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What Windows Task Manager Won’t Tell You

Over the last few weeks I’ve noticed a dramatic decrease in my system’s performance. It’s actually gotten so bad that I’m starting to think that it somehow became infected with a virus or some other piece of spyware. Proceeding under that assumption, I verified that my anti-virus definitions were up to date and ran a virus scan on the entire system. I also scanned the system using spyware removal tools Ad-aware and Spybot: Search and Destroy; but neither program discovered anything.

Read more here…

Check IT List: How to detect spyware on PCs
10 steps for detection of spyware on PC’s.

With the latest revamp in Google’s algorithm (which is still going on at this moment), a lot of people are noticing great changes (for good and for bad). One thing that is definitely changing is the different factors in the values of incoming links. It therefore seems as if the days of easy ranking gained by plenty of links and a certain anchor text are short.
One new element implemented in order to improve search results is the concept of “visual page segmentation” which was recently proposed in a paper entitled “Block-level Link Analysis”, by Deng Cai, Xaiofei He, Ji-Rong Wen and Wei-Ying.

How does it work?
In it’s first argument this paper suggests that the current link popularity algorithm is faulty due to the fact that it weighs each page as a whole, and therefore, any link, located anywhere on the page is given the same value.
However, the average page has different semantics on its different parts / blocks. That is, that the left block will most likely have general navigation links and some potential advertising. The right block, on the other hand might have links to related articles as well as additional advertising. Lastly, the middle block, will contain the actual content and therefore, the most powerful links.
Separating pages can be done using a computer with a vision-based program. Each block then can be considered as the fundamental unit of analysis, rather than the entire page.
When a link is scored in terms of its block, the links’ contextual relevance can be interpreted more intelligently by search engines.

VIPS and the SEO?
Since different parts of the page are now weighed differently, links from the “article” block will most likely be the most valued links and will likely to be considered as “true recommendation”. Rented links, and links gained by the different networks with normally are placed on the right block or on top, are risking being devaluated.

VIPS and the SE’s
By implementing this technique and separating each page into blocks, search engines will also be able to measure page relevancy more accurately. It will allow search engines to find the theme of each block rather than the entire page, and offer more accurate results.

In Summery
While some links values might be devaluated, others should be valued more thanks to a better relevancy. This can hurt some webmasters who like gaining links using certain techniques, but can also be a great tool for fighting spam. Articles, Directories and Press Releases links are going to be highly valued and therefore should be highly considered.

The Biggest Web Design Mistakes of 2004
This article reviewes the top 10 mistakes / misconceptions in web design in the past year.

An interesting interview with Steve Krug reviewes vis view to Common Sense Web Design

Copywriting & Bidding Tips to Improve Your Overture Campaign Results
Mary O’Brian of Overture gives some tips for writing copy for OV ads vs Google - Apparently successful campaigns in OV cannot be made just by copying your Adwords copy to the OV ads.

Overture allows 40 characters for the title, 190 characters for the description. It’s a bit more room than a Google ad, so you don’t have to write copy that’s quite so punchy.

Unlike Google searchers, people who search on Overture tend to respond to fact-oriented, non-salesy content, O’Brien says. They don’t like overt calls to action such as “click here,” or “buy now.” Save those for the landing page, not the ad itself.

Instead, focus on your value proposition: “We have the largest selection of XYZ in an easy-to-follow format” or “Check out our site for free downloadable white papers on topics such as…”

A new Firefox SEO Extension I’ve ran across should come handy making some of the optimization process easier.

Current SEOpen features are all accessed through right-clicking an open area on a web page; they include:

• Yahoo Backlinks
• Google Backlinks
• Google Cache
• Link Analyzer
• Keyword Density
• Page Size Checker
• HTML Validator
• HTTP Header Viewer
• PageRank Check

SEOpen Close-UpPlanned Features:

• Wayback Machine
• Yahoo Cache
• Check robots.txt
• Number of pages in Google index
• Number of pages in Yahoo
• Options Menu to select which features to make available via right-click

FontList
It’s usually very hard to get a nice overview of all your installed fonts. With FontList, you can easily create a HTML file showing all your fonts in your web browser. FontList lets you change the sample text, exclude seldom used fonts from the list and change the path for the HTML file. FontList then opens up your web browser to show you all your fonts.

Conventional wisdom says 97 percent of Google searchers don’t click past the first three pages (or 30 results). With about three-quarters of the active online population in America using search engines, according to Nielsen/NetRatings (.pdf), and 40 percent of shoppers choosing Google to locate stores and comparison shop, the difference between a high and low ranking can literally be the difference between a thriving online business and Chapter 11.

This got me wondering: How much is it worth to a company’s bottom line to place near the top of Google’s search rankings?

A recent study conducted by OneUpWeb among their clients. The study analyzed Web sites entering Google’s first, second, or third SERP for the first time in 2004. Of the 114 search terms tracked using the company’s ROI Trax analytics tool, 56 were three-word terms; 50 were two words; 7 were four-word terms; and one a single-word term. Brand name keywords were not tracked.

In the first month a site appears on Google’s first SERP, its conversion rates rise 142 percent, according to the study. The second month, conversion rates nearly doubled (194 percent) compared to the month prior to entering the top SERP. In terms of unique visitors, the average site appearing in Google’s top natural SERP could expect a 337 percent increase in traffic in its first month and a 627 percent increase in the second month.

“The important thing to note is that when a company first gets listed on Google’s first page, the traffic in the first two months goes up almost exponentially, and conversion rates also improve strongly,” said Rachel North, Oneupweb’s marketing director. “It draws a more qualified customer that converts more frequently.”

For sites that make their initial appearance on Google’s second and third SERP, the study found the number of unique visitors to the site increased 517 percent in the first month and 942 percent the next (compared to the month before the site first appeared on either the second or third page).

Because sites ranking below page three don’t generally convert, the study didn’t chart conversion rate increase for a site appearing on Google’s second or third SERP. “While conversion rates tripled from the first to the second month, the rates are very low (300 percent of nothing is still nothing),” the study concludes.

Sending Email from your PHP Applications

The following article from developer.com gives a great walkthrough / how-to do so in a very simple way.

Are there some tricks to speed up Firefox?

There are indeed a number of different adjustments you can make to Firefox that can improve its performance, the first and most important of which is to always make sure that you have the very latest version on your system. Pop over to get Firefox and download it right now.

Done?

Good. Now, enter the URL about:config and then type in “network.http” to the browser’s “filter” function to identify the following entries:

network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

If your Firefox is set up like mine, the first two will be set to “false”. Change them to “true” and then enter a value like 20 for maxrequests.

These will make the browser use your network connection more efficiently (or, depending on your perspective, more aggressively) which should visibly speed up rendering pages in the browser.

There’s a lot more you can learn if you pop over to Mozillazine’s Firefox Tuning discussion, if you really want to fine-tune your Web browsing experience.

A new article posted at A List Apart describes the use of JavaScript to better your site’s precence as well as being able to change it’s outlook without having to create 3 different versions of the same content page, and in place, risk being panelized for duplicate content…

Trying to earn back some of it’s lost market share the AOL owned ICQ has a vew version (ICQ 5 5.02).

Some of the main changes to the program:

• Push to Talk - This feature(VoIP based) allows the user to transmit a voice message at the push of a button to one user or to a whole group, upon the persons’ approval. It is somewhat similar to some of the features that so far were offered by the cellular companies alone.
• The Extra platform - Feature advanced customization, improved emoticons and games, as seen on AOL.
• SMS - The SMS feature was improved. It now allows one to send the same message to several recipients. It also allows one to forward all received IM messages to any supported cellular phone as a SMS message.
• Firewall improvements - For those who know ICQ you probably know that it was lacking the support for the different firewalls and in a lot of times will block certain options. The new version fixed this problem.

Note: The only problem I found was that the problem attemps to add it’s own toolbar to the different browsers. To block this from happening for those who already use a different toolbar, it has to be done during the installation.

All in all, it seems pretty good, I am excited, try it out: ICQ 5 | Download