Oct 23

Google Feed Stats Stagnant for Last 10 Days

Posted in: Google, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on November 15, 2007 by CyberNet.

Many of you have probably heard of the Google Feedfetcher before if you’re a FeedBurner publisher. It is what Google uses to go and crawl RSS feeds for people subscribed to them using Google IG, Google Reader, and any other place Google displays feeds. Each time Google goes to fetch a feed it supplies the number of subscribers so that publishers know how many of their feed readers are using Google’s services.

The Google Feedfetcher appears to be having some major problems over the last week and a half correctly reporting the feed subscriber stats. On November 3rd Google didn’t report any of the reader stats, which caused some sites to have an alarmingly low number of feed subscribers. The same thing happened again on November 9th.

What’s even more interesting is that since November 4th the Google Feedfetcher has been reporting the same number of subscribers everyday. That essentially says that over the last 10 days we have not lost or gained any readers on Google, even on the weekends where our reader count heavily fluctuates:

Google Feed Stats Stagnant

Why is this significant? I’m not quite sure what this could mean, but Google is obviously tinkering with something that is screwing up the reporting functionality. Maybe it means that updates are coming to Google Reader, or maybe some of the FeedBurner stats will finally get integrated into Google Analytics?

For all of the publishers out there don’t be worried if you haven’t been gaining new readers. I’m sure there will be some sudden jumps when Google gets the kinks worked out.

Thanks to the How-To Geek for tipping me off on this!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 23

MyFive: Online Bargain Shopping

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on September 04, 2007 by CyberNet.

Claw Machine / Crane Sometimes finding a great deal online is like trying to win something out of a claw machine. The key is knowing how to beat the claw machines, and there are some techniques that can let you walk away a winner (watch the video at the end of this post).

Just like the claw machine you can also save a lot of money if you know where to look, and I’ve come up with a list of my favorite five places that I watch for great deals:

  • Slickdeals.net [RSS] – This is my favorite place to hunt down a deal because it has a huge community backing it up. If you want to find the deals before they hit the front page just watch the Hot Deals forum area [RSS]. If you create an account with them you can also setup keyword notifications for things such as “computers.” That way you’ll get emailed whenever a forum post matches your query.
  • FatWallet [RSS] – A site that is similar to SlickDeals. It has a very strong forum that receives hundreds of posts every day. Just like with SlickDeals you can get email alerts for keywords that you designate. Generally speaking the same things show up on here that show up on SlickDeals, but that’s because forum members from both sites copy off of each other.
  • DealsPlus [RSS] – I really like this site because it has an uncluttered interface, and an easy voting mechanism. The deals you’ll find here aren’t quite as amazing as those from FatWallet and SlickDeals, but it’s worth subscribing to the feed in my opinion.
  • Woot [RSS] – This is a pretty unique site in that sells one item per day at a significantly reduced price, and once it’s gone…it’s gone. I’ve actually found some great deals on their, such as a pocket hard drive, and you should checkout Ashley’s review of Woot for a more complete understanding of how it works.
  • DealCatcher [RSS] – This is my favorite place to search for coupons, and I always check for “promo” codes here before making a purchase at most online stores. If you’ve got some money burning a hole in your pocket hop on over to their page with the 50 most popular coupons.

I have a few other sites that I’ll check here and there, but I give the ones above the highest priority. You’ll notice that I included links to each of their RSS feeds as well, and that’s because it’s the easiest way to keep up with them. Let us know some of your favorite sites for saving money by dropping a comment below.

And finally let’s wrap things up with a video explanation on how to beat the claw machine:

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 23

Amazon (Alexa) vs. Statsaholic

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on April 20, 2007 by CyberNet.

StatsaholicYou’ve probably heard of Statsaholic by now.  It was formerly named Alexaholic, and the service allowed you to enter up to five different domains and compare their Alexa traffic statistics. They called it traffic comparisons on steroids, and it did everything that Alexa probably should have done from the start. It was a better product.

When Statsaholic first emerged, it turned out to be better than Alexa itself.  But the irony was, Alexa (Amazon) didn’t put up a fuss over this. Instead, they turned and complimented them for such a great service. This friendly side didn’t last though, because once more people learned of Alexaholic and they started using it instead of Alexa, the situation turned ugly.

Alexa decided they wanted ownership of the Alexaholic domain because of trademark issues. No problem. The owner of the site, Ron Horbaker went on to change the name to Statsaholic, and he said this change suited the site well for the upcoming changes he had in store.

After this change occurred without a glitch, Amazon decided they weren’t done yet. Recently they filed a lawsuit against Ron Horbaker, and according to ZDNet, they’re “suing him into oblivion.”

Now when you go to Statsaholic and enter in domain names to compare, it only returns a graph for one of the sites which makes the service pretty useless. Amazon is doing everything they can to keep Statsaholic from taking any of their users away, and on top of it, Alexa has essentially stolen their ideas.

Mashable has the 43 page filing, and the blogosphere is calling for a boycott of Amazon. While we really haven’t heard Amazon’s side of the story, it sounds to me like they’re bullying. It also sounds like it’s something that could have been settled without this big hoopla. It’s the big guy versus the little guy, and a lose-lose situation.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 23

Ever Wonder What Users Search for on Wikipedia?

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on June 05, 2007 by CyberNet.

Wikipedia has turned into a massive web-based free encyclopedia filled with never-ending content in over 200 different languages. Millions of people turn to Wikipedia on a regular basis to perform searches, including myself.  I’m sure many of you use it regularly as well, but have you ever wondered what other people are searching for?

Compete.com has the answer to that question.  For the month of April, they categorized the top 100 Wikipedia terms into general categories.  Topping the list with 28% was general research terms. It’s good to see that people actually use Wikipedia for what it was created to do, seeing that it’s an encyclopedia. The next top two categories are a little surprising though. Any guesses?

With 26%, Anime came in second and with 16%, sex came in third. Yes, 26% of the people coming to Wikipedia are searching for terms like Pokemon and Ranma 1/2. The graph below shows the 100 most popular search terms broken up:

Wikipediapiegraph

 

In regards to the 16% of people searching for sex, Compete points out:

“What’s interesting about the top sex related terms on Wikipedia is that they do not appear to have gratuitous intent. The top terms include very straightforward inquiries on human reproductive ‘parts’ and basic concepts of what sex is and how it is performed. It appears many people are learning about what sex is and how to have it by referencing Wikipedia.”

So there ya have it, the top 100 Wikipedia terms broken down into categories. I’d almost think that movies, pop culture and music could all be put into an entertainment category, but nonetheless it’s pretty captivating to see what people are up to on Wikipedia.

Source: AppScout

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 23

Get a Taste of RumShot, a Free Screen Capture Program

Posted in: Apple, Microsoft, Screenshots, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on January 24, 2007 by CyberNet.

Get a taste of RumShot! It’s an awesome free screen capture program. It’s not made to replace any screen capture software for everyday screenshots, instead it’s made to add frames, and borders to make your screen shots fancy. RumShot takes both a screenshot of your desktop, but also a preview shot which is what you’ll see below. Before you see the examples, here are a few things you’ll need to know.

First, nothing has to be installed which makes this super simple to use and get started with. All you have to do is unzip it, and then you’re ready to go! It does require.NET 2.0 framework (not a beta version) for it to work.  And, if you’re wanting the fancy borders, you’ll need to download their ThemePack with a ton of different options. Some of the options include a Sony PSP, Gameboy, and an Xbox theme.  Some are simple, others have more to them.  Regardless of the theme you use, it will still only take just a second to get your screen shot (a fixed dimension) to look like this:

 

It literally took me less than 3 minutes to create all of those images.  It’s just a matter of selecting your theme, aligning the fixed dimension box, and clicking to create a screenshot. You can download RumShot here, and a variety of themes including the ones used above, here.

 

Source: Digital Inspiration

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 22

Live Search 411 vs. GOOG 411 – Who Came First?

Posted in: Microsoft, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on October 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

livesearch 411 Yesterday Microsoft announced a new service called Live Search 411 which will be available soon. Listen to the description: “Customers can gain toll-free access by dialing (800) CALL-411 from any phone to find and connect to local businesses and other local information such as weather updates, movie show times and airline information.  People using a cell phone with Internet access can also receive links to traffic maps from Live Search 411.”

What’s that you say? It sounds similar to Google’s free service called GOOG-411? Well, it is, but who came first? Microsoft’s Live Search 411 was developed jointly with Tellme Networks  which they acquired back in mid-March. Some of you probably remember that about a month after Microsoft acquired them, and a week after Google launched their 411 service, Tellme launched their own 411 Service. Both were probably under development at the same time, but Google happened to launch theirs first.

At the time of the launch we did a quick comparison and found that Google’s service was a bit faster than Tellme’s, but Tellme offers much more information. We concluded that if you were doing a business search, stick with Google, but if you wanted something like stock quotes or weather, Tellme would give you what you want. Seeing as Microsoft’s Live Search 411 isn’t up and running yet, there’s no way to tell what the service will be like.

All I have to say is enough of the competition already. It seems like Google and Microsoft are ALWAYS competing, and it’s not that one is really worse than the other, they both do it. While competition is usually a good thing, often times when Microsoft and Google are competing, it hardly seems worth it. So who came first? Well, technically Google, but if I’m right, Microsoft’s service is just Tellme’s branded with a new name in which case they were in development at the exact same time.

Source: Webware

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 22

Yahoo Adds Drag and Drop to Maps

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites, Yahoo

This article was written on December 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

Back in June, Google Maps got a new drag and drop routes feature which allows someone to tweak the route that Google provides them so that it’s just the way they want it to be. Following in Google’s footsteps, Yahoo has added a drag and drop rerouting feature which can come in handy when you’re planning a trip and you prefer to go a different route than what it gives, or if you’re planning stops along the way.

To use this feature, just go to maps.yahoo.com and enter in your starting and ending destinations.  Yahoo will calculate the route and then a map will appear with the route highlighted in purple.  Just bring your mouse over the highlighted line and then at any point you can drag the mouse to adjust your route.  Once you do that, it will recalculate your route and give you a new trip distance and a new time.  It’ll also pop-up with a box that compares the two routes as shown below (click to enlarge): 

yahoo drag and drop

Adding the drag and drop feature wasn’t the only change though, Yahoo also made a few minor improvements to the business listings that will appear on the map. New additions include photos and users ratings which they gather from Yahoo Local. While both changes are nice to Yahoo Maps, I’m still a fan of Google Maps and the features and layout that they offer.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 22

Yahoo! Releases A User-Based Time Capsule

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on October 10, 2006 by CyberNet.

Yahoo Time Capsule Yahoo! has launched a unique Time Capsule service for the world to participate and share their words, photos, videos, sounds, or drawings. There are multiple categories that you can place your item in (seen in the image to the right) depending upon the feelings that you have for it.

Most of the categories are all positive except for Anger and Sorrow, which apparently have the least amount of submissions. So I thought that I would submit one under Anger of the thing that ruffles all of our feathers…the Blue Screen of Death on Windows. :)

The upload process was just a few steps and you had to do things like enter in tags for the items. They do require the submissions to be approved and they email you once it is with a direct link to view it (took about 30 seconds to receive my approval). Sometimes the direct link that they send works for me or sometimes it hangs while loading all of the pictures, but this is the direct link to my image in case you want to try it. Alternatively you can go to the Anger category and I’m currently the first one (they put the most recent submissions first). I also tagged the image with CyberNet so you can do a search for that and it will come up as well.

I really like this idea and hopefully it will spark a lot of people to participate in it. It is only available for the next 30 days so if you want to upload something you might want to make sure you don’t forget!

Thanks for the tip Radu!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 21

We’ve Got 123people Invites

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on February 20, 2008 by CyberNet.

We’ve got 123 invites to giveaway to CyberNet readers for a new people search engine called 123people.com. Before we get into the details about how you can get an invite, we’ll explain what the service is first.

In a nutshell, 123people uses an algorithm to aggregate publicly available information from all kinds of sites on the web. Their competitors include sites like Spock, and Wink.  Some of the information that they collect includes:

  • email addresses
  • postal addresses
  • telephone numbers
  • videos
  • photos
  • tags and comments from social sites

123people

The list of sites they gather information from is pretty lengthy and includes sources like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, YouTube and Wikipedia. Users are able to claim, tag, vote, and comment on aggregated profiles.

They already launched in Europe and now they’re preparing to launch in the United States.  Part of that preparation is opening up their private beta to US based users.  The only downside is that search results at this point are optimized for European users so keep that in mind while you’re using the service.

Get an Invite

Here’s how you get an invite.  The first 123 people in the United States only that send an email to cybernetnews@123people.com will receive an invite. That’s all there’s to it!

123people in other countries

We know that there are a lot of readers from Europe, and 123people has country specific sites available. They are as follows:

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 21

ESET Online Virus Scanner Really Helped Me in a Pinch

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on July 22, 2011 by CyberNet.

Free online antivirus scanner

A few weeks ago someone came to me with their computer because it was in a virtually unusable state. They couldn’t download and install any applications anymore because of multiple viruses they managed to get infected with, and their existing antivirus app had been expired for quite awhile (sigh).

Since I couldn’t install anything I decided to turn to ESET’s free online antivirus scanner, and it worked beautifully. It runs in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Netscape, and Safari browsers without needing to actually install an application. In a few clicks I was able to kick off a scan, and it would show each virus it found as it chugged along. I don’t use online antivirus scanners often, but in this situation it saved me a lot of headaches.

Here are some of the features of the ESET Online Scanner:

  • Uses the most current threat signatures and heuristic detection algorithms available from ESET’s Threat Lab.
  • Detects both known and unknown forms of malware, such as viruses, worms, Trojans, phishing and spyware.
  • All infiltrations and infected files are moved into the quarantine where they no longer represent any threat for your computer. In addition, quarantined files can be restored or deleted permanently.

Once ESET finished it managed to clean off about a half-dozen different viruses, and the machine was purring along just fine again. As much as I love ESET in the end I still ended up installing Microsoft Security Essentials on their computer because, well, having a free antivirus app installed on someone else’s machine is the way to go since you know they’d never renew a paid program.

Just remember that these online antivirus scanners are there to provide help when you don’t have many other places to turn. It also doesn’t hurt to run them on your own system from time-to-time to get a different set of “eyeballs” looking at your system.

ESET Online Virus Scanner

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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