DavidTan.org http://www.davidtan.org Personal Tech, How To, Tips and Making Money Online Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:23:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 en 1257190http://www.feedburner.com All The Barack Obama Headlines and Campaign Buttons http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Davidtan/~3/460824569/ http://www.davidtan.org/all-the-barack-obama-headlines-and-campaign-buttons/#comments Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:48:33 +0000 David http://www.davidtan.org/?p=1625 You just can’t believe how big this is when the man won the American president election. The headlines and campaign buttons really says something about this man.

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All The Barack Obama Headlines and Campaign Buttons

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]]> http://www.davidtan.org/all-the-barack-obama-headlines-and-campaign-buttons/feed/ http://www.davidtan.org/all-the-barack-obama-headlines-and-campaign-buttons/ SocialTwist Tell A Friend: Online Word Of Mouth Marketing Tool http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Davidtan/~3/457377507/ http://www.davidtan.org/socialtwist-tell-a-friend-online-word-of-mouth-marketing-tool/#comments Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:55:33 +0000 David http://www.davidtan.org/?p=1614 Social Bookmarking is a good way of getting backlinks and new visitors to your site. If you have good contents, the aim is to go viral, to have someone bookmark your site, email, share, talk and spread it like wildfire.

It was probably by coincidence that I wrote this AddThis VS ShareThis post two days ago, then found out about “Tell A Friend” yesterday and been using it since.

So What Is Tell A Friend?
Image of Tell A Friend widgetTell-A-Friend (TAF) widget is an innovative Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Tool. Unlike most other TAF implementations, SocialTwist helps users reach friends through their address book as well as other channels such as blogs, IM, and social networking sites like Facebook. The SocialTwist TAF is a simple to use Word-of-Mouth=Marketing tool. And it is Free!

This video shows it in pictures

Should You Use It?
I would definately say yes. And there’s really no reason not to. You can see it implemented on the end of each post on this blog now. While AddThis is currently still my favorite to allow my visitors to do social bookmarking, Tell A Friend provides 3 extras channels:

1. Email friends + friends + friends
How many friends do you think your visitors have in their address book?

2. Instant Messaging
I know I have way lots of friends on my IM contact lists

3. Blog
Can you imagine when someone really blogs about your story?!

You see, it really is more then a simple social bookmark tool. And from Vivek’s email, it looks like some work is getting done on social bookmarking too.

Conclusion
The next time I build a new site, Tell A Friend will definately be one of the first thing I think of putting onto my site. Word of Mouth Markerting is pure gold and using Tell A Friend is a good way of getting it done.

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SocialTwist Tell A Friend: Online Word Of Mouth Marketing Tool

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]]> http://www.davidtan.org/socialtwist-tell-a-friend-online-word-of-mouth-marketing-tool/feed/ http://www.davidtan.org/socialtwist-tell-a-friend-online-word-of-mouth-marketing-tool/ Kevin Rudd Goes Social, Promotes New Site On YouTube http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Davidtan/~3/456220116/ http://www.davidtan.org/kevin-rudd-goes-social-promotes-new-site-on-youtube/#comments Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:31:04 +0000 David http://www.davidtan.org/?p=1610 It was nice to see that the newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd introducing himself and his new website at KevinPM.com.au. The video got my attention as it was listed in the “featured videos” list and must have probably gone viral by now.


That’s definately a very smart move by Kevin’s team. Online presence was one of the main factors contributing to Barrack Obama’s recent victory in the latest US presidential election. World leaders should start practising open communication as we all know it and Kevin is showing good signs that he is.

Oh, and Kevin is on Twitter too!

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Kevin Rudd Goes Social, Promotes New Site On YouTube

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]]> http://www.davidtan.org/kevin-rudd-goes-social-promotes-new-site-on-youtube/feed/ http://www.davidtan.org/kevin-rudd-goes-social-promotes-new-site-on-youtube/ How To Set Default Internet Web Browser http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Davidtan/~3/456001062/ http://www.davidtan.org/how-to-set-default-internet-web-browser/#comments Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:00:40 +0000 David http://www.davidtan.org/?p=1607 Add/Remove Programs > Set Program Access and Defaults 2. Select [...]]]> Some people have different web browsers such as IE, Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome or Safari installed on their computers. And for some reasons, some are having problem switching their default browsers back to what they want. The solution is actually, pretty simple.

1. Goto Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs > Set Program Access and Defaults

2. Select the “custom” radiobox and press the arrow sign at the right side of the same row.

3. Select your default browser.

That should do it. Happy browsing.

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How To Set Default Internet Web Browser

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]]> http://www.davidtan.org/how-to-set-default-internet-web-browser/feed/ http://www.davidtan.org/how-to-set-default-internet-web-browser/ Social Bookmarking Plugins: Why I Chose AddThis Over ShareThis http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Davidtan/~3/454917555/ http://www.davidtan.org/social-bookmarking-plugins-why-i-chose-addthis-over-sharethis/#comments Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:00:38 +0000 David http://www.davidtan.org/?p=1600 I’ve always been a ShareThis user but after thinking about it and comparing it to AddThis, I’ve finally made the change by dumping ShareThis and jump onto AddThis. Here are just the few considerations why I made this change.

1) Loading Size
ShareThis is bulky compared to AddThis. Don’t believe me? Try having both ShareThis and AddThis on your blog, use Firebug, and goto the Net tab (it measures what get sends and retrieved) and you’ll see that there are more calls to sharethis.com when compared to addthis.com. There are more things to be downloaded/retrieved from ShareThis and I dislike the wait (not long, but still…).

2) How Will User Bookmark and Share My Post/Page?
The AddThis dropdown widget is way more interactive then ShareThis. The flow of getting an intereseted person to bookmark/share your site is:
1) Click on a the “Share This” link
2) Wait for services to be populated.
3) Choose a service to save your bookmarks to

While compared to AddThis:
1) Hover over a image and you’ll get a drop down of the services instantly
3) Choose a service to save your bookmarks to

That’s a 33% reduction in terms of steps needed to get a person to bookmark/share your site! You want things to be easy as it can be, and this is it.

3) Ease of Implementation
It’s so simple to get the bookmark/share widget from AddThis onto your blog. Although there’s a plugin to add AddThis automatically at the end of each post, it’s equally easy to do so by hand. The widget customization page shows you more but the basic can already get you started.

<!-- ADDTHIS BUTTON BEGIN -->
<script type="text/javascript">
addthis_pub = 'YOUR-ACCOUNT-ID';
</script><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onMouseOver="return addthis_open(this, '', '[URL]', '[TITLE]')" onMouseOut="addthis_close()" onClick="return addthis_sendto()"><img src="http://s7.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" width="125" height="16" border="0" alt="" /></a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/152/addthis_widget.js"></script>
<!-- ADDTHIS BUTTON END -->

If you want stats and reporting of how much your post/page are shared, you will need to register and then replace addthis_pub with your account-id. Or else, it can simply be left blank.

That’s it, hopefully by doing this you can get more people to share your work :)

Goodbye ShareThis. I still remember writing a post about some SEO considerations with Share This, but don’t think I will need to worry with that again anymore

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Social Bookmarking Plugins: Why I Chose AddThis Over ShareThis

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]]> http://www.davidtan.org/social-bookmarking-plugins-why-i-chose-addthis-over-sharethis/feed/ http://www.davidtan.org/social-bookmarking-plugins-why-i-chose-addthis-over-sharethis/ How To Hide Category From Wordpress Home and RSS Feeds http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Davidtan/~3/454199711/ http://www.davidtan.org/how-to-hide-category-from-wordpress-home-and-rss-feeds/#comments Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:43:59 +0000 David http://www.davidtan.org/?p=1595 I love to write about tech tips and web development but also appreciate the fact that I love to keep a weblog of my daily activity and life here online. But that would contradict with my reader’s best interests to learn a new trick or two from this blog. So the best solution was to exclude certain categories from showing up in the wordpress homepage (index.php) and rss feeds. After a few investigations, here are a few ways which you use to get that done.

Method 1: Custom Feed URL
It’s really simple to tell Wordpress to generate feeds for a specific category. For example, if I want to have a feed for the category Wordpress and Tech Tips only, I could build a feed url such as:

<a href=”http://www.davidtan.org/feed?cat=6&cat=7″>Wordpress and Tech Tips (RSS)</a>

Similarly, to have a feed which doesn’t include both the Wordpress and Tech Tips category, I could use the feed url (notice the extra minus signs):

<a href=”http://www.davidtan.org/feed?cat=-6&cat=-7″>No Wordpress and Tech Tips (RSS)</a>

But wait, where do you get those numbers? They are the category id and can be obtain from your wordpress admin > Manage > Categories section. Just mouseover the category name link and you’ll see that the web address will be refering to something such as:

http://www.davidtan.org/wp-admin/categories.php?action=edit&cat_ID=7

Method 2: Add New Function in Theme’s functions.php file
Every wordpress themes comes with a functions.php file and you can add the following into it to exclude a certain category from showing up in the main index and rss feeds.


function excludeCategory($query) {
 if ($query->is_feed || $query->is_home) {
   $query->set('cat','-6, -7');
 }
return $query;
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts','excludeCategory');

Surprisingly I had a problem where if I use exclusions (indicated by the minus sign), there was a problem whereby old posts will be shown first on the blog. Not sure what the problem was but the solution will be to list every category id except for those which you want to exclude in the $query->set command. So for this example, it would be something like $query->set(’cat’,'1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8′);

Method 3: Feedburner Feed Details
Feedburner Feed Details
If you’re using Feedburner, there’s a “Original Feed” field in the feed details section where it ask you to enter the feed url of your blog. Refering back to method 1, fill that field with a custom feed url with your excluded categories.

Method 4: Wordpress Plugins
If you hate manual work and ain’t confident with editing functions.php, then this is the easiest way for you. I’ve found 2 wordpress plugins which helped in this matter: Advanced Category Excluder and SimplyExclude and I would personally recommend SimplyExclude.

Both plugins basically does what Method 2 can already do but you get more visual stuffs when configuring which category and in what sections (home, rss, archive, search) should those categories be excluded from showing up.

Again, like the post ordering problem we had in Method 2, you might also notice that you will get the “old post listed first” problem when using SimplyExclude. Here’s a user comment which helped in solving that problem.

If you select the “Exclude” option for the Front Page and check one or more categories in the corresponding column you will end up with inversed post order.
If however you select “Include only” for the Front Page and check all the categories you want to apear (which will probably be quite a few) it will work just fine (meanig you will have the normal post order).

That’s it, happy learning and tweaking Wordpress! :)

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How To Hide Category From Wordpress Home and RSS Feeds

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]]> http://www.davidtan.org/how-to-hide-category-from-wordpress-home-and-rss-feeds/feed/ http://www.davidtan.org/how-to-hide-category-from-wordpress-home-and-rss-feeds/ Wordpress Blog Sold For $15 Million http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Davidtan/~3/450715034/ http://www.davidtan.org/wordpress-blog-sold-for-15-million/#comments Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:00:19 +0000 David http://www.davidtan.org/?p=1591 If this ain’t inspiring, I don’t know what else is. Bankaholic.com has just been sold for $15 Million last month :o

Simply put, being in the right niche (finance indutsry as in bankaholic case) and working hard does pays off. And who can deny that when you have just sold your one-man-show blog for $15 million after just 2 years of blogging?

Impressive indeed.

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Wordpress Blog Sold For $15 Million

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]]> http://www.davidtan.org/wordpress-blog-sold-for-15-million/feed/ http://www.davidtan.org/wordpress-blog-sold-for-15-million/ How To Remove Advertisements From Xunlei (Thunder) http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Davidtan/~3/449557531/ http://www.davidtan.org/how-to-remove-advertisements-from-xunlei-thunder/#comments Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:00:26 +0000 David http://www.davidtan.org/?p=1583 Xunlei is a file sharing client that supports BitTorrent, eDonkey, Kad, and FTP. It is said to be faster then other popular bitTorrent clients such as bitComet and uTorrent. I usually use it for downloading drama episodes through torrent and ftp.

I like using Xunlei (Thunder) but the problem to me was that it contains too many distractions and ads. A fresh installtion of Xunlei will look something like the picture below whereby boxes in red are ads and Xunlei community news.

Xunlei user interface

The following tips will teach you how to remove all of those bothering contents.

Shut down Xunlei (Thunder) if it’s already running.

Remove Header Ads
You can stop getting ads on the top header section of Xunlei by doing this. That section will still show but there won’t be any ads in it anymore.

Open C:\Program Files\Thunder Network\Thunder\Program\Ad, delete all files except 002.gif, main.gif, new.gif, default_main.swf and default_new.swf. Then open C:\Program Files\Thunder Network\Thunder\Program, find gui.cfg and edit it with notepad so that the following settings refers to empty strings.

ADServer=
PVServer=
ADCountingServer=
HomePage=

Remove Right Sidebar Ads
This is probably the most requested part to be removed in the application.
Open up C:\Program Files\Thunder Network\Thunder\Profiles\UserCofig.ini with notepad and search for the section [Splitter_1]. You will see a list such as

[Splitter_1]
Pane0_MinSize=50
Pane0_IdealSize=0
Pane0_x=193
Pane0_y=0
Pane0_cx=1087
Pane0_cy=618
Pane0_Hide=0
Pane1_MinSize=50
Pane1_IdealSize=210
Pane1_x=1070
Pane1_y=0
Pane1_cx=210
Pane1_cy=618
Pane1_Hide=0

Edit the last line so that you get Pane1_Hide=1. That’s it.

Now run Xunlei (Thunder) and you will see that all the right hand sidebar contents are now gone (it’s actually hidden)! If you want them back, just change the previous setting back to 1.

Extra: Remove Xunlei Community News (bottom left corner)
Chances are you don’t even have an comunity account since you’re just using Xunlei(Thunder) for downloading stuffs online. This is easy as you can just use the shortcut key ALT+V+U to remove that section.

Extra: Remove Pop Up Tips and Ads
This is really another annoying part of the program. Goto Options (ALT+O), Advanced, and untick the following boxes labelled in red so you won’t see them again.

Image: Remove unneeded features in Xunlei

Image: Remove unneeded features in Xunlei

That’s it. A cleaner user interface is just what we need :)

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]]> http://www.davidtan.org/how-to-remove-advertisements-from-xunlei-thunder/feed/ http://www.davidtan.org/how-to-remove-advertisements-from-xunlei-thunder/ Capture Snapshots and Screencasts with Cropper http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Davidtan/~3/448426016/ http://www.davidtan.org/easy-how-to-capture-snapshots-and-screencasts-with-cropper/#comments Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:00:32 +0000 David http://www.davidtan.org/?p=1577 I’ve wrote about a free screen capture software known as Cropper late last year and honestly haven’t been using it much after finding out about Jing.

But today, I’ve finally come across yet another good reason why keeping Cropper in my list of most useful program is such a good decision. Cropper is an open source C# .NET project and thus has allowed other developers to write plugins for it. The following are a few plugins that I’ve found very useful to be used with Cropper.

1. Gif Output Plugin (download)
Cropper by default doesn’t have the option to save your screenshots to GIF, but this plugin solves the problem.

2. Cropper Plugins Pack
This plugin pack features the following plugins:
- AnimatedGif - Captures to an animated GIF image.
- AviFormat - Captures to an AVI movie.
- CountdownPng - Gives you a countdown before taking the shot to allow you to set it up.
- SendToEmail - Sends the image via the default e-mail client.
- SendToFlickr - Sends captures to one’s Flickr account
- SendToOneNote - Sends captures to a page in OneNote
- SendToS3 - Sends captures to one’s Amazon S3 account
- SendToTinyPic - Sends captures to TinyPic
- TFSWorkItem - Creates a Team Foundation Server work item with the captures image as an attachment.

Now I’m not going to go through each of the plugin but the motivation behind writing this post actually came after finding out about the AnimatedGif plugin. I was initially looking for a utility to do screencasting but ended up finding out a plugin for Cropper. Jing does record screencasts but leaves a trademark/logo at the end of a screencast which I’m quite annoyed of which leads me to look for something better.

Animated GIF Looks Cool TOO!
To see why I’m excited about this particular plugin, just look at the picture below.

Hello World! This is David animated gif

'Hello World! This is David' brought to live in animation!

.

That’s essentially just an animated gif file! This is really a time saver especially for those who just want to record a series of on-screen-action and send it others or show it on your website. There’s no need for SWF, AVI, clumsy embeding whatever as it’s simply an animated gif file. Can you call that a screencast? Absolutely!

And if you really want to make an AVI, the AVIFormat plugin (from the plugin pack mentioned above) can also help you handle that. I’m yet to find a SWF plugin for cropper, so if anyone finds one, please let me know :)

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Capture Snapshots and Screencasts with Cropper

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]]> http://www.davidtan.org/easy-how-to-capture-snapshots-and-screencasts-with-cropper/feed/ http://www.davidtan.org/easy-how-to-capture-snapshots-and-screencasts-with-cropper/ SEO And Keyword Research With SEOQuake http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Davidtan/~3/447394010/ http://www.davidtan.org/seo-ppc-keyword-research-seoquake/#comments Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:35:24 +0000 David http://www.davidtan.org/?p=1565 SEO and keyword research are both important activities which can help you in getting the top positions in search engines as well as to see what keywords your competitors sites are targetting.

There are several firefox extensions which helps in research automation such as counting number of inbound links, keyword density, domain age, google pankrank or alexa rank etc, and SEOQuake being one of them.

Having used SEOQuake for quite a while to do research on sites and SERP, I’ve today just uncovered another useful feature of the extension, known simply as “density” in the SEOQuake toolbar.

Firefox Extension SEOQuake Keyword Density Toolbar

Firefox Extension SEOQuake Keyword Density Toolbar

That “density” utility gave back a report of the meta descriptions, meta keywords plus all the density of the keywords found on a page. What’s even better in the report is it contains a link “Load Google keywords data” which will then query Google Adwords Keyword Tool for search volumes and estimated avg cpc for each keyword found on a page. These data can be quite useful to know for adsense publishers to see what keywords are high paying as well as for adwords advertisers to see how strong the competition is.

Here’s how the report looks like for this blog : DavidTan Tech and Tips Blog

seo and keyword research data report

SEO and Keyword Research Data Report

If you’re already using firefox, then SEOQuake can really be a time saver for doing SEO keywords related research.

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SEO And Keyword Research With SEOQuake

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