October, 2008

Add colourful wordings, videos, smilies, links to your Orkut profile and scraps

I have been getting many emails from my readers (who read my about me section in Orkut) about how to write colorful letters in orkut profile and scarps?
We had thought that this is a small thing that almost everybody using orkut will be knowing. But to our surprise many people wanted to know about it, so here we go:-

Scraps to friends
Now, you can paste in photos, videos, audio, and flash widgets in scraps to your friends. Here’s how:
Add images

Copy and paste urls ending in .jpg, .gif, .png or .bmp and the image will appear in the scrap.
for example, http://example.com/example.jpg
Add videos from YouTube:
Copy and paste the url and the video will appear in the scrap.
for example, http://youtube.com/watch?v=videoid
Add podcast/audio:
Copy and paste the url of an audio file and an audio player will appear in the scrap.
for example, http://example.com/example.mp3
Add html-embeddable objects:
Create or upload your content at sites such as photobucket.com, imageshack.com, rockyou.com or slide.com. Copy and paste the html embed code to share it with your friends.

Scraps to everyone(See below image for the symbols)

To change the font color of your text, type the name of the color you wish to use in brackets.

Ex:- [ColorName]Your text that you want to see in red color[/ColorName]
[red]Text will appear in Red, in Orktu[/red]

To show an emoticon, type the key shown above for each emoticon in brackets.
To make text bold, italic, or underlined, use [b], [i] and [u] accordingly.
To make a word a link, use [link]…[/link]

I am [red]feeling[/red] [b][i]lucky[/i][/b] ! [:)] –> I am feeling lucky !
[link=http://www.orkut.com]orkut[/link] –> orkut [http://www.orkut.com]
[link]http://www.orkut.com[/link] –> http://www.orkut.com
Source:- Orkut

These are some of the basic things to make your scraps and about me section of Orkut colorful and attractive. And if you like any thing in someothers scarp book or about me section and you have no idea of how to do it, then you can just select the whole thing, drag and drop into your scrap book[Not recommended. Do something creative yourself]

Traffic Strategies PART 4: Promote stories which link to you

Digg, stumble, (share/Vote) those stories on the web which link to your blog homepage or to any of your articles. Vote for it, if its really interesting. If its just a bulk link back to many sites, then you will be hurting your reputation by voting or sharing such stories, as it will not be an interesting thing for others to read(in social book marking sites).
Following this strategy, you get traffic indirectly to your blog. Atleast people will read your blog title or URL in the article you Digg or stumble or Buzz! or to whatever site you submit the story. This brings their attention towards your website URL or its name, the next time when they see your blog title/name or URL(which seems to be familiar to them).

And its also good for your Digg, Stumble, Buzz etc profiles, if you submit stories from different URLs.. As all these networking sites have some tracking systems to track the self promotion and they may even ban or suspend(temporarily or even permanently) your blog URL(and not just your profile!) for submitting all the stories from your own blog.

Following this strategy would increase the (referral visitors) visitors trust level as someone is linking to you, and there is every chance of them becoming your loyal readers, if they like your blog for some reasons.

This strategy is not a “get heavy traffic over night” trick. This will bring in some quality readers to your blog over time.

This is one of the strategies that has worked so well on our blog. And be cautious while submitting stores that link to your blog. See that you don’t over do it and/or only submit stories when someone links to you. This will surly annoy your followers in social book marking sites as well, and you may endup with no followers.

Be smart, use this strategy once in a while and be active in all sites where you share/promote good stories on the web.

Happy spammers-Orkut allows Export contacts in CSV format

Spammers job is to keep collecting email address of active internet users until they get a deal(spamming), so that they can mint some money from those spam mails.

I know a guy in India, who asked me 75$ and he could send my blog link to 5 lakh people in one day. And he was very good at convincing. He told that I would get back my money from the one day of campaign with him(spamming).
But guys, I don’t like spammers. And I hate when someone interferes in my privacy without my permission, so how could I interfere in someone else privacy!

One sad part is, these spammers are very intelligent. They know all sorts of things from where they can get the email ID’s of active internet users.

Now anyone can get large number of active email ID’s from Orkut!
Log in to orkut, then click ‘Friends’ along the top navigation. Next, click ‘Download your contacts’ on the bottom of the page to save your contacts as a CSV file.

In Orkut, its not so difficult to add 1000 friends(which is the limitation presently, but we hope Orkut will soon remove this limitation too) by creating a fake account(in the name of a girl and with a sexi pic in the profile). After creating some 10 accounts you can keep checking these accounts and just accept the friend request you get. There are applications which will help you to accept all the friend requests in one click. So by a month are so, you will be acquiring 1000 contacts in each of the profiles i.e., 10 x 1000 = 10000 / month. Now just goto ‘Friends’ link in the top navigation. Next, click ‘Download your contacts’ on the bottom of the page to save your contacts as a CSV file. SO you will have 10000 active email contacts per month.

Now the “Big G’s” “Orkut” is a hot place for spammers to get the email ID’s of the most active internet users. Because, people who are using social networking sites are mostly addicted to that social networking site and they check it almost every day like a daily ritual.

To prevent spammers from getting your email ID for some extent:
Don’t accept/send friend request of/to those who put fake sexi pics in their profiles(to attract others).
And observe their activities before sending/accepting request.

I have been getting lot of spams to one of my ID and the others had just 2 or 4 spams. So I wondered why only one ID is getting full of spam mails?
So we did a bit of research and found that, the same spam messages where present in many peoples orkut scrap books, and finally we could get to know the source of spam and discovered that the guy who spammed us, got our ID from Orkut.

And I am sure, Orkut is one of the main place where these spammers collected huge number of active email ID’s.
So be careful the next time you send/receive a friend request in Orkut or any other social networking sites.

Orkut adds a Family Friendly Feature – “Safety Filter”

Social networking site is a place where we can connect with people and have a good, healthy relationship with. If these sites become like porn sites, then where is the meaning for social networking ?

Its good that Google has come forward to implement this feature in its famous social networking site Orkut.

Google is changing things in Orkut so fast and its improving almost day by day. And We can say that Orkut would surly be a tough competitor for Top 1 place in social networking sites, in the coming days.

This “SAFETY FILTER” feature is automatically turned on in all profiles and you can turn it off anytime by going to “settings”. You turn it off or on, orkut’s tough policies against explicit content will still be in place.

The new “Safety Filter” automatically screens for content that may not violate Orkut Community Standards. With the “Safety Filter” on, whenever you come across a page with photos or text that you might be bothered by (such as sexually suggestive phrases or images) , you’ll receive a warning and the mature content will be replaced by special icons. No filter is 100% accurate, so if you see a page that you think should be blocked, just flag it as always and let the Orkut team know about it.

Orkut has been criticized and even sued in courts of India, not so much for sexually explicit content, but for political content, including communities on the site that criticize the country or some of its politicians.

The filter in Orkut is however oriented to filtering out sexual content and not political content. Filtering political content is far more difficult as there is always a gray area as to when the filter would come in the way of freedom of speech, – said Rahul Kulkarni, product manager at Google India, on Thursday.

Feature Rich Google Analytics Gets Richer By Integrating Adsense ($)

Google has heard the voice of all people who wanted the Adsense and Analytics integration, and finally integrated them, as most of us had guessed.

Google is gradually rolling out this functionality to publishers, and you’ll see an invitation link at the top of your ‘Overview’ and ‘Advanced Reports’ pages when it’s been enabled for your account.

click above image to enlarge
And Google is also rolling out some advance features to its analytics:

click above image to enlarge

With this integration, we can get huge benefits:
Actually, we need to find more use of these feature rich resource using our creativity.

Discover untapped markets. Use the geographies report to determine which regions are under-represented in your site’s user base. Optimize your site’s content to attract more of these under-represented users.
Drive high-earning traffic to your site. Use the ‘Referring sites’ report to determine where the users who are making you the most money are coming from. Focus your efforts on getting traffic from these sources.
Delve deeper into AdSense reports. Use the visualization feature to look at trends in your site’s AdSense performance over time, or by time of day.

Some advance features available is Google-Analytics also include:

Advanced Segmentation, Custom Reports, a data export API (private beta), integrated reporting for AdSense publishers (private beta), multi-dimensional data visualizations called “Motion Charts,” and an updated user and administrative interface.

Integrated Reporting with AdSense:

click above image to enlarge
Learn how to link your AdSense account with a Google Analytics account, and for a glimpse at the new reports, take a look at this video:

If this feature is not yet active in your account then be patent, Google is busy rolling out this feature to all of us.

Our myths:-[ Hope this was a pure coincidence. Don’t take this myth seriously, I just wanted to share the coincidence incident with you people 🙂 ]
Put your analytics code to your blog/website where you have put your adsense ads(after you link your adsense and analytics accounts), and Google will start trusting your blog/site more and your earnings will also increase, as Google can identify[almost all user activity in your blog] valid and invalid clicks on your blog more accurately, easily and faster. [Believe it or not, we could see a sudden raise in our Adsense earnings just 30 minutes after we put analytics codes into our blog. — Might be a coincidence.]
Its like surrendering almost all information of your blog to Google. Now Google Search algorithm will also improve a lot due to Google Adsense and Google Analytics Integration.

PayPal Teaching Security Measures to Its Customers

Many days ago we had received an email from paypal@something.com, which said to click on a link and enter my credit card information by loging into PayPal account. We knew that the email was not from PayPal(by looking at the from address of the email), but still we clicked it to test(not recommended), and the link took us to a fake website resembling PayPal. And to our astonishment, the fake website was almost an exact clone of PayPal website. Newbies and ignorant people would just do everything the email had stated them to do and you know what will happen next!

What I did was, just entered some wrong username and password(to loginto that fake PayPal like website), guess what? Any random, wrong username and password will longinto such websites. The next thing was, it prompted us to enter our Credit Card number. There also I entered some nonsense numbers. And finally it poped up a hearty message saying “Thank you”.

We do not recommend anybody to try what we did with the phishing email link. We did all those things at our own risk.

And as this was our first experience with such phishing email, we just informed about the email and the fake website to PayPal team. And got this reply email from PayPal:

Dear Satish,

Thanks for taking an active role by reporting suspicious-looking
emails.
The email you forwarded to us is a phishing email, and our security
team is working to disable it.

————————-
What is a phishing email?
————————-
Phishing emails attempt to steal your identity and will often ask you to
reveal your password or other personal or financial information. PayPal
will never ask for your password over the phone or in an email and will
always address you by your first and last name.

Take our Fight Phishing Challenge at https://www.paypal.com/fightphishing to learn 5 things you should know about phishing. You’ll also see what we’re doing to help fight fraud
every day.

————————-
You’ve made a difference.
————————-
Every email counts. By forwarding a suspicious-looking email to
spoof@paypal.com, you’ve helped keep yourself and others safe from
identity theft.

Thanks,

The PayPal Team

——————————————————————————–

That email really made me think PayPal as more secure. As the secure feeling was still in my mind, another email was spotted in my email. Now I forwarded it to spoof@paypal.com. Now, this time I got still better reply from PayPal, which was more informative:-

Dear Satish,

Thank you for contacting PayPal.

At PayPal, we care about the security of your account. Therefore, we
would like to offer you a number of Security Tips.

The tips will help you protect yourself against various types of
Internet fraud, such as ‘spoofing’ and ‘phishing’: the act of collecting
personal and financial information through fake emails, websites and
phone calls.

Using this sensitive information, the perpetrators will try to commit
identity theft, credit card fraud and various other illegal activities.

So please read the tips below, for your own sake, and in the interest
of all PayPal users.

Emails – Make sure they are sent from PayPal

1. Always check the greeting. We will never address you with Dear
PayPal User or Dear PayPal Member. Instead, we will address you by your
first and last name, or the business name associated with your PayPal
account – except in some automatic responses.

2. Look for strange links. When you’re asked to click on a link in
an e-mail that looks like it’s from PayPal, be extremely cautious.

3. Does the e-mail ask you to enter sensitive information? If it
does, it’s not from us. PayPal will never ask to you enter:
o Bank account numbers
o Credit and debit card numbers
o Drivers license number
o Email addresses
o Your full name

4. Check for attachments. PayPal will never send an attachment or
software update to install on your computer.

5. Take your time, don’t be rushed. Spoof emails can contain a
threat: You must take action, and do it now. If you feel undue
pressure, don’t respond. Simply log in to your account, and check your Resolution Center.

Website pages – make sure that they are hosted by PayPal

1. Check the URL when you log in. When you use the PayPal service,
make sure that the URL at the top of the browser is
https://www.paypal.com/. This means the website is secure. If you see a different URL, close your browser – even if it contains the word
PayPal.

2. Look for the lock. The lock symbol that appears in the bottom
right hand corner of your browser means it is a secure site.

Passwords – keep it on PayPal

1. Last but not least, create a unique password for your
PayPal-account. Don’t use this password on any other site and don’t
share it with anyone else.

2. Change your password every month.

If you think you have received a fraudulent email, forward the entire
email, including the header information to spoof@paypal.com and then
delete the email from your mailbox.

Click the “Security Center” link on any PayPal webpage for additional
tips and tools for staying safe online.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us
again.

Sincerely,
Jeffrey
PayPal, an eBay Company
————————————————————————————————–

I was very much happy that PayPal is concerned about its customers.
Now PayPal has taken yet another step to teach its customers, to make them authority of online fraud detection and prevention techniques.

Now you can see an ad on the HomePage of PayPal and which will take you to https://www.paypal-promo.com/safety/ when clicked.

paypal-security-measure
This site is made of flash and its visually appealing and gives full information about online fraud detection and prevention techniques.
It involves “Training Center”, where it tells about online theft and protection measures etc. And next is, it has an “Safety Exam” section where you will be presented with some questions and answers(in the form of options) to test your levels of understanding about online fraud detection and prevention techniques. Next is the “Safely Calculator”, calculates “How safe your PayPal account Is?”, by determining your answers to some of the questions.
And there is also a section called “Safety Products”, which lists some of the safety products developed at PayPal Lab — Take a look at it, they may be for you.

One thing which we never knew and came to know from this website are:
PAYPAL SECURITY KEY
All agents need gadgets. Customers in the US, Germany and Australia can use the PayPal Security Key, a small electronic device that generates a unique security code every 30 seconds.
You use this security code when you log in to your PayPal account, giving you an extra layer of protection against identity theft and account takeover. Hope this feature will be available soon in all countries where PayPal transactions are allowed. And for those who are deprived of this feature presently can make use of one of their Plug-In which offers an array of security features by generating a single-use MasterCard credit card numbers to help keep your financial information’s secure.

In India RelianceMoney demat account holders have been using such Security Key to generate new password for their account every 30 seconds. PayPal taking such measures creates an healthy, secure feeling in its customers.

Update:-
Please do not even click on the suspicious links found in your phishing emails. Because now a days the scripting(script programming) has become so powerful that, if you click on such links, a worm can be placed inside your computer(which may track your activities later). Clicking on such links is just like permitting the script to access your information.

WordPress2.7 Latest Screen Shots

WordPress2.7 is scheduled to release on November 10, 2008.
Here are some great looking design screen shots(may not be a finalized design, there may be some changes to these designs):-

2.7 New Post Screen, Unfinished

2.7 Dashboard(click above image to see full screen image)
Screen Shots Credit

1. For plugin compatibility check.
2. New features of WordPress2.7