2007 October archive at forgedeuphoria.com

Archive for October, 2007

VPS Made Easy with NetworkSolutions

Friday, October 26th, 2007
By Aeriff 9 months ago 0 Comments

Categories: Sponsored Posts

Network Solutions, the company for everything web related under the sun, has started offering VPS packages, or Virtual Private Servers for those not down with the lingo. In short, a VPS provides control and flexibility not typically found on shared hosting plans. Here’s a short and sweet definition of what a Virtual Private Server actually is.

A VPS uses virtualization software to partition physical servers into multiple “virtual” servers, with each having the ability to run its own operating system and applications and can be rebooted independently without affecting another VPS on the same system. VPS hosting users have root access, which provides them control, flexibility, and power over their hosting solution to run and install virtually any program on their server.

Imagine having your own personal server for as low as $50/month. There are 3 packages available, with the most expensive being $100/month. Compare and contrast the plans to find out which one is right for you. All the extra information can be found over at the Network Solutions VPS page. If you’re not sure which plan to go for - ask in the comments, I’ll be more than happy to help you out.

Why not dive into the world of VPS and find out if it’s the right solution for you?

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PayPerPost Rage

Friday, October 19th, 2007
By Aeriff 9 months, 1 week ago 2 Comments

Categories: Rant

In the complete polar opposite to my post titled PayPerPost Love earlier on in the year, I’ve decided to post about my hangups with PayPerPost, namely a recent saga involving one of my sponsored posts; GoLive Mobile Marketing.

The policy for sponsored posts as set out in the PayPerPost Terms of Service is long and jargon-filled, so I’ll leave those out. If you’re in dire need of some reading material, then be my guest: PayPerPost TOS. The main point I want to bring your attention to is the following:

Paid posts must not be consecutive. Each sponsored post must be separated by at least one non-PayPerPost post.

So how does all this relate to the sponsored post on GoLive Mobile Marketing? This is where the story begins. Grab a coffee, you may be reading for a while.

Obviously after posting, you must submit the post for review by a member of the PayPerPost team for acceptance or rejection which all seems fair. I was a little surprised when an email from PayPerPost with the subject line ‘Your post has been rejected.’ found it’s way into my inbox. Not one post that I have ever submitted has been rejected. I opened the email to find a reason why my post was rejected and it read a little something like this:

Jarred,

Thanks so much for submitting your post to this Opp. We appreciate your hard work! Unfortunately, we cannot accept this post as it does not meet our Terms of Service regarding Disclosure.
According to the Terms, you must disclose, either within the sponsored post or on your Blog that certain posts have been sponsored.
You may wish to visit DisclosurePolicy.org for more information.
Once you have made disclosure for this post, please resubmit it to us.

Also, your post after this one titled, “Undo For Browsers” is not original content. It is just copied and pasted from another blog. According to the Terms, each PayPerPost Opportunity post must be separated by at least one non-sponsored, original content, post. Interim posts must also be of a reasonable length, at least one paragraph, 3-5 sentences.
As the post previous to this post is just copied and pasted, I apologize, but it does not meet these Terms. Please add at least 3-5 sentences of original content to this post and resubmit.

Thanks
Crystal

Now, the rule on disclosure was known to me as you can see in almost every one of my paid posts. The thing I don’t quite understand is why I was penalised for following the rules set out in the opportunity description. It clearly stated there was to be no in-post disclosure and that the blog must have sitewide disclosure. So being the law-abiding citizen I am, I followed the rules and placed a small note in the post saying that the post was indeed a sponsored one. I do have a disclosure policy in place, and it can be viewed here for those interested.

I will also refute one of the other points that Crystal had made in her reasoning: ‘Also, your post after this one titled, “Undo For Browsers” is not original content. It is just copied and pasted from another blog.’ I believe you will find that it is an original article and simply has been cross-posted to help at a friend’s blog to help his site out; Attackr.com. I was asked to add 3-5 lines of original content so that my post could be accepted. But hang on a minute, don’t the rules say that two sponsored posts must be seperated by one non-sponsored post? If you look at the front page of this blog, you will find no sponsored posts have been published since the post on GoLive Mobile Marketing. If you care to scroll down a little further, you will find that all paid posts are separated by non-sponsored posts. So it all makes sense? To Crystal of PayPerPost, apparently not.

The same day after resubmitting the amended post, I receive yet another email advising me that my post has been rejected. Once more, Crystal had stated her reasons and they read as follows:

Jarred,

Thanks so much for submitting your post to this Opp. We appreciate your hard work. Unfortunately, we cannot accept this post because it does not met the requirements of the advertiser.

The advertiser has asked for no in-post disclosure. Please remove your in-post disclosure and create site-wide disclosure.
You may wish to visit DisclosurePolicy.org for more information.
Once you have made disclosure for this post, please resubmit it to us.
Thanks, again!
Crystal

Excuse me, didn’t you just ask me to add disclosure to the post? So why the hell are you asking me to take it out now?! Once again, I followed her instructions and resubmitted the post. Even after placing a link to the disclosure policy in the sidebar; Surprise, surprise - It was once more rejected for nearly the same reason:

Jarred,

Thanks so much for submitting your post to this Opp. We appreciate your hard work. Unfortunately, we cannot accept this post because your previous post “Undo For Browsers” is exactly copied and pasted from another blog post titled “Undo For Browsers” from the URL www.attackr.com/undo-for-browsers/.

Please add some original content to this post and resubmit!
Thanks
Crystal

If she bothered to check the dates, she would find that the post on my blog was posted before I submitted it to Attackr. I somehow think that she should also appreciate the hard work that bloggers like myself put into writing quality articles, rather than jumping to conclusions that everyone’s a plagiarist these days. I think if she bothered to look and back up her claims, that I did add some more content to the post on this site just so the damn post could make it past her scrutiny.

So that brings me to the reason I’m posting this: I really believe that PayPerPost should employ people who actually bother to do their job properly and back up their claims before accusing other people of plagiarism and rejecting their posts for contradictory reasons. Maybe even Crystal will read this post on her next check to make sure I haven’t ‘plagiarised’ more content when I get around to resubmitting this post.

Got any other PayPerPost hangups? I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Technorati Tags: payperpost, rage

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Undo For Browsers

Monday, October 15th, 2007
By Aeriff 9 months, 1 week ago 0 Comments

Categories: Internet, Software, Web and Windows

If you’re really long in the tooth, you’ll recall when Microsoft introduced the undo command in Word for DOS. This little piece of bacon-saving magic was one of the great milestones in user-friendly software development.

It’s taken a while for browsers to catch up with the delights of undo. Of course, the need for an undo command only really became pressing once tabbed browsing appeared on the scene. Before that, you could always return to a site during a session using the Back button, or from session to session by using the browser’s history cache. But once we gained the ability to view multiple sites concurrently using tabs, the Back button was no longer sufficient. With multiple sites open, it’s all too easy to close one of those tabs and then realise you need that site open after all.

Opera, not surprisingly, was the first to bring the undo concept to the browser. It gave us the ability to undo a closed tab by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Z. Then it went further and added a multilevel undo in the form of the Trash Can. The Trash Can stores each tab you close during a session, plus every closed popup window. Click the Trash Can at the far right of the Tab Bar and you can open any of these closed items.

Firefox has had tabs all along, but no undo. Due to its support for extensions, though, third-party developers were happy to remedy that omission. A number of extensions provided basic undo functions, all the way from the single-minded Undo Close Tab to the spectacularly all-inclusive Tab Mix Plus.

The folks at Mozilla have since seen the list and in Firefox 2 you can undo a closed tab by pressing Ctrl-Shift-T. If you already used the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-T to open a new tab, that’s particularly easy to remember. If you close a series of tabs, you can reopen each of them by pressing Ctrl-Shift-T repeatedly. It’s a LIFO stack (Last In, First Out), so Firefox will open the most recently closed tab first, then the next most recently closed and so on. Firefox also includes a (less elegantly implemented) version of Opera’s Trash Can: to select from a list of closed tabs, click History —> ‘Recently Closed Tabs’.

Reopening a closed tab also restores that tab’s history, in both Opera and Firefox, so you can browse back though the sites you viewed on that tab.

So where’s the undo closed tab feature in Internet Explorer 7? It’s not there. Microsoft is still playing catch-up with it’s browser.

Up A Notch

Reopening a closed tab is handy, but wouldn’t it be great if you could undo a browser crash or re-display a bunch of sites after you’ve accidentally closed your browser? That’s where crash recovery comes in.

Once again, where Opera leads, the others have followed. Opera will automatically load your last session exactly as it was – all the tabs and all the windows – if you click Tools —> Preferences —> General and from the Startup menu select ‘Continue from last time’. You’ll no longer have to worry about accidentally closing a bunch of tabs.

Firefox has a similar options: go to Tools —> Options —> Main and in the ‘When Firefox starts’ box, select ‘Show my windows from last time’.

Once again, IE 7 doesn’t quite get it right. There is an options to re-display the currently open tabs, but there’s no way to set this to occur automatically. Instead, you have to remember to do it each time.

Open at least two tabs.
Click IE’s close button. A dialog will appear, asking whether you wish to close all tabs.
Click the ‘Show Options’ button.
Tick the ‘Open these the next time I use Internet Explorer’ options and then click ‘Close tabs’.

Firefox and Opera have the ability to recover from a crash. Should your computer or browser crash, the browsers will automatically offer to reload your last session. It’s not fool-proof, but it usually works.

Matching Opera

To match Opera’s graceful undo handling, Firefox and IE 7 both need the help of add-ons. For Firefox, you should install Tab Mix Plus, one of the all-time great Firefox extensions. Tab Mix Plus provides a huge array of tab options, including a right-click ‘closed tabs list’, as well as it’s own highly flexible crash recovery and sessions saver. Once installed, navigate to Tools —> ‘Tab Mix Plus Options’ —> Session to find settings to suit your needs.

For Internet Explorer, there’s IE7Pro. This add-on provides a whole bunch of enhancements for IE, including crash recovery and advanced tab management.

Tips

Tweak Firefox
If you like fiddling under your browser’s bonnet, you can manually tweak Firefox’s session restore and crash recovery settings. Type about:config in the address bar and set the Filter to session. You’ll see all of Firefox’s session-related settings. Double-click a setting to change it.

Edit: Opera users, I haven’t forgotten you! After searching around a little, I’ve found you can also change a plethora of settings using Opera’s opera6.ini. if you’d much rather edit the file from your browser, type about:config or opera:config and you’ll be greeted with a bunch of settings that you can tweak to your heart’s content! More information over at Opera Support.

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Uncloaking TinyURL

Friday, October 12th, 2007
By Aeriff 9 months, 2 weeks ago 1 Comment

Categories: Code

Welcome to another PHP tutorial from ForgedEuphoria. This time around we’ll be looking at how to use PHP to input a TinyURL and display the real page’s URL, thus ‘uncloaking’ the link. Let’s get into it!

Here’s the full code for our function:

<?php
function reverseTinyURL($url){
    $url = explode('.com/', $url);
    $url = 'http://preview.tinyurl.com/'.$url[1];
    $preview = file_get_contents($url);
    preg_match('/redirecturl" href="(.*)">/', $preview, $matches);
    return $matches[1];
}
?>

Download this code: revTinyURL.phps

Let’s break it down..

The first line of code declares that it is a function, ‘reverseTinyURL’.

function reverseTinyURL($url){

Next our function splits the URL, starting with .com. Next it gets the source of TinyURL preview page, which is where we will find our uncloaked URL.

$url = explode('.com/', $url); $url = 'http://preview.tinyurl.com/'.$url[1]; $preview = file_get_contents($url);

Finally it uses the PHP preg_match function to find the line of HTML where our link is hidden and then returns it as a URL.

preg_match('/redirecturl" href="(.*)">/', $preview, $matches); return $matches[1]; }

If you want to know how to use the function, see below.

<? reverseTinyURL('http://tinyurl.com/2frj9u'); // returns http://www.forgedeuphoria.com/blog/ ?>

Download this code: revTinyURL-example.phps

Pretty neat, eh?

Questions, comments, something unclear? Leave a comment.

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GoLive Mobile Marketing

Friday, October 12th, 2007
By Aeriff 9 months, 2 weeks ago 0 Comments

Categories: Sponsored Posts

GoLive Mobile is a leading provider of mobile marketing software. In this technological day and age where your office can go home with you in your pocket or tucked under your arm, your business needs to be available 24/7. Whether it be online or over the phone, more and more people are turning to their handheld mobile devices to access their information. That’s why you need GoLive Mobile. They specialise in SMS Marketing, Mobile Website Design and Hosting and a plethora of other specialty areas. A recent article on MarketingVox shows just how much mobile devices are impacting on business life. According to the article, 28 percent of global brands surveyed have already launched live SMS (text) campaigns and 18 percent have launched live MMS (multimedia) campaigns. The survey also found that more brands expect to spend a greater proportion of their marketing budget on mobile campaigns in the near future: 71 percent project that they’ll spend up to 10 percent of their budget on mobile marketing within two years. The survey also presents a bunch of more interesting key finds, so it’s well worth a read.

Do you want to get ahead in today’s business market? Go with GoLive Mobile!

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I’m Going Pink for October

Thursday, October 11th, 2007
By Aeriff 9 months, 2 weeks ago 2 Comments

Categories: Uncategorized

You may have noticed that the blog has undergone a slight colour change. For the month of October, I’m going Pink in support of Breast Cancer. Show your support for Breast Cancer and Make a Difference by supporting Pink4October.

Edit: Another fellow blogger, Pelf has decided to join the Pink For October awareness campaign. Spread the love and show your support.

If you have joined the cause, leave a comment and a link to your site and I’ll add you to the list

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What Does Your Desktop Look Like?

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007
By Aeriff 9 months, 3 weeks ago 2 Comments

Categories: Miscellaneous

Out of plain curiosity: I want to know what your desktop looks like.

Here’s my current desktop (view larger):

Here’s a quick rundown on what you’re looking at:

Wallpaper: High Plains Arcus from SocksOff.co.uk
An Empty Desktop: Not many people have an empty desktop, but I quite like it. It keeps things uncluttered and organised. I can’t imagine the amount of clutter there would be if I had icons, and frankly, I don’t want to.
Quick Launch Bar: My 3 essential applications (LTR) Firefox, My ‘bin’ folder [essentially a second desktop, keeps the clutter where you can't see it.] and Foobar2000 for my tunes.

What do you think my desktop, and what does yours look like?

Share your desktops in the comments.

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