Quick Online Tips

Safer Internet Day 2010 Today: Think B4 U post!

QuickOnlineTips — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:00:17 +0000

Today is Safer Internet Day 2010. Insafe organizes this event every year in February to promote safer and responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially amongst kids and teens across the world. The topic for 2010 is “Think B4 U post!“.

Safer Internet Day aims to teach children and teenagers that they can control their online identity, by using the privacy settings offered by social networing services, selecting friends online that they can trust, publishing their own photos after thinking carefully about the potential consequences, and pictures of their friends with their permission.

Safer Internet Day is regularly organized by Insafe, the European Safer Internet awareness-raising network co-funded by the European Commission and coordinated by European Schoolnet. Safer Internet Day 2010 will also mark the launch of the web version of eSafety toolkit developed by Insafe in collaboration with Liberty Global Inc. and supported by the European Commission.

Stay Safe Online and Think B4 U post. Internet is not so safe now and everyone knows what you are doing. Think before you post, as your post reaches more people than you can ever imagine.

Original article: Safer Internet Day 2010 Today: Think B4 U post!
Copyright 2009. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Importance of Facebook Fan Page Notes Feature

QuickOnlineTips — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:11:47 +0000

Guest post by Shahnawaz
Notes is not a very well known feature of Facebook fan pages because most of the attention of bloggers is mainly focused on making their Facebook fan page wall more eye catching and on ways to increase their fans count. The fact is that they are actually unaware of the importance of Notes and hence forget to use it effectively.

It’s a great marketing tool and if use effectively the exposure it offers to your blog is unbelievable. You should take it into consideration if your sole purpose of joining Facebook is to promote your blog.

>> Understand | What are Facebook Fan Page Notes

In brief, a Note is very similar to your blog. Like blogs you can update or add new (fresh page) postings (content, news and information) on which people can comment (or show their liking) and even subscribe to your Notes RSS feed. Your Facebook fan page wall will be updated with adding of new Notes.

>> Create | How to activate Facebook fan page Notes feature

Go to your Facebook fan page
At the top navigation bar click on ‘+’ mark, you will see the Notes feature available at drop down menu
Just click on it to make it available at navigation bar as tag
Whenever you need to add content, just click on it and write down your creation. You can also incorporate RSS feed of your blog in your Notes for automatic update.

>> Importance | Why should you use Notes at Facebook fan page

Facebook is not only the best social networking website that helps you to socialize with your online friends, it provides a tremendous feature named Facebook fan page Notes, which is must required for the improvement of your blog.

1) Google takes care of your Notes

The most importance of Facebook fan page Notes is that Google crawls and indexes it. And whenever someone searches for items which are present in your Notes, then there is a chance that your Notes will appear in Google search results. This means a new stream of traffic to your blog and a chance to improve your page rank.

In this regard you should keep in mind, for the best performance of Notes at google search results you should use keywords effectively at title (heading) and produce high quality valuable content.

2) Exposure and Reputation

Your Facebook fan page fans can interact directly with you – they can comment on Notes, they can take part in conversation and polls, and they can communicate with other fans. All these makes them able to understand that they are a part of your blog and their opinion makes sense to the blog owner reading their submission carefully.

Hence the Notes feature helps to expose your blog to a huge number of audience and build reputation for you.

3) Drive traffic to your blog

If use effectively Notes can improve traffic to your blog dramatically.

One way to increase traffic to your blog through Notes is to incorporate RSS feed of your blog to your Notes. It ensures that your Facebook fan page wall will be updated with the same content that you have published at your blog. Whenever fans click on any title it will take them directly to your blog.
Rather, you should always link back to your blog whenever you publish new post in your notes.

This two techniques is enough to drive fans to your blog.

Guest author Shahnawaz (sani), a 25+ years old guy from India is professionally a software engineer and blogger by passion. He blogs at takeme2yourheart.com, which is a blog on make money online and technology niche. You can also submit guest posts and share your Facebook tips.

Original article: Importance of Facebook Fan Page Notes Feature
Copyright 2009. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Everyone Loves xkcd

QuickOnlineTips — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:50:00 +0000

xkcd.com is a popular webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. As a whole new generation continues to love xkcd cartoons, the love is spreading across the web…

One fine day, xkcd starts spreading the love

… and someone decided to animate the cartoon to I Love xkcd

… and then a lot of web celebs joined in to love xkcd

Do you love xkcd?

Original article: Everyone Loves xkcd
Copyright 2009. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Identify Mystery Face in Digg.com Source Code

QuickOnlineTips — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:39:16 +0000

Is Digg hacked? There is a mysterious hidden face on Digg.com? If you view page source code in your browser, a commented code is visible on Digg.com homepage! Can you identify who this face resembles?

Go to Digg.com > Right click > View Source Code … and behold!

Why was I looking up the Digg source code? To grab some cool CSS styling for our blog and look what I found. BTW this face was only present on the front page of Digg, and not on other pages and links. Who do you think this face resembles? Has the Digg.com page been hacked?

Who is the Mystery Face on Digg?

If you look carefully at the source code, it reveals some links and a password also.

The link goes to the site Hell is Nigh, which asks for 6 passwords, and this seems to be one of the passwords which you see in the code. It has other links pointing to Dante’s Inferno, which it is one of 2010’s Most Anticipated Videogames. So this is basically some promotional advertising game going on as Dante’s Inferno hits stores on Tuesday Feb 9, 2010. You can Preorder Dante’s Inferno right now.

View the Dante’s Inferno ‘Go To Hell’ Super Bowl Commercial

Update: The game creator EA had embedded faces of different game characters of Dante’s Inferno into source code of various websites so people can find the 6 passwords. View Source code of kotaku.com, ign.com, gamesradar.com etc.

Original article: Identify Mystery Face in Digg.com Source Code
Copyright 2009. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

3 Killer Email Tips for Saving Money

QuickOnlineTips — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:30:41 +0000

Guest post by Ann Smarty
Here are 3 killer email tips to save money easily. We spend hours a day going through our daily email. Checking mail is the first thing we do when getting down to work and the last thing we never miss before going to bed.

Yes, this is both addictive and inevitable; no matter what advances we have in online communication, email is still the main and the most important medium of staying in touch with friends and doing online business.

This post looks at somewhat creative uses of our inbox: 3 ways to save money with your email:

1. Track and sort special offers from your favorite stores

Say you love shopping with Amazon, then you are likely to be on their mailing list and frequently get special offers from them. Do you want to organize and manage those special offers more efficiently. Then you can learn to use Gmail filters:

Create a label to store all those email updates;
Star them to mark them as highly-important.

If you don’t use Gmail, you can do similar things by learning to use Outlook rules. This post on getting organized with customized Microsoft Outlook rules lists some killer tips on how you can do that:

Create a separate folder to store money-saving email updates;
Flag any email from the store as high importance

2. Get those special offers to your mobile phone

Now, let’s say you really love that store and you are waiting for the discount from it so impatiently that you want to be alerted of it even while you are not in front of your computer. In this case you can set up an email SMS alert. This is really easy, you will be surprised you didn’t know of that tip:

First, get free email to SMS gateway for your mobile carrier.
In the above filter (besides starring the message and labeling it as AMAZON), forward those updates to your free email-to-sms number, like shown on the screenshot (substitute1234567890@txt.att.net with your email-to-sms ID):

3. Subscribe to sites that don’t offer email subscription option

My most effective way to get timely updated of new online deals and free offers is still email. Yes, it is safer to subscribe by RSS and faster if you follow them by Twitter but email is still the only way to not miss anything: you can forget to check your RSS feeds or miss an update in twitter clutter but you are most likely to notice the message if it comes right to your email inbox.

Therefore if I really like what a website is doing I prefer to subscribe by email. Unfortunately (and I’d say surprisingly), not all freebie and deal aggregators offer an email subscription option. One of my favorite ones - ListFreeSamples.com – has none for example.

To subscribe to those sites I use Google Alerts. To make it look for updates within the specified site, use SITE: operator followed by the domain (without space):

The guest post is by Ann Smarty, a search and social media blogger. If you love guest blogging as much as Ann, join MyBlogGuest.com, community of guest bloggers to promote your site and brand. You can also write guest posts and share your favorite tricks.

Original article: 3 Killer Email Tips for Saving Money
Copyright 2009. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Site Hacked?

QuickOnlineTips — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:33:37 +0000

TCS Hacked! If you visit the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) website tcs.com right now, the top Indian tech company’s site has been hacked and a “For Sale” sign is displayed on the site with a notice that the tcs.com domain name is for sale. It points out prospective domain name buyers to a contact email address.

Tata Consultancy Services Limited (TCS) is the top software services and consulting company in India and is the largest provider of information technology and business process outsourcing services in India. TCS is a subsidiary of one of India’s largest and oldest conglomerates, the Tata Group.

It is unbelievable that some hacker could easily hack into one of the most secure websites of the top technology company in India. Its a Sunday evening here in India and I wonder if someone at TCS is looking into it…

Update: Aditya says this is a DNS hack because the page opens well with anonymous proxy surfing tools.

and then an TCS employee commented on his blog that

tcs.com was not hacked. What did happen was that the DNS records that supply the IP were reset to some other IP. Whether that was done by actually hacking tracom/netsol or by social engineering a valid change request I do not know. I know the site was fine because going through the internal DNS got me the correct IP address and the correct content. I believe the problem started sometime before 1am IST [this is a wild guess, from other symptoms], and was resolved around noon or so [this guess is more accurate because I was semi-actively monitoring it].

In both instances, it would have taken a few hours for the bad data to expire from DNS caches. Depending on who your DNS provider is, you may have seen it “come back” at different times. If you were running your own DNS, you could have purged your DNS cache manually and would know more accurately when it came back (or just run a “dig +trace” at 10-minute intervals looking for the right IP to come back)

MoneyLife adds that

The Internet Protocol (IP) address of TCS’s website is 216.15.200.140. However, the hackers changed it to 205.178.152.154, re-pointing the name server (NS) records of the company’s website which may have been done by breaking into the NS or the registrar account, said a cyber-security expert …

… Incidentally, the changed domain ID, 205.178.152.154, shows the ISP name as Network Solutions LLC, which is the registrar of tcs.com as well. So primarily, it appears that someone might have entered into TCS’s registrar account; possible using a compromised password, added another expert.

Original article: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Site Hacked?
Copyright 2009. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Wannabe Millionaire: Confessions of a Newbie Blogger

QuickOnlineTips — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:30:51 +0000

Guest post by Wannabe.
Wannabe Millionaire? I am sure you wouldn’t mind becoming one, right? On a lot of blogs you can find tips and tricks explaining newbie bloggers how to earn a six figure income in the first year. Their stories of success are appealing, and a good number of how-to-make-money blogs are drawing a big crowd of followers that are after the same thing; Money.

It’s amazing really, stop for a second and think about the amount of money that people spent by just being online and clicking on Google ad-sense or by buying an e-book explaining how-to-make-your-first-million. Surely Google and other major advertising companies are the big winners in this game, and we all want our little share.

My reasons for blogging is derived from the above, how do they earn money, and is it really true that by blogging you can have a six-figure income? What is the truth behind all of this?

Reacting on an impulse I started my blog on January the 27th 2010, suddenly I had the need to try it myself. And my goal is ’simple’; investigate the possibility if it is feasible for an absolute newbie to start making money blogging. Amazingly enough the domain-name www.wannabemillionaire.com was up for grabs and it suits my goal perfectly. So here I am, fresh out of the box, a compulsive attention seeking blogger and in a great need for traffic.

Ah yeah, traffic, the magic word, traffic. It’s so much advertised on so many blogs, that very quickly, in my mind, it became a synonym for millions of dollars. But getting traffic is not so easy, and wait a minute, very quick it dawned on me that traffic is the least of my problems. Because what about my blog, what about layout, content, structure, marketing and software?

The vast amount of information that I as a newbie had to absorb in a matter of hours is astonishing. My impulsive reaction to go after a few bucks proved to be very time consuming … But … it is fun, I enjoy doing it and will enjoy it for the coming time. Luckily for me I learn fast, if I may say so. The blogging business, I rapidly discovered, is not just putting a few words together and publish them. You, as a blogger, are the CEO of a very complex company that, in most cases, requires more techniques in marketing and advertising than, let’s say starting your own shop at the corner of a street.

You are the CEO, CFO, COO and CTO of your online company. Both as a beginner and expert, you need to have a strategy. Ever thought of formulating a marketing plan/strategy for your blog/website? It never crossed my mind when I was thinking about blogging. But, as a blogger you need to think of so many things. Currently, I am following the tips and tricks that I find online and use it to promote my blog and gain more exposure. Which is another matter of importance we all want, and desperately are seeking to acquire, exposure.

To be frank, I read somewhere that guest writing is a good thing, and that it will boost your exposure online. So, here I am, exposing my blog and my true motivations with all of you. By the way, some lost souls managed to find my blog since I created it last week, but all they do is stare at the index page and click away. According to many money-making-blogs this is something Google does not like, it has something to do with bounce rate. It crossed my mind to link inside my blog to sexy pictures, just to get rid of bounce rate, but I wonder if that would be ethical…

Anyhow, I just started my blog and I have a lot to learn and a lot of information to digest. Right now, I am not happy with my layout, I would like to have more traffic and surely more content is needed. There are a lot of things I need. But the journey has started, and I will investigate if it is possible for an absolute newbie to start earning in the trade, using free online advice and techniques.

Let the journey begin!

Oh, almost forgot (still being a newbie), I read on many blogs it’s a good thing to involve the audience, so here goes; What is your opinion about those money making blogs, don’t you agree that they are after making money for themselves by trying to lure money out of your pocket? Did you have a marketing plan when you started out, do you have one now?

Guest author Wannabe blogs about the struggles all wannabe millionaires are facing, is the truth out there…? You can also write guest articles and share your experiences.

Buy Vogue-CFDA Google Designer Collections: Limited Time Sale

QuickOnlineTips — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:08:43 +0000

Some amazing Google inspired designer collections are created by the winners of the Vogue and Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) sponsored Fashion Fund and they are selling out on the Google Store.

Google teamed up with the 2009 finalists for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, a program that supports the next generation of fashion designers. 3 selected designers created unique items inspired by Google, and have been put up for a limited time sale on the online Google Store.

Vogue reveals that the winners of the Google Challenge were unveiled at a cocktail party teaming with actresses (Rose Byrne), designers (Diane Von Furstenburg), Vogue editors, and Google staffers—including the brainchild of the challenge, Marissa Mayer. Check out more Party Pictures from the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Cocktail. Here are the 3 products -

Peace “Vintage” Inspired T Shirt by Gary Graham
Gary has reinterpreted the map point, a point of destination, as a global symbol for where we are and where we’re going by enlarging the map point, making it look “worn” away, and placing it over a backdrop of search results for the word ‘Peace.’ Price: $85

Old Fashioned Magnifying Glass Pendant by Waris
Symbolizing a “Googol” – the digit “1” followed by 100 zeros – the chain has one hundred small round links and the digit “1” dangling at the end. Price: $200

Oversize Knit Scarf in Google colors by Ohne Titel
Inspired by Google’s multi-functionality and diversity, the scarf features Google’s signature colors. Price: $300

Astronauts Tweet Earth Photos From Space

QuickOnlineTips — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:15:19 +0000

After the first live tweet from space, now the astronauts are clicking beautiful earth photos from space. Flight engineer Soichi Noguchi is tweeting earth images and posting to his Twitpic account as the International Space Station orbits the Earth. Its a breathtaking view!

Follow Twitter trending topic #spacetweet for more tweets and images from space.

Donate Google AdSense Earnings for Haiti Relief

QuickOnlineTips — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:35:49 +0000

Google Adsense publishers can now easily donate their unpaid Adsense earnings towards Haiti earthquake relief efforts. Donations will go to Partners In Health, to provide medical aid on the ground in Haiti throughout the ongoing reconstruction efforts.

Go ahead and fill the Adsense donation form. AdSense publishers can donate AdSense earnings accrued through January 31, 2010 directly to the earthquake relief efforts in Haiti.

Donation request will not be processed if you donate more than your unpaid balance through January 31, 2010, are subject to tax-withholding, have a disabled account or your account is pending submission of tax information, PIN or phone number.

Some important rules to remember are that you still have to follow AdSense Program Policies. It is very important you do not inform your readers that your Adsense revenue is donated to Charity which might encourage your readers to click your ads, and get your Adsense account banned.

How much of your Adsense dollars are you donating?