Microsoft have finally made the official release of Windows XP SP3, which in their words “includes a small number of new functionalities, which do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system”. Yet, the public is giving it more attention and interest than Microsoft hopes for, in it’s continuing effort to kill the OS, and replace it with Vista. Despite their official announcement to kill XP from retail store this coming June, PC manufacturers like Dell and HP have found a loophole in the possible downgrade option from Vista to XP, and will sell their computers preinstalled with downgraded XP version. This would ofcourse incur little extra cost, that they seem to be welling to take.
To read the SP3 update details, download the PDF file from here.
26th April marks my birthday. It also marks the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster. The same memory has been used to spread a Windows Virus by the same name, which some might argue it as a good day). I have had several bad incidents on my birthday before, I started wishing I could just skip it. It’s just in my mind I know, it’s a low probability that just happens. This year however it was different. Nothing serious happened. It was rather a normal weekend, with a bit extra childly noise. But once my wife asked me “How does it feel to turn 28?”, I just thought for a second, and all I can think of is “How old I am, and what have I done so far”. I’m not so young anymore. Time passes by, and we somehow easily manage to let it go.
I write this thinking of the great “The Alchemist” novel and the boy’s journey to pursue his Personal Legend, and how Paulo best describes it saying “It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the master work. Now, I’m beginning what I could have started ten years ago. But I’m happy at least that I didn’t wait twenty years.”
So my mother kept nagging on me to stop being lazy and open a shareholder account in Mishref Co-Op to get some promotions and profit from the purchases I make. I preferred to just use my family account instead, until I gave up and opened one for me and my wife. Ofcourse months passed without collecting the cards that I felt a shame of going asking for it anymore. My wife did the favor, and as I’m writing this right now I still don’t remember the account number. Only once I did know and use it. It was worth it. I made some extra profit this month right here:
There is even a typo in it, mishref-frofit. I really laughed when I saw it. It’s also nice from them to bother them selves and my bank to send over this money. My only complain is I didn’t get the SMS alert for money deposit :).
Google and Yahoo! have been undergoing a testing period for the efficiency of delivering Google Ads alongside Yahoo search results. This is to measure how the ad click-throughs are compared to Yahoo’s own ads. Yahoo themselves estimate that Google Ads bring 60-70% more revenue than Yahoo. This is because of ad relevancy for one, and two I’m sure from the large collection of advertisers Google has. The more options you have, the more possible it is to deliver better results. Also, the user won’t get bored from the same results all the time. And when it comes to global market, say the Arabic region for example, or any other non-English site, it’s pretty difficult to get any geo-targeted ads. I don’t see any Arabic ads at Yahoo or any other ad network, while Google is getting more and more every day.
The test was to show Google ads at 3% of Yahoo search results inside the US for two weeks only. How did it go? Both parties have spoken general good deal of it so far. The Justice Department have been officially informed about the ongoing tests, and questions are rising right now about whether a deal between the two would give Google a monopoly over the internet ad market. Frankly, I would love for my Google Ads to show on Yahoo results for two reasons. One, Google is the best advertising program I’ve tried from many others, and gives very strong ad control and tracking. Two, I don’t want to split my money and time following multiple ad programs. Still however, for a multi-billion dollar business that large, I believe Google are over looking certain areas and need to improve on them:
Ad Filtering: Filter unwanted ads on my site. Sex & gambling mainly. Google does a brilliant job catching fraud ads, ads that do not reflect the site content, heck they even ban certain Arabic words if they are about medical terms without valid permit. I’ve had one keyword disabled “عقار” which means both real-estate and medicine. It was banned because it’s a medical term and I can’t promote medical stuff without any proof of permit, even if I really meant real estate. So their filtering is strong when they want to, yet their Google AdSense competitive ad filtering is pretty lousy. I filter a certain site and after 12 hours I can still see the ads showing up on my site. This could be really embarrassing and bad for a business. I also don’t get any chance to disallow gambling and sex sites, which I believe should be a normal easy to implement option. Google already offers to filter offensive content in it’s search, so an option to disallow those sites from advertising on mine should be pretty simple.
Customer Support: How easy is it to contact Google for support? And how long does it take for them to reply. Not what you hope for from a leading company. Google support has always been disappointing to me.
Wire-Transfer: For AdSense, most countries are still not supported for money transfer. Many smaller sites are ahead of Google and transfer to any place in the world. Google is only slowly expanding, and yet promoting the green environment thing.
Money Split: For some reason Google just don’t wish to tell you how much your share is from the click. Many other sites do. The ad is on my site and we are sharing the revenue. Any business would usually include share percentage. Google always gives vague unclear answers about the subject. If it’s bad, then you’re doing EVIL. If it’s good, then say it. One report was published before by New York Times based on announced 2006 Google financial reports estimating 78.5% of the AdSense clicks going to the publishers. Such a big number makes you wonder why wouldn’t Google reveal it. One reason I can think of is maybe they don’t want competitors to know the percentage and start a percentage share war.
All in all, Google remains a very strong source for advertising and revenue that I would like to see expand further. A bit more attention is required hoewever for customer needs.
The 67% increase in Xbox 360 sales did not save the company from reporting the 10.9% drop in net profits this last quarter, to only $4.3bn. The net revenue it self didn’t grow much either, less than 1% to $14.45bn. So the drop can’t only be blamed on the $1.42bn EU anti-trust fine.
That said, add to it the very slow growth Microsoft is getting in the online business, and to add insult to the injury, Gartner analyst have recently reported on the danger of Microsoft Windows collapsing due to it’s lack of competitiveness with the fast growing market. Come to think of it, really, for the leader in OS business, Microsoft haven’t been shaking things up at all. So maybe few years from know, Microsoft will receive door knocks by Yahoo for a buyout!
Upon request from macaholiQ8, I am reviewing this LCD 46″ V-Series screen from Sony. I should note that I’m not the expert in this field, but it’s mostly an end user opinion of it. Below are the specs, and my opinion along with it. Product Name: Sony LCD Bravia KLV-46V200A
SIZE: 46″
Supported Resolutions: 480p, 720p, 1080i - This is the drawback for HD Gamers who mostly would want to go with 1080p. Even though for me, when I tried the 1080i, I did not see huge improvement over 720p in the picture quality, and neither I noticed any problems with motion in video games. For more information about the two types, read the post 1080i & 1080p.
Input & Output Slots: The device comes with the widest range of possible options you may think of for connecting external equipments.
Side Slots: S VHS/Hi8/DVC camcoder & Headphones. So you can easily connet your camera to play videos, or your normal definition gaming device, e.g. Wii or PS2.
Back Slots: Loads of slots are there. Most important are PC IN, Digital Satellite Receiver, Digital Terrestrial Receiver, HDMI-IN (1 only), video game equipment, VCR, DVD Recorder, Hi-Fi audio equipment. Mostly, you won’t miss a thing. But the problem is, this LCD screen best fits on walls rather than TV stand, and once you do so, you will have to take the screen down every time you want to put or remove a new cable. And for that, it really takes two strong men to do. Your house mate won’t help much, I had to call my brother over to the house to get it down. The other option is, if you are so skinny, and lubricate your hand with oil, you might be able to slid your hand in the back and just get the cable in. I somehow managed to do that when I couldn’t wait any longer to play PS3 using the HDMI cable :). Point being is, I guess they could’ve made the wall hanger a bit adjustable to move back and forth when wanting to connect new equipments.
Viewing Angle: 178 Degrees. I’ve heard that others in numbers outdo this one, or that Plasma has a better viewing angle. Regardless of why you may want to watch the TV from such an angle, I have my TV in the living room, lay down in my bedroom and am able to watch it crystal clear though the door. I can’t wish for more than that.
Ghosting effect: Nothing yet.
Fast motion response: This one is usually a take against LCDs, but I’ve seen movies like Blood Diamond and Flags of our Father, watch soccer games, and played hard-core PS3 games with not a single problem yet thank God. Is this where the brand comes in handy? Maybe.
Additional Equipments: Alongside the LCD screen, I got the Sony DVD Home Theater System. It’s not cheap at all, but the great thing about it is, it includes 5 DVD-Exchanger with embedded sound amplifier. Also, the rear speakers are connected to the front ones via infrared. So no wiring all across the room is needed. If you notice the small deive on top left of the image, that’s the transmitter for infrared signal.
Why did I choose it?
Going through lots of reviews and comparisons between LCD and Plasma, while numbers in general favored Plasma, I still inclined towards the LCD. First, it does not have the Burn-In effect, and it’s much more suitable for gamers. Even though I didn’t have any plans for games at the time, I knew I won’t be able to resist for long. Second is LOVE. That’s right. You move inside the showroom, browsing tens of different screens, not even knowing the size, type, or brand of it. And you find your self suddenly standing infont of one only, staring at it. Saying, this is the one I want. I kept doing this for maybe 8 months. Everytime I enter Sony shop I stand infront of the same one. I went then to public showrooms showing different brands. I somehow found my self staring at the very same screen. It got on the nerve of all people around me. I kept saying I want it, and didn’t get it. They just shouted back, just get it “Theba7tna!”. Eventually I did.
Isn’t it so romantic? Let’s make a hollywood movie. Better than the Titanic. Point I want to make is, browse through all kinds, and see the one that you really like. The one that really catches your eyes (and fits your budget!).
Hope this little was a bit of help for some, at least MacaholiQ8. If you have specific question, please fire away.
IMG ALT attribute is an alternative text that is displayed to the user when the image is not found, giving the user a hint about what the image is. Typical example would go as this:
In most cases, you normally expect that the image will be shown rather than alternative text, and if you do have so many broken image links, then most likely the alternative text is not going to help you a lot attract many visitors anyways. That said however does not mean one should overlook the alt attribute at all, on the contrary. IMG ALT attribute is used by search engines like Google and Yahoo when indexing for images. The alt attribute is one very strong hint about the content of the image, and proper labeling would sure help the search engine return your images as relevant results to the users, and ofcourse, increase your site traffic.
Having followed that, and taking a look at Q8Ba7th site traffic, I found that over 3% of the total site traffic is coming from image searches, and not any image searches, but rather Google Image searches.
Two nice rules to follow for Image SEO are:
Image Names: Meaningful “-” separated file names, e.g. “Google-logo.jpg”
ALT Attributes: Short, meaningful and related, like alt=”Google logo”
Following such practices helps you get traffic, and the user get the desired images. Oh, and it also makes the job of the search engine a whole lot easier.
UPDATE: 3baid mentioned below the title attribute, which is used to give image description usually that the user sees when pointing his mouse over. It is also used for Image SEO, and while Google seems to be fine with one of them only, it’s probably a good idea for me as well to use both, as some other engines may use only one. I will need to look into how they treat it as spam. Video below posted on how Google treat the IMG attributes.
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