How to Change Your IP Address

The IP or Internet Protocol address helps identifying the terminal that one is using when surfing on the internet while at the same time enabling one to trace their online activities. The Internet Service Providers or ISP controls the IP addresses. Changing an IP address is not something that can be done easily especially if it is done promptly because it takes a lengthy process. However, static IP addresses are assigned by some ISP which when it is needed to change, the ISP has to be contacted for technical support to get a new one. Various computer applications require different procedures to change an IP address.
Through the command prompt
The command based interface is the back end of the computer's operating system. When using the command prompt for changing the IP address, two options are available that can be used.
Option 1
Steps:
1. First, turn on the computer
2. Go to the Start button then Run
3. A small dialogue box will appear on the screen in which 'cmd' is to be typed. This will automatically pull up the command prompt.
4. Type 'ipconfig/release' then press Enter
5. Type 'ipconfig/renew' then press Enter
6. Now type exit to leave the prompt and return to the desktop
When 'ipconfig/renew' is typed, the modem will generate a new IP address.
Option 2
Steps:
1. Turn on the computer.
2. Click Start and Run then type 'cmd'.
3. Now type 'ipconfig/release' on the small box that appears on the screen.
4. Shut down the computer and turn it off.
5. Now, the switches and hubs are to be turned off.
6. Turn off the DSL modem and cable.
7. The computer should be left in that condition overnight.
8. Turn on the cables, hubs and computer.
Through the Local Area Network (LAN)
Here are the simple steps mentioned below can be followed.
Steps:
1. Turn on the computer
2. Press start button on the desktop.
3. Open the control panel and click it to open the control panel screen.
4. Right click on the Network and Connections icon, a small window will pop up.
5. Click on the option reading Properties.
6. Now, Click the box that is besides the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), then click on properties.
7. A space will appear where the IP address is supposed to be entered. It also has an automatic setting option which will give a new IP address from the router or modem.
For gaining the IP address, a request can be made from the internet service provider.
For changing through Windows Vista
The procedure to change the IP address in Windows Vista is similar to Windows XP. However, the different names are used by Windows Vista application which can sometimes confuse users. The simple steps mentioned below can be followed.
Steps:
1. First, turn on the computer.
2. Press the Start button on the desktop and then open the Control Panel
3. The Network and Internet has to be selected which will automatically open a new screen.
4. Now, select Network and Sharing Center.
5. Select the Manage Network Connections.
6. Right click on the Internet Connections then choose Properties.
7. From the Properties screen click the Network tab.
You can now input the new IP address or alternatively, you can automatically receive it from your router or modem.

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How to Block Pop Up Ads

Pop up ads are of three different categories namely pop-ups created by spyware and adware, messengers service advertisement and general browser pop-ups. Pop-ups ads occasionally appear on the screen and interfere with the user's ability to view the contents displayed on the screen. The user can easily avoid these advertisements by installing a pop-up blocker.
Messenger service advertisement
These types of pop-ups are applicable only for Windows XP and Windows 2000. They usually occur because someone is accessible to your computer network and is can transmit this message to your computer through TCP and UDP ports. It is the responsibility of the messenger service to transmit these messages. For controlling these pop-ups, the security has to be hardened by installing firewall software like zone alarm or by installing Windows XP which puts off messenger service by default and activates the windows firewall. The port which facilitates the transmission of these messages gets blocked.
For activating firewall in Windows XP, click the Start icon on the desktop, press Run and type the word Firewall.cpl, select the on button lick OK. It is recommended not to connect to the internet before activating the Firewall because there is a risk of computer getting infected.
Pop-ups created by adware and spyware
The function is same as the general browser but spyware is usually run by the browser assistant object which is the activeX controls that connects to the internet explorer and gets in touch with their server without the user knowing it. This can also be a cause of leaking the user's confidential information to the spies as well as wasting the internet bandwidth. In relation with this, any outgoing connection without the user's authorization should be taken as threat to the security of the user. For preventing pop-ups that are generated by adware and spyware, anti-spyware application such as spyware blaster, Ad-Aware, Spybot Search and destroyer should be installed in the computer. They are just the same like the anti-virus software. These applications work by employing the services of the folders of the hosts for preventing unnecessary ads servers and sites that are responsible for conveying these ads, they also increase the security settings of the browser.
Applications like Sygate and Zone Alarm will always signal the user every time when an outgoing traffic is detected. This will enable the user to block Trojans and dialers from reaching the internet. It will also give the user same attentions to the settings of the firewall, it can be assumed as the passage security and operates only with programs that are needed to be assessable to the internet. This point will make the user be able to investigate the performance of the firewall being employed to the websites. They will do a thorough checking of the system for accessible ports and weaknesses, therefore they will accordingly advise the user.
General Guidelines that should be followed
- The system should not be connected to the internet before activating Anti-virus and firewall.
- The security configurations should be amplified in the browser so that the Activex control is blocked from installing automatically.
- The system should be always updated by seeking latest information online or by subscribing to Microsoft Security Bulletin in order to be aware of the possible threat.
- The services of the HOSTS folder should be employed for preventing unwanted websites.

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CD-R For Long-Term Digital Storage of Photos, Audio, and More

Depending on your storage requirements, a CD-R or recordable CD can be an excellent choice for safeguarding your digital information. Digital files such as digital audio, digital photos that are not very high quality, emails, spreadsheets, and word processing files can all be stored quite well on the CD-R format. However, the capacity of the recordable CD is either 650 MB or 700 MB and because of this, there is not enough space to store significant amounts of digital video and at reasonably good quality. To store more than 15 minutes of digital video on a recordable CD would require heavy compression of the video and this would result in poor quality. Despite this limitation for digital video, the CD-R can be used for the effective storage of most other digital files.
There are various choices for CD-Rs that go beyond just selecting a particular brand. CD-Rs store information in a dye layer and there are three main types of dyes that are used. The three dyes are a phthalocyanine dye which is light green in color, a cyanine dye which is generally light blue in color, and an azo dye which is deep blue. The phthalocyanine dye is the most stable and does not degrade with elevated temperature or relative humidity and does not fade with light exposure. Both the cyanine and azo dyes are much less stable. These dyes are sensitive to degradation initiated by temperature and relative humidity and will fade with enough light exposure.
Another important part of the CD-R is the metal layer. The metal layer is found after the dye layer if looking at a cross-section of a disc from the bottom up. A disc is read through the base. The role of the metal is to reflect the laser light that reads the disc back to the player/reader detector after it reads the information in the dye layer. In order words, the metal layer is very important because it allows the laser light to produce a signal. Without the metal layer, the laser light would shine through the disc and no signal would be registered. There are three types of metal layers that are used in recordable CDs, silver, silver alloy, and gold. Gold is very stable and will not react. Silver will oxidize and corrode and so will silver alloy but to a lesser extent.
Therefore, if you want to store your information on very stable media, the recordable CD or CD-R with a gold metal layer and phthalocyanine dye is the best option. Choosing discs with other dyes and other metal layers can potentially give you much shorter lifetimes. Finally, it is also important to select discs that have a good scratch resistant top layer because this will help prevent irreversible physical damage to that all important metal layer.

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How to Trace Hackers

Ever wondered how hackers function and what you can do to find someone that is hacking into your system. Read through the following article for some answers.
If you want to know how to trace hackers then you will find some answers in the following paragraphs. The first thing that they need, to be able to get into your system is your IP address. One way that can get your IP address is from the header information from emails that you send. Included in header information is the IP address of where the email is being sent from and once they have this they can access you.
Since there are now two kinds of IP addresses, the static and dynamic, hackers are generally able to access people with static IP addresses or using DSL lines. So if you are operating with dynamic IP addresses hackers are of little concern to you.
One way of how to trace hackers is to use a tool referred to as the NETSTAT tool. Using this tool you will be able to see who is connected to you. On your PC go to start, click programs, choose MSDOS prompt and then type in "netstat -a". There must be a between the last t and the a'. The screen will then display a list of active connections. It will show a local address, that is the address of your PC and the ones that they say foreign address are the ones that are connected to you.
There are various NETSTAT commands that will help you understand the workings of your network better. If you want to know how to trace hackers, I recommend that you learn as many of these commands as you can. Once you know them, then you are set.

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What 4G Wireless Deployments Mean For America

The United States is a country with a proud tradition of technological innovation and advancement, and it is a country where ordinary people demand access to extraordinary technologies. Though the sheer size of our country sometimes makes it difficult to provide large-scale commercial access to cutting-edge technologies-more difficult, at least, than is the case for smaller countries with smaller populations such as the nations of Europe and Japan - we have nonetheless done an incredible job in this regard, as can be seen, for example, in the case of deployments of latest generation mobile networks. Across the United States there are new deployments of such technology being planned for the imminent future or already being conducted, and more people than ever before are going to be able to enjoy the advantages of super-fast wireless internet than ever before. Yet what are the specific benefits and advantages that the latest in mobile technology, 4G, actually offer America and its citizens? That is a question the answer to which is a little more complex and sophisticated than most people might think at first, and here we'd like to delve a little deeper into the subject to help people out there understand what it really means to have fourth generation wireless networks spreading out across the country.
Though it is still a little ways off, the spread of 4G networks across the land is going to entail an absolutely unprecedented level of coverage, eventually surely stretching from coast to coast. Wireless networks have traditionally focused on the major urban zones of the nation, yet this time around with the latest generation of mobile technology the rural areas of the nation are also going to be brought on board. In fact, providers that have already ventured into remote locations have detected that there is a surprisingly high capacity for acceptable return-on-investment rates in these areas, something which is completely the opposite of what had been originally expected. Though nationwide coverage for 4G networks is still a ways off (that won't last long), residents of places that have already been included in the coverage map will notice that the coverage area they are included is surprisingly vast. Rather than just the downtown area of the cities where such networks are deployed, the coverage area extends well out into the surrounding greater metropolitan area-something that is practically unheard of! The superior transmission capabilities of next generation mobile networks are responsible for this, and it is thanks to the fact that each cell is larger than ever before that bringing the entire country 4G coverage will be feasible in the midterm.
With regards to connection speeds, 4G wireless is going to offer Americans an experience that they will in most cases not even be ready for it's that fast. Currently fourth generation networks are able to bring users speeds that range anywhere from 8 to 15 Mbps, whereas in the very near future such speeds will steadily creep up to 50 Mbps and even beyond. As a result, mobile apps will become much more dynamic and offer capabilities never even heard of before on mobile devices.

See if clear internet hasn't already been deployed in your local area. With the strength of their wimax internet transmitting technology, soon everyone will be able to connect at next-generation speeds!

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Cleaning a CRT and LCD Monitor

If you are reading this article, then you have a computer and a computer screen. Do you know the tricks to cleaning it? The difference between a Cathode Ray Tube and a Liquid Crystal Display Screen? If not then stay tuned.
The Cathode Ray Tube model or CRT has mostly gone out of style with the addition of Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) and plasma screens. Cathode Ray Tube monitors are those bulky glass covered monitors that take up a sizable amount of room on your desk. Designed for desktops, technological improvements lead to the flat screen monitor which is often a Liquid Crystal Display. Most laptop screens would be a prime example, and the LCD has invaded the desktop computer as well.
The two are obviously different which means that a different method of cleaning is needed for each. The LCD method of cleaning will work for a CRT but the reverse is not true. The glass protection on the CRT means Windex or other glass cleaning products and even tap water can be used. You never want to spray directly on the screen. Instead spray on a cloth or paper towel and use circular motions to clean the screen. Spraying directly on the screen poses the risk of the liquid streaming down and finding a way inside, past the screen.
LCD's are slightly more difficult to clean. They require a microfiber or other clean, soft and nonabrasive cloth. Due to how the liquid crystal displays are made up of pixels, pressing too hard or using abrasive cleaners can lead to permanent damage and a distorted image. Distilled water or approved LCD cleaning kits should be used. When in doubt, follow the manufacturer's instructions. Wet the proper cloth with the right substance and then gently wipe the screen.
Whether a cathode ray tube or a liquid crystal display screen, cleaning is simple and quick if one follows a few simple steps ensuring a clear picture for all your computer needs.

For more information on a clean computer screen and other useful articles visit my profile. I am a free lance writer interested in a variety of topics and articulate what I learn so others can also benefit.

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Tips For Selecting the Right ADF Scanner For Your Needs

Due to the vast variety of scanners present on the market, you are bound to be confused about which is the right scanner for you. Most people only require a simple machine to scan and capture information from documents so that they can easily retrieve the data when they need it. It may sound as a simple task but choosing the right scanner for this task can still leave you with doubts. However, there are a few basics which you should bear in mind while browsing for that right ADF scanner.
Firstly, examine your scanner requirements. Ask yourself questions like what kind of data are you going to scan? What are the paper sizes and whether the documents are colored or black and white? You can acquire any ordinary scanner to use at home but for business use, an ADF scanner is highly recommended.
There are three basic features you might want to consider before deciding to buy a scanner. These features are the speed, feed and of course, the price. Scanner speeds are noted by page per minute with which the scanner captures images, however this measure is only applicable in the ADF scanners. Feed is usually the quantity of pages which you plan to scan in the ADF scanner. This is suitable when scanning is required for a large number of pages.
The price factor is the most important and normally is also the determining aspect in the decision making process. You might notice that two similar scanners from different brands may diverge greatly in price. In this case, compare the software installed in the two scanners. A good software option is often worth a bit more money as it will facilitate the scanning process.
If you are looking for a scanner for heavy business load, the average cost of a good scanner will be $ 800 to $1200. If you are planning to scan approximately two thousand documents every day, then a work group scanner will fulfill your requirement. This scanner is compact in size and fast in speed.
The departmental sized scanner for official use, scans up to four thousand documents per day. They are small in size but work much faster than the work group scanner. The best part of using this scanner is that multiple users can be given access to this scanner and hence more work is done in less time. The departmental scanners are usually more expensive, but can be an invaluable member of your work team.

Visit ADF scanner or portable printer scanner for more information

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Installing a Wireless Bluetooth Speaker

The word 'Bluetooth' originated in Denmark at the end of the first millennium. The then Danish King, Harald Blatand, united the warring tribes of his land to become the most powerful ruler of Scandinavia. In the same spirit, the object of this new wireless protocol was to unite separate devices harmoniously. The Bluetooth protocol is simple and low cost but global and powerful.
The technology uses radio waves for connecting and exchanging information with other devices. The range is short, around 10 meters and applies to a broad range of devices; cell phones, speakers, MP3 players, cameras, printers etc and expanding rapidly.
Today, almost all laptops, handhelds and mobile phones have built in Bluetooth chips. However, desktop PCs, mostly, do not have Bluetooth incorporated in them. So, to begin with, check whether your PC has Bluetooth capability or not. You will need to buy a Bluetooth adapter (generally priced $10 to $30) for your desktop PC if it doesn't have Bluetooth. The rest of the steps are general and should enable you to start using your Bluetooth speaker within minutes.
Basically, all you have to do is to 'pair' or connect your computer/phone with your Bluetooth speaker.

• Switch on the computer/cell phone then select or switch on the Bluetooth device on your hardware. The computer will automatically recognize the device and prompt a confirmation.
• Now, turn on the speaker and press and hold down the Bluetooth button for a few seconds. The Bluetooth light will start flashing and the device will search for other Bluetooth devices in its range to connect to. The computer/cell phone will show a list of available devices usually by their model number. Select your speakers.
• You will now be asked to input a PIN number or PASSWORD. It is '0000' or '1234' by default for most of the Bluetooth devices (if this does not work, refer to the speakers' user manual or visit the manufacturer's website).
• Once the password is accepted the pairing is complete. The indicator on your speaker will flash quickly confirming that it is connected. And you can immediately play your audio and enjoy the sound over wireless Bluetooth technology.

The latest Bluetooth technology is Version 3.0 which has a data transfer rate of 24Mbps. Sending sound data over Bluetooth uses considerably more battery than sending data over wires. So along with quality of sound, rate of data transfer and functionalities, battery life must also be taken into consideration when buying a Bluetooth speaker.

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Great 25 Facebook Tips and Tricks

1. Hide Your Online Status From Selected Friends:

So you want to use Facebook chat but don’t want some people to see your online status? Simply open up the Facebook Chat and click on Friends List. Start creating a new list called BlockList.
Once the list is created, add those friends to the list that you want to appear offline to. When the list is complete, hover your mouse to the little green icon adjacent to the list and click Go Offline. Bingo! You will now appear offline to everybody in the BlockList.

2. View a Friend’s Profile Without Messy Applications:

If you are like me, you often get annoyed by the dozens of silly applications that people have added to their profile. Here’s a Grease Monkey script that allows you to view any profile without all those applications. Remember: the Mozilla Firefox web browser is a prerequisite for running Greasemonkey.

3. Display Your Facebook Status On Your Wordpress Blog:

Want to display your Facebook status updates on your Wordpress blog? There is a plugin that does exactly that. StatusPress lets you display your status updates to a widget on your Wordpress blog.

4. Access Facebook Chat Through Your Desktop:

No need to go to Facebook.com if all you want to do is use Facebook chat. You can do it right from your desktop using clients like social.im , Adium or ChitChat.

5. Update Facebook Status From Firefox:

If you are a firefox addict you don’t need to use any other software to update your Facebook status. Simply install the FireStatus add-on and update your status right from your browser. You can also use the Facebook Toolbar to completely manage Facebook from your Firefox browser.

6. Create A Photo Collage From Pictures Of Your Facebook Friends:

Easily create a photo collage from profile pictures of all your Facebook friends using a simple Facebook app called Photo Collage.

7. Add A New friend But Hide It From Your Status Update:

A great tutorial by Tim Watson walks you through the process of hiding specific actions from your status updates.

8. Schedule Facebook Messages To Be Send Later:

If you want to schedule your Facebook messages to be send sometime in the future, Sendible is a great tool to do that. You can also use Sendible to schedule your status updates.

9. How To Share Flickr Photos On Facebook:

My Flickr is a Facebook application that lets you display your Flickr photos and photo sets on Facebook so your friends can view and comment on them without leaving Facebook.

10. How To Download Facebook Photo Albums:

Ever felt the need to download complete photo albums from Facebook. You can easily do it with either a Windows desktop application named FotoBounce or a great Firefox add-on FacePad.

11. Upload Photos On Facebook From Your Phone:

All the smart phones like iPhone and Blackberry make it simple to upload photos to your Facebook account but how would you do it if you have a regular phone? Here is a great tutorial to walk you through that.

12. Magic Circles On Facebook:

You might have heard about the Konami code that makes red blurry circles on your Facebook page. This might be one of the most popular Facebook hidden tricks. Here’s how to do it:

Press Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Enter key then press up & down & Magic circles will appear!

To stop them simply reload your page.

13. Use Your Facebook Like A Pirate:

Do you love talking like a pirate? You can set your Facebook to appear like a pirate page by going into Current Language Settings and setting it to English (Pirate).


14. How To Insert Cool Symbols In Your Status Updates:
Make your status updates interesting by inserting cool symbols. Simply copying them from this list and pasting in your status updates.

15. Automatically Poke Friends That Poke You:

Don’t have enough time to poke back friends who poke you on Facebook? Automate it with a Grease Monkey script called Facebook Autopoke.

16. Upload Photos From PicasaTo Facebook:

Upload photos to your Facebook account directly from Picasa using the Picasa app for Facebook. You can also upload the Picasa captions and resize your photos before uploading them to Facebook.

17. Search Facebook Like A Pro:

Not everybody knows how powerful Facebook search is. Similar to any large search engine, Facebook search has a lot of advanced options to help you search like a pro. For example if you are looking for a person named John Marsh and filter your results down to only people who are married, you can try name: John Marsh status:married. A complete list of search tips for Facebook can be found here.

18. How To Update Facebook Status From Gmail:

Facebook gadget for Gmail allows you to update your Facebook status right from your Gmail.

19. How To Access Gmail From Facebook:

If you seldom have to leave Facebook just to go check your Gmail inbox, check out Fmail. It is a great application that lets you check your Gmail from within your Facebook inbox.

20. See Facebook Twitter style:

If you love Twitter more than Facebook, you can view your Facebook just like you view your Twitter using this grease monkey script.

21. Import Facebook Friends To Twitter:

FB140 is a simple tool that lets you find all your Facebook friends that are using Twitter so you can easily follow them.

22. Access Facebook From Microsoft Outlook:

This is a great tip for people attending colleges or working in places that block Facebook, but allow you access to Microsoft Outlook. Simple install the FBlook plugin and access Facebook from Outlook.

23. Display Your Facebook Status Upside Down:

This is a cool and fun trick. To display upside down status updates, simply head over to FlipText and type in your status. Then simply click on Flip Text and copy-paste the upside down text into your Facebook status box.

24. Update Facebook Status Using Twitter:

Wouldn’t you love to update your status on both Facebook and Twitter at the same time. Just install the Twitter application for Facebook. Once synced, your tweets including the #fb tag would automatically be posted as status updates on your Facebook.

25. Download Videos From Facebook:

Facebook has one of the largest collection of user uploaded videos.You can download most of the videos from Facebook by using a client like SpeedBit or DownFacbook.

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Getting Started Blogging-Zone Blogger

Setting up a blog is generally a matter of following some online steps. The first thing any blogger (business or personal) needs to do is to find a blogging host. This could be a stand alone like Zanga or Blogger or a part of a social media site like MySpace or FaceBook.
You will need to register with a typical user name and password. From this point on you will need to pay attention to the instructions the blog site provides.
In most cases you can upload photos and most blog sites will also allow you to place audio and video in your blog. Most of the time this is placed as embedded link. This means that the link to the audio video or picture is placed on the blog from a secondary hosting source.
Unless you pay for blog space the blogging company will generally place a limit on the amount of space you can use to host files on their site. This is why the blogging site will not host most audio and video. Most bloggers will use video sites like YouTube to present any video clips they might want.
Photos can be stored at a site like Photobucket and then placed with an embedded link so the photo will show up on the site.
You will also be allowed to manage friends, comments and posts from your main page. Your profile can be edited or modified to include new achievements or events and the color scheme of your blog can also be adapted to express your personal taste.
Many blogging sites make Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds available as well to allow others to be advised when you post new material on your blog.
Many existing websites will have a page that is linked to the blog or frame the blog so site visitors can view their blog entries directly from the primary website. This can be important especially if the primary site is also a business website.
Blogging is just one of several marketing tools that can be integrated directly into an existing website design.
Most blogging sites will allow you to remove old blogs and edit existing ones whenever you need to.
In most cases the only individuals who can post comments are those who have registered with the blogging site. This is done for the protection of the company as well as the blogger. If a threat or malicious comment is made in response to your blog the blogging company can contact the poster or work with authorities if needed to find the person who made the comment. If no registration was required for blog comments then anyone could post their thoughts in your blog no matter how potentially harmful or threatening.
The next step is to actually post a blog entry. These can be general stream of consciousness thoughts or they could be more direct and informational.
Expect blog visits to be slow at first. When you develop several you will find visitation will increase and there will also be the expectation that you can and will provide new material to view on a regular basis.
Blogging can be a great way to add a personal touch to a personal or business website and can help customers and friends capture a sense of your humanity.

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Tips for maximizing Your Google AdSense Revenues-Zone Blogger

Despite what you may hear, the Google AdSense program is not for everyone. There are some types of web sites that do poorly no matter how hard the owners try, and there are others that should be doing well but the webmaster simply isn't putting in the effort to make things happen. Here are some tips to make AdSense work better for you. If you do them all and you're still not having any luck, then you just might be running one of those sites that don't make money
1. Determine if your visitors are 'in the mood'
Like I mentioned at the top of this article, some web sites just don't work with pay-per-click programs. The best performing sites fall into one of these categories:
' Sites where users go and expect to buy something while they are there. E-commerce sites fit the bill here.. ' Sites where users go to find specific information on something that they want to buy now. Music and video review sites, vacation information sites, resume building sites, etc. You don't have to actually be selling these types of things; your site can just be a mecca for information pertaining to these things. Then, when the visitor comes to read your content, they are more likely to click on your ads.
' Sites where people who have disposable income and a credit card like to visit. This includes sites with money management, investing and lifestyle content.
' Sites that draw a large amount of new users every day. Free coupon sites and 'How to' sites are good examples. ' Sites where people go who expect to read ads. Classified ads and shopping comparison sites fit into this category.
2. Make sure that your visitors don't feel that you just want to grab their money
Give them plenty of relevant and well-written content. If writing isn't your best skill then hire someone to do it for you. Good content brings steady traffic and steady traffic pays the bills.
3. Play by the rules
Google has some very specific Terms of Service (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) for participating in their AdSense program. Learn those rules and follow them so you don't lose all of your investment by getting shut out.
4. Use the tools that Google gives you
Google gives you tools for determining the best keywords for your site, measuring ad performance, and setting up different ad 'channels' for fine-tuning ad results. These guys and girls are the 800 lb. Gorillas in the Pay-Per-Click market. They didn't build these tools just to keep their programmers busy. Take advantage of their knowledge for they are very big and you are not!
5. Tweak, fine-tune and then tweak again
You should never be happy with your AdSense performance. If it's good, then you need to make it great. If it's great then you need to make it amazing. If it's amazing then you need to take it to the UPS club. The UPS club? Google sends all checks over $10,000 per month to the webmaster via UPS overnight delivery. Now there's a club that I wouldn't mind belonging to.
6. Get more traffic
No matter how much traffic you have, you need more. More eyeballs translate to more clicks. Even if you're only pulling a 2% click-through. That's a lot of clicks when you have thousands of visitors each day.
7. Experiment with new keywords
New keywords can bring new ads and new eyeballs along with it. Set up some new pages on your site and experiment with different content. Once you get something that's working then refer back to Tip # 5.
You can see results in near real time when you use Google's AdWords. Don't be afraid to be different. If something that everyone else is doing doesn't work for you, then invent something that does work and get it on your site.

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Top 10 Blogger Hacks and Tips-Zone Blogger

Hey MakeUseOf! I thought I would share with you what I have learned about Blogger’s Blogspot blogging platform over the last 8 months or so. I jumped into the new Blogger almost immediately after its beta launch and then I wanted to customize it – You know, make it my own.
So I went out looking for how to do it. And here is that wisdom I uncovered. Consider it a gift from me to you. Poor old Blogger gets a bad wrap, namely because people do not know how to manipulate it. I hope this article helps you guys out and if you have any others please let me know in the comments…
1. Removing The Blogger Bar
I hated the blogger bar across the top of my Web site because it didn’t really go with my template and I already had a Google search bar integrated. So I went on a mission to remove it and de-bloggerify my blog. I searched far and wide and for some reason kept hitting a dead end. It turns out that the code used to change the old blogger templates no longer works! So after tracking down the CSS changes here is how I did it:

All you need to do is add the following CSS to your template under edit HTML. You need to put in anywhere in your template between the

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RSS to Twitter&The Big Boys Have Arrived

(Google + Feedburner) = Death_of (Twitterfeed + RSS2Twitter +DLVR.it) ?

I have posted before about how you can capitalize on your Twitter social community to increase traffic onto your blog. Regularly tweeting the new posts on your blog is the secret. I tweet a few thousand posts per month, accounting for over 100,000+ visits on my aggregator blogs.
What tools are on the market to automatically convert RSS feeds to Twitter, and which is the best? An overview.

Twitterfeed

My aggregator blogs collect the latest articles from over 1,000 different special interest sites, be it nonprofit blogs, aidworker blogs, social media sites or humanitarian news sites. These sites aggregate 20,000+ articles per month, so it would be a full-time job if I’d to tweet these posts manually. No, I use an RSS-to-Twitter tool to make my life easy. Up to recently, I used Twitterfeed which takes the RSS feed from my blogs and converts the feed items into tweets automatically. For each site, I tweet a maximum of 5 updates every half an hour.
Twitterfeed did its job pretty well, feeding not only to Twitter, but also to Identi.ca, Facebook,… It is highly configurable to include or exclude RSS posts based on keywords in the title. Twitterfeed can add words before or after the post title and uses different URL shorteners, including “the king of short”, bit.ly.

Twitterfeed: Feed configuration screen

Mario, the guy behind Twitterfeed, did a pretty good job in providing support via both Twitter and GetSatisfaction. What started  small, grew into a machine with 700,000 feeds publishing millions of posts a day. Back in May, Betaworks and TAG invested in Twitterfeed, and the service went from a side project to a company. They kicked off a major overhaul of the site both in terms of backend systems and look-and-feel.
Unfortunately, migrations are migraines, and Twitterfeed’s uptime started to become erratic. Feeds would no longer feed, or feed tweets ad hoc. To top it off, the website used to configure feeds became extremely slow. Users pulled out their hair, me included.

RSS2Twitter

Looking for alternatives, I stumbled upon RSS2Twitter, which up to today still runs in beta. RSS2Twitter has a clean and simple user interface, allowing users to easily combine input feeds with different Twitter accounts. The drawback is the lack of different features which made Twitterfeed so succesful.

RSS2Twitter: simple but barebones

While you could prefix and suffix your tweets, and filter RSS items based on keywords, it could only feed into Twitter and no other microblogs or social media. It used its own URL shortener, url4.eu, so you could not take advantage of aggregated shortener’s statistics which bit.ly gave. I admit though: RSS2Twitter’s built-in statistics are better than bit.ly’s, and more geared to a “Twitter user”.
So I gave it a shot. When my feeds on Twitterfeed went down for a couple of days, I migrated my most prominent feeds onto RSS2Twitter. And it worked. It worked until… it stopped working.. Or should I say, until it worked too much: On one fine day, at each update interval – 30 minutes in my case -, all feed items would be tweeted, and not the 3 to 5 I wanted tweeted per update.
This happened, of course, during a few days where I was really busy at work, and not monitoring what Twitter activity I generated. Soon my Twitter-followers were complaining about the excessive posting. Sure enough, nobody wants to get 20 to 30 tweets every half hour, many of them repeats. RSS2Twitter support folks admitted this was a problem,  but it took for ages to solve. Good enough for me to disengage.

Dlvr.it

Just around the time of the RSS2Twitter debacle, Twitterfeed came back up, so I reactivated my feeds on my good old trusted service. Until the hiccups from about a week ago, that is. Feeds randomly stopped, the user interface changed, making it impossible to properly configure different feeds. Worse of all it took over three minutes to load the login screen. Once I clocked 15 minutes just to log in.
Today Mario apologized for the hiccups, explaining they are once again migrating the database and backend systems, but unfortunately, users are not very patient.
And that includes me. I tweeted “Does anyone know an alternative to Twitterfeed?” and sure enough, out of the blue, a reply came “Try us. We are in private beta. dlvr.it”. So I registered to be included in the beta test for dlvr.it and have been using it for a week now (check at the bottom of this post if you are interested in participating in their beta too).
I like dlvr.it… It is reliable and highly configurable. It lets you easily combine different inputs and outputs, just like RSS2Twitter while it has just as many features as Twitterfeed.

dlvr.it: combines the best of RSS2Twitter and Twitterfeed

An additional feature, particularly useful for sites which get many updates per hour like my aggregation sites: they let you send tweets every 15 minutes. Twitterfeed and RSS2Twitter are limited to one update per 30 minutes. Unfortunately, for the moment they only feed to Twitter, and use their own shortening service converting all links to “dlvr.it” shorturls.
They do provide interesting statistics, which will keep you busy analysing your tweets to your heart’s content.

Hootsuite

One RSS-to-Twitter service I have not played with yet, is Hootsuite, and online Twitter management tool which just won Mashable’s Open Web Award for best Twitter application.
The definitive plus is the seemless integration of the RSS-to-Twitter functionality within its multi-account Twitter tool, so you “have it all” in one package. The RSS-to-Twitter features are rather meager: while for each RSS, you can define which of one or many Twitter accounts you want to feed into, you can only feed once per hour at max. You can prefix, but not suffix a tweet, and there are no filters available. Hootsuite only uses the ow.ly URLshortener.

Hootsuite integrates RSS-to-Twitter functionality in its Twitter tool

Google and Feedburner, tackling the market once more?

And then, two days ago content hogger Google announced they were entering both the URLshorteners and the RSS-to-Twitter market. “Two birds with one stone”, they must have thought. Feedburner, bought by Google for 100 million two years ago, now lets you feed the RSS feeds “burned” by their service onto Twitter. And they made it simple: Just go to your Feedburner’s feed configuration menu, click on the “Publicize” tab, select “Socialize” and off you go.

Feedburner makes it easy to tweet your feed

Feedburner, being “king of feeds” since ages, knows its business, so no surprise they included features not to be found in the other RSS-to-Twitter engines. They allow the automatic generation of hashtags, based on the categories tags you use for your posts. The updates onto Twitter don’t work on a fix interval, but your post is tweeted the moment Feedburner sees it in your feed. By default, Feedburner updates your feed every 30 minutes, but if your blog or website is configured to ping Feedburner automatically, then once a new post is published Feedburner will immediate pull in your updated feed and tweet the post. Neat!
While they were at it, they also convert all links to their newly introduced URL shortening service, “goo.gl”. It does not seem they provide any statistics at the moment, but it is easy to imagine the integration with Google Analytics, the “king of webstats”, is just around the corner.
While bit.ly, which only recently conquered the #1 place in the URLshorteners business, is putting up a nice fight to counter goo.gl, it might very well be that with its vast data infrastructure and know-how, Google will work all other RSS-to-Twitter services out of the market.
Time will tell, but one thing is for sure: whoever shows the most features, the highest speed and uptime, as well as the best integration, will win. Let the battle for URLshorteners and RSS-to-Twitter services begin.
Update:
The dlvr.it service is currently in “private beta”. You need to register for an invitation. After this post was published, the kind folks at dlvr.it gave us 10 invitations for our readers.
If you are interested in an invite, leave a comment on this post, or email me. Will send you the invite code.
No strings attached, though feedback during the beta tests are highly appreciated by the dlvr.it crowd!

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