June 2006 Archives

Google Adsense team announced that they provide channels for referrals to publishers. This is a long waiting feature.
As it indicated, the publisher can track the perfomance of your referral units across different pages, sites, or topics. You can also use channels to determine whether one referral design works better for you than another.

Adsense for content, Adsense for search and referrals, they all have channel tracking features.

The publisher have more flexibility to use their AD spaces on their web pages. To better referral and get better earnings.

As 6A said yesterday, the Movable Type 3.3 would be ready to download today.
I am also very eager to get this new version blog platform.

Today, Jay Allen said they postphone the final release for an unspecified amount of time .

So, I have to wait and wait.

Now MSN has this Cartoon Creator in Chinese only.

It is good for someone like me who need a Cartoon avatar.

First of all, prepare your own photo with front face.
Step 1: Upload it to the site.
Step 2: Choose your faverity style. This step is very important. MSN Cartoon has three races.
Step 3: Get your own hair style and glasses if applicable.

I made my own avatar today. I will use this avatar in different forums.

Today, the Movable Type 3.3 Beta-3 is released. 6A said they resolving about 140 cases.
And add some new items and some improvement into this Beta-3.

Feeds.app Lite
This is a plugin implemented into the Beta-3. Now it is easy to including content from other blogs.
Enter the blog's address, the plugin can find the feed automaticlly. It can be used with Widget plugin.

How to use it?
Under Templates section, you will find the link of Create a feed widget in Plugin Actions.
Click it to make a new feed module which will be found in modules.
To add this modules, you can use Widget or use include modules function.

The Acronis True Image Server for Windows 9.1 provides valuable bare-metal restore functions for enterprises or home users on Windows Server from NT4.0. Based on the eWeek issue on June 5, 2006, It is fairly easy to use and provided a wide variety of file and system recovery options. For more information, go to www.acronis.com.

The listed price of Acronis True Image Server for Windows 9.1 is $699.
The following are the new features in this release:
New! DVD Burning — Save backups directly to DVDs without using 3rd party DVD burning software
Acronis Universal Restore — Restore to different hardware and recover from any unforeseen event (note: requires separate add-on license)
Modify images — Mount images in read/write mode and apply changes directly
Enhanced database support — Online backup of mission critical databases, such as Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle
64 bit Windows support — Use one application for both new and old systems
Boot from an image, using Acronis Snap Restore™ (a patent pending technology) — Decrease downtime by allowing systems to be used during a recovery
Automatic image verification — Peace of mind by ensuring that images can be used for restoration
Differential backups — Decrease the number of backups you manage
File backups, in addition to our traditional image backups — Flexible system protection
Exclude files from backups — Capture only business data and saves space in storage archives ensuring that you capture only business data
Windows Event Log and SNMP support — Plug into your existing network monitoring application
Custom scripts before/after backups — Facilitate compliance with company-wide backup policies
Throttling to control hard disk write speed and network bandwidth usage — Minimize disruptions of business operations
Create CDs with bootable images, and bootable recovery media ISOs — Eliminate the need to have separate recovery media

I posted the questions about how to use Googel Search in the Beta forum at 6A. They replied so quickly. I tried and it works.

Here is the official answer for Google Search, almost same as V3.2, Setting Up Google Enabled Entries.
Follow the guide above, you can add Google search results related to your post title into your individual archives.

I thought about the usability of Google Search plugin yesterday night.
The Google Account and license key entitle you to 1,000 automated queries per day.
This is very important limitation for Google Search.
Check Google API site.

For example, if you have a blog with three years history and over 1,000 entries. You also have the Google Search Results into your individual archives template. What happen when you post a new entry or rebuild the who site. I think the error will be coming. The Google may disable your API.

Even you only have very small amount of entries, say 100 posts. If the Page View of your site over 1,000 per day, and you use the dynamic publishing, the error will come again.

There are nine updates on Windows 2000 pro from Microsoft.
They are all security updates. Very important.

My question is sometime the disk usage of all Windows updates may bigger than the native Windows installation.

There are total 12 updates for Windows family.
MS06-011 - is a re-release, addresses a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows XP and Windows 2003 only, and has a maximum severity rating of important

• MS06-021 - addresses several newly discovered vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and has a maximum severity rating of critical

• MS06-022 - addresses a newly discovered vulnerability in Internet Explorer and has a maximum severity rating of critical

• MS06-023 - addresses a newly discovered vulnerability in Microsoft Windows and has a maximum severity rating of critical

• MS06-024 - addresses a newly discovered vulnerability in Windows Media Player and has a maximum severity rating of critical

• MS06-025 - addresses two newly discovered vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and has a maximum severity rating of critical

• MS06-026 - addresses a newly discovered vulnerability in Microsoft Windows and has a maximum severity rating of critical

• MS06-027 - addresses a newly discovered vulnerability in Microsoft Word and has a maximum severity rating of critical

• MS06-028 - addresses a newly discovered vulnerability in Microsoft PowerPoint and has a maximum severity rating of critical

• MS06-030 - addresses two newly discovered vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and has a maximum severity rating of important

• MS06-031 - addresses a newly discovered vulnerability in Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4 only and has a maximum severity rating of moderate

• MS06-032 - addresses a newly discovered vulnerability in Microsoft Windows and has a maximum severity rating of important

Yesterday, Movable Type 3.3 Beta-2 is released. It comes with lots of features and bug fixs.

The following plugin is included in this release.

A new and improved StyleCatcher
WidgetManager
GoogleSearch

The Stylecatcher is same as what I manually installed version 1.01. Works well.
WidgetManager and GoogleSearch are installed properly, but I don't know how to use them.

I installed the Movable Type 3.3 Beta 1 into a Windows box. The installation is much more easy than v3.2 with less configuation.

I also test the most important plugin I think, Scode. The latest version Scode 1.0 works well in MT 3.3 Beta 1.
Scode is a good tool of spam control.
StyleCatcher Version 1.01 is also working on it. The CSS can be changed by StyleCatcher easily.
The new features 6A deployed, internal TAG is also good in one blog. It can organize your posts by TAGs.

When you want to make a new post, the edit box can be resized by click. It is very useful when enter a long paragraph.

My feelling of the new version is 6A does not add new features, but make a lot of improvement and fineturn.
This time the installation on Windows 2000 is not like last version. It is smooth.

It is the next version of Movable Type, one of the most popular blog platform. The beta version, 3.3, is ready to be downloaded and to be tested.
I used Movable Type over 2 years. The latest Movable Type 3.2 works well in my server.
These are some items I think will be of most interest to me and other experts:

Smarter Defaults, and Fewer Settings
Setting up a new blog or a new installation can be like getting a new computer -- the first thing you do is turn off all the stupid settings. So by default, we've got rid of fifty settings and controls when you create a new blog in Movable Type 3.3, and made the default choices be smarter about doing what you expect. You can still get to these options (and dozens of new ones, for people that like to tweak) but the good news is now that you don't have to if you don't want to.
(It means the default setting is much smarter, and the beginner don't need to change settings with a lot of questions.)

A Better Author Experience
Built in Tags, with support for automatically publishing tag clouds and support for the rel="tag" attribute. Resizable posting text areas that remember your settings and have bigger, more readable fonts. Inclusion of a range of professionally-translated language packs so that all your authors can see the MT user interface in their own language. And smart default settings that don't overwhelm authors with fields they won't use. And an improved junk management system means you spend even less time dealing with spam.(Some tag plugin will retired. Spam control is still the blogger's concern.)

There is over 85% traffic from search engines comes from search results. I know some people put a lot of time to work on Search Engine Optimization. Here are ten quick and simply things you can do to make your rank higher.

1) Get listed in more search engines. There are tons of them out there. There are also many free submit services that may help you get listed. Or you can spend some time to get it done yourself.

2) Get listed in more directories. Same, there are a lot of them out there. Find higher page rank directories.

3) Get some incoming links to your site make them relevant and at least the same Page Rank as yours.

4) Clean up your html code and check your links. Be carefull for the dead link and bad link, and slow speed.

5) Check your Title tags. You can use up to 990 characters in the title, so mix some keywords with your title.

6) Check your ALT tags. Search bots cannot see pictures. Make sure have all ALT tags on each of your picture, and make sure they are descriptive and keyword rick.

Rainlendar is a customizable calendar that displays the current month. It is a very lightweight application that doesn't use much system resources or take much space on your desktop.

I saw this one from my co-worker's desktop. I feel it is cool. I trust simply is beautifull.

It has three parts, one calendar, one to-do list, and one event list.
Now forty languages it supported and over two hundred skins provided, all free.

This desktop calendar software is for personal use. You can also use it in a small lan with Rainlendar server.
Here is the note from readme:
This is the server part of the Rainlendar calendar. You only need this if you are going to use the network distribution of the events. Note that the server is meant only for single user usage. The main purpose of it is to synchronize the events between two computers.