Categories, Labels and Tags

I am a new blogger. And I've been wondering, if there are categories, why should I'm bothered with "tags" ? So what's label ?

Wordpress uses category and tag. Blogspot uses "label". So what are they ? These article is really using my own words. It's just what I feel.

A long time ago, I made my self template hack to create category clouds. But then I knew it was not effective. Why ? It's unusual if an article has too many categories. So I read more and I found that a blog using wordpress could have tags, but with external plugin. And recent version of wordpress has included tagging as a feature.

But there's a funny thing. On blogspot you will not find category and tag, you will only find label. I think label is more like tag, it's not category since it cannot have sub-category.

Honestly, I don't care about them all. I'm using labels, categories and tags to classify my articles. The only different is how I use them. Usually before writing an article, I have known what categories it would be, complete with sub-categories if needed. And when the article is done, I can analyze it and choose relevant tags.

When you're working with blogspot. You may have defined labels for your article, but later you may find more labels for your article. It's like tag, isn't it ? So far, "label" has been misused by blogspot as category. :D

The most interesting part about category is, you can include it in the permalink. This is the first thing considered by spiders. And surprisingly, you can create a page with no content at all, only adsense on it, but the URL or permalink mentions some keywords. And adsense will show matching ads using those keywords.

But you may categorize your article with some categories and those "categories" do not have to appear on your article.

At the first time, I thought that tagging is only a way to strengthen (or populate, or manipulate) contents with some matching words so it will be looking more relevant.

And these tags (or labels) also do not have to apprear on your article too. But it would be best if they appear.

So, put the strongest words as categories, and the rest as tags. If you are using blogspot, you are free to treat label as category or tag, it's up to you because it depends on your point of view.

Happy Blogging ! :D

Sorry Mr. Gates, your IE is in Recycle Bin !

Dear, Mr. Bill Gates...

I am sorry if the title is too rude for you, I hope you don't mind and I hope you don't take it personally. I know you are a wise man, and I know your history very well. Personally, I'm one of your fans.

Mr. Gates, I'm trying to be honest. I knew you since I was 13. There was only DOS in a 5¼ inch diskette which people carried anywhere. As a little kid, I wanted to know everything, so I bought a diskette too, asked my friend's brother to fill it with DOS and some games. A few years later, I had my own computer. It wasn't really my computer, my father bought it for my brother because he needed it for his study in a college. So, I intensively tried some programming languages.

When it came into BASIC, I found an info that it was created and developed by yourself, alone (I hope it was true). But BASIC, and also other 3rd party application such as Wordstar, Lotus, weren't bundled with DOS, so my brother had to find them elsewhere. It wasn't easy to get them. You know my country very well, all information - especially about technology - was very slow and needed a hard work to get "the latest".

After you launched Windows 3.1, it was really a miracle. And computer dealer were very happy because they had something new to sell : mouse and harddrive. :D Usually I only saw a console with A:\> prompt. And I really loved Windows 3.1 User Interface, really friendly and easy. I only needed to move the cursor and click. While my right hand did that, my left hand could crawl other places (don't ask me where :D ).

Mr. Bill Gates, it was really a precious moment. You came into this world as a gift. You made me understand computer very well. Your products spread anywhere like a virus.

Along with that, naughty guys tried to do something bad using your products. Sorry if I write "using" here, because they were really users like me. I hope you understand that I'm on both sides. I don't want to blame them because they really help you to find out the weakness of your products. They had helped you developed newer, stronger, and better products. And you just enjoy it because you really make money from it. Until now, I'm still wondering why you don't give them few bucks. And you never give a thankful statement on your website too.

And even after Windows 2000 era, you shipped Windows XP Home Edition with great GUI improvement. But then I disappointed because you only allowed 5 connection at a time. You said it's for our safety. But you bundled Internet Explorer since Windows 98, it's a weak product because day by day my computer got infected and it was turned into a nice home for viruses.

After that, you allowed 10 concurrent connections on Windows XP Professional, but the price went up almost twice. Mr. Gates, you were a wise man, only for that thing you charged us almost twice ! And you also launched other Windows family products.

What the heLL happened with you, Mr. Gates ? Why didn't you just launch an OS with all capabilities ? Is it about the money ?

After reading some materials, it's known that you already did that since Windows 2000.

Sorry if I'm not your admirer anymore.

Mr. Gates, last night the XP could not boot anymore. Before that, I noticed in task manager there were some IEXPLORE.EXE running. At that time, I didn't run Internet Explorer manually. And neither automatically nor automagically set up to run. I also never put IE in schedule, because I always turn off scheduler. And when the XP couldn't boot anymore, I had to reinstall because it really can not be fixed. It was really wasting my time.

And this morning I tried all the best I can to remove IE. It's really unfair that IE can not be uninstalled. So I just put IEXPLORE.EXE on the list of disallowed application in Group Policy Editor and delete its folder from Program Files. And maybe I will also do that for bundled Outlook, Windows Messenger, Remote Desktop, Net Meeting, and Windows Media Player.

I'm sorry if now I turn the "B" into "E", add "v" after that, and throw the last "l". So, Mr. BEvill Gates, for old time sake, for all those precious moments, I'm asking you to be a good man again. I heard you stop supporting for XP on 2009, and you had started to sold the buggy Vista since 2007. And you also have had a plan to replace Vista with Vienna on 2011. Please, stop that crap. And stop chasing people just because they don't use your original / licensed OS.

You have had enough money now. Are you afraid that you will not be able to make money by building open source software ?

Wait a minute... I forgot to tell you. My wife clicked "Empty Recycle Bin" this evening. Sorry for that Mr. Gates. The IE is now gone forever.

Have a nice day, Mr. Gates...

Create Screenshot of Website from within Firefox !

My computer had been infected with viruses but I didn't do anything to fix that because I was too busy. Until last night, it can not enter windows normally. Even in safe mode always automatically rebooted over and over. So I decided to reinstall my windows. But that's not what I'm going to tell you. :D

After successfully reinstall, the first time I did was installing my favorite browser, Firefox. And because I forgot to backup the extensions, I should download them again.

I browsed all extensions, maybe I could find new things. And surprisingly, I found many extensions that I couldn't imagine it can run within browser before.

On every review, I always include screenshot of the website. Do you know how I did that ? I open the website » press F11 to go fullscreen » press Print Screen to capture it » Open Photoshop » create new » Paste » Remove vertical scrollbar on the right » Save » Upload. After that you will see captured image, usually floated on the top right of starting paragraph.

But then I found FireShot.

FireShot is a Firefox extension that creates screenshots of web pages. Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify captures and insert text and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers, testers and content reviewers. It's possible to choose whether entire web page or only visible part of this page should be captured. Screenshots can be uploaded to server, saved to disk (PNG, JPEG, BMP), copied to clipboard, e-mailed and sent to external editor for further processing.

I was freezed for a moment and scream out loud (in my heart, :D ) : This is what I'm looking for !

A long time ago I did admire Opera because of its ability to view screenshot of opened websites when hovering tabs. And there are
some websites providing similar functions. Then I tried to find application to do that, but then I was hopeless because there's no free application.

This extension really saves my life. And even more... it can save whole portion of a website although it's unseen (need to scroll horizontal or vertical to see it).

So, the old way is not usable now. It's shorted into : open the website » right click and choose Fireshot - Take Screenshot (entire page) and ... » Save... » Upload.

From 9 steps down to only 4 steps. But I think it's only 3 steps, since Save... is only sub menu of Fireshot - Take Screenshot (entire page) and ....

Very handy and really a time saver, isn't it ?

But, when I tried to Edit (not directly save) to add some notes, firefox got errors and should be closed. Maybe this feature still have bugs.

And I feel the menu is too long. But that's ok, I only need to capture and save. That's it.

This extension is very useful ! Believe me !

Save Your Hosting Bandwidth

You have got hosting account, it could be free or you bought it from a hosting company. Usually, when we talk about hosting account, you will be limited on bandwidth usage.

Bandwidth is amount of data transferred to and from server. For example, if you fetch RSS via your php file, your server request the url and after that the content of RSS delivered to the server. Your php file parses the RSS contents and display them to visitors, usually it's bigger. Every single character from html codes is also counted. And the biggest bandwidth eater is image, including background images.

Let's count in detail :
[RSS fetch request] + [RSS Content] + [Display RSS after parsed] and [html codes] + [background images] + [images in your post]
That's around 250KB.

You have 50 visitors / day, then in one day your website needs 12.5MB bandwidth / day. That's only for one page. If you have 10 pages, it will be 125MB / day. And don't forget spiders, they will index all your pages. Yahoo, Google, Adsense Bot come and 20KB/page * 10 * 3 = 600KB. RSS fetchers are also consuming your bandwidth, maybe around 400KB.

Let's sum them all. The result is 126MB per day. In 30 days, it will be 3780MB per month. So you need a hosting account with at least 4GB bandwidth. It may increase from time to time because you will add more pages and more visitors will come. That's just an example of 10 simple pages.

If your bandwidth is insufficient, visitors will have to wait until first date of the next month. That's terrible.

How to save bandwidth ?

1. Host static files somewhere.
   Maybe using free host. You can search "free file hosting hotlink" or "free image hosting hotlink". There are many. Some of them have big storage and big allowed bandwidth you can use.


2. Minimize inbound bandwidth
   When visitors come into your pages, your host spends outbond bandwidth. But when you fetch a RSS to be parsed by your php script, it uses inbound bandwidth. Especially when you schedule the fetching using cron or manual routine executes. If you think your visitors don't really need this, just remove that thing.

Happy saving !

New to Adsense ? This is a way to increase your impression

You just made a new website. Signed up for adsense, get approved. And a few minutes later, you put ads on your newly created website. And you want to increase your ads' impression.

Increasing in impression means increasing in visitors. And the chance for your ads get clicked will increase too. That's a simple logic, isn't it ?

And finally you have to promote your website by submitting to search engine, tell your friends and colleagues, put your url on name cards, etc.

But I have another idea. It's not about your website, it's about the adsense. Very simple idea, and you'll get a lot of fun and impressions (and maybe clicks too), really ! I guarantee !

You don't even need any website. You just need to sign up at forums or blogs. But it's not ordinary forums or blogs, they are called "Adsense Revenue Sharing" Forums / Blogs. What the hell is that ?

You, as a member, have a chance for your ads to get displayed on those forums / blogs. Of course it's shared with owner's ads. Maybe 50:50 or any percentage specified by the owner.

You may have to work a little bit hard at the first time, depends on their rules. Maybe you have to post 50, 20, 10, or even 1 at the first. A forum like digitalpoint require you to post 50. And after that, you will get 50% chance for your ads to be shown on your topics.



But FreeDomainLand DOES NOT require any number of posts. If your posts are under 50, you will get 20% chance. More posts, more chance.

At the first few hours, I got 28 impressions. It's amazing ! It took only 1 topic.

Don't worry, those forums / blogs have a large number of members and visitors. So, I can guarantee that your ads' impressions will increase. I promise !

And finally this is the prove :



What if I can do 50 posts, my chance will raise 50% and the impressions would be about 45 impressions / day. That's only from 1 posted topic.

Imagine the possibilities.... :-)

Have a nice day...

FileHippo.Com - Download Free Software

I can say that filehippo is number one free software download sites.

Beside the features listed in their about page, there are more : No excessive and annoying ads & No sign up / membership required.

I usually experiment with software version. From my experience, newest software is not always the best, although the developer said that newer software will give better features. I can easily download older version at filehippo. The 100 Mbps connection make me sure that I will be able to download softwares from filehippo easily, even with my personal dial up connection.

Simple navigation and fast loading pages also make this site number one. There won't be unneeded things on your screen.

And sometimes I find new software that I never heard before by clicking in software category. For example, 2 weeks ago I knew that there were some alternative defrag softwares. That's amazing ! As a computer technician I have to use the best and the most efficient softwares. And filehippo.com really really help me.

With all those great features, they keep it free. And I hope it will always be free.

Thanks filehippo !