TechSlip.net

I have been using EzineArticles.com for about 2 years, although I haven’t used it as much as I do now. I started publishing new articles recently (technology articles) and I received an e-mail saying that I was promoted to a Platinum member, which was awesome news. Well today I received a great complimentary package in the mail. The package included a note card with a message saying congratulations on reaching Expert Level (not sure why it didn’t say Platinum), a high quality over-sized coffee mug, a custom leather coaster, and some Door Country Gourmet Coffee (which was tasty!).

Thank you EzineArticles!

This article has been republished from 3arn.net, with the permission of Abdul Rehman Agha, it’s owner. 3arn.Net is a blog where you can learn how to earn money online. Consider dropping by the blog and subscribing to it.

In my previous article about the virus attack or shall I say the torrent attack, I got multiple requests regarding what should be considered to find the best torrents and not being attacked by a virus. I have been through this and ever since I developed a few set of rules for every torrent that I downloaded and I did find the best torrents to download ever since, here are those 5 rules:

1. The most important thing is to check the date when the torrent was added, make sure that the torrent is at least 5 days old, because if it is a virus it may takes up to 3 days for it to be discovered as a virus and cleaned from the system.
2. Read the comments, and do not fall for it if there are as less as 3 comments. Usually if it is a virus, the person who made it can add 3 comments from different accounts just to make people believe in it. People usually tell in comments about the torrent, for example they’ll tell you if it is a virus.
3. The ratio between seeders and leechers is a very important aspect. Make sure that the ratio of seeders to leechers is somewhere around 5 : 4 or something similar to that. In case 1 if there are a lot more seeders than leechers then you can consider yourself to be wasting time to set it to downloading as you would not get any downloading speed, in Case 2 if there are five time more seeders than the leechers, then there is something fishy as hackers know how to easily fake the seeders count, if you’re not very good in mathematical ratios then check the Seeder Leecher Ratio Calculator and enter either the seeder or leecher of a torrent and it will tell you the suitable amount of the other one.
4. Use a good torrent site and always search for the same torrent in all of them as it will help you find the best one, I recommend the torrent sites listed below as they are the most reliable ones, although the first is  the most recommended but the rest torrent search engines are not that bad either:
   1. btjunkie
   2. Pirate Bay
   3. Mini Nova
5. Download torrents from famous users. Anonymous users usually put torrents of malicious softwares, for example if you want to download latest English movies you should search for the movies by aXXo or KLAXXON. It is best not to download torrents from guest and anonymous users.

I follow these 5 steps and have found the right torrents ever since, and this not only finds the right torrent but also protects you from virus torrents, and trust me you don’t want to be attacked by one!

TechSlip.net guest post by : Robin Smith from Vertical Leap

You may not know it but your business could definitely benefit from search engine marketing services.

Why? Because the chances are, your competitors are taking an active approach – and Google’s “organic results” are becoming anything but.

That sentence might need a bit of explaining if you’re a complete novice to how search engines work. Put as simply as possible, search engines try to rank websites by relevance – delivering the site that they think users will most want to click on for any given search query. Of course the tricky bit is how they work out this relevancy, given that this is a computer programme interpreting a few phrases from one of several million possible users. The open secret behind search engines is that they use an algorithm for this.

Of course since you could actively add ‘relevancy’ to your site if you knew how the exact details of these algorithms, then it’d be an easy task to get your website to the top of any query you could imagine. However there are two things that stand against this; one is that there are a lot of potential keywords and search queries out there and you couldn’t possibly hit them all. The second reason is that these algorithms are complicated – and they’re also a closely guarded secret.

This is where search engine marketing services enter the picture. There are two basic approaches for visibility in search engines – paid, or organic. Don’t be fooled by the names as both will take time and money to achieve.

Basically, Paid Search is where you take out an advertisement so that your site appears alongside the normal search results. Using Google as an example, this would be the AdWords system – the links alongside the right and immediately at the top of search results. These adverts are charged for every click – every ‘conversion’ – that users of the search engine make on them.

The twist is that the cost of these clicks are worked out via bidding; you set up an AdWords account and you set budget limits and keyword choices for your campaign and the system does the rest. You can do these yourself, but you can lose a lot of money on wasted keywords if you’re not careful. A professional will keep your campaign closely targeted and will also make sure that your competitors aren’t bidding you out of the marketplace.

Then there’s search engine optimisation – making your site appear higher in ‘organic’ results. This field of search engine marketing has grown dramatically in the past few years and basically amounts to tweaking your website so that Google (or other engines) give it a better ranking for the desired keyword. Some of this takes part on the website – targeting keywords in metatags, headers, page content and the like – and some of this takes part offsite, in what is known as ‘linkbuilding’.

All of this is complicated by the fact that search engines are constantly updating their algorithms, providing only the most cryptic clues to the wider SEO community who constantly probe to see how they can target keywords more effectively. Simply following the formula isn’t enough either, as most engines have checks in place to screen out sites that are too focused on SEO – that are targeting visibility over true relevancy through spam messages.

Keeping on the right side of this and keeping up to date is a constant battle – and its made more difficult by the fact that so much of what you do is ‘tidal’; depending on what other websites in the search index are doing. Unless you have the resources to dedicate a member of staff to SEO in-house, or unless your site gains huge amounts of traffic by itself (the most effective SEO possible – but the least controllable), then you’ll likely need outside expertise to reach customers via search.

When it comes to having your own blog/website, probably the second most important thing is the name of your domain (first would be content). Why is it so important to have a good domain name and how do you choose one? Well I will explain here with a few tips.

Choosing The Domain Name

The name of your website domain is very important because it is what visitors see when coming to your blog/website, and if it is something they can easily remember then it will be more effective. Having a good domain name will grab the attention of your visitors and they will be able to share it easily with friends or other sites. Here are a few good basic tips when picking out a name.

• Try to keep your domain name short, usually two or three words
• Make sure the words are spelled correctly
• Abbreviations work great if they are available
• If possible try not to use “z” to replace “s”, because it can confuse people and they may end up typing the wrong name
• If your domain choice is unavailable, try to place a “-” in between a word. This can help if the name is short, but can get confusing if the name is long. Try to stick with one “-”
• Keep the name related to your blog/website. You don’t want to have a name called “dogs.com” when you write about cats.

.Com vs .Net

When choosing a domain name, does it really matter if it is a .com or a .net? Well there are a few ups and downs to having a .net. Most internet users associate .com with websites so it just clicks in their head and is easy to remember, but if you choose a .net domain be sure to advertise your blog/website as the full name. For example my blog here at TechSlip.net, when I tell others about this blog or I write an article then I will say TechSlip.net instead of TechSlip because some people may just assume it is .com.

Having a .net can be good since it is different than the same old .com names and stands out. Just make sure people realize it is .net and you always put it when advertising. You do not want to send visitors to your competition’s website from making a simple mistake.

So I would recommend getting a .net domain if your choice for a .com is taken, but if a .com is available then grab it quickly and use it.

Price and Where To Buy

You can purchase domains on a few different websites but the most popular ones are 1and1.com and GoDaddy.com. Both sites are reliable and I use both of their services.

Prices for a domain are very reasonable. You can purchase a domain for under $10 per year.

I hope this little guide will help you out when it comes to choosing a domain name. Please share this post if you find it helpful.

This is the official updated Top 10 (source from Alexa.com)website list for the United States. I am very surprised that Twitter isn’t in the top 10 yet, but they are crawling fast at number 12. Out of all of these websites, the ones I do NOT visit are Live.com and MySpace.com.

Do you think that Facebook will ever take over #1 place to bump off Google? Which of the top 10 don’t you visit?

I’ve decided to make a post about my Twitter stats for the month so far. I use Twitter for sharing new posts from the website, tweet tips and links, plus other random stuff. It is a great tool for connecting people to my website and keeping them updated. I created my account last year but never used it because I didn’t think Twitter was that popular, but then I realized how helpful it can be and started using it last month.

As you can see below, just last month I started out with 17 followers, and today it is at 272 (also in 8 user lists). That is a pretty big jump for one month and I am happy with the results. I followed the tips that I wrote about in a previous article called “6 Tips For Getting Twitter Followers” My goal is to have 1,000 followers by the end of April. Let’s see if I can get there!

I have usually had bad luck with PayPal but of course like most people, sometimes you just have to use it. Well last week was a day that I decided to purchase a “Featured Listing” on Sedo.com for a web domain that I wanted to sell. The cost for a 30 day featured listing is about $40, which doesn’t sound too bad if you can sell a decent domain name for a couple of hundred bucks.

So I purchased the featured listing, went to checkout with PayPal, and the payment went through and my listing was paid for. Sounded good and I was happy. Well then I receive an e-mail from PayPal stating my account has been set to “Limited” because of suspicious activity on my account. I have never had an account limitation before so I found it strange that this happened only after my Sedo purchase.

I checked my PayPal account and messed with that for a few hours because in order for them to remove this “limited account”, they had to verify my location and blah blah. The payment sent to Sedo showed “Temporary Hold” because of the limited account. So finally after getting everything fixed, my payment to Sedo was shown as sent.

This all happened on the first day I placed my order, and my listing was shown within a day. So I was happy and everything seemed fixed. WELL then Sedo decided to e-mail me two days after the payment was sent and my PayPal account was fine, to tell me that the payment was held and my account was limited through PayPal, and once it was fixed they would place my listing back up. Well my account WAS fixed and had been for nearly 3 days and NOW they tell me there is a problem. So I emailed the person back to tell them it was fixed and to place my listing back up.

My listing was never placed back on the “Featured” homepage or the full featured list at all. They have not replied back to any e-mails, I am out $40, and I only received barely 2 days of featured listing. I would NOT recommend Sedo at all for premium services. They are only worth using for domain parking, and waiting to sell a domain. I am very disappointed in PayPal and Sedo for all of this hassle and rip off madness.

That’s my $40 thought! Take it to the bank and shove it Sedo/PayPal.

TechCrunch announced yesterday that they are giving away 1 FREE iPad to one lucky person! It is the 16GB WiFi version that retails at $499. All they ask you to do is to Fan their FaceBook page and to retweet their article. Tons of people are commenting and trying to win this, but at least the odds are better than the lotto. For the full article and information by TechCrunch visit http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/12/techcrunch-friday-giveaway-an-apple-ipad-crunch/ . Hurry up because the winner is chosen TODAY!

Well since Twitter, Google Buzz, and Facebook are all popular websites, it seems like everyone is creating a website that allows users to share and re-share content. There is already Tweetmeme, ReBuzzThis, and lots of others. Next will be a Facebook sharing website, which I am sure there are some already but I haven’t looked much since I do not use Facebook often.

Anyway I have bought a couple of domains that may be handy for someone who has an idea for a handy Facebook sharing website. The domains are http://www.fbthis.com and http://www.rebookthis.com. Both are short, easy to remember, and are related to Facebook. So if you are interested and want to make an offer, just contact me on the website here or through Sedo.com. Thanks!

The 17 year old Russian, Andrey Ternovskiy decided to make a new and exciting chat website that would change the way people chat via webcam. The website is becoming a big hit and is being featured on news stations everywhere. It already attracts more than 20,000 visitors per day. The idea behind Chatroulette goes something like this, you join the site via webcam and are connected to another totally random webcam user. Teens are finding the website to be cool but parents on the other hand think differently. Jon Stewart used the website so it is even capturing a celebrity’s attention.

I personally think the idea is ridiculous and needs to be improved a LOT. So I have created a list of 5 reasons why Chatroullete sucks (sorry Andrey)

1. The person you are connected to is 100% random – I do not want to hop into a webcam chat and then come face to face with some 80 year old man wearing just underwear in his living room. It’s just not for me really. I mean cheers to the old man wearing underwear but dang that’s sick.
2. The age requirement is 16 years old – Ok….like this is going to keep kids under the limit away. Just like every other website, young people will want in and they will get in. Now giving them access to older men/women’s webcams. Who knows what they are doing. It is a parents worst nightmare to think their kid may be on video chat with a pedophile.
3. Just hit the “Next” button if you don’t like the person – With the amount of users on the website and the personal appearance preferences for people, they may have to click next a thousand times, just to find someone they find interesting or attractive. Unless you are bored to death or drunk and don’t care who you talk to, then maybe this works out well.
4. The layout makes me want to run away. I see two boxes and some text, all in black and white……..oh wait there is a link in blue.
5. The name alone makes me think of Russian Roulette (which is odd because this was made in Russia) and already I want to blow my brains out from the idea of it.