Update: The “beta” notice appears to be gone, for now.

Seems like Google is doing a mini experiment on the iGoogle page. This time, it involves a small little yellow notice with a “Close” link. Apparently Google forgot to place any message on the notice.

Clicking on the close link will close the notice, though not for long as the empty annoucement will spring right back on the next time you reload the page.

Once again, yet another one of those minor things to happen on the Google home page.

1. Buy Entrecard credits

After much debate on whether Entrecard credits are available with cash (officially anyway), Entrecard decided to fill in the gap by introducing the option of buying credits. The buy credits link is available from the main page. Credits are only purchaseable using PayPal. Credits can only be bought in batches of 1000, 5000 or 10000 credits, with each 1000 credits causing $9.50 (presumable determined automatically via a system within Entrecard). Only 12000 credits are allocated for purchase for all users, probably as “market mechanism” to prevent rapid devaluation (or the reverse) of Entrecard credits.

While third party credits are usually offered at a lower price than the official price, there are nonetheless some great perks of the credits coming directly from Entrecard: They are much more secure, and that money spent on these credits go back to the community. The 12,000 credits quota set is partly due to a second feature of Entrecard credits - you can possibly earn actual cash from it.

Entrecard credits sold by cash are compensated to original members who have sold their Entrecard credits back to Entrecard. Hence Entrecard acts as the middleman. However, only certain members would benefit from the extra revenue, and it is generally those who are regarded as trusted and reputable. This applies mainly to active members.

2. Blog on Entrecard blog

If you are not a contributor for Entrecard’s blog, you can get your post published on Entrecard and earn credits for it. Each post successfully approved will get Entrecard credits credited to your account. The better the post, the larger the payout. The payout is largely variable, but the average suggested by Entrecard is in the area of several hundreds, but it can reach a possible maximum of 2000 credits.

Each post on Entrecard will contain a link to your site, thereby promoting your own site as the Entrecard blog receives thousands of views each day.

3. Get paid to blog on your blog

Entrecard has taken one step further to helping new bloggers get the promotion they need. The moment you make a post on your own site, you would get paid 25 Entrecard credits per every 3 days you have made at least one post on your site. Entrecard would detect if you have made a new post on your site via checking your site’s RSS feed.

I’ve just realized that Google changed it’s favicon from capital G to small g. For those of you who do not know what a favicon is, it is that small 16 by 16 pixels icon you sometimes see beside the address bar. I guess that’s probably one of the minor changes that I’ve ever seen happening on the Google homepage.

Nonetheless, it does appear that someone spotted it as well. Kudos to all who managed to spot the change.

I still can’t get accustomed to the new icon. Maybe I’ve been using Google for a very long time and even a small icon change makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Hopefully I could get accustomed to it sooner or later. Honestly, while the new icon looks pretty sleek, the shadow (or gradient?) behind the “g” makes it look ackward. I guess that’s because I’m using IE7 and that the icon appear to be semi-transparent. On Firefox, the icon looks great.

*Note: In order to view the new favicon, you can shortcut the caching process by simply accessing the favicon directly (i.e. google.com/favicon.ico) and refreshing it. Tada, the new Google icon!

Let’s hope Google won’t be turning lowercase anytime soon, otherwise it’ll look pretty odd.

The flaw is being used by Chinese hackers (presumably, since most of the affected sites are in China) to steal World of Warcraft passwords through the installation of a keylogger that records keystrokes for certain programmes. It also attempts to disable Kaspersky Anti-virus (fortunately most other anti-viruses are not affected).

The attackers also attempted mass SQL injection attacks (i.e. attempting to insert some “additional” stuff or modify things in your site) early on and are using these victim sites as a means of

While the bug affects Internet Explorer more often than Firefox in a way, it’s still a good idea to update your Flash player immediately (even if you not play World of Warcraft).

Looks like even after extensive testing on Wordpress’s side, one nasty bug managed to slip through, and it’s not the fault of Wordpress either. Apparently, anyone using mod_security on Apache will not be able to upload anything on Wordpress 2.5 or Wordpress 2.5.1. This could be because mod_security doesn’t take a liking towards the Flash uploader Wordpress now uses. This is a big problem for Wordpress, since more than 30% of the Internet uses mod_security (courtesy of Hostgator and numerous other Internet web hosts), which means these uploaders won’t work if you simply install Wordpress and do nothing else after.

The fix?

Simply create or edit your .htaccess using your text editor. Insert the following lines to the file:

<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>

That should switch off security only for your uploader, and chances are your uploader should work fine.

Alternatively, since the entire problem is caused by Flash, you could try disabling the Flash uploader using a plugin that does that.

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A second glitch is that sometimes the media gallery in Wordpress 2.5 may not be able to insert images. In addition to that, changes to your post might be lost for unknown reasons after doing that. Nonetheless, you can insert the image in another method by copying the URL of the image in the gallery and inserting it via Add Image in the toolbar.

My Search Funds is offering to pay you just for web searches. That’s probably one of the easiest ways to earn money, since after all, you do use Google or Yahoo right? Results are obtained from Yahoo, Ask, and Windows Live. Google is not supported since Google doesn’t permit third parties to modify searches. In order words, MySearchFunds would be Dogpile, except that it pays.

The new Dogpile?

Dogpile is already popular enough just for implementing the idea of combining all your favorite (and not-so-favorite) search engines in one. My Search Funds is very similar, except that you need to install a plugin in order to use their service. This plugin appears to record your searches, naturally since it has to know how and what you are searching for. The programme may discredit related searches so as to prevent “repeated searches”.

It’s pretty unusual that someone would offer paid to search services, especially since they may make a huge loss out of it. I’m sure that My Search Funds would be using the information collected in order to perfect their search results, or something else. Nonetheless, for those of you who are not too concerned with privacy issues, go ahead and use My Search Funds.

Nonetheless, the information collected by My Search Funds would be incredibly useful to companies like Alexa, since it records search traffic.

Privacy issue?

My Search Funds states in its privacy policy and Terms of services that it would collect information and retain it. Fortunately, it’s not much of a problem, since Google does almost the same. However, the fact that they are willing to divulge your personal information to the authorities meant that they will keep your personal information forever. Most search companies do not do that, so you may want to be wary of that.

Not much information was given on how the information might be used for future purposes.

To trust or not to?

There are no costs involved in participating in the programme, but you may want to note that My Search Funds is recording whatever you are searching. While you may not mind that, some do especially if they are searching for you-know-what. The pay rate sounds cheesy - but it’s possible that they may have gotten that from just ad revenue.

I’m pleased to announce that the Convault theme is available for download. The convault theme is a 2-column layout that supports widgets.

The other theme is still undergoing further testing and may be released shortly.

Dofollow enabled

Tevine would be removing nofollow from comments (i.e. dofollow) to further credit any commentators. If you are a registered user, your comment would not be subjected to immediate moderation. However, if you are not registered, your comments would only appear after moderation.

#1 Pligg - Digg

Pligg is the closest you can ever get to Digg, except perhaps the interface (but you could always make one up right?). Currently the most popular CMS under social bookmarking, Pligg is used numerous entreprening site owners. Pligg also supports anonymous voting, perhaps one element that Digg cannot offer (yet).

The 10 minute install guide to Pligg (assuming you have your web host ready):
1) Download Pligg, install it to where you want it to be. Make these directories writable (CHMOD 777) otherwise some features might not be available: backup, cache, templates, templates_c, avartars
2) Go to the installation page (i.e. http:// yourpliggsite /install/) and follow the instructions on the installer
3) If you done it right, Pligg would be installed within 5 minutes. You can then log in using your own password.
4) Go to the administration panel (link is at the top panel) and browse/tinker with the options available.

While Pligg may be still in beta, it is fairly stable and usable. There might still be some glitches though, but chances are it is fixed with every update. Fortnately, Pligg is in active development and a final release may come out at any time.
Rating: 9/10
Sites using Pligg: Sphinn

#2 Drupal (+ plugins) - Reddit

Drupal is a general Content Management System, but with the addition of some modifications it can emulate Reddit. The Vote Up/Down package allows you to do just that.

Installation:
1) Install Drupal
2) Download the package and install it to the “modules” directory
3) Log into your Drupal install and enable the Voting modules: actions, links, userpoints, views, vote_storylink, vote_up_down, voting_actions, votingapi.
4) Upload node-storylink.tpl.php, template.php (may need to be combined/merged with the existing file if any) files to the theme directory.
5) Disable “Vote widget display” in admin/settings/vote_up_down (if using node-storylink.tpl.php).

Note: This module is discontinued due to inactivity and is not updated for several months, thus no updates are expected.
Rating: 7/10

#3 Corank - Digg, Del.icio.us

A pretty nice Del.icio.us clone, Corank is perhaps a great alternative to the above 2 especially if you do not wish to install anything much. However, there’s only one problem with using Corank - it’s not something that comes out-of-the-box. You’ll need some pretty decent programming skills to make use of the API they provide. However, because this makes use of an API, you need not worry about resource problems. Fortunately, this API is very robust and can do quite a lot of things. In order to access Corank’s API, you need to register an account there. CoRank does not support anonymous voting.

Rating: 7/10

#4 Upwarded - Digg

Now a discontinued project, this would-be Digg clone has fallen out of favour and is released to the public as open-source code. If you are looking for a really, really simple Digg-like CMS, Upwarded would probably be the perfect choice since the files are very easy to customize. Upwarded allows users to vote for articles anonymously. The only drawback is that it doesn’t support user registration.

1) Download and upload the files to a suitable place
2) Run the SQL script in sql.txt (via phpMyAdmin)
3) Create a cronjob (view the readme file provided for further information)

Since this is a discontinued project, it is unlikely that there would be any updates. Nonetheless, the project is fairly complete, and does what it’s suppose to do.

Rating: 6/10

#5 Blinkk - Digg

If the above three are not enough to satisfy your needs, perhaps Blinkk will. Blinkk is the merger between the main Social Bookmarking sites that inspire all. Sadly, this project doesn’t seem to be quite as popular compared to the others.

The open-source project is discontinued a few months ago and was converted into commercial software.

Rating: 5/10

Looks like the PageRank update is going to be great news for webmasters, since there is an overall increase in PageRank across sites, unlike the previous 3 PageRank updates that have done the opposite. This update has been carried out over several days, so you may want to check out inner pages of your site if you went PageRank hunting on the day of the update.

This update saw more increases than decreases, partly because the main penalty round occurred a week before the update began (probably the first signal that an update was iminent). The penalties involved mainly new sites selling paid links, so it does seem that Google is tightening its stance against paid links. This is not expected since after all, Google gave their official message that nofollow paid links are not allowed and subjected to penalties. The paid link business have gone a lot more quiet (but it doesn’t mean that webmasters are not giving up on paid links though).

Google may have also changed the weightage of links, now giving internal links slightly more power or perhaps all links in general. Probably great news for site owners who have been building links for a while.

Looks like Microsoft decided to withdraw it’s second bid (given the results of the first proposal, not many paid much attention to the second proposal) to acquire Yahoo. It’s not that surprising that the bid failed since after all, the second bid was only slightly higher than the first bid (but much less than what Yahoo wanted). This so-called ”hostile takeover” appeared to end with nothing more than a whimper. Well, at least now we know Yahoo is certainly not going to big Microsoft (or perhaps, Macrosoft?).

Sadly, Yahoo will eventually be taken over by someone, or some company. Microsoft will probably come back a third time, or probably much more, hoping Yahoo will eventually say “yes”. Despite Google “helping” Yahoo against Microsoft’s tyrany, it’ll take only time before Microsoft would probably finally get its hands on Yahoo, given Yahoo’s current deteriorating situation (stock market, etc. etc.). Certainly not-so-good news for the Yahoo community.

So what do Microsoft want to do with Yahoo?

There’s one thing for certain - Microsoft will NOT do anything related to search. The primary reason why Microsoft wanted Yahoo was not for Yahoo search or the hundreds of services Yahoo provided. Microsoft simply wanted the advertising portion of Yahoo (plus some other technologies to include in Microsoft’s ever-growing arsenal of proprietary software) since it’s going to be the next big thing that’s going to expand Microsoft’s wallet.

I guess time will tell before we will see Microsoft Yahoo (or Microhoo) in the near future.

Why no Microsoft Yahoo?

The first answer is obvious: Yahoo simply didn’t want Microsoft, and Microsoft now knows that. Given Yahoo’s constant turn-downs on Microsoft’s offer, as well as going as far as making deals with rival Google in relation with advertising (fancy Yahoo actually advertising Google AdSense rather than its own ads). In addition, Yahoo did not release any statement even when the dateline was due.

The community has been pretty neutral about this matter, but there are certainly some people who do oppose the takeover (thereby, calling it “hostile”). Why oppose? With Microsoft Yahoo, we will end up having to pay more for ads. Microsoft would attempt to use Yahoo to inflate ad prices everywhere and anywhere (as part of their “business plan”).

Looks like Google decided to update the visible PageRank on the Google toolbar between the 30th of April and the 1st of May. Well, at least it came after much speculation (on Digitalpoint anyway) of PageRank updates following a string of PageRank penalties across sites that were caught selling paid links.

Overall, most sites received an increase in PageRank, while others had the same PageRank, which is good news for most sites on the whole. Of course, it is bad news for guilty site owners who have sold paid links, since Google is being extremely vigilant (and smarter) on what links are considered paid. Penalties are also carried out during the update, but most of it a few days before the PageRank update. This is done so presumably so that you can address the issue, and request for reconsideration, and have the right PageRank in time for the incoming update.

Why this theory is true

Generally, comment spammers tend to target certain sites more than others. So, well-linked sites (and sites easily found by others through god-knows-what) tend to receive more attention by spammers. As far as anyone can tell, it does seem that spam bots are really efficient - being able to find well-concealed sites, and hitting them where you least expect them.

The good news - because spam is so common, you need not worry about getting rid of them, because that’s taken care of by Akismet. (So dear spammers, your advertisements will never see the light, ever.) What’s next? Show off your Akismet counter. Once thought of as a spam deterrent that has apparently failed, the Akismet counter can be now considered a bragging tool - despite the prominance of spam, it still takes real effort to rake up over 1000 spam comments detected and destroyed by Akismet. Want to make your friends go “wow” in an ackward manner? Show them you have gotten Akismet to trash over 10,000 spam comments.

The What IFs

People might say that others might attempt to inflate their spam count by simply… spamming their own blogs. That, I have to say, is utterly dumbfolding, because why on Earth would they want to do that? Secondly, if you were to spam on your own blog, you risk having your comments detected as spam on other blogs. The spam count will never be inflated, because people often look down on something as “trival” as the Akismet counter.

What if you do really want to use the spam counter as a statistic? The thing is, as with any website popularity measurement, there are its flaws. The spam counter is so looked down upon, that no one will ever use it, if ever. Do not hope in the near future that Akismet might do something like Alexa does with traffic - give a special website ranking called “spam rank”, which should ideally have popular sites at the top of that ladder (since they get spammed often).

*Akismet count on this blog: Over 1600.

Mozilla recently released an update for Firefox to fix a potential security threat. This update is available through auto-update.

The update only fixes one flaw in Firefox related to the Javascript “garbage collector” which may cause crashes in Firefox. While this problem has not been exploited for any purposes, Firefox isn’t going to wait till it is. This is not a feature release, so no new features are added.

An interesting note is that this update fixes only one issue, unlike other updates that normally patches several issues at once. In addition, the security flaw was fixed as soon as it was announced (i.e. on the same day). A pretty impressing feat, considering most other browser makers (notably Microsoft) prefer the all-in-one approach, compared to the bit-by-bit approach used by Mozilla.

Update: According to the auction site, it looks like John Cow’s site is sold. 

John Cow, a parody of the famous John Chow blog, is selling his blog (via SitePoint) at an (large) price of $25000, with an immediate purchase price of $50000. John Cow, while a parody, is still pretty popular, so much so that it has become a rival to John Chow. Both are Search Engine Optimisation experts, but gives a different viewpoint on the subject.

What if… you had the money?

Great, if you have about $50000 to spare, you can pop it in and an extremely popular blog is your’s. Of course, that is IF you even had $50000 to spare in the first place. John Cow’s blog has an earning potential of thousands a month (roughly the same amount a normal job can give), which can easily make up your “investment” after a few years. With such a popular blog, you can easily promote other stuff as well with ease.

Sales of such popular sites are extremely rare, and the opportunity should be seized.

Consequences of takeover

Knowing that no one can actually replace John Cow’s writing methods, John Cow’s popularity is bound to fall. However, if the new owner is just as good (or better) than John Cow, the opposite may occur. John Cow, as a reputable source of SEO related material, would have to rebuild its reputation again from scratch after the deal.

In addition, what if the owner decides to develop something totally different from the original site? Remembering once-popular Leapfish, it’s a pity that it was wasted when it was sold, especially when the new owner redirects the online appraisal tool to a real estate site which has totally no relation at all. Traffic of Leapfish undoubtly plummeted to new lows.

Note: The auction ends in a month’s time. Already there are some bidders, so you may want to save up if you really want that blog.