Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

With recent news of either Tr.im url shortening service closing, Tr.im staying opening, or via TechCrunch, Tr.im Cuts Off Bit.ly’s 301works Idea, Wants to Sell, I am finding it a better venture to just have your own URL shortener. In fact, I have found quite a few recent articles that have stemmed from this Tr.im mess. Regardless if Twitter prefers one url shortener service over another because of close ties, or Tr.im was closing or selling, people only want to know if the service is going to continue and if they can use the service when tweeting links. People want a reliable service, even if it is free.

Shortened URLs are a wonderful resource to use with Twitter, Facebook, and many other social networks because it saves space and the potential eyeful of a URL with many characters. Of course, people could have shorter titles for their blogs, but what fun would that be if you cannot play with words. The title is very much the first thing a person sees and if it is catchy, people are apt to check it out.

Many of the free services are highly competitive for visitors attention. While some people love TinyURL.com, others like bit.ly, or another related short url service with a very short URL like tr.im, they all practically do the same. Some offer user accounts so you can monitor your submissions, and others have different ways of coding. All are usually free. Some have advertisements to monetize the site. However, they are all useful.

There are even free resources that you can install and have your own URL shortener on your domain, or even a side domain. I offer a free GPL one you can install and customize called PHPurl. I am in the works of continuing the PHPurl project to contain a WordPress plugin to twitter with the script using your chosen url shortener, even ones using PHPurl as its core. I also may come up with a captcha version. I am the only developer working on it, and so far my plate has been busy with other things that pay to put food on my son’s and my own plate.

Of course, there are more free URL shortener scripts that you can download. In fact, WebResources Depot has a great list.

What url shortening service do you use? What do you think about being able to having your own url shortener on your domain? And of course, what kind of suggestion would you like to see in PHPurl in the future?

With the Denial-of-Service Attack (DOS) on Twitter in early August 2009, it has some users wondering what it is and how to prevent it.

According to Wikipedia, a denial-of-service attack is:

A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users.

Some ways to create a DoS attack are ping flood, ping of death (PoD), smurfing, IRC flood, nuke, peer-to-peer, fraggling, SYN flood, teardrop, and distrubuted denial of service attack (DDoS). Actually, there are a lot more funny terms for DoS attacks. In the simplest manner, each of these DoS attacks require intense communication between between a computer or several computers to disrupt the site’s server by either using all its resources or slowing it down until it cannot be accessed properly. You can find out more at Wikipedia for each of the DoS terms.

I have had this happen on the first server I co-owned when I started webhosting. We had just reached 350 clients when that had happened and it was only a minor setback. Still, it was annoying and because most of these attackers use spoof IP addresses, it is hard to track, so I left it up to the company that leased the servers to go after the culprit. That is pretty much you can do when attack as it is illegal anyway. Server-side, our server was upgraded to prevent further attacks.

However, to prevent this, it is recommended your servers are up-to-date with the software and hardware on the server, especially those with features that can prevent flooding. Many major sites, even Microsoft have been victims of DoS attacks, so it is not all that uncommon. It might be lame advice, but it is the first prevention against such and your best defense up front.

Have you ever witnessed a DoS attack on a site? Was it yours? What other advice can you give to those wanting to know more about preventing DoS attacks?

Game applications have been quite popular the past few years on various social networks like MySpace and Facebook. In fact, one of the most popular out there is Mafia Wars.

There have been others that have surfaced and users flock to try them out. I have even joined a few. However, I am finding something quite disturbing – the fact that these applications are asking people to buy points (or whatever they are called for each application) with real money. What are the points used for? Well, they can be used for special defense/ offense items, or towards game money, or energy refills to do battle with other game opponents.

In Sorority Life, you can buy 20 brownie points (their point system) for $5. The special items offered are between 12-19 brownie points a piece, meaning you have to really pay some money as the opportunities to obtain free brownie points are like pulling teeth.

The question is: why is it so expensive? How much is Zynga, who owns Mafia Wars, Vampire Wars, and many other game which they boast an increase of 12 million users in two weeks? (As a huge note, Sorority Life is not owned by Zynga, but by Playdom.) I understand that some of the money goes to technicians, graphic artists, server expenses, and some for the company, but what about a little relief for the gamers? Why not give back to their users and lower their special items?

Of course, for those who have a lot of money to waste on something they would not be able to show anything for, it would be no worries. However, there are game rental sites online that you can be sent games for a low cost per month.

Do you play these interactive games? What do you think of it? Expensive? Do not care? Have you bought points through these applications?

I could not pass up this opportunity to share this contest. It is the Yamaha neoHD Sweepstakes . In fact, for me it is very relevant as I have several remote controls and a lot of times I am looking around for the remote. On top of that, I have a television in my living, my bedroom, and my son’s room. So, that is a lot of remotes to keep track of. Just for my living room, I have my stereo, my DVD/VCR player, and of course the television, and then the surround sound system. It is quite annoying and no matter how many times I vow to stick every remote in a certain place, it seems to never work out that way.

What is a neoHD? Well, it is an all-in-one remote that can control up to 6 AV components including Blu-Ray and some game systems. The controller boasts to be advanced and give complete control but made for simplicity.

It is simple to apply to for the contest to win a Yamaha neoHD. You can go to the Izea Blog ( blog.izea.com ) and follow their instructions. Another way is if you are on twitter to tweet – “I just entered to win a #neoHD b/c I have too many remotes, visit (blog.izea.com) to enter”.

It does not hurt to enter and and for those tech guys who love nifty gadgets, this post is right up your alley.

How many remotes do you have? Is this a contest you would enter?

After Yahoo! posted on their corporate blog their acquisition of Xoopit, I am still reeling about them closing GeoCities. This is insane! Not only that, but they failed to even mention ANYWHERE in their corporation blog about the closing.

Literally millions used Yahoo! GeoCities free hosting. October 26, 2009 is the official closing day and yet they redirect their free hostees to other companies? What is with that move? I asked in another blog this mysterious and unanswered question, Yahoo!GeoCities – Why Get Rid of a Good Thing?

It is a move that I am pretty sure that when people hear about Xoopit being assimilated into Yahoo! so people can have photos displayed in their email account. Okay, but no thanks anyway since one of my oldest email addresses I have is a Yahoo! email and it is extremely bulky, in my opinion. Then, there was the fact that Yahoo! had closed Yahoo! Briefcase too, in March 2009 and Yahoo! 360 closed July 13, 2009. Okay, so they closed one, have Flickr, and now Xoopit.

Make up your mind Yahell!

Anyone else confused with Yahoo! and their juggling act?

In late May 2009, I applied to become a social media intern for FanHistory.com (the company is FanHistory LLC.) Fanhistory as I mentioned in another blog is a wiki site for fans. Already this site had over 750,000 articles in a variety of fandoms when I took the position. When I first joined, the site was barely pushing 2,000 visitors a day and now only a few months later, it is pushing 3,000 visitors a day. The owner had already made several social identities dedicated to bringing the site’s content to as many people as possible.

Some of their social identities include:
- Group page and a Fan Page on Facebook
- Account at Identi.ca
- Account at Twitter

…as well as various accounts through Fanpop, LiveJournal, and many more.

The one thing that I think is interesting about FanHistory.com is that not one person can really say that they are not a fan of anything. Fandom can contain celebrities, pop culture, internet websites, hobbies, writing, and so much more. This site is relevant to most anyone. That is why the data is the most precious commodity this site holds. FanHistory has a lot of potential educational value for those wanting to document and learn about the different aspects of each fandom. It is ran by volunteers who have an passion or even an interest on certain topics in fandom.

When Michael Jackson passed, myself as well as Laura Hale (the founder of FanHistory.com), and the other administrators of FanHistory.com scurried to make a decent page for the pop icon. Why? Because at the time he was a relevant topic and we were sorely lacking in information on him. After filling his page out, plugging it in the various social networks and even I re-tweeted it through my own stream, traffic has gone up. This is just one topic of several and even David Spark wrote about it at Mashable recently in the article, Trending Topics: 5 Ways Companies Used News Trends for Business Success. As a side note, FanHistory.com was also spotlighted at AboutUs.org for July 2009.

Of course, for those involved in fandom that have fanfiction sites, celebrity gossip sites, fanart sites, and just about anything fan-related can easily become involved in contributing. On a SEO angle, you would be able to add your link to the relevant topics that are on FanHistory.com, therefore getting a link back to your site. It is a no brainer in my opinion, especially when adding the link to your relevant topic is free, and the site gets a pretty good amount traffic.

Now, this is just a beginning to this case study, but with further work, I am confident that all of the administrators will make FanHistory.com soar in traffic. Of course, my hopes are that other tech sites like TechCrunch, and WebProNews can write FanHistory.com. It might not be as fancy, but it is definitely full of relevant information to those looking for a central point for their fandom. In a way it is a wiki and a web directory in one.

The bottom line is -plugging your site into the social network does take a bit of work, but with a bit of time, it does pay off. Try it if you have not already.

Have you ever to contribute to FanHistory? Do you have a site that you have used social media techniques and have made your site more success?

Since the recent article TechCrunch published, Twitter’s Internal Strategy Laid Bare: To Be “The Pulse Of The Planet”, it has gotten a lot of attention. Both from its own readers, the web community and Twitter too. TechCrunch had published confidential information about Twitter. However Evan Williams of Twitter had said otherwise that TechCrunch did not have such permission to share such documents.

There are people asking others to boycott TechCrunch while others praise TechCrunch and say Twitter is clueless on how to run their business due to the fact there has been no definite business model. Others like WebPro News questions – Who’s Right: TechCrunch or Twitter?

My own opinion is that TechCrunch should have gotten in touch with Twitter no matter what came through their inbox on what could be divulged. Twitter is entitled to keep their business model under wraps and their employee information by law is confidential. Was this a ploy of wankage by TechCrunch to get attention? Who knows, but at least Twitter came back with a response on their company blog (by the way… someone tell them to switch to WordPress please…perhaps Matt Mullenweg could?)

Biz Stone wrote:

Nevertheless, the publication of stolen documents is irresponsible and we absolutely did not give permission for these documents to be shared.

So, what do you think? Should TechCrunch issue a retraction, or will this be quite damaging to TC’s reputation? Was it a wankage scheme to discredit twitter as well as get more attention? Is boycotting TechCrunch a suitable action?

EDIT: Please be sure to note that I am not boycotting TechCrunch. In my personal opinion, it is ridiculous to do so as TechCrunch does have a lot of great material to read and learn and enjoy. However, as I have previously said, I do believe TechCrunch should at least issue some apology. I would think if someone got information like they did of TechCrunch like what happened with Twitter, that they would want to be informed and asked if it was okay to go ahead and publish, or to what information could be given out. Also, if a hacker gives out information in the spirit of helpfulness, this is not the case. They should have told Twitter and helped by giving tips. Perhaps they would have been hired by Twitter for helping them rather than making a scandal of it. I did not think TechCrunch was a tabloid, but I also just got tired of seeing people post about them wanting to boycott and wanted to know if it was really necessary and why? It was pointless to comment at TechCrunch because half of the comments were like walking into a forum with half the responses with no point despite there was a topic at hand.

Yes, it is old news, but it is great news that bbPress 1.0 is released. Another project from the creators of WordPress, bbPress is a forum script. It even allows you to integrate the forum smoothly with your website because the php call functions are quite similar.

bbPress boast to be lean code-wise, secure, and quite flexible. There are already many plugins created to expand your own personal installation. I have set up quite a few bbPress forums for clients and they have loved it. The most attractive is the security. If anyone has ever had a phpBB forum, you know it WILL eventually be hacked no matter how many times it has been updated. The core has never been reworked properly and of course, it is very bulky.

I am contemplating adding a forum onto Blondish.net for support questions, but I will be also putting a price on support as I am fielding quite a few. Most of them ask me to correct their installation and this takes a chunk out of my time. Most of these I do without being paid, so I have to put a stop on it. I will definitely be using bbPress for that forum.

I have been following bbPress updates for quite some time, and I am extremely happy to see another WordPress product out for people to use. I am hoping for our cPanel Fantastico users, that bbPress will become available as an automatic install. I asked during WordCamp Chicago 2009 about this and apparently it is in the works, though there is not a definitely release date.