In the last 6 months, we have had some massive Panda updates, and last month, Google deindexed a number of blog networks which provide backlinking services, most noticeably BuildMyRank (that was forced to close down). Google has also an ongoing “Over Optimization” penalty which will penalize sites for overdoing SEO without enough keyword diversity. To top it off, Google sent out almost a millions notices of “Unnatural Links Detected” in people’s Google Webmaster Tools accounts  in February alone (and continues to do so).

Well, let’s face it; all these changes were going to come sooner or later. There is really nothing a webmaster can do apart from continuing to pay heed to the main principals and abide by them, because these principals are timeless and are the only things you have going for you, no matter what Google does. So although everyone is tired of hearing it, I’m going to say it again – it’s still about quality, quality, and quality; create content that always caters to your visitor. This is one of the few things within your control, so make use of it.

But there is more…

There is a massive debate now about how Google views backlinks. Previously, it was widely believed that Google would simply discount or devalue backlinks that it thought were bad or “unnatural”. But now, Google is busy notifying webmasters of their “unnatural” links and then appearing to penalize them for it, and at the same time inviting them to submit a Reconsideration Request to fix the problem.

Thus, a debate has been opened up regarding whether sabotaging a competing website by literally spam-linking to it can cause it to be penalized Google, and the answer unfortunately, is yes – at least for now, and at least for anyone whose website is not Wikipedia or a Fortune 500 company. It is a running joke now that blog networks should instead re-purpose themselves to become spam link farms for those who want to get a competitor in trouble!

It very much appears that Google has opened up a Pandora’s Box and if it has any intention of closing it back, it needs to readjust its algorithm to not punish websites for their incoming links (like it has always done), and to publicly address the issue, or else things could soon likely get out of hand with websites waging “SERP wars” on each other. The result would be utter mayhem.

I personally don’t see any end to this problem, unless search engines decide to eliminate links altogether as a ranking factor, or at least severely reduce its importance. I do think that by the end of this year, significant changes will have occurred in the Internet world with regards to how search engines work and how people adapt to them. Interesting times we live in.

Should I change this blog back to NoFollow?

This is a question that I’ve been mulling for some time. The crux of the matter is that what was okay the last time around, may not be so okay now, since Google keeps on changing the goal posts.

Although I have always believed in the whole DoFollow movement thing, and kept this site DoFollow all these years (5 years) albeit with very strict moderation, it may not be enough to balance that desire with Google’s increasingly strict demands now.

The original purpose of having a DoFollow blog was always to encourage quality comments that linked to quality sites, but it’s also very obvious that this noble goal has been much abused all these years. Most comments these days are created using automated software like Scrapebox. It is also extremely easy for Google to start viewing a DoFollow blog as “spammy” – at any time. And they have done that many times before, penalizing some DoFollow blogs in association with link spam.

Therefore, it is with a heavy heart that I’m turning this blog back to NoFollow, at least for an indefinite period of time.

I know this is never going to be a popular decision, but think about it, if getting a lot of DoFollow comments merely lead to you increasing your risk of getting an “Unnatural Links Detected” notice (followed by a penalty), what is the point anyway in getting them? Let me know what you think in the comments.

Sometimes when writing reports, you may need to summarize it, especially if it is a long one. But that may be quite difficult to accomplish if there are a lot of different types of information contained within it. If you are using Word 2007, there is a feature to summarize documents, called the Auto Summarize feature. This is a useful feature that gives a score to each sentence in your Word document. You can use the sentences with highest score to write the summary for your document. And, if you don’t want to do even that, you still can use the Auto Summarize function.

Let’s now go through the steps to access and use the AutoSummarize feature.

We start by adding the “AutoSummary” shortcut to the quick access bar in Word 2007. Here are the steps:

1. On the Office menu, click the “Word Options” button.
2. Now, click “Customize” on the left panel, and then select “All Commands” from the “Choose commands from” list.
3. Scroll down the command list, select “AutoSummary Tools” and then click the “Add” button.

The AutoSummarize icon will now be added to the Quick Access bar of your Word 2007. Let’s now use this feature to summarize a document.

NB: The text in the Word document used in the screenshots is created automatically. You can create it too. Just type “=rand()”, without quotes in a blank document, and hit Enter.

Click the “AutoSummary Tools” icon on the Quick Access bar and then select “Auto Summarize”.

The AutoSummarize dialog box will be displayed.

If you select “Highlight key points”, the most commonly used phrases in the document will be highlighted and you may use them to write the summary.

Also, depending on the length of the document, you may set the percent of the original document you want to use for the summary. The default value is 25%.

If you choose to create an executive summary, then the document is automatically summarized for you and the text is placed at the top of the document.

You can also choose to create a new document for summary or display only the summary and hide everything else in the document.

So, next time the boss says to write an executive summary of a long report “ASAP”, you know how easy it is to do it in double quick time!

1. For sending continuous request to any website, enable pipelining from your Firefox browser. To do this, type “about:config” in your address bar and click on the options “network.http.pipelining” and “network.http.proxy.pipelining” and for selecting the maximum number of requests sent at once, go to “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” and set it with a desired value.

2. It takes time to load a page if Firefox keeps on displaying what it has after its allotted interval, which in general is quite small (about 0.12 seconds); and so change it to a much greater value by following this navigation: type about:config->New->Integer->type content.notify.interval->set a high value like 20000->New->Boolean->content.notify.ontimer->True.

3. Decrease the content switch threshold by going to New->Integer->content.switch.threshold and select a low value like 100000 which means one tenth of a second; this decreases the response time of the browser considerably.

4. If flash animations pop up every time you are browsing the internet, it would probably slow down your work. If it is so, then there is a very easy way to get rid of this by downloading FlashBlock Extension and it will block all the flash animations that appear and keep them in the place holder so that you can check them later.

5. Cache is the temporary memory that keeps track of the last few visited sites. Reloading them takes very little time as they are loaded directly from it. If the cache size is increased, Firefox runs faster, and to do so type about:config->New->Integer->Select browser.cache.memory.capacity and enter a high value to get the bigger cache.

6. If you have a slow internet connection, Firefox performs best if it is used with a data compression tool like toolnet. Not only does it compress data but lets all the data pass through its own server making the response much faster. And it can be downloaded very easily as well.

7. Lastly, Firefox can get slow if any other application tries to run while a page is being loaded, to stop this go to: New->Boolean->content.interrupt.parsing->select False. This stops every other application until your page loads properly.

The bottom line is that SOPA makes it possible to take down almost any website on copyright infringement grounds without even going through any proper due process; it’s a shoot first, talk later approach. Under SOPA, any website can potentially be taken down, or blocked, if just a small percentage of its pages host copyright material, or even if it links to such sites. If the previous DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) was at least quite workable in practice, SOPA can now be likened to using a shotgun approach to go after flying mosquitoes. Yes, mosquitoes are no doubt annoying, but you don’t deal with them using a shotgun!

The wording in SOPA is quite broad and vague, so its scope to cause a lot of collateral damage is huge indeed. It goes without saying that virtually all the large Web based companies that create content in one form or another, is opposed to SOPA, while many record labels and large businesses unfortunately, support it. Godaddy initially supported it, but after a boycott Godaddy campaign in which many people moved their domains out of Godaddy, they seemed to have done an about-turn.

I am sure at least 95% of web surfers all over the globe would disagree with it if only they were made aware about it. 2012 may well start off with such a damper if the US Congress moves closer to approving the bill when they convene sometime in Jan 2012.

One suggestion that seems workable would be for the top Internet companies to have a “mass blackout” day, but I think the will to do it seems to be lacking – for want of a better word. There isn’t much time before this law is passed, and those who oppose it really need to get their act together, and soon.

Most mobile devices like Android phones, Blackberrys and the iPhones already possess the necessary software within them which enable them to connect to the PC and sync. But in the case your device doesn’t have one, you can easily get the Device Stage Feature software in your Windows or Mac OS and if your mobile device supports this feature, then you can easily sync with it.

What is the Device Stage feature? Basically it is syncing software that enables the user to sync his own mobile device with his PC and helps the two to share all the necessary information between them. So, if anyone wants to share any calendar or important contacts from his mobile device to his PC, then he can do so using this software.

Also, if one wishes to create his own set of ring tones for instance and transfer it to his mobile device, then this software is a good option as well. But one thing has to be kept in mind, compatibility is the key here. For example, you cannot sync and transfer calendar and contacts to your iPod; only your mobile phone.

Using Device Stage is very simple as well. If it is not installed, then simply connect your device to your PC and if the device is compatible with it, then the software will open automatically – provided you have that device installed beforehand. For all the different devices there are different options that will flash on to the screen from setup to sharing for the user’s convenience. The options are self-explanatory and can be easily identified; it takes hardly five minutes for syncing and sharing – so it is nothing but a piece of cake!

Most mobile devices are Device Stage compatible nowadays but if you are planning to buy any new mobile device and are not sure about its compatibility then contact your manufacturer for getting the necessary information.

You too, can create an application if you know how to do it. To create your own application, you will need to install Android Software Development Kit (SDK) which works in combination with Eclipse. Don’t think you need the Android SDK? Think again. You would need to use and get familiar with the SDK, if you want to jailbreak/root your Android phone at some point, for example.

There are some prerequisites, which you will need to have downloaded before proceeding. Some of them are as follows –

• Eclipse version 3.4 or above.
• Eclipse IDE for developing.
• Java Development Kit version 5 or 6.
• Android SDK and Development Tools plug-in.

The steps required are –

1) First of all, you will need to download all the prerequisites, and install them in the same location of your hard drive. (For example “C: \Android”). If you already have them downloaded earlier, just extract them to a specific location of your drive.

2) Start Eclipse. Go to its Help menu, and select the option that reads “Install new software”. This will allow you to integrate the Android SDK with Eclipse.

3) In the Add Repository box, add the name “ADT Plug-in” and write “https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/” in the space for Location. Select “Ok”.

4) In the next screen, checks the box named “Developer Tools” and then proceed by clicking on “Next”. In the next window, you will be shown a list of packages and tools to be downloaded. It is not required to change any of those. Just click on “Next” and read the license agreements to ensure you are not violating any of them. Click on “Finish”. It will take some time for the download and installation to complete. Finally when it completes, close Eclipse and restart it.

5) Now go to the Window menu, and select the option “Preferences”. Select the name Android from the tree directory structure given towards the left. Click on the button that appears on upper right of the screen, and select the Android SDK that you previously installed on the hard disk, and then click on “Ok”.

6) Now click on the button that appears. Select the option that says “virtual devices”, and again press the button next to it to add a new Android Virtual Device, which you will need to test your applications without actually attaching a device. This is more or less like a virtual simulation of your application that you are going to develop.

In the new dialogue box, you will need to set the name and the target of your project. A target defines a relevant application interface that your program is going to look like. Then choose the total amount of memory that will be available to it. You can specify something like 1000 Mb. Then you can select the peripheral device that you want to emulate like Bluetooth or GPS etc. Then click on “Finish AVD” button to create the new virtual disk.

7) Finally go to File menu, select “New” and then select “Project”. Choose the option “Android”. Provide an appropriate project name, select build target as “Android 2.2”, and click on “Finish”. Now you are ready to work on your first project.