Visitor Identification Methods Through Urchin

If I save an interesting-page, I see a file named "urchin" in javascript format. But I did'nt find it if I sae mine. So, I try to find more about this item in google search engine. Finally, I found a site explained about it.

I will re-write here about the explanation so that I keep it in my this dear-blog directory.

The site explanation is folowing :

Overview

Urchin has five different methods for identifying visitors and sessions, depending on available information. Of these, the patent-pending Urchin Traffic Monitor (UTM) is a highly accurate system that was specifically designed to identify unique visitors, sessions, exact paths, and return frequency behavior. There are a number of visitor loyalty and client reports that are only available when using the UTM System. The UTM System is easy to install and is highly recommended for all businesses.

In addition to the UTM System, Urchin can use IP addresses, User-Agents, Usernames, and Session-IDs to identify sessions. The following table compares the abilities of each of the five identification techniques:

Ability	IP Only	IP+User-Agent	Username	Session ID	UTM
Identifies non-proxied sessions	X	X	X	X	X
Identifies some proxied sessions		X	X	X	X
Uniquely identifies each session				X	X
Defeats session IP proxying				X	X
Defeats most provider caching				X	X
Defeats browser caching					X
Uniquely identifies visitors			X		X
Captures exact path sequence					X
Captures visitor loyalty metrics					X
Captures browser capabilities					X

Data Model

The underlying model within Urchin for handling unique visitors is based on a hierarchical notion of a unique set of visitors interacting with the website through one or more sessions. Each session can contain one or more hits and pageviews. Pageviews are kept in order so that a path through the website for each session is understood. As shown in the diagram, the Visitor represents an individual's interaction with the website over time. Each unique visitor will have one or more sessions, and within each session is zero or more pageviews that comprise the path the visitor took for that session.

Proxying and Caching

In attempting to identify and track unique visitors and sessions, we are basically going against the nature of the web, which is anonymous interaction. Particularly troublesome to tracking visitors are the increasingly common proxying and caching techniques used by service providers and the browsers, themselves. Proxying hides the actual IP address of the visitor and can use one IP address to represent more than one web user. A user's IP address can change between sessions and in some cases multiple IP addresses will be used to represent a cluster of users. Thus, it is possible that one visitor will have different IP addresses for each hit and/or different IP addresses between sessions.

Caching of pages can occur at several locations. Large providers look to decrease the load on their network by caching or remembering commonly viewed pages and images. For example, if thousands of users from a particular provider are viewing the CNN website, the provider may benefit from caching the static pages and images of the website and delivering those pieces to the users from within the provider's network. This has the effect of pages being delivered without the knowledge of the actual website.

Browser caching adds to the question. Most browsers are configured to only check content once per session. If a visitor lands on the home page of a particular website, clicks to a subpage, and then uses the back-button to go back to the home page, the second request of the home page is most likely never sent to the website server, but pulled from the browser's memory. An analysis of paths may result in an incomplete path missing the cached pages.

In the above diagram, the actual path taken through the website by the client is shown at the top, while the apparent path from the server's point of view is shown at the bottom. In this case, before proceeding to Page-3 the user goes back to the Page-1. The server never sees this request and from its point of view it appears the user went directly from Page-2 to Page-3. There may not even be a link from Page-2 to Page-3.

Visitor Identification Methods

As mentioned previously, Urchin has five different methods for identifying visitors, sessions and paths. The more sophisticated methods which can address the above issues may require special configuration of your website. The following descriptions describe the workings of each method in more detail.

1. IP-Only: The IP-Only method is provided for backward compatibility with Urchin 3, and for basic IT reporting where uniquely identifying sessions is not needed. This method uses only the IP Address to identify visitor sessions. Thirty minutes of inactivity will constitute a new session. The only data requirements for using this method is a timestamp and IP Address of the visitor.

2. IP-Agent: The default method, which requires no additional configuration, uses the IP address and user-agent (browser) information to determine unique sessions. A configurable thirty-minute timeout is used to identify the beginning of a new session for a visitor. While this method is still susceptible to proxying and caching, the addition of the user-agent information can help detect multiple users from one IP address. In addition, this method includes a special AOL filter, which attempts to reduce the impact of their round-robin proxying techniques. This method does not require any additional configuration.

3. Usernames: This method is provided for secure sites that require logins such as Intranets and Extranets. Websites that are only partially protected should not use this method. The Username identification is taken directly from the username field in the log file. This information is generally logged if the website is configured to require authentication. This method uses a thirty-minute period of inactivity to separate sessions from the same username.

4. Session ID: The fourth visitor identification method available in Urchin is the Session ID method, which can use pre- existing unique session identifiers to uniquely identify each session. Many content delivery applications and web servers will provide session ids to manage user interaction with the webserver. These session ids are typically located in the URI query or stored in a Cookie. As long as this information is available in the log data, Urchin can be configured to take advantage of these identifiers. Using session ids provides a much more accurate measurement of unique sessions, but still does not identify returning unique visitors. This method is also susceptible to some forms of caching including the above example.

In many cases, the ability to use session ids may already be available, and thus, the time required to configure this feature may be short. For dynamically generated sites, taking advantage of this feature should be straightforward. The result is more accurate visitor session and path analysis.

5. Urchin Traffic Monitor (UTM): The last method for visitor identification available in Urchin is the Urchin Tracking Module. This system was specifically designed to negate the effects of caching and proxying and allow the server to see every unique click from every visitor without significantly increasing the load on the server. The UTM system tracks return visitor behavior, loyalty and frequency of use. The client-side data collection also provides information on browser capabilities.

The UTM is installed by including a small amount of JavaScript code in each of your webpages. This can be done manually or automatically via server side includes and other template systems. Complete details on installing UTM are covered in the articles later in this section.

Once installed, the Urchin Traffic Monitor is triggered each time someone views a page from the website. The UTM Sensor uniquely identifies each visitor and sends one extra hit for each pageview. This additional hit is very lightweight and most systems will not see any additional load. The Urchin engine identifies these extra hits in the normal log file and uses this additional data to create an exact picture of every step taken by the users. This method also identifies visitors and sessions uniquely so that return visitation behavior can be properly analyzed. While this method takes a little extra time to configure, it highly recommended for comprehensive detailed analytics.

Facebook welcomes outside services

By Greg Sandoval
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

update SAN FRANCISCO--Facebook is finally opening up to third-party software developers--a move that comes three years after rival MySpace jumped to a staggering lead in social networking largely by throwing the doors open to outside services.

Facebook announced Thursday that the No. 2 social-networking site is allowing software developers to create applications, or "widgets," for Facebook users. MySpace executives may yawn, but Facebook is also going to allow other companies to open retail services and advertise on the site, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced at a media event here Thursday.

"You can serve ads...or if you don't want to advertise, you can just sell something," Zuckerberg told an audience of journalists and outside developers. "You keep all the revenue."

This contrasts sharply with MySpace's philosophy. It's against MySpace rules for anyone other than MySpace to advertise on the site.

At the core of Facebook's new plans is the debut of Facebook/f8, a platform that allows anyone to build applications for social computing. The company is hoping that its 23 million monthly users and the opportunity to create for-profit businesses will attract developers to build a host of new networking services on top of the f8 infrastructure.

"Facebook is really trying to catch up technologically," said Emily Riley, an analyst with JupiterResearch. "They were lucky to build a loyal audience fast, but they don't have the media play that MySpace has. MySpace is the perfect combination of communication and new media."

Facebook has lagged behind MySpace in offering users a wide array of services that keep them engaged and spending more time on a site. The longer users stay logged on, the happier the site's advertisers.

MySpace was founded in November 2003, just three months before Facebook, but has accumulated nearly three times the traffic.

According to comScore, MySpace, which News Corp. acquired in 2005 for $500 million, saw 66 million monthly visitors in April compared with Facebook's 23 million.

Beginning Thursday night, Facebook announced that users will be able to equip their profiles with 65 new services, including photo slide shows (Slide), a music recommendation service (iLike) and a music player (Uber). A new video application will allow Facebook users to send video messages directly to friends within Facebook.

For many, Facebook has long been considered an online hangout for college kids, but Zuckerberg said the company is growing up. He pointed out during the press conference that now, 60 percent of Facebook's users are out of college.

During the press conference, Zuckerberg downplayed the possibility that Facebook's new open-door policy was late. He said that up until now, third-parties were allowed only to "drop some widgets" into a site.

"This is the first time that anyone has ever offered a platform that allows others to build full applications into a social-networking site," he said.

Nonetheless, Owen Van Natta, Facebook's chief operating officer, appeared to acknowledge that Facebook needed to one-up MySpace to attract developers.

"We needed a competitive edge," Van Natta said. "We want to create the most attractive site for developers to develop applications and a big part of that is to allow them to build businesses."

Riley cautioned that Facebook shouldn't pine to be the next MySpace. She pointed out that the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company grew a large audience by making it simple for users to communicate.

"Don't try to imitate MySpace too much," Riley said. "Make sure you stay true to what you do best today. Facebook is great for tight-knit communities and for people that already know each other offline. Facebook needs to remember that."

Facebook has long been rumored to be for sale. Asked whether that was true Zuckerberg said, "I've always thought that Facebook should remain independent and this just strengthens that."

Google asks gov't to fight censorship

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, AP Business Writer

WASHINGTON - Once relatively indifferent to government affairs, Google Inc. is seeking help inside the Beltway to fight the rise of Web censorship worldwide.

The online search giant is taking a novel approach to the problem by asking U.S. trade officials to treat Internet restrictions as international trade barriers, similar to other hurdles to global commerce, such as tariffs.

Google sees the dramatic increase in government Net censorship, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, as a potential threat to its advertising-driven business model, and wants government officials to consider the issue in economic, rather than just political, terms.

"It's fair to say that censorship is the No. 1 barrier to trade that we face," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google's director of public policy and government affairs. A Google spokesman said Monday that McLaughlin has met with officials from the U.S. Trade Representative's office several times this year to discuss the issue.

"If censorship regimes create barriers to trade in violation of international trade rules, the USTR would get involved," USTR spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel said. She added though that human rights issues, such as censorship, typically falls under the purview of the State Department.

While human rights activists are pleased with Google's efforts to fight censorship, they harshly criticized the company early last year for agreeing to censor its Web site in China, which has the second-largest number of Internet users in the world.

The company defends its actions, saying the Chinese government made it a condition of allowing Chinese users access to Google Web pages. China has an Internet firewall that slows or disrupts Chinese users from accessing foreign uncensored Web sites.

Censorship online has risen dramatically the past five years, belying the hype of the late 1990s, which portrayed the Internet as largely impervious to government interference.

A study released last month by the OpenNet Initiative found that 25 of 41 countries surveyed engage in Internet censorship. That's a dramatic increase from the two or three countries guilty of the practice in 2002, says John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, who helped prepare the report.

China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, India, Singapore and Thailand, among others, are increasingly blocking or filtering Web pages, Palfrey says.

Governments "are having more success than the more idealistic of us thought," acknowledges Danny O'Brien, international outreach coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Still, even government filtering isn't always successful. In a brutal regime like Iran, which filters Web content, there are nearly 100,000 bloggers, making Farsi "one of the most blogged languages in the world," says Palfrey.

Google's YouTube has become a common target for thin-skinned rulers. Turkey in March blocked the video-sharing site for two days after a complaint that some clips insulted Turkey's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Thailand continues to block YouTube after several videos appeared in April, criticizing the country's monarch.

Bloggers in Morocco said in late May that they could not access YouTube shortly after videos were posted critical of that nation's treatment of the people of Western Sahara, a territory that Morocco took control of in 1975. A government spokesman blamed a technical glitch.

One likely source for Google's censorship idea is a paper written two years ago by Timothy Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, who argues that downloading a Web page hosted in another country effectively imports a service.

Drawing on that concept, Google envisions using trade agreements to fight back. The negotiated pacts would include provisions guaranteeing free trade in "information services." As is true of most trade pacts, the provisions would call for arbitration if there are violations.

The U.S. has a trade agreement with Morocco and began negotiating one with Thailand in 2004, although those talks were suspended early last year after a military coup.

Columbia's Wu said the trade pact approach is likely to be more effective when governments are guilty of blocking entire Web sites or applications, such as Internet phone-calling, than when they filter specific content.

Under World Trade Organization rules, countries can limit trade for national security or public moral reasons, Wu said, exceptions that authoritarian governments would likely cite when filtering politically sensitive material.

The company's trade initiative reflects Google's increasing acceptance of the value of federal lobbying. The company didn't hire a lobbyist until 2003, according to public filings, but paid the high-powered Washington-based Podesta Group $160,000 last year to work on Internet free-speech, tax and other issues.

Human rights groups say Google's censorship efforts seem sincere, albeit motivated by bottom-line incentives.

"Free expression is a unique selling point" for a company like Google, O'Brien said. Filtering and censorship "diminishes the value of their product."

Yet last month at the company's annual meeting, Google's board recommended investors vote against a shareholder resolution urging Google to renounce censorship.

The resolution was defeated, although Google is already acting on some of the proposal's ideas, including working with other technology leaders, such as Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., to develop a set of principles on how companies should respond to censorship and other human rights violations when doing business abroad.

Human rights advocates, academics and corporate social responsibility groups are involved in the project, announced earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Google's global growth efforts continue. YouTube said Tuesday that it plans to expand into nine other countries, including Brazil, France, Spain and Poland, offering local-language Web sites and highlighting videos of domestic interest.

In China, where Google is the No. 2 search engine behind the domestically based Baidu.com, the company said in April it will increase its investment as it works to create more content of interest to Chinese users.

Each your sales copy will play a major role in your success

Original Tittle : "Writing Effective Sales Copy"

A professional looking web site is a very important part of developing a profitable Internet business. However, your sales copy is just as important -- each will play a major role in your success.

The key to writing effective sales copy is simply learning how to write persuasive words specifically written for your targeted potential customer. You must feel their needs and write your copy with passion, excitement and benefits. Tell them exactly what's in it for them by writing copy that evokes a specific emotion and stresses your product's benefits.

Use the following formula when writing your sales copy:

A - Attention - Use a powerful headline that demands attention
I - Interest - Intrigue interest and create curiosity
D - Detail - Provide details about your product or service
A - Action - Call for action

When you begin writing your copy, your text should be written in a black, legible font with a light background. Avoid using fancy fonts or backgrounds that will make your text difficult to read. Write in small blocks of text with a space between each block. There is nothing that will make your visitor click away faster than a sea of black text --so make sure you use plenty of white space.

A great way to write your copy and come up with new benefits is to use the "so what" strategy. After each sentence, say to yourself, "so what" and then elaborate.

Example:

XYZ computers are lightning fast. (so what) They can process information faster than any other computer on the market. (so what) Your programs will instantly load on command, (so what) saving you hours of valuable time and frustration over the life of your computer.

Remember...benefits sell not features.

Headline

The first and most important part of your sales copy is the headline. If your headline doesn't instantly capture your targeted potential customers' attention, and arouse a specific emotion, the rest of your sales copy will be useless.

In order to write an effective headline, you must learn how to use specific words to achieve a specific reaction.

Before writing your headline, you must first learn a little bit about the basic human motivators. According to psychologist Abraham Maslow, human behavior is always the result of one or more of five basic needs. He listed these needs in a sequence that he refers to as "the hierarchy of human needs."

He believes that until a less important need is met there won't be any desire to pursue a more important need. Below are the five human motivators, beginning with the basic needs and continuing to the most important needs.

Physiological - Basic human needs include hunger, thirst, shelter, clothing and sex.
Safety (Security) - Human need for physical, emotional and financial security.
Social (Affiliation) - Human need for love, affection, companionship and acceptance.
Esteem (Self Esteem) - Human need for achievement, recognition, attention and respect.
Self-actualization - Human need to reach their full potential.

When you are aware of the basic human needs, you can incorporate these needs into your writing. A great headline will appeal to your potential customers' emotions. You must feel their needs, wants and desires and write your headlines with passion and emotion.

Introduction

Just as your headline is a very important part of your sales copy, the first paragraph is just as important. Studies have shown that if your headline attracts your potential customers' attention, and you can maintain their attention through the first paragraph, chances are they'll read the rest of your copy.

The first paragraph should clearly define the benefits that will be outlined within your sales copy -- identify a problem and promote your product or service as the solution.

Subheadings

Subheadings are basically just smaller headlines used to break up your text blocks. They also provide your readers with important highlights of your paragraphs.

Use plenty of subheadings throughout your copy, as not all of your visitors will read your copy word for word. They'll simply scan it and only read what catches their attention.

Remove the Risk

You must provide your potential customers with a solid, no risk, money back guarantee. In addition, provide a limited time free trial or download that will completely remove their risk. This will build your potential customers' confidence in you and put their mind at ease.

Call for Action

Once your potential customer has read your sales copy, you must direct them to your order page by asking for the order.

Use a P.S.

When your visitor scans your sales message, chances are they'll read your headline, sub headlines and your PostScript message. Place your most important benefits within your PS message.

Provide Testimonials

Testimonials provide a great way to reassure your visitors. Blend your testimonials in with your sales message. Avoid making your visitors have to click to another page to view your testimonials -- chances are, they won't. By blending your testimonials in with your sales message, you can ensure they will be read.

Long Copy verses Short Copy

It is a proven fact that long sales copy out-sells short sales copy. However, some visitors do prefer a short sales letter. You can provide your visitors with both. For those who prefer a short sales letter, provide opportunities to click through to your order page prior to ending your sales letter.

Try to keep your sales letter all on one page. Your visitors would much rather have to scroll through your letter than click through and load another page. With each additional click, you'll lose a percentage of your potential customers.

Your words should seamlessly flow together from your headline through to your order page. Every word, sentence and headline should have one specific purpose -- to lead your potential customer to your order page. The simple, well-designed web sites with killer sales copy make the sales.

Copyright © Shelley Lowery

About the Author:

Shelley Lowery is the author of the acclaimed web design course, Web Design Mastery. http://www.webdesignmastery.com And, Ebook Starter - Give Your Ebooks the look and feel of a REAL book. http://www.ebookstarter.com

Launching Your Web Site on the Internet

When you're ready to launch your web site, you'll need to make two very important decisions -- what your domain name will be and where you will host your new site.

A domain name is used to locate a particular web site on the Internet. It is a part of the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and instructs the browser as to where to find a particular web page.

When a web address (http://www.domain.com) is typed into the browser, the web server will look for a page called index. This page may have different extensions, such as .htm, .html, or .shtml and will be displayed when the URL is called.

Additional pages within the site are called by including the URL followed by a forward slash and the page name. http://www.domain.com/page.htm

Selecting a quality domain name is of the utmost of importance. Not only will it tell your potential customers what your business is all about, but it will also play a role in branding.

LifeBook N Series Notebook

A good domain name is one that will be immediately remembered by your visitors, as it connects with something they're interested in.

A great domain name is one that can be guessed by a potential visitor looking for something in particular. For example, LINK

What's Apple's Safari strategy?

By Stephen Withers

Windows doesn't really need another browser, so why is Apple porting Safari from Mac OS X to Windows?

The answer is market share.

With Safari, Apple currently has less than 5 percent 'web share' according to recent figures from Net Applications, with other browsers - primarily Firefox, but also Camino and Opera - taking nearly a quarter of the Mac's platform share.

Whether 75 or 85 percent of Mac users actually use Safari is neither here nor there. Even if the Macintosh's share of the market is growing, current levels of use are not enough to encourage many web designers and developers to check that their pages work with Safari unless their target market is particularly Mac oriented or especially vocal.

I'm not going to get into a debate about which browser most closely supports the relevant standards, but as long as there are any significant differences in the way major browsers handle the code they're fed, minority browsers like Safari are going to be a nuisance that many web developers would prefer to overlook.

It's just that Apple's about to start selling this thing called the iPhone, which uses Safari as its web browser. Not only that, but initially Web 2.0 applications will be the only way non-Apple developers can get their software onto the iPhone.

The company could quickly find itself selling more iPhones than Macs, but that would only mean Safari had perhaps a 10 percent web share - not really enough to impact on the IE/Firefox hegemony.

But if Safari on Windows could attract another five percent, then Safari is snapping at Firefox's heels, and web developers would have less justification for ignoring it. Steve Jobs seems to think it will come at the expense of Firefox, but we would be amazed if it didn't attract some Internet Explorer users.

With Macs - especially MacBooks and MacBook Pros - becoming more commonplace in corporate environments, you can see that IT staff might be keen to encourage the use of one cross-platform browser to minimise support loads. If Apple does a good job, that could be Safari rather than Firefox - but either way it would be IE that misses out. (Unless you think they'll recommend IE under Parallels or VMware instead.)

So why has Apple released a beta of Safari for Windows that some people are describing (unfairly in our view) as being of alpha quality?

Those Web 2.0 developers with an eye on the iPhone need a way of testing their apps on Safari now if they are going to be ready for the iPhone's release at the end of this month. They probably wouldn't go out and buy a Mac if they don't already have one, but installing a pre-release copy of the Windows version isn't much of a hardship.

Around of FeedBurner has bought by Google

Google has bought FeedBurner, which runs more than 400,000 RSS feeds. By this, for last week, Google also bought three companies - GreenBorder Technologies, Panoramio and FeedBurner which is more than usual.

Google announced the purchase on its blog under the headline Adding more flare (presumably a pun on flair), saying: "FeedBurner offers a feed advertising platform for advertisers to reach engaged feed readers through targeted in-feed ads and innovative techniques like RSS feed-driven ads."

This also means Goole bought three companies last week -- GreenBorder Technologies, Panoramio and FeedBurner -- which is more than usual.

Google announced the purchase on its blog under the headline Adding more flare (presumably a pun on flair), saying: "FeedBurner offers a feed advertising platform for advertisers to reach engaged feed readers through targeted in-feed ads and innovative techniques like RSS feed-driven ads."

On its own blog, FeedBurner said It's True-gle! and pointed to an FAQ at http://www.feedburner.com/google

The purchase is a certainly fantastic way for Google to insert itself between tens of thousands of Web sites (FeedBurner users) and millions of RSS reading consumers and make pots of money. Thanks to the power of AdWords, it should get back the rumoured $100 million purchase price very quickly.

About the purchasing, I copied a portion of some opinion from Guardian as follows ;

Chris DiBona is Google's open source programme manager and a respected . He was in London for one leg of Google Developer Day, and I grabbed a few minutes to speak with him about Google's approach to open development.

How much does Google use open source? And how do you support the community?

CDB: Google does use open source a lot - our servers, for example - it gets used in different parts of our tools. That's what our office in the open source group is tasked with. We also run events like the Summer of Code - we'll have 917 students coming to work on projects this year. And then there's just internal code release - over the last year we estimate that we've put out around 1 million lines of code for everyone. The idea is to bring the open source ethos into everything we do.

But Google Developer Day is mostly about APIs - which might be open for developers to use, but they're not actually open source.

CDB: It's absolutely true that when you create some kind of feed or interface for, say, Google Calendar, you can't say it's open source. But it's about as open possible.

So if Google is a big contributor to the OSS world, does that mean that most of the is now from big businesses with a vested interest in these free, widespread products?

CDB: Well, the best data I have goes back to 2003 - and that says about 40% of people who contribute to open source work for other companies in an IT capacity, 40% work in academia and the other 20% are enthusiasts. I've always thought that's a really great balance, but over the last 10 years it has got a lot more company participation.

Can you name any actual products that have been improved this way at Google?

CDB: If you look at how Sitemaps evolved, it's a great example. Since we'd chosen proper licensing around the protocol, other people were able to get involved and asked can we work to make it better? Sometimes it makes sense when you're trying to create a standard.

But overall, there must be a business case for this: since the flotation, Google has a duty to its shareholders.

It certainly improves the bottom line - as the internet gets bigger, so goes Google. Part of what we do is to make sure the internet is as lively as possible. That way we're able to leverage our strengths; for example we're able to bring lots of people to any new service.

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Mary Kalin-Casey looked at Google's new StreetView and "as she zoomed in, she could see Monty, her cat, sitting on a perch in the living room window of her second-floor apartment," reports The New York Times.

"The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people's lives," Ms. Kalin-Casey said in an interview Thursday on the front steps of the building. "The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged."

She agrees there is other information about her on Google, but:

"People's jobs are pretty public," she said. "But that doesn't mean they want a shot of their sofa on Google." She has asked Google to remove the image of her building, which was still online as of Thursday evening.

She has a point, in that there is a difference between what anybody can see walking down a particular street and making all streets viewable on a global basis.

But a collection of the Top 15 Google Street View Sightings at Mashable suggests there's not a lot to get worried about, even by the standards of people who don't get out much.

The same issues have already been raised by CCTV, satellite imagery, YouTube and Google itself. Compared to those, StreetView looks rather less threatening.

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eBay has bought StumbleUpon, a site for sharing web sites, for around $75 million. The press release says it's grown 150% over the past year and "delivers approximately five million new recommendations a day to its large, highly engaged user base". What eBay doesn't explain is why. With previous purchases such as PayPal, Skype and Shopping.com, there did seem to be a rationale, but this one escapes me.

StumbleUpon currently has tabs for Websites, People and Videos, so it could possibly add one for Bargains on eBay, but that doesn't sound particularly useful.

The StumbleUpon blog says:

Looking to the future, we think that joining eBay is the right thing to do to help us to grow StumbleUpon to its full potential. We think eBay is a great fit for us because eBay and StumbleUpon share similar approaches - we're both driven by our community of users, and we are both dedicated to connecting people.

Since it's increasingly hard to find a Web site nowadays that isn't driven by connecting its community of users, this will give eBay lots of scope for future takeovers.

There are no such doubts about today's other takeover: Google buys Panoramio. The Panoramio blog says:

The integration of photos from Panoramio in Google Earth has been so successful since John Hanke suggested it that we see the acquisition of Panoramio as a natural consequence.

Of course, Google buys so many companies that it hardly seems worth mentioning the smaller ones....

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Google's $3.1 billion cash purchase of DoubleClick has attracted FTC scrutiny, according to The New York Times. The story says:

The inquiry began at the end of last week, after it was decided that the Federal Trade Commission instead of the Justice Department would conduct the review, said the executive, who asked not to be identified because he had not been authorized to speak. The two agencies split the duties of antitrust enforcement.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a citizens rights organisation, the Center for Digital Democracy and the United States Public Interest Research Group filed a complaint that the takeover would "give one company access to more information about the Internet activities of consumers than any other company in the world." The EU also has privacy concerns.

It's probably good news for Google that the FTC is taking on the case, because it has a consumer focus. The FTC investigated both Microsoft and Intel without taking any significant action. However, it does mean that Google is now on the anti-trust radar screens, which could have repercussions down the line.

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Don Dodge, who works for the Microsoft Emerging Business Team, has put a few numbers on the value of search. Working from Google's published financial results and market cap, he reckons that "each 1% of search market share is worth over $100M in revenues" and "the stock market values 1% market share at over $1 billion".

A single search in the US is worth about 12 cents, on average.

In a comment to Don's post, usability guru Jakob Nielsen, points out:

The value per page view on a content site tends to be about 0.1 cents. Thus, pointing people to content is more than 100 times as profitable as actually writing that content. (This is why I called search engines leeches on the Web, at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/search_engines.html )

In other words, content providers (including The Guardian) get 1c for creating content but Google gets 99c for indexing it. And, of course, if you don't let Google index it, you probably don't get the 1c ;-)

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"European data protection officials have raised concerns that Google could be contravening European privacy laws by keeping data on internet searches for too long," says The Financial Times.

This repeats issues raised by the Norwegian Data Inspectorate last year, "as part of a larger investigation of Norwegian search engines. Sesam and Kvasir".

Peter Fleischer, European privacy counsel for Google, said the company needed to keep search information for some time for security purposes - to help guard against hacking and people trying to misuse Google's advertising system.

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt recently prompted a round of Big Brother scare stories by saying Google wanted to know so much about users that it could tell them what to do -- a competition won by The Independent.

This story included a couple of interesting paras:

Ross Anderson, professor of Security Engineering at Cambridge University and chairman of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, said there was a real issue with "lock in" where Google customers find it hard to extricate themselves from the search engine because of the interdependent linkage with other Google services, such as iGoogle, Gmail and YouTube. He also said internet users could no longer effectively protect their anonymity as the data left a key signature.

"A lot of people are upset by some of this. Why should an angst-ridden teenager who subscribes to MySpace have their information dragged up 30 years later when they go for a job as say editor of the Financial Times? But there are serious privacy issues as well. Under data protection laws, you can't take information, that may have been given incidentally, and use it for another purpose. The precise type and size of this problem is yet to be determined and will change as Google's business changes."

Apparently the Information Commissioner doesn't care because of "the voluntary nature of the information being targeted". Yeah, right.

If Google wants to make it voluntary, it can put a big tick box on its home page that says: "Yes, you can compile, store and analyse information about me and my searches." The default, obviously, is NOT. At the moment, Google (like most other search engines) is doing it by the back door. Seems to me that it's involuntary for those not aware enough, and geeky enough, to stop it.

Google complained about Microsoft's IE7 saying it was too hard to change the default search engine. Here's a tip: you can "don't be evil" by making it even easier to opt for privacy protection when using Google.

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There were plenty of reasons to be interested in the news that Google has invested almost $4m in 23andMe, the genetics company created by Anne Wojcicki, who married Sergey Brin earlier this month.

As our Wall Street correspondent Andy Clark noted, 23andMe "aims to unite people with copies of their genetic blueprint".

My first thought was that I wouldn't necessarily be too happy if I was a Google shareholder. Regardless of the intrinsic value of 23andMe or its potential, there are always going to be questions when the principals are as closely related as this. In Google terms, though, $3.9m is a drop in the ocean when it's prepared to invest zillions in other companies so it might not become a topic of debate.

The second thought was about the long-term implications of this investment. What happens when you can sequence your own genetic code? What can we find out about the human race when that data is searchable? And what happens when that data is owned by a third party?

Back in 2004, Glyn Moody wrote a piece for us about the ethical questions of googling the genome - at that time it was a possibility, now it seems a probability.

Of course, this isn't Google's first foray into genetics. In 2005 Craig Venter - the legendary businessman/biologist who launched his own commercial genome sequencing scheme in competition with the Human Genome Project - said that he was working with Google to catalogue the genome and make it searchable.

It seems the mission to organise the world's information has stepped up a notch or two.

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Back in 2004, a company called Perfect 10 sued Google on the grounds that its use of thumbnails violated its copyrights. This attracted attention because of the subject matter -- nude photography -- and because it represented a significant challenge to the working of the Web. (Perfect 10 also sued Amazon.)

Google has now won the case on appeal, according to the Washington Post. It says:

The appeals court ruled that the thumbnails fell within a "fair use" exception in copyright law because they play a role in the search process and thus have a function different from that of the original photos.

"We conclude that the significantly transformative nature of Google's search engine, particularly in light of its public benefit, outweighs Google's superseding and commercial uses of the thumbnails in this case," Judge Sandra S. Ikuta wrote for the panel.

However, "Yesterday's ruling was not a complete victory for Google, because the judges directed the lower court to reconsider a separate finding in the company's favor," says TWP. Basically, it seems the problem is that while Google's thumbnails may not infringe copyright, it was linking to sites that do infringe copyright -- and knowing that, not stopping it.
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"When you search on Google, we collect information about your search, such as the query itself, IP addresses and cookie details," says the official Google blog. It certainly collects enough information to indetify you, and quite possibly to hang you (depending on the punishment strategies of your local jurisdiction).

Google doesn't have to collect this information, but it does, so if you put sufficient value on your privacy, you have to figure out how to protect it on Google and other search engines.

However, even Google has now come to recognise that it isn't necessarily to keep all these records forever. The blog says:

Today we're pleased to report a change in our privacy policy: Unless we're legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymize our server logs after a limited period of time. When we implement this policy change in the coming months, we will continue to keep server log data (so that we can improve Google's services and protect them from security and other abuses)--but will make this data much more anonymous, so that it can no longer be identified with individual users, after 18-24 months.

Thankyou, Google: that represents a very welcome advance.

However, 18-24 months still sounds far too long to me. Frankly I don't believe that two years' personal data delivers any significant benefit for users over three months. But of course, I'm not allowed to know.

Yeah, I know: if it bothers you, you can always stop using Google. There are at least a few search engines that don't retain any user data at all, such as Scroogle (a "Google scraper"), ixquick and Clusty. Is anybody going to switch? Thought not. Why give up real and immediate short-term benefits to avoid a potential and possibly unreal long-term risk?

Would you switch to Yahoo or Windows Live Search if either of those pledged not to retain data for more than three months?
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Microsoft lawyer Thomas C Rubin duly delivered his speech on copyright (Searching for Principles: Online Services and Intellectual Property) at the Association of American Publishers annual meeting, and you can read the full text here.

And as Bobbie reported earlier, this did include an attack on Google. The main one was on Google's Book Search project, but Rubin also covered Google advertising for pirate sites, and copyright violations on YouTube.

In one sense, there isn't anything surprising about this: Rubin was simply preaching to the choir. The Association of American Publishers -- the audience -- filed a lawsuit against Google in 2005, following legal action by the Authors Guild. As CNet reported at the time:

"The publishing industry is united behind this lawsuit against Google and united in the fight to defend their rights," AAP President and former Colorado Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder said in a statement. "While authors and publishers know how useful Google's search engine can be and think the Print Library could be an excellent resource, the bottom line is that under its current plan, Google is seeking to make millions of dollars by freeloading on the talent and property of authors and publishers."

Microsoft is also a member, with Yahoo and many others, of the Open Content Alliance. This is doing the same as Google in digitising libraries, except that, unlike Google, it asks for permission first.

In other words, it is absolutely clear that Google is trying to advance its own interests at the expense of the book publlishing industry. On the other hand, Microsoft is just as clearly trying to advance its own interests (it's a major content provider through Microsoft Books and things like Encarta, and a major supplier of digital rights management systems), and it's not even clear that Google is in the wrong.

Google is not printing books and shipping them to Borders, and it's not even making electronic texts publicly available. That would be wrong. It's aim is to make books searchable, just the way it makes the web searchable. Sure, I think Google should ask permission, because printed books have no equivalent of a robots.txt file to say content should not be indexed. But even if the AAP wins in court and it is ruled illegal, it's still a good thing to do: it's not inherently evil.

Google could have made the whole problem go away very easily, just by joining the community effort in the Open Content Alliance. This would also have cut out duplicate scanning and thus speeded up the whole digitisation processs. Google's arrogant decision to go it alone in the face of a hostile book trade is what has left it open to attack -- and for no good reason.

Of course, joining the community effort would have meant Google had the same data as Yahoo and Microsoft. But Google already searches the same World Wide Web as Yahoo and Microsoft, and Google is winning that battle by miles. I think it would have won in book search, too.
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Google is one of the world's biggest copyright infringers, through its project to digitise books and through its YouTube video site (let's not even think about Google's cache or its news services, which certainly ought to count as "fair use"), so it's interesting that the don't-be-evil company now says offering copyright protection is "one of the company's highest priorities". According to Reuters:

"We just reviewed that (issue) about an hour ago," [CEO Eric] Schmidt told Reuters when asked what Google was doing to make anti-piracy technologies widely available to video owners. "It is going to roll out very soon ... It is not far away."

Later:

Schmidt declined to give a specific timeframe of weeks or months to cover all potential users, saying that any move would take time to cover all Google's services, including YouTube, and to be made available to all copyright holders wishing to use the anti-piracy technology.

There's not much to go on, but it sonds as though Goolge plans to add yet another DRM (digital rights management) system to the ones from Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Real Networks, IBM, Macrovision and others.
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AFP has a funny story. It seems a group of Polish poets, Grupa Mlodych Artstow I Literatow (Group of Young Artists and Writers) owns http://www.gmail.pl/ and Google wants it. So it's using its lawyers to try to get it, rather than admit its own incompetence and just offer to buy it.

Izabela Krawczyk of GMAiL told AFP: "We bought the name legally, with our own money. Nobody gave it to us for free. We refuse to be deprived of what we consider is our property."

Krawczyk, a poet and IT fan based in the central Polish city of Lodz, said that at the end of last year her group was surprised to discover that www.gmail.pl was available.

They decided to buy the rights to the domain name in order to raise the profile of GMAiL, which publicises the works of young unknowns who have not yet found a conventional editor.

"Our site has a use. There's no financial gain involved. And we're not competing with the US company," she said.

So is the message that after three years of beta testing Gmail, and stashing many billions in the bank, the droids at the Googleplex either have not yet heard of Poland or still can't figure out how to buy a Polish domain name? No problem! They may not be able to figure out how to spend $10 on a domain name, but they can easily afford $100,000 worth of lawyers.

What was that bullshit about "Don't be evil" again?

Hat tip to Profy.
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It's not a great news week for Google, which has not only been accused of encouraging piracy but now faces the latest twist in its fight with Belgian news publishers.

A court in Belgium this morning ruled that Google News must stop reproducing articles, because they can be read even when the articles have disappeared behind a paywall. Here's what Reuters has to say:

The case was brought by Copiepresse, which manages copyrights for Belgium's French- and German-language newspapers and has also demanded that the French division of Internet portal Yahoo (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) stop displaying Belgian press reports.

Copiepresse argues that versions of news articles stored on Google can be seen on its service even after the articles are no longer freely accessible on a newspaper's Website.

Personally, I think the Belgian newspapers are foolish and short-sighted for pursuing this - and I can't understand why they've gone through the courts (surely a robots.txt file would suffice, if they want Google to stop indexing their paywalled content).

I hate paywalls, and I hate news executives who don't realise the internet has changed their game. It's as if they'd been banning their papers from being sold on certain newsstands because people can read the headlines from the street. In cases like this, the only long-term victims are likely to be the newspapers themselves.

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As part of its strategy of being helpful and giving users the best possible information, Google used to add map links that would take you to three major mapping services: Google, Yahoo and Map Quest. Sadly, things have changed. Google no longer cares about giving users the best information. What it cares about is promoting its own services to the exclusion of rival services. So now you only get one link: Google Maps. (See Google Blogoscoped for an illustration.)

Of course, there's really nothing to complain about here. Google is a hugely rich multinational corporation and needs to keep its founders in private jets etc. It's just doing what almost any other capitalist corporation would do in serving its own ends. The only thing it needs to do to normalise things is to drop the arrogant pretence that it occupies some kind of moral high ground against "evil" rivals. In sum, Don't Be Hypocritical.

Search Engine Land covered the maps story and Danny Sullivan has followed up with New Google Checkout Promo; New Google Trust Worries. He says:

Outcry over the tips issue got Google to drop them. Clearly it heard the concerns over trust and reacted. But clearly it also didn't learn anything from that. Google failed to have an official discussion or mention of the concerns via its blog. Now we've got Google Checkout shoved at us and map links dropped, both moves that someone should have realized would raise new concerns about Google's self interest.

In technology terms, Google is rapidly becoming Big Brother, capturing more and more information about people's lives. It knows what you search for, which sites you visit (if they have Adwords), what's in your mail (at Gmail) and so on. Will you still use Google's services if it loses your trust? Or doesn't anybody care any more?
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Former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki has had a fantastic first year blogging, and he rapidly climbed into the top 50. His round-up says he got "2,436,117 page views for an average of approximately 6,200/day".

The drawback is: "Total advertising revenue: approximately $3,350 = $1.39 cpm"

As Chris (Long Tail) Anderson quickly pointed out: "A best-selling author and genuine tech celebrity writing a thoughtful essay nearly every workday on a top-50 blog for an audience of around 30,000 people/day. And the pay for that is about $280 a month." Don't quit your day job, he said.

At which point dozens more people chimed in to point that they were making five times that (or whatever) and it was Guy's fault for using Google AdSense.

Aaron at BlogKits did the sums for his post, Google Adsense A Huge Failure For Guy Kawaski's Blog, and reckoned he should be making at least $100 a day instead of $9.17.

Result: "Guy is switching to Federated Media, as we suggest for blogs of his size. BlogKits estimates that he'll make anywhere from $50-$100k/year using that system."

Isn't it nice when stories have a happy ending....

Update: The story has been picked up by CNN in Kawasaki: long tail success or failed "meganicher?"
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Make Firefox be Faster

Make Firefox become Faster

Recent time when I wanna update this blog content I found my Firefox is slower than usually.. I don't know what happened to my browser. So, I tryed to found the solve by google search engine.. Finally..I found the tip to make from this forum

After have done some modifications like the one is in suggesting, finally my browser become faster than usual.. BUt unfortunately..I'm stay don't know what make me my firefox slwer in that time..I though perharp the provider was down..I don't know..But NOW my browser is faster and I'm enjoy it..

If you wanna to adopt the modification..I share it to you following;

Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll
down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time.
When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really
speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This
means it will make 30 requests at once.(I put it to 35)

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer.
Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0".
This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

If you're using a brodband connection you'll load pages 2-3 times faster now.

Corellation Link :

Firefox become faster (PC World India)

Why won’t Firefox become faster on a Mac (www.seoimage.com)

Firefox Become Faster For Me Now (vb.vip600.com)

Firefox be faster if it wouldn't be cross-platform (www.linuxquestions.org)

why can't Firefox be faster? (forums.mozillazine.org)

Will 2.0 FIREFOX be faster on Intel? (orums.macrumors.com)

Learning the Basics of RSS

By : Dina Fedorova

What is RSS?
You probably have seen this three-letter acronym in the course of your internet surfing. RSS stands for
Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary; syndicating means republishing an article that comes from another source such as a website.

An RSS is a means of publicizing updates about websites. It may or may not include a summary and photos of the latest posting. But those that provide summaries (thus Rich Site Summary) allow users to skim through the article so that they could decide later on if they want to access the website source. The RSS feed usually contains the title of the update originating from the website. It is also usually the link to the website source.

What are the benefits of RSS? RSS gives benefits to both readers (users) and web publishers.

It gives you the latest updates.
Whether it is about the weather, new music, software upgrade, local news, or a new posting from a rarely-updates site learn about the latest as soon as it comes out.

It saves on surfing time.
Since an RSS feed provides a summary of the related article, it saves the user’s time by helping s/he decide on which items to prioritize when reading or browsing the net.

It gives the power of subscription to the user.
Users are given a free-hand on which websites to subscribe in their RSS aggregators which they can change at any time they decide differently.

It lessens the clutter in your inbox.
Although your email address will be required to enjoy the services of online RSS aggregators, RSS does not use your email address to send the updates.

It is spam free.
Unlike email subscriptions, RSS does not make use of your email address to send updates thus your privacy is kept safe from spam mails.

Unsubscribing is hassle-free.
Unlike email subscriptions where the user is asked questions on why s/he is unsubscribing and then the user would be asked to confirm unsubscribing, all you have to do is to delete the RSS feed from your aggregator.

It can be used as an advertising or marketing tool.
Users who subscribe or syndicate product websites receive the latest news on products and services without the website sending spam mail. This is advantageous to both the web user and the website owner since advertising becomes targeted; those who are actually interested in their products are kept
posted.

What are the drawbacks of RSS? The disadvantages of RSS use are brought about by its being a new technology and some user-preference concerns.

1. Some users prefer receiving email updates over an RSS feed.

2. Graphics and photos do not appear in all RSS feeds. For conciseness and ease of publication, RSS feeds do not display the photos from the original site in announcing the update except for some web-based aggregators

3. The identity of the source website can be confusing. Since RSS feeds do not display the actual URL or name of the website, it can sometimes get confusing on what feed a user is actually reading.
The information about RSS presented here will do one of two things: either it will reinforce what you know about RSS or it will teach you something new. Both are good outcomes.

4. Publishers cannot determine how many users are subscribed to their feed and the frequency of their visits. Moreover, they would not know the reasons why users unsubscribe which could be important in improving their advertising.

5. RSS feeds create higher traffic and demands on the server. Most readers still prefer the whole update over a

brief summary of the entry, thus they still access the site.

6. Since it is a new technology, many sites still do not support RSS.

How do I start using RSS? There are two things needed: an RSS feed and an RSS aggregator or reader. The RSS feed comes from an RSS-supported website. There are also websites that provide a list of RSS feeds of different websites. An RSS aggregator is used to read the RSS feed from the source website. It scans and collects data on latest RSS feeds from the worldwide web.

An aggregator comes in two forms: a downloadable program also known as desktop aggregator and an online or web-based aggregator. Downloadable aggregators may require payment before they can be acquired, while internet-based aggregators are usually free of charge. All you need to do is to register an account then you are ready to use their services. Both versions allow you to customize or choose which RSS feeds to enter. Paid aggregators are usually chosen by more experienced users and they usually allow more freedom in customizing feeds.

1. Choose an RSS aggregator to use. For beginners, web-based aggregators are recommended since they are usually user-friendly

2. Scan the homepage of your target website for the RSS or XML button. It contains the RSS code you need to enter in the aggregator. Copy this code. Syndic8 provides a directory of websites that support RSS.

3. Paste the code (which contains the URL of the website) in your aggregator. There is a space provided for pasting the code.

After you have done these three easy steps, you can start reading the RSS feeds coming from the website. New postings appear as they are published real time at the source website.

RSS and Internet Marketing

The original idea of RSS came from Netscape, where their intention is to provide a means for users to customize their personal homepage to contain links to websites that interest them, similar to bookmarking websites.

The application of RSS to internet marketing was an unforeseen development to RSS technology developers. Since users are given the freedom to add RSS feeds to their aggregators, those who are interested in particular products and services available in the internet can now be notified real time. Marketing becomes more specific to interested people and not a
hit-and-miss operation.

Those who intend to use RSS for marketing their products and services should consider linking up with email account providers, (e.g. Yahoo, MSN, Google mail); networking websites (e.g. Friendster, Multiply, My Space, Hi5); websites of newspapers and television network websites (e.g. New York Times, CNN) for medium to big-scale companies. Small-time
industries can also look into networking websites as well as personal blog websites (e.g. Blogspot) and websites of clubs and organizations that would probably make use of their products or services e.g. a fishing supplies store can look for the website of their local fishing club for possible RSS marketing.

Clearly, RSS is an innovation in information management in the worldwide web as well as online marketing. We can expect better RSS technology in the not-so-distant future as its popularity increases among users and website owners alike.

Sometimes it’s tough to sort out all the details related to this subject, but I’m positive you’ll have no trouble making sense of the information presented above.

Author Resource:- Dina Fedorova, finding a Home Business that’s Right for You.
Visit my site and download “Dotcomology:The Science of Making Money online”. Absolutely Free at: http://www.net-plus-profit.com

For more information please visit : http://successuniversity.com

Another Link :

Affiliate Business Opportunities

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Book and Jurnal

Satellite Internet - What is it?

A Primer / Editorial by Thomas (Bouncer) Blakely, CCNA, CCDA
by Tom Blakely

WARNING! Stunningly long piece to follow. Please use next restroom exit !... and bring me a cookie while you're up. Here we go:

So you're waaaaaaay out in the country, and neither DSL nor Cable is an option. Like say ..in Kosova. Or Bosnia. Or, God forbid, North Dakota. Perhaps on a ship. You'd like to get the internet, but carrier pigeon seems to be your only option. Wherever you are, if you're north of the equator and have a view of the visible sky to the south of you, you may have another option. You can probably get internet ...via Satellite. Yes, just like Wolf Bliitzer and James Bond you too can have nearly instant communications with the vast internet.

"Where do I sign up!" you cry out... Well... I wouldn't pop the champagne just yet. There's some issues we need to discuss, which I'm going to try to do in this editorial. Okay...You have to understand and remember one very simple premise:

Satellite communications are line of sight.
That one sentence is the core of what drives everything else. I won't go too much into the history as it's not relevant, except to mention Syncom2, the first Geostationary Satellite.

LifeBook C Series notebook

What the heck is a Geostationary Satellite anyways?
A Geostationary Satellite is a satellite or "bird" that is in a fixed position relative to the Earth. Kind of like your cars' drivers side mirror is in a fixed position relative to the rest of your car. If you turn left or right or even in a circle the mirror stays in it's fixed position relative to the rest of the vehicle. Make sense? A GeoSat follows the same premise, only on a larger scale and it uses physics to do so. First the how, then the why. I'm going to keep the math to a minimum.

Ever noticed that if you drop something it falls to the ground? So did the folks at NASA, and they got concerned because they didn't want satellites dropping out of the sky. It's embarrassing and expensive. So they had to try and find the point where the satellite would maintain enough speed to keep it from falling to earth while staying in a fixed spot over the equator.

Why do it this way?
Because satellites (like your car) only have so much gas or propulsion fuel. Unlike your car, when they run out, that's it. They can no longer maneuver. If they're too close they fall into the atmosphere slowly but inevitably. If they're too far out they simply slowly drift away into space. So the idea was to put them at a place where the speed of the satellite is sufficient to keep it from falling to earth yet have a rotation of one day. This keeps the satellite in it's position. A combination of forces trying to equal out to a stable area.

22,300 miles over the equator there is a whole belt of satellites zooming along. This area is named after Sir Dr. Arthur C. Clarke the science-fiction novelist. It is frequently referred to as "Clarke's Constellation" Because it was he, back in 1947, who postulated the idea of using satellites for point-to-point-to-point radio communication. Science Fiction indeed.

Why a fixed position? Why Line of sight?
Satellites are expensive. If you can have one cover a large area it's more cost effective than having two or three. In addition, we don't want to keep trying to find satellites every day. So we keep them at fixed positions so once we're locked in and pointed at the satellite we don't have to worry about tracking it across the sky. It's that simple. There are other reasons as well, but those are the most important ones.
Now.. Line of Sight...
Okay...
If you think about it, you'll realize that from where you are standing right now, you can see some things that are farther away from you than other things. This is frequently because they are taller. They have more "Altitude". For instance you can see the top of a water tower long before you can see the pumping station underneath it. So we know that the greater the height, the farther away you can "see" something.

Geostationary Satellites are at fixed positions at an altitude of 22,300 miles from Earth. They can "see" (and be seen from) a huge area of land and ocean, and this area they can "see" is called the "footprint". They are also frequently located over the equator. You can imagine what the foot print looks like by holding a flashlight at a fixed distance from a basketball and turning the light on. The closer you get, the smaller the footprint. Make sense?

Now if you hold the flash light at a fixed distance from the centerline or "equator" of the basketball AND aim it at the upper half you will see that the "footprint" elongates and gets much larger on one side, extending itself by half again. And turning from a simple circle, into an oval. That's why a lot of birds are "parked" in orbit over the equator. There is a consequence to this large footprint though. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, or about 186,000 miles per second. So any traffic from you to the satellite has to go 22,300 miles up, go through the satellite, and be retransmitted 22,300 miles back down.

The net effect is that it adds about a minimum of 240ms to the round trip. This is from an ideal position as close to the satellite as possible, which is probably in the ocean at the equator. And remember, that if you send for a web page both the request and the response have to travel these distances in addition to any ground distance. A more realistic expectation is a response of about 500-1000ms.

What is this "200ms" stuff?
Briefly: 1000ms (milliseconds) equals one second. The satellite internet systems currently available run about a half second delay because of the distances involved. To an average web surfer this means about one half a second MINIMUM, between the time you click a link and the time you start to see a change take place. On a practical level it's probably closer to 3/4 of a second response time (750ms). Unfortunately, if you're heavy into internet multiplayer gaming, then we're pretty much done here. You can go elsewhere because a 750ms plus response time is unplayable. Why?

Imagine you are driving a racecar. Now imagine it's about three-quarters of a second delay (750ms) between the time you try to steer left, and the time the racecar starts to respond (750ms). You see the problem. It's like driving on ice and is simply not useable for many internet games that require fast reflexes. Some flight games may be useable, because they don't need as fast a response. However, popular first person shooters like Quake III and Tribes 2 and Counter-Strike are almost unplayable.
If, on the other hand, you're not as big into gaming and are in an area not serviced by DSL or cable then Internet via Satellite may be just the thing for you.

I'm sure you're tired of the history lesson and would like me to get on with how you can get it if you want it.

You have two primary options right now.
Hughes is beginning to offer satellite service in conjunction with it's DirecTV product, not surprisingly called DirecPC. You can buy it separately or bundled, thus giving them twice the access to your wallet. OTOH, since you already are getting a a satellite dish for the internet why not also use it for TV. In any case, the Hughes system used to be referred to as a Hybrid or "dial-in return" system. Hughes is now switching over to a true two-way satellite system. The difference between the two types is that in the older system you HAD to have a landline and a modem to dial in. Your request for a web page would go via landline/modem to Hughes, who would retrieve the page, and then downlink it to you via the satellite.

THE NEW SYSTEMS CONDUCT YOUR REQUESTS AND THE RESPONSES FROM HUGHES ENTIRELY VIA SATELLITE. THERE IS NO LANDLINE/MODEM.
The new terminal you receive when you purchase the product has both a receiver, and a transmitter. A terminal is simply a box that houses some equipment. In this case.. a receiver and a transmitter. Hook it up to the dish, point it at the satellite and start surfing. More or less. There's always details but that's the crux of it.

The Other system is by Gilat, and is being sponsored by Microsoft and Radio Shack. It also uses the newer two way satellite system. It is part of the DiSH Network for TV access and is called StarBand.

The nice thing about these systems is that service is available just about everywhere in North America and Europe, and many places in South America as well.

I would like to mention this:
While each company claims multi-megabit performance it's more reasonable to expect about a 768kbit downlink / 128kbit uplink speed. This is based more on TCP issues and the corporate advertising tends to run smack into some real world physics issues. This is long enough and I won't bore you with too much detail but there are some inherent limitations due to TCP receive window size and receive acknowledgement timing.

I hope this primer leaves you with a clearer understanding of the theory and operational issues with Satellite Internet access. As an aside there are some Low Earth Orbit/Observable satellites called "LEO's" which promise to offer all the current systems do, and more. Including MUCH lower delay times in the 10 to 20ms range. These systems, however, aren't slated to come online until about 2005 if they ever do. So for the time being, you'll just have to accept the delay inherent in the system.

In alphabetical order:
Hudhes : www.directpc.com
Gilat / Microsoft : www.starband.com

Average pricing is between $40 - $60 USD a month. Some require you to buy more equipment than others and both run specials and deals so prices will tend to vary.

Finally, I want to mention this. Satellite internet represents the best opportunity for schools, communities, and individuals in remote areas to gain access to world wide communications. It is unique because it is simply not subject to local control over access or content. It has the ability to reach people no other communications medium can at a practical cost.



Regards,

Thomas Blakely, CCNA, CCDA
- Bouncer -

Internet connection Sharing

Setting up a LAN and sharing your Internet Connecton
by Philip


There are a couple of different ways to share your Cable Modem or xDSL connection over multiple PCs. Your ISP provides you with one or more IP addresses (or simply IPs) used to identify your PC. Most providers will assign just one IP per residential account, which means that for the outside world, the Internet in this case, you have only one address. The problem with multiple PCs using one IP address is that you need some kind of address translation that will route traffic to/from your PCs accordingly.


Single IP Address Sharing

Hardware solution

The simplest and our recommended way to share your Internet connection across multiple PCs is by using a broadband router, you might want to check the Reviews section of the site for different brands and variations. The router sits between your external Cable/DSL modem and the LAN, or client PCs. Most Home/SOHO routers are simple to setup and use, it's just a little more involved than plugging the unit in.

Generally, you might want to get a router with multiple LAN ports, so you can connect all your client PCs without additional hardware, such as hub or switch. Other significant considerations should include support and downloadable firmware updates.

Depending on your confidence and experience, you might want to consider a more expensive unit that's more complicated, with flexible configuration that gives you total control, or you can choose a simpler, easy to configure and maintain router. Whatever choice you make, most standard internet applications will work without problem with any of the routers we've reviewed.





Software solution

If for some reason you don't want to use a router, there is a way to share your Internet connectin by using either Proxy or NAT (Network Address Translation) software. Also, you would have to designate one PC as the server, and another as a client, rather than plugging your Modem to a hub.

1. Install 2 NICs in the Server PC and one in the Client PC.

2. Connect one of the NICs in the Server to the Cable Modem/xDSL and the second NIC to your LAN, or client PC. You can use a hub only between the PCs, not between the Cable modem and the Server.

3. Install either NAT or Proxy software. The advantages of using proxy are that you can block ports and it's more customizable. The disadvantage is that most networking software might require special configuration in order to run. If you decide to use NAT, on the other hand, most of your software will work without additional configuration on the client PCs.

Note that with this setup your server PC will need to be powered-up in order for your client PCs to be able to access the Internet.

Recommended NAT software: Sygate Internet Gateway
Recommended Proxy: Wingate WinProxy



Multiple IP addresses

If you decide to purchase additional IP addresses for each PC on your LAN, your ISP might charge you anywhere between $0-$10 / month for the additional service. The advantage of this method is that you wouldn't have to install any additional software, and you can plug the Cable Modem directly to a hub, rather than having one of the PCs on-line as a server, or buying a router. The only disadvantage is the possible monthly fee. If you have multiple IP addresses, ask your ISP's Tech. Support to assist you with configuring your LAN to share the Internet connection.

How to Improve Adsense Targeting on your Site

By Oudam Em

Get More Out of Adsense - Tips to Improve Contextual Targeting on your Site

As an Adsense publisher, I am often annoyed to find my web pages filled with public service announcements (PSA) and ads unrelated to the content of my site. Fewer relevant ads means fewer click-throughs and ultimately lower Adsense revenues. However advanced Google’s contextual ad serving algorithm may be, it is still a computer program (as opposed to a human being) trying to figure out what a web page is about.

Below are some tips to help you optimize your pages to make them more Adsense-friendly. Note that these tips deal with ad delivery rather than ad formatting or placement. While ad formatting and placement may affect ad click-through rates, they have nothing to do with the delivery of relevant ads to your site. Your site must display relevant ads before they have any chance of being clicked on.

1. Avoid too much content on a page

If Adsense does not understand what is your page is about, it cannot deliver ads targeted to its content. Although a human being can easily tell what a web page is about by taking a glance at it, computer algorithms are no so intelligent. If your page contains too much content, chances are that it also contains too many seemingly unrelated keywords. Adsense becomes confused and displays PSAs or ads unrelated to the topic of your page. Try dividing the page into smaller ones, each focusing on just a few related keywords.

2. Avoid too little content on a page

If your page contains lots of graphics and very little text, Adsense may have a hard time figuring out what it is about. This is especially true when the bulk of your content is derived from graphics and scripts. When possible, use text rather than graphics to display website names, page titles, and headline texts. Make certain to include your keywords in the title of your page and repeat them throughout the page. Avoid hiding your text through sneaky tactics, such as using tiny fonts or making your text the same color as the background. This may be construed by search engines as spam.

3. Repeat keywords that you are targeting

Keyword repetition makes it easier for Adsense to decipher what your page is about. Do this in moderation as excessive repetition may be considered spam by the search engines. Excessive repetition may also make your writing sound awkward to the human reader. Instead of repeating the same keyword more than 5 or 6 times on a page, use synonyms and related keywords. For example, instead of repeating “Adsense optimization” 20 times, you might try alternative phrases like “increase Adsense revenues” or “earn more from Adsense”.

4. Avoid acronyms

I once wrote an article on pay-per-click advertising for one of my sites. When I uploaded the article to my site, I was surprised to find that all of the ads showing on the page were for Apple computer products and had nothing to do with pay-per-click. It later occurred to me that instead of repeating “pay-per-click” over and over in the article, I used the acronym “PPC” numerous times. As it turned out, “PPC” also stands for “PowerPC”, Apple’s line of Power Macintosh computers, which explained why I was getting all the Apple related ads. When I replaced all the “PPCs” with “pay-per-click” and “pay per click”, the problem went away.

5. Choose keywords with commercial value

You may get public service announcements rather than paid ads if your page deals with a subject matter whose keywords no one bids on. A remedy for this is to incorporate keywords with commercial value into your manuscript. For instance, if your page is on some obscure medical condition, you might try sprinkling a few drug names into your document to make it display paid ads rather than PSAs.

Oudam Em is the publisher of http://www.seotoday.net, a free resource for search engine optimization and website promotion. Visit his site for more SEO articles and tools.