It started out innocently enough: I was using Windows Media Center to watch TV, and I had IE open pointing to a portal site. As the TV program was about to end, I heard a couple of beeps. I didn’t think much of it at the time (actually by that time it was probably already too late). After the program ended, I closed Windows Media Center, and started noticing that the computer was really busy. A couple of minutes after that, I start seeing the following:

• Popup windows, popup windows, and more popup windows.
• A program called WinAntiVirus asking to see if it can install itself.
• The computer remained extremely busy.

At this time, it was obvious that I got hit by the WinAntiVirus malware (isn’t it annoying that it disguises itself as a anti-virus software?) My first job was to figure out what I can do to get rid of it. So, I went to the search engine and found a couple of sites, all of them recommending elaborate steps for removing this trouble maker.

“There must be an easier way!” I thought… I am always leery about downloading more software and going into the registry, and then I remembered Windows XP has this System Restore function that would restore the system configuration to a previous time. So, I tried this route. Lo and behold, it worked!

In addition to that, I went into the Temp folder and got rid of all the files that were created after the system first became unstable. Hopefully these steps have saved my computer from this dreaded malware.

One thing that makes me wonder is how the malware got into my computer in the first place. I was not viewing any dubious web pages, and I haven’t opened any strange email attachments. Obviously figuring out what had happened is important because I want to be able to plug that hole so that this doesn’t happen in the future. A search on the internet, however, didn’t reveal anything. If anyone has any thoughts on this, please let me know!

As part of this rebranding, I am renaming the blog “TopCat Blog”, and moving it to TopCatBlog.com. I have also set up a new Feedburner feed. The current Feedburner feed will continue to work for at least a month. If you are reading this, please update your feed to the new feed as soon as possible. I have also upgraded to Wordpress 2.2, and migrated to a new theme.

• Automated message.� The voice can be either male or female.
• The message is very vague in terms of who the caller is and what the call is about.
• The message� asks you to call� back a 800 number.

These calls appear to be scams.� � If you receive this type of call, do not call back.� You have no idea what the other person on the other end is after.

If you want to make sure visitors to your site have a consistent user experience (for example, if you are testing whether it’s better to use a 728×90 Leaderboard or a 468×60 Banner, you want to ensure that users who see the Leaderboard ad initially will always see a Leaderboard ad as they navigate through the site), the random number method alone won’t work because it’s not possible to ensure all pages for that particular user fall under the same test bucket.

How can this be accomplished? The one constant during a visitor’s visit to a site is his/her IP address. So, we can use this information to determine which bucket a particular visitor falls under. To do this, include the following code at the top of every PHP file:

<?php

$ip =$_SERVER[’REMOTE_ADDR’];
$last_ip = explode(”.”, $ip);
$even_odd = $last_ip[3] % 2;

?>

The above code divides all visitor into two equal buckets ($even_odd = 0 and $even_odd = 1) based on the last number of visitor’s IP address. This determination will last through user’s visit to the site.

At the place where Adsense code would be inserted, use the following code:

<?php
if ($even_odd > 0) {
?>
## First Adsense code
<?php
} else {
?>
## Second Adsense code
<?php
}
?>

The above assumes that the testing occurs in a single place on the page. However, even if this is not the case, you can still use the same principle.

Remember to use different channels to track the performance of the two blocks.

I found that several gasoline credit cards are among the best in offering rebates (BP, Shell, Hess, and Marathon).� For cash-back cards, Citi Driver’s Edge Platinum Select Card and TrueEarnings Card from Costo and American Express are the best ones.� For people who spend a lot of money on their credit card (over $10,000 a year), Blue Cash from American Express is the best card.

You can find out more information in this Best Reward Credit Cards page.

1.� The same� pages rendered ok in Firefox, Opera, and even IE7.

2.� When I do a “view source”, I can see the full HTML code.� So, IE6 can see the code, but it just refuses to render it at all.

I searched the internet to see if someone else has posted about this before, but to my chagrin, the answer was no (at least not in English).� So, I decided to examine the page one element at a time.� Eventually, I was able to narrow it down to the <title> tag:� When the title tag contained only single-byte characters, the page rendered ok; but if I add Japanese characters to the title, the page wouldn’t render.

As it turned out, the way to fix this is to leave a space between the last Japanese character and the closing title tag.� It was surprising because I worked with other double-byte languages before, and had never seen this requirement.� This was probably due to some Japanese-specific IE6 bug that got fixed in IE7.

Basically, the concept is this:� Advertisers are willing to pay bloggers a certain amount of money to write about their products/services, and bloggers are can view advertisers’ offers and pick the ones they are interested in.� Bloggers blog about that particular service or product and get paid for that post.� � Bloggers may or may not disclose that they are getting paid (some sites make it optional, some sites specify that bloggers have to disclose this relationship).� At the end, bloggers are happy because they get paid for what they already do, and advertisers are happy because they just got more buzz (not to mention the possible incoming links) at a relatively cheap price.

Some people argue against doing this because they believe this is unethical, that the bloggers, if they are getting paid, should at least disclose it.� I don’t really have an issue with this, because the entire world of journalism is subjective anyway.� Just because a story came out of a respected wire� service or your favorite� newspaper� doesn’t necessarily guarantee� that it is free of personal bias, which may or may not be influenced by monetary considerations.� � Besides, blogging is all about expressing personal opinions.� If a blogger is motivated by the incentives the advertiser offers, why not blog about the advertiser’s products/services?�

Even though I don’t have any moral issues� with the concept, it is very unlikely that I will get into it myself.� My concerns are more practical:� 1) traffic, 2) economics

Traffic

If I read a blog and it appears that the person behind the blog is talking about certain products / services because he/she is getting paid, chances are I would not return (unless it happens to be on something that I have a lot of interest in).� By the same token, I can expect my readers to have the same response.� � Over the long run, this means that the regular readership that I have built up will likely go away, and my traffic will suffer as a result.�

Economics

The offers� are typically about $2 - $5 per post.� Let’s say I get offered $4 a post, and I spend 20 minutes playing with the product/service, and 20 more minutes writing about it.� That comes out to an hourly rate of $6 per hour, which does not get me too excited.

Summary

Bottom line, you won’t get rich by joining any of the “Get Paid To Blog” sites.� You’ll make a little money, sure, but does that make a difference?� For some people, it will, and for others, it won’t.� If you are the former, definitely go try it out to see if it’s for you.�

1) Make sure the index and the actual content match up. It’s very frustrating to click on a video from the search result, only to find out that the video has been removed. If the video has been removed, don’t make it available as a search result.

2) In the search box, allow the user to specify how to sort. Right now, the default sort is relevance. This doesn’t work well for me, as I am always looking for the latest videos for certain keywords. As a result, I always need to go through one additional click to get the results I want.

3) Better yet, since I stay logged in to Youtube, they can ask for my default sort order and apply it whenever I do a search. To take it a step further, it would be great if they perform the search for me and display the newest videos that I want whenever I go to youtube.com.