, etc).

You then have to provide a a few details - note though you have to give a first name and last name, these don't need to be your real names any more.

These days, by default, new accounts are Google+ accounts - but you can opt out of this during the sign-up process if you want.    If you do this, you won't have access to all Google's features (eg Google+ Photos) - but you will have everything you need to use Blogger.

Account names look like email address

Google account names always look like email addresses, ie they are of the form:

willy.worm@yourMail.com

If the product that you sign up with is Gmail (which is where Google accounts started, I think), then this makes sense.

However it is possible to have an account name that is simply a text-string that looks like an email address.

For a long time Google didn't even check if there was a valid email account with that address at the time you signed up   This has changed now:  Google warn you that they will send an email message to the account that you give, to verify that you own it, and that you won't have full use of the account until it is verified.

However, even today, if a Google account was created some time ago, you cannot guarantee that the person who owns a Google account still owns - or indeed ever owned - the email-address with the same name.

This means there are Google accounts called Joe.blogs@yahoo.com, and similar.   And there are even Google accounts with a name that is not, and never has been, a real email address.

Some of the confusion and problems:

• If the email address isn't a gmail one, then changing the password of the email doesn't change the password of the Google account

• Some people don't understand that their Google account name is just a set of letters: they don't realise that they can change the email address attached to their account without changing the underlying account (Dashboard > Edit Profile, identity tab).

• Some people lost access to the email address (eg because they leave their job, or use a free service and didn't log on for 30 or 60 or however-many day).

• Some people never had access to the email address, because they used a text-string that wasn't actually an address, and previously Google never checked if non-Gmail addresses actually worked.

In these cases, problems happened when that email address was the only tool that the person used to identify their Google accounts.  If it's not real, or they can't access it any more, then Google can't help when they forget their passwords,etc.  So there are some blogs that can never be accessed ever again, because Google has no way of being sure who owns the Google-account that made them.

---

Related Articles: 

Blogs, Blogger and Bloggers, Google Inc vs google - some basic terms

Giving a Google+ Page its own loginID and password

Understanding Google Apps accounts

Fixing conflicting Google and Google Apps accounts

AdSense and AdWords - understanding the difference.

Moving some posts from one blog to another

This article is about how to copy some of the posts from one Blogger blog to another.

Previously, I've written about

• moving individual posts, or pages, from one blog to another and 
• moving all posts from one blog to another.   

They are in separate articles because the techniques used are quite different in each case.

If you only want to transfer some posts between two blogs, then you need to choose between:

• Moving each post individually,or
• Moving all the posts then and deleting the ones you don't want from the "new" blog.

Before you start, decide what should happen to any posts that are already in the destination blog:  if you want to delete them, you need to do it from the Posting / Edit Posts tab (press the delete link beside each one).  Don't just delete the enter blog (from the Settings / Basics tab), because that will remove your access to the URL.

How to decide

Choosing whether to most post individually, or moving all of them is firstly about maths.

You need to estimate the time needed for each option, ie

• Time to move a post individually, multiplied by the number of posts to be moved

• Time to export and import, plus (time to delete a post times the number of posts that will need to be deleted).

And then choose the smallest one.

Except - you may like to figure in the chance of making a mistake, or of wanting to make small changes to come posts along the way.  Possibly you need to consider which approach you're most comfortable with - so it may not even be about maths at all!

Either way, remember that Pages (see The Difference between Posts and Pages) in the first blog, need to be moved individually because they aren't currently included in the export file.

---

Related Articles

Moving all posts from one blog to another

Moving individual posts, or pages, from one blog to another

Converting Posts into Pages

The Difference between Posts and Pages

Citadel makes big promises

There's a new big remake effort a-brewing in the Free Software world, this time for prominent shooter/RPG, System Shock. under the shape of project Citadel. According to project description, the goal is to recreate the original game using the widely known GPLed platform Darkplaces Engine, upgrading the game's graphics to full 3D but keeping game aesthetics close to the origianl game. Added modding capabilities and cooperative multiplayer will also be a part of the project. 

Details, however, are somewhat scarce, so far, as development is happening behind closed doors, and creator Josiah Jack just announced the existence of the project itself after months of programming in secret. While the code will certainly be all GPL or GPL-compatible due to Darkplaces licensing requirements, the game appears to rely on original proprietary assets, as well as using its own whose license nature is yet to be disclosed.

With a release date planned for the the 23rd of December, System Shock's CD release anniversary, I guess we'll have to wait and see if this project will deliver.

Pro and contra of images encoding as base64 encoded data URI for performance purpose

One of the common techniques of the website performance optimization is the reducing of the HTTP requests amount. Each website asset, like image, needs a HTTP request to be loaded.  On this issue is based an idea, to embed website images as base64 encoded data URI. After an image is embedded directly into HTML or CSS of the website, no additional HTTP request is needed to load this image - it is no longer an external resource, but becomes a part of the source code. This is the good part.
Read full article »

Smadav PRO 2014 Any Version Serial Key

Registration Details

NAME: http://www.cnl.yw.lt
serial: 991299702090

Photoline latest version serial keys

Serial Keys

565580-1415252333

565621-1415282324

566363-1415282015

565852-1415278892

566879-1415275989

568944-1415275691

565839-1415276493

565877-1415250481

565575-1415275948

566131-1415252437

Tenorshare Card Data Recovery v4.3.0.0 Serial Key

Serial Key

Email : // bauerlindemann@laxity.da //

Code : // 84BE31-A2DEF2-D98B81-556EA7-E7DFE4-D8BD9D-C138 //

Softwarenetz Invoice 5 v5.05 Serial Key

License Key

3741-9832-635308

File & Image Uploader 6.9.4 Serial Keys

+------------------------------------------+
|    Use any of these names and keys to      
|          register the program:                            
|                                        
| Name: Team REiS                        
|  Key: 37b3e7c3d69a588482b62f3afdc9f3e2  
|                                        
| Name: Ghost0507                        
|  Key: 02fdcd2f2ca3624794ce1264b2338370  
|                                        
| Name: LordCoder                        
|  Key: d56b3fb843de89087fb68ae27d3a8c65  
|                                        
| Name: TheLaw                            
|  Key: 18dea394f3ff7b1152d1e7535f41050e  
|                                        
| Name: Smile                            
|  Key: 224326b97be0eb4d678f89235ef499eb  
|                                        
| Name: OPiC                              
|  Key: faab7f8780a8fdf5a92f1202efebed0c  
|                                        
| Name: www.teamreis.altervista.org      
|  Key: 9274cfb16db3054d071906f266734e2d  
+------------------------------------------+

Offline Explorer Enterprise 6.8.41 Serial Key

Serial Key

dqmaFU2NFff/Q/d35Ug0WiOQJIphaaWMRzZLqxuMhkm9YW5RBKoUnKtg6lmIVL3p
Ot0QnOKqfoJ1Ot4Vlkxw235HePEu7ox1HgxZaiftogK6eUm+Xvo=amqd

DisplayFusion 6.1.2 Serial Keys

Serial keys

101-02-RTGOREBFA4-MZHTM12526-zyd03mTZJQd2D1zfzXmsrdbfdhT0Apue092U+ps5f8VmwGTaZEm8Q/lahczNo/xGkmBKvgglpRRyWJa/0PG/BlgCYv
2yQWMMp11Bf+T+1NXMPxEPkCvVIW087U3rnq8nGMMCzA5f1SbopePg6lvhCVtMvDEeW+66ftmVYmYCcxhulaPnH
jSZMQQOtA12Qq4Z

101-02-QCKWVD32C3-HAJTF14B60-zyd03mTZJQd3D07fzXmsrdT5RUt4FnMvpPpjmRGtsPxR0nz8akthDrxhKSyO1j5y1yfuAuIBV8gmgNrhfQBvT+hUk2k
T3qgna06eQQTwc0AFbL2EDy7HNhXOqdS7fNSMbmGt9Rliq0CYQS69YXfJ0V3JVJe1rW83B/+jxBN7MaXvmzojgcVi
WBX9NGz+VJzS

101-02-TTNTM87C88-VCQLL0A0C0-zyd03mTZJQdhD07fzXmsrX6/UXAjIHvk58qNFYsmygP19f9hLtEN1SBFogfv1JVMbEeOwWQGr6BUI3X3Fdcohmkku
QLNl2FN2PMQ7bBu4frprMOXhfE9wlHfQarJy+lu3thIZK9nuYY2HjrBBgRa0kv60DpLW2vZoAjRIW4aOQSdYjrld56u
F5+fSsnGwJYQ

AVG PC Tune up 2015 [ Latest ]

AVG-PC-TuneUp-2015 Features

• Restores your PC to top speed
• A Smoother running PC
• Extends your battery life
• Frees up valuable disk space
• Keeps your PC at peak performance
• Leaves no trace of your most important files
• Gives you complete performance – automatically
• Makes optimization easier
• Fine tune your computer for even more performance

Download Keygen : [ Here ] 

Annex:CTW RTS version 4.0 close to release

The MegaGlest based RTS Annex: Conquer The World is very close to a major update as version 4.0. Strait from the developer's mouth:

Yes! We are so close we can almost taste it.

He also posted a game-play video of the current development version:


He also recently stated that the new release will be fully FOSS, i.e. not only GPL source-code but also all artwork under a FOSS compatible creative-commons license (most likely CC-by-SA).

It's just a pity that the new much improved GUI code from MegaGlest seems to be not yet ready for the release.

P.S.: Also check out this Tower Defense mod for MegaGlest.

A word on CosmicDuke

On Thursday F-Secure released a blog post on CosmicDuke. But what is CosmicDuke exactly?

CosmicDuke - the first malware seen to include code from both the notorious MiniDuke APT Trojan and another longstanding threat, the information-stealing Cosmu family. When active on an infected machine, CosmicDuke will search for and harvest login details from a range of programs and forward the data to remote servers.

Source: COSMICDUKE: Cosmu with a twist of MiniDuke (PDF)

In other words, it will (attempt to) steal your login credentials from browsers and any other programs you may or may not use. I was interested to take a look, queue how Twitter comes in handy:

@bartblaze @TimoHirvonen Hashes here: 82448eb23ea9eb3939b6f24df46789bf7f2d43e3 c86b13378ba2a41684e1f93b4c20e05fc5d3d5a3
— Mikko Hypponen (@mikko) September 19, 2014

In this post we'll be focusing on sample 82448eb23ea9eb3939b6f24df46789bf7f2d43e3 - which supposedly handles about the EU sanctions against Russia.


When opening the document:

(Source)

When you open the document with macros disabled:

Seems they got prepared in case anyone disabled macros. Think this is a legit Word document?
Nope.

When you open the document, there's actually a child process spawned (tmp4D.tmp) which also loads a file called input.dll:

Don't be fooled by the company name or description,
this isn't IIS Express Worker Process nor has it anything to do with Microsoft.

We'll soon see what all this does. First, I'd like to provide some background information. The file's a .docx file, which means it is a combination of XML architecture and ZIP compression for size reduction and was implemented when Office 2007 was introduced. Why is that relevant?

Because you can unzip (with 7-zip for example) any Office file with the new extension:
(.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, ...)

Unzipped content of a .docx file

Thus, you can have a peek inside the document without actually opening it. If we look inside the "word" folder from our document, we can see the following (note the highlighted entries):

Unzipped content of  our .docx file

As you can see, there are 3 extra files there, 2 DLL files and a BIN file. Those files are embedded into the Word document. The BIN file loads an OLE , which then loads either the input.dll or input64.dll file, depending on your Operating System architecture. (in other words, the Office macro loads a malicious binary file.)

If you're interested in what the OLE artifact contained, here's a Pastebin link:

CosmicDuke VBA macro

Afterwards, the malware tries to kill the following processes:

cmd.exe
savadminservice.exe
scfservice.exe
savservice.exe
ekrn.exe
msseces.exe
MsMpEng.exe
dwengine.exe
ekern.exe
nod32.exe
nod32krn.exe
AvastUi.exe
AvastSvc.exe
kav.exe
navapsvc.exe
mcods.exe
mcvsescn.exe
outpost.exe
acs.exe
avp.exe

It will then try to gather as much data as possible, from cookies to files containing *psw*;*pass*;*login*;*admin*;*sifr*;*sifer* or *vpn. Soon after your data will be uploaded to an FTP server... Which wasn't too hard to find.

Anyways, here's some additional information on the Word file by automated tools:

MalwareTracker Result

VirusTotal Result

Prevention

• Don't open emails (and certainly no attachments) from an unknown source. 
• Install an antivirus and antimalware product and keep it up-to-date & running.
• Improve security for your Microsoft Office package. (Word, Excel, ...)
  This means disabling ActiveX, disabling macros and blocking external content. Useful links:
  Enable or disable ActiveX controls in Office documents
  Enable or disable macros in Office documents
  Block or unblock external content in Office documents

Conclusion

It seems obvious that malware authors are keeping up-to-date with the latest news and as such adapting their campaigns as well. Better be safe than sorry and don't trust anything sent via email. ;-)

If you're in an organisation, you might want to consider blocking the execution of all macros (or only allow the ones that are digitally signed if there's no other option) by using GPO.

You can find those templates here:

2007 Office system (SP2) Administrative Template files (ADM, ADMX, ADML) and Office Customization Tool

Office 2010 Administrative Template files (ADM, ADMX/ADML) and Office Customization Tool download

Office 2013 Administrative Template files (ADMX/ADML) and Office Customization Tool

Resources

Analyzing Malicious Documents Cheat Sheet

COSMICDUKE: Cosmu with a twist of MiniDuke (PDF)

Where is the documentation for Office's docx/xlsx/pptx formats? Part 1: Office 2007

Where is the documentation for Office's docx/xlsx/pptx formats? Part 2: Office 2010

Faceted search, SEO and user experience: how to and why?

Certain ecommerce sites with only few product categories and some thousands of products are able to generate thousands upon thousands useless URLs, through product search, product filter and product option URLs. Sad, but true. We can't do as if this problem wouldn't exist. To leave such URLs unhandled would bring tons of negative SEO impact. There are only few kinds of dealing with such URLs:

• to get rid of them completely,
• to turn a part of useless URLs into useful, and
• to reduce the negative SEO impact of the remaining useless URLs.

Note!
There isn't the magic method - no one of existing SEO techniques does the trick alone. What works is the combination of SEO techniques, which i collect in this article.

 Lets look →
Read full article »

A potpourri of open-source engines for old(er) games

Yep, not much updates on the blog, but I thought I throw up a list of (mostly) obscure open-source news:

• Original Keen Dreams source-code liberated
• Also check out: CloneKeen, Omnispeak & Commander Genius
• CaveExpress liberated (2d physics game)
• Pixel Dungeon RogueLike open-sourced (Android only)
• X-Com: Apocalypse engine reimplementation
• Libre content replacement project for Gish
• Stein's Gate Visual Novel Engine reimplementation

Less obscure: New version of OpenMW (0.32).

Big tease: Icculus works on open-sourcing a game and it seems to be a relatively new title as it includes steamworks support.

Please comment below if you know of other recent open-sourceing efforts ;)

Did you know that your blog is in the cloud?

This article explains the relationship between your blog and "the cloud", and other ways that you might be using the cloud without even realising it.

A few days ago, I received an email from Sam who works for "SingleHop, a company that specializes in cloud computing."

He explained that

"Due to recent events like Heartbleed, the Target breach and the leaking of celebrity photos to the public, the world is abuzz about "the cloud." However, you may be wondering what exactly it is and what it does. We are hoping you would be interested in sharing a post with your readers about cloud computing in everyday life.

In a nutshell, the cloud is a way to store data remotely, rather than on your home computer. This gives you easy access to your photos, documents, and other files from anywhere at any time. We are hoping that by spreading awareness about how the cloud works, we can help others make smarter decisions about what they post/share online.

We have put together a graphic discussing some of the most common ways you use the cloud. We would love to share this with you so that you can use the information to help create a post about how you use cloud computing in your day-to-day life.

Being the suspicious sort, I wondered if this was come kind of spam / scam. But it didn't feel totally spammy: there was no link to SingleHop in the email, his message text didn't come up in any of the hoax or urban-legend sites, and the company looks legitimate - though I cannot see how they will benefit from being linked to from my blog.

I wrote back to Sam, and sure enough he sent me a graphic. It looks sensible-enough, doesn't appear to have any viruses in it, and a Google image search isn't showing it anywhere else on the web. So far, so good.

I had asked "what's the catch" and he replied "No catch, we're just trying to spark discussion and create awareness about how people use the cloud. We’d love for you to talk about how you use the cloud, whether it’s to be productive at work, share special moments with friends or relax at home."

So here goes - a blog post about blogs, bloggers, Blogger and the cloud, with an illustration compliments of SingleHop (who didn't ask for the backlink).

Your blog is already in "the cloud"

For all the hype, "the cloud" is nothing new - at least not for individuals.

 As Sam said the cloud is just "a way to store data remotely, rather than on your home computer". 

I've been doing this on in Blogger since 2006 and doing it seriously (ie writing for more than just myself) since 2009. I've been using internet-email since 1987 - eve though most of the world didn't start until ten years later.   More recently I switched to using email accounts that let me keep all my email on-line and access it via IMAP rather than downloading it to my PC using POP3.

Obviously - if you have a blog made with Blogger, then it is already in "the cloud".

And this is true whether your have a public blog, or a private blog with restricted readers:  even those select people will be seeing the version of your blog that it on the internet.

The same if you are using Picasa-web-albums or any other picture-hosting service to keep photos that you show in your blog.   Or Youtube to store your videos, Google-Contacts to manage your address book, Google Drive to store the PDF files that you distribute through it, or a Facebook page, Twitter account or Pinterest boards to promote your blog.

These are all "in the cloud" because people who see them on your blog see the version that you uploaded to the internet, not the one on your home computer. This means that the pictures, videos etc can still be seen, even when your computer is turned off.

There are also new ways of interacting with your blog, which "the cloud" is making possible, eg I'm currently experimenting with an app called Pixlr, as a way to manage the size of photos loaded to my "quirky pictures from my city" photoblog directly from my phone.   But the basic idea - that your blog is "in the cloud" hasn't changed since well before the cloud became hip.

Are there other ways that you can, should and do use "the cloud"?

Probably. Some of these will just be about the way your blog develops - for example if you start makign vlogs (video-blog-posts), you can store them on YouTube.

Others could be more suable. Looking through Sam's picture (below), one issue that stands out for me is backup: as well as using Google Takeout to make periodic copies of the contents of all my blogs, I should probably start to save these somwhere extra-safe just in case anything bad happens.

And for some types of blog, using streaming-media might be important.  SingleHop says that this is for entertainment.  But I can easily see it being useful for choral singers who are learning new works, teachers who want to share their materials, and even sports players who want to train to specific regimes that are distributed by "video", and available to play when needed - as well as for bloggers who write about these topics.

More information

Sam's graphic is shown below: he didn't say whether it it was ok to include in my post or not, so I thought I'd risk it and share it with you - I'm sure he'll be in touch if he wants me to take it down!

Most probably, your blog itself will fit into his social media category: blogs are really just ultra-long Twitter posts, delivered inside a tool that gives lots of creative freedom about how material is displayed.

But in some cases, you may fit into the collaboration category, if you are writing a team blog and have set up other team-members to write in it. B ut what do you think - does it belong somewhere else?

What you can and cannot know

For most bloggers, their use of "the cloud" will be pretty invisible: they see themselves as using Blogger or Wordpress or whatever, rather than using "the cloud"

If you look harder at Sam's company website, you will see that they are offering virtual private cloud services. In very, very rough terms, this means they own a very large set of computers, and rent out space on them - set up so that only people from the organisation which has leased the space can see the space and use the computer-power behind it.  This is different to public cloud services, where the processing power is shared with other people using the same computer.

For almost all cloud systems that you will use as a blogger, you aren't going to be certain whether they are based on public-cloud or private-cloud services - but for all practical purposes, you don't need to know.

But is it safe?

This is the biggest question for most when people someone starts talking about "the cloud" - especially if they've heard about passwords being hacked etc

Certainly my first reaction was that the companies I work within my day job would never use the cloud, because they would have to put too much sensitive data onto computers outside their control. And for some, this is true.

But what I eventually realised is that generally the large "cloud services companies" provide better computer security than you do in your house - and far better than the single IT-staff person in a small company can manage.  So overall, I think it's now safe to say that "the cloud is as secure as any other computing tool you use", and that the biggest risk to the safety of your information comes from choosing bad passwords, or having viruses / malware attack your computer.

What do you think?

Are you happy that your blog is in "the cloud" - would you prefer a blogging solution that let you keep your private blogs, at least, in a non-cloud place?

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Related Articles:

Understanding Picasa: Picasa-web-albums are Picasa "in the cloud"

Planning a social-media strategy for your blog.

Letting other people post to your blog.

Blogs, bloggers, Blogger - understanding the basic defintions around blogging

H for htaccess: part 5 of the HASCH the OnPage SEO framework

.htaccess (hypertext access) is a text file, placed mostly in the root folder of the given site and invisible cause of the point at the begin. .htaccess contains directives for server, server software, robots and browser about handling of files, folders and paths / URLs.

Generally there are 2 topics, where .htaccess can be used for SEO purposes:

• Mod_alias and mod_rewrite directives (URL redirects and rewrites)
• load time optimization

Site security has in my opinion only indirectly to do with SEO, so i decided not to make it to a topic of this article.

The last, fifth part of my HASCH OnPage SEO framework is about the SEO mission of .htaccess. I aim to create a kind of multipurpose explained and examples-illustrated checklist about .htaccess usage for mod_rewrite and robots manipulation and load time optimization as advanced SEO objectives. This ".htaccess for SEO" tutorial will be helpful (for me and you) on performing site audits and building new strictly SEO-minded sites. Read the tutorial →
Read full article »

How to find other blogs to read

This is a quick guide to searching for other blogs to read, now that Google's blog-search tool has been retired.

If you write a blog, then reading other blogs "in your niche" (ie about similar topics) is a really good idea. This lets you keep up with what's going on and what other people are saying, and helps you to think up new blog-post ideas.

An RSS-reader is a great tool for managing everything you need to read:  it's basically a folder with links to all the blogs and websites you want to follow, which shows when they have been updated.   To make best use of it. as soon as you see an interesting website, go to your RSS reader software and subscribe to the website's RSS-feed there-and-then: otherwise you will almost certainly forget.   Alternatively you can subscribe-by-email - provided the site offers that option - but many bloggers find that their email gets overwhelmed if they do this with more than a few sites.

Some RSS software suggests websites that you might like to follow - although generally I've found that the suggestions are pretty broad and not overly useful.

So -  how else can you find new blogs to read?

How to find other blogs to read

Google's BlogSearch tool, RIP

Google previously gave us a dedicated blog-search tool at www.google.com/blogsearch, which was available from various places, and still comes up in the search results if you google "how to find other blogs"

But apparently this is now re-directing to the Google home page.   And even though I'm seeing that the re-directed URL is https://www.google.com/blogsearch?gws_rd=ssl - the search results that it returns are most definitely not just blogs.)

You can still get to it without re-direction at the moment, by going to https://www.google.com/?tbm=blg, but the predictions are that this won't work for much longer.

Google News

This tool is available at https://news.google.com

It looks like there are a couple of versions available.

In the newer one, you can apparently click Search Tools, select the “All news” drop down, and choose “Blogs.

In the older one, which I still have, to prioritise blogs in your news-feed you need to:

• Click on the gear wheel (button with a picture of a cog on it) near the top right of the screeen, 
• Click on the Settings link that is to the right of Save, and 
• Under Sources set Blogs to More and Press Releases to None
• Click Save Changes.

At the moment, the News content from blogs isn't the best - but indications from Google are that it will get better as news-bloggers register their sites.

Search

Old-fashioned searching is probably one of the most powerful way of finding blogs.  To use Search to find other blogs:

• If you follow a topic, then you should regularly search in Google for interesting questions in your niche, but not choose the most-obvious results from the results page. Instead choose the ones you haven't heard of, but which look promising.

• Use a different search engine - either a mainstream one like www.bing.com or www.yahoo.com, or a more specialist custom search in your niche.

• Include the word "blog" when you are searching. (This returns websites that use the word "blog" as well as blogs, so isn't perfect. But it sometimes helps to turn up new sources.)

• Search for interesting key words together with the phrase "site:blogspot.com". Now, this will only give you sites that don't have custom domains - but some of them are great blogs.

Browse

One of the most important ways of finding sites is by - finding sites.    Be curious with everything you read:  ask who wrote it, who else they follow, and what they are telling you about where they got their information.

Visit their sites, instead of just reading their blog posts in your RSS subscription tool, and look at their blogrolls and lists of interesting sites, and see if there are any you don't know about.

Follow links in their posts, and assess if they are pointing to blogs that you should be reading.

Look at their Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites:   she who they follow or interact with - and then check if those people have blogs.

Ask

This may seem strange but simply asking your readers for suggestions can unearth some blogs that you won't find any other way.     Of course it won't work if you ask on your blog and don't have many regular readers yet - but you have nothing to lose.

But there's no reason why you cannot ask in other mediums - eg by leaving a question on your Facebook page or the page of anyone else who might know (and will let you write there0

Similarly you could post a question on Twitter, and a time when people with lots of knowledge about blogs in your niche are likely to be posting.

Use Blogger's Profile linking service

This approach was first described in 2007 - which seems like eons ago.   And today won't work for bloggers who have a Google+ profile.  But it might work still for new bloggers, in particular.

Look in a Blog Directory

These are also somewhat old-hat, but some blog directories like Alltop and Technorati are still useful if the topics they feature suit your niche.

How do you keep the list of blogs that you read fresh and up-to-date?

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Related Articles:

Understanding RSS

How to make a real website using Blogger