Open source Operating Systems

"antiX is a fast, lightweight and easy to install linux live CD distribution based on MEPIS for Intel-AMD x86 compatible systems. antiX offers users the "Magic of Mepis" in an environment suitable for old computers. So don't throw away that old computer yet! The goal of antiX is to provide a light, but fully functional and flexible free operating system for both newcomers and experienced users of Linux. It should run on most computers, ranging from 64MB old PII 266 systems with pre-configured 128MB RAM to the latest powerful boxes. 128MB RAM is recommended for antiX. antiX can also be used as a fast-booting rescue cd."

"Arch Linux is lightweight and flexible distribution that tries to Keep It Simple."

"The AROS Research Operating System is a lightweight, efficient and flexible desktop operating system, designed to help you make the most of your computer. It's an independent, portable and free project, aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS 3.1 at the API level (like Wine, unlike UAE), while improving on it in many areas. The source code is available under an open source license, which allows anyone to freely improve upon it."

"Ark Linux is a Linux distribution for everyone -- designed to be easy to install and learn for users without prior Linux (or computer) experience, while powerful enough for longtime Linux users."

"CCux Linux is * the fastest Linux Distribution in this solar system, * Up to date, * RPM based."

"CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible."

"Damn Small Linux is a very versatile 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution. Damn Small is small enough and smart enough to do the following things: * Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD) * Boot from a USB pen drive * Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can run *inside* Windows) * Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we call "frugal install" * Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install * Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram * Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!) * Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to customize."

"Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating system), but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence the name GNU/Linux."

"DexOS is a 32bit, asm OS, based on the idea, that it would be cool to have a OS based on a console type OS. Like you would get in consoles like the Xbox, PS2 or GameCube, but for x86. The difference with this new OS, would be you are free to code new game's or program's for this new console type OS. From the start, as you would expect from a OS based on a game's console OS, optimizing for speed has been of paramount important in the over all design. To this end there's no virtual memory paging, and only a single process is allowed (though that process can spawn multiple threads). The program runs in ring0, you have direct access to all hardware (including CPU and graphics). Memory allocation is the responsibility of the app--there's no front-end memory allocation. The entire OS will fit into less than 100k. DexOS is bootable games console, that can be run from floppy, cd/dvd, USB fob or direct from Hdd. It's got lots of built in functions and libs to help programmers. You can boot without touching the underlining OS. There's a team of coder's working on tools to help you code, including IDE, fasmport, theres also things like a full TCP/IP stack implemented."

"Dream Linux is a modern and modular GNU/Linux system that can be run directly from a CD/DVD/USBStick and optionally be installed to a HDD (IDE, SCSI, SATA, PATA and USB Drive) It comes with a selection of the best applications designed to meet most of your daily needs."

"eyeOS is a new kind of Operating System, where everything resides on a web browser. With eyeOS, you will have your desktop, applications and files always with you, from your home, your college, your office or your neighbour's house. Just open a web browser, connect to your eyeOS System and access your personal desktop and all your stuff just like you left it last time."

"Fedora Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join."

"The Community Edition of EnGarde Secure Linux was designed to support features suitable for individuals, students, security enthusiasts, and those wishing to evaluate the level of security and ease of management available in Guardian Digital enterprise products. Its development is very much driven by not only the requests from the community, but also their continued participation."

"Foresight is a desktop operating system featuring an intuitive user interface and a showcase of the latest desktop software, giving users convenient and enjoyable access to their music, photos, videos, documents, and Internet resources."

"Frugalware is a general purpose linux distribution, designed for intermediate users (who are not afraid of text mode). Briefly: simplicity, multimedia, design. We try to make Frugalware as simple as possible while not forgetting to keep it comfortable for the user. We try to ship fresh and stable software, as close to the original source as possible, because in our opinion most software is the best as is, and doesn't need patching."

"GeeXboX is a free embedded Linux distribution which aims at turning your computer into a so called HTPC (Home Theater PC) or Media Center. Being a standalone LiveCD-based distribution, it's a ready to boot operating system than works on any Pentium-class x86 computer or PowerPC Macintosh, implying no software requirement. You can even use it on a diskless computer, the whole system being loaded in RAM.
Despite his tiny ISO image size, the distribution comes with a complete and automatic hardware detection, not requiring any driver to be added. It supports playback of nearly any kind of audio/video and image files and all known codecs and containers are shipped in, allowing playing them through various physical supports, either being CD, DVD, HDD, LAN or Internet.
GeeXboX also comes with a complete toolchain that allows developers adding easily extra packages and features but that might also be used to give birth to many dedicated embedded Linux systems."

"Gentoo is a special flavor of Linux that can be automatically optimized and customized for just about any application or need. Extreme performance, configurability and a top-notch user and developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience."

"Haiku is an open-source operating system currently in development designed from the ground up for desktop computing. Inspired by the BeOS, Haiku aims to provide users of all levels with a personal computing experience that is simple yet powerful, and free of any unnecessary complexities."

"Knoppix is a Free and Open-Source Live Linux CD. Knoppix is a GNU/Linux distribution that boots and runs completely from cd. It includes recent linux software and desktop environments, with programs such as OpenOffice.org, Abiword, The Gimp, Konqueror, Mozilla, Apache, PHP, MySQL and hundreds of other quality open source programs."

"Linux Mint's purpose is to produce an elegant, up to date and comfortable GNU/Linux desktop distribution."

Linux from Scratch
Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a project that provides you with step-by-step instructions for building your own custom Linux system, entirely from source code."

"Mandriva is a distribution which offers "live" testing and installation. It contains the Mandriva Control Center, which eases configuration of some settings. It has many programs known as Drakes or Draks, collectively named drakxtools, to configure many different settings."

"MenuetOS is an Operating System in development for the PC written entirely in 32/64 bit assembly language, and released under the License. It supports 32/64 bit x86 assembly programming for smaller, faster and less resource hungry applications. Menuet has no roots within UNIX or the POSIX standards, nor is it based on any operating system. The design goal has been to remove the extra layers between different parts of an OS, which normally complicate programming and create bugs. Menuet's application structure is not specifically reserved for asm programming since the header can be produced with practically any other language. However, the overall application programming design is intended for easy 32/64 bit asm programming. Menuet's responsive GUI is easy to handle with assembly language."

"MEPIS offers SimplyMEPIS as a Live CD or DVD allows you to run the Linux operating system and all the programs from your CD or DVD drive before you install. There is no need to backup all your data, delete the whole hard disk and install the system, just to find it doesn't meet your needs and expectations."

"The openSUSE project is a worldwide community program sponsored by Novell that promotes the use of Linux everywhere. The program provides free and easy access to openSUSE."

"Parsix GNU/Linux is a live and installation CD derived from KANOTIX and based on Debian. It is a complete GNOME centric desktop oriented distribution. Beside of the dozens supported languages, Parsix GNU/Linux also supports Persian keyboard and users can switch to Persian with Alt+Shift keys."

"PC Linux OS PCLinuxOS is distributed as a LiveCD, and can also be installed to a local hard drive. LiveCD mode lets you try it without making any changes to your computer. If you like it, you can install it to your hard drive."

"Plan 9 is an operating system kernel but also a collection of accompanying software. The bulk of the software is predominantly new, written for Plan 9 rather than ported from Unix or other systems. The window system, compilers, file server, and network services are all freshly written for Plan 9. Although classic Unix programs like dc(1), ed(1), and even troff(1) have been brought along, they are often in an updated form. For example, troff accepts Unicode documents encoded in UTF-8, as does the rest of the system."

"Puppy Linux. What makes Puppy different from other Linux derivatives? Most significant is its small size, around 80MB! This lends itself to some unique features: 'Live' booting from CDs, USB sticks and other portable media, Ability to run entirely from RAM, making it unusually fast and particularly relevant to modern PCs, Very low minimum system requirements, runs happily on old Pentiums with as little as 32Mb RAM and Sub-60 second boot times."

"Sabayon Linux helps you realize your dreams by making desktop, office, server computing easier day by day."

"ReactOS is a free, modern operating system based on the design of Windows® XP/2003. Written completely from scratch, it aims to follow the Windows® architecture designed by Microsoft from the hardware level right through to the application level. This is not a Linux based system, and shares none of the unix architecture. The main goal of the ReactOS project is to provide an operating system which is binary compatible with Windows. This will allow your Windows applications and drivers to run as they would on your Windows system. Additionally, the look and feel of the Windows operating system is used, such that people accustomed to the familiar user interface of Windows® would find using ReactOS straightforward. The ultimate goal of ReactOS is to allow you to remove Windows® and install ReactOS without the end user noticing the change."

"Ubuntu is a community developed, Linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. It contains all the applications you need - a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging and much more."

"SliTaz is a free micro GNU/Linux distro using BusyBox, a Linux kernel, and GNU free software. The goal of SliTaz is to have a GNU/Linux distro working in memory (RAM). Installable to a hard disk, with good support for French language web, it offers reliability, high performance and PC recycling. SliTaz boots with Syslinux and provides more than 200 Linux commands, the LightTPD web server, SQLite database, rescue tools, IRC client, SSH client/server powered by Dropbear, X window system, JWM (Joe's Window Manager), gFTP, Geany IDE, Mozilla Firefox, Alsaplayer, Gparted, a sound file editor and much more. SliTaz's ISO image will always fit on less than 30 MB, and try and give you a reasonable selection of software."

"Slax is a modern, portable, small and fast Linux operating system with a modular approach and outstanding design. Despite its small size, Slax provides a wide collection of pre-installed software for daily use, including a well organized graphical user interface and useful recovery tools for system administrators.
The modular approach gives you the ability to include any other software in Slax easily. If you're missing your favourite text editor, networking tool or game, simply download a module with the software and copy it to Slax, no need to install, no need to configure."

"Syllable is becoming an easy-to-use free software operating system for the home and small office user. It is powerful, lightweight and extraordinarily fast and responsive."

"Visopsys is an alternative operating system for PC compatible computers. Under development since late 1997, this system is small, fast, and open source. It features a simple but functional graphical interface, preemptive multitasking, and virtual memory. Though it attempts to be compatible in a number of ways, Visopsys is not a clone of any other operating system. You can demo the distribution from a "live" CD or floppy disk... "

"Wolvix is a desktop oriented GNU/Linux distribution based on Slackware. It features the Xfce desktop environment and a comprehensive selection of development, graphics, multimedia, network and office applications. It's mainly targeted at home users and strives to provide a balance between everyday computing tasks, creativity, work and enjoyment."

"Yellow Dog Linux is an open source, Linux operating system for home, office, server, and cluster users. It is built upon the RHEL/CentOS core."

"Yoper offers you a fast, stable and desktop orientated operating system. It is based on the famous Linux kernel and is usable for home computers. Yoper offers you all the important applications on just one CD. Office, graphic, programming, and multimedia applications are already included and many more applications are available for download from software mirrors. Yoper gives you complete freedom. Free software, free choice of applications that you want to use, the freedom to change your working environment to suit your needs. Get a taste of one of the fastest KDE based Linux distributions currently available."

"Zenwalk is a GNU/Linux operating system, designed to provide the following characteristics: - Modern and user-friendly (latest stable software, selected applications) - Fast (optimized for performance capabilities) - Rational (one mainstream application for each task) - Complete (full development/desktop/multimedia environment) - Evolutionary (simple network package management tool - netpkg)."

Firefox Extensions for Web Professionals

HTML Validator (http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/) – validates web pages to the W3C HTML standards with a simple green check in the corner of the page if the page validates, a red check if it doesn’t, and a yellow exclamation point if there are warnings. It also includes an enhanced view of source code that allows you to see where errors are within the code.

FireFTP (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/684/) – free, secure, cross-platform FTP client that provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers. This eliminates a piece of software for those of you who use a separate program for FTP.

Professor X (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2823/) – lets you view header information without having to view source code. The page “slides” down and Professor X shows you the contents of the page's head element, including Meta, Script and Style content.

NikkelWHOIS (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2646/) –view the WHOIS information for any page by clicking the button on the top-right of the browser.

IE Tab (http://ietab.mozdev.org) – sick of swapping between Internet Explorer and Firefox when testing out a web page you’re developing? With IE Tab you can view Internet Explorer in a Firefox Tab!

FireBug (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1843/) – an advanced debugger console that lets you monitor your javascript, CSS, HTML and Ajax.

Codetech (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1002/) – web page editor that has the feel of Dreamweaver. An amazing extension for anyone doing web design that doesn’t want to fork out a few hundred dollars for Dreamweaver.

Server Switcher (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2409/) – easily switch between sites on your development and live servers by clicking the switch server icon.

SEO for Firefox (http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html) – pulls useful market research data right into Google's and Yahoo!'s search results, including Google PR, Age, links, Alexa rank, WHOIS, and more. It also adds a few helpful links to the top of the search pages, including Google Trends, Google Traffic Estimator, and the Overture View Bid tool.

Yet Another Window Resizer (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2498/) – allows you to resize browser window to default screen resolutions.

AdSense Preview (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2132/) – preview the Google AdSense ads that would appear on that page. This is incredibly useful if you are considering putting AdSense on a page and don’t want to go through the hassle of signing up for an account and putting the ads up just to see what type of ads will show.

Screen grab (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1146/) – takes a screenshot of the webpage and saves it as an image file. This saves a ton of time compared to the method I used to use – take a screenshot and open Adobe Photoshop to crop the image.

Server Spy (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2036/) – indicates what brand of HTTP server (Apache, IIS, etc.) runs on the visited site on the lower-right side of the browser.

Using Keywords in URL Filenames

As a newcomer to the professional practice of SEO I am still trying to familiarise myself with the relative importance of the multitude of factors that can affect a site’s search engine positions for various search terms. There are just so many to consider. When engaged in an SEO project we may initially make a whole range of changes and tweaks so it is difficult to know exactly how much each has contributed towards subsequent search engine position changes. However, a recent experience appears to reinforce the significance of an appropriately chosen URL filename.

One of our SEO client companies is a vehicle contract hire and leasing firm. A few short weeks ago we were asked to begin to apply some focus to the competitive keyphrases ‘van leasing‘ and ‘van lease‘. On site modifications were underway to bring focus to this aspect of the companies business and these included choosing and applying suitable page titles, meta descriptions and copy for the commercial vehicle related pages of their site.

The page that the client wanted indexed for the search terms ‘van leasing’ and ‘van lease’ had been named ‘commercial-contract-hire.htm’. This was changed to ‘van_leasing.htm’ with an appropriate rewrite rule. At that time they were sitting at around #98 in Google UK for the term ‘van leasing’ and around #58 for the term ‘van lease’.

After having made the URL filename change some modest promotion of the van leasing aspect of the business was carried out. Seven days after making the change the site had been crawled by the Google and the newly named page was now appearing at #24 for ‘van leasing’ and #18 for ‘van lease’. A significant improvement in only seven days!

Whilst this is clearly not a controlled experiment with the effects of only one change being accurately quantified it does appear to reinforce the importance of choosing URL filenames that include primary keywords or phrases that are relevant to the page content, title and description.

This is not news but it is a relatively simple aspect of SEO which appears to be overlooked by many sites. Just enter almost any sensible search term and then look at the sites listed on some of the lower SERPs. For the term ‘van leasing’ these are some of the URL filenames that are being used by other businesses involved in van leasing:
mercedes_contract_hire_deals.shtml
cars_and_vans/index.html
category.php?cc=311&k=business_vehicle_leasing___purchase
volkswagen/8/index.html

SEO is all about paying attention to an extensive array of details, URL filenames being but one of these details. Relevant, appropriately chosen URL filenames will not magically result in a page rising from obscurity to prominence overnight but they are a key ingredient in the SEO stew.
(Article from web)

Great SEO Tips From Matt Cutts

This is a compilation of stuff Matt Cutts has said historically on his blog:

1. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/
Matt recommends using dashes over underscores to delimit words in urls. 2005.Google does not algorithmically penalize for dashes in the url despite the fact that some have raised it as a possible heuristic for spam detection. I think WordPress pretty much precludes this anyway. 2005.
2. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-sneaky-javascript/
Google takes action on individual instances of spam when they find it, but they focus on creating better algorithmic solutions. He states that he would not recommend using sneaky javascript redirects because your sites may get nailed in the near future. 2005.
3. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/whats-an-update/
Google updates their index data — including backlinks and PageRank all the time. However, they export and publish new backlinks and PageRank data approximately every three months. New backlinks and PageRank are meaningless — it is not an update. The information is likely already factored in for awhile before you see it. 2005.
4. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-nearly-hidden-text/
Hiding text using similar colors and background colors can actually be worse than using the same colors. Using “#EEEEEE” instead of solid white on a solid white background can look worse — as if you’re trying to hide it. I suspect this is a heuristic for detecting hidden text. 2005.
5. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/q-a-thread-march-27-2006/
If you sell links, Matt says you should use link condoms. Otherwise your reputation may fall. I assume this means they will devalue your outbound links. 2006.
6. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/
Googlebot can only crawl the free portions that non-subscribed users can access since it does not log in. Therefore, be sure to excerpt material in the free version that that offers value. Vanessa Fox. 2006.
7. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/
If you must use Flash, you must also make an HTML version available as well. Block the Flash version from the crawlers with a robots.txt file. Vanessa Fox. 2006.
8. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/
Use user-friendly URLs like "african-elephants.html," and not "343432ffsdfsdfdfasffgddddd.html." Don't overdo it either — african-elephants-and-their-habitats-etc-etc-etc-etc.html. Vanessa Fox. 2006.
9. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/
Assign unique, descriptive tag and headings to every page. Vanessa Fox. 2006.
10. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/
Minimize the number of redirects upon hitting a URL. Vanessa Fox. 2006.
11. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/
Minimize the number of URL parameters — 1-2 parameters if possible. Vanessa Fox. 2006.
12. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/
Don’t use a parameter named “id=” in a URL for anything other than a session ID. Otherwise, it may not be included in the index. Vanessa Fox. 2006.
13. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/
Earned-links are earned and given by choice. Google does consider buying text links for PageRank purposes to be outside our quality guidelines. Vanessa Fox. 2006.
14. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-analytics/
Blackhat SEOs may be leery of using Google for analytics, but regular site owners should be reassured. Vanessa Fox. 2006.
15. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-link-follow-up/
Google’s is against selling/buying links, and Matt indicates they are good at spotting them — both algorithmically and manually. Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines. 2006.
16. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-spam-in-other-languages/
Google is focusing on detecting spam in other languages in 2006 — Italian, Spanish, Chinese, etc. 2006.
17. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-discussing-302-redirects/
External (domainA -> domainB) 302 redirects are largely treated as 301s now. 2006.
18. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/
Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages — http://www.example.com/ vs. example.com vs. www.example.com/index.html. Since all these urls are different, a web server could return completely different content for all the urls above. When Google “canonicalizes” a url, it tries to pick the best one and elimintes the others. To help Google, link to resources on a site consistently, and use 301 redirects to enforce it. 2006.
19. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/
Do not use the URL removal tool to remove domain.com if you are worried about URL canonicalization and have both domain.com and http://www.domain.com/ in the Google index. This will remove the entire site. 2006.
20. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/
Search engines can perform canonicalization for things like keeping or removing trailing slashes, upper vs. lower case, or removing session IDs from bulletin board or other software. 2006.
21. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/sitemaps-interview/
404s (Gone, but may reappear) are treated the same as 410s (Gone, but will not reappear). Most web masters use 404s as 410s anyway. 2006.

Following these tips will probably help you rank better, so long as you actually trust Mr. Matt Cutts :)

Turn your Windows into Mac OSX

Turn your Windows into Mac OSX the ultimate winner when it comes to looks. Just installing this simple software that do all your work while you enjoy the new look of your operating system.

Download: http://devrexster.googlepages.com/dexpose2

Safe web browser for Kids filled with fun

A company called KidZui has taken a positive approach to filtering what your children ages 3 to 12 can access on the internet.

They hired the former editor-in-chief of Leap Frog to set up standards for kid-appropriate internet content.

Then they assembled 200 teachers and parents from across the U.S. to search for appropriate websites for this age group. From this they have created a web browser (like Internet Explorer or Safari, etc.) that will only allow your child to access approved content.

The KidZui web browser already allows over 500,000 safe websites to be accessed, they are adding approved websites every day, and the parent also has the ability to approve websites based on their own discretion. (For example, KidZui doesn’t allow news networks such as ABC to be accessed through KidZui, but parents can change that if they want.)

Free Download: http://www.kidzui.com/download

The Best Sites to Watch Free Movies Online Streaming

1. Watch-Movies.net Watch-movies has the largest achieve of movies to watch for free, their collection range from the classic to the present and unreleased movies. They have movies be genre and they also have bootleg, trailers and reviews so you can easily get familiar with the site and with over thousands of movies achieved you can easily pick your choice.

URL: http://www.watch-movies.net/

2. Freemooviesonline.com The site contains different good quality movies in their respective genre such as romances, adventure,action/martial arts, drama. suspense/mystery, musicals, war, westerns and animations. All of the movies here are in their original versions and has no subtitle.

URL: http://www.freemooviesonline.com/

3. freemoviespuppy.com Freemoviepuppy is also a great addition for your movie fancy trip. They also have wide selection of movies from the oldest up to the most recent in theaters. The site adds new links every hour so you'll have no worry in searching your favorite films.

URL: http://www.freemoviespuppy.com/

OTHER SITES FOR FREE MOVIES

http://www.online-movies-free.com/

http://www.planettube.net/

http://www.movieplace.us/

http://www.freemoviescinema.com/

http://www.movierumor.com/

http://www.cinesmart.net/

http://www.66stage.com/

http://www.themoviezone.net/

http://www.flickpeek.com/

http://www.watchmoviesfreeonline.org/

(djmarion)

Watch free Space Shuttle Launch Live!

NASA Tv livestream video coverage of live events and space programs.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

Common Web Design Mistakes

Here are some of the common web design mistakes:
Confusing pop up messages
Poor load time
Over use of Java
Poor overall appearance
Poor use of HTML tables
Spelling/Grammar mistakes
Poor organization
Inconsistent page design
No contact information
No 'about us' page
No privacy policy
Different backgrounds on each page
Poor content
Poor navigation
Over powering music set to auto play
Broken HTML code links and graphics
Poor browser compatibility
Large slow loading graphics
Too many graphics
Large Welcome banners
Flashing banners
Pages scrolling to oblivion
Multiple colored text
Multiple use of animated graphics
Text difficult to read
Animated bullets
No Meta tags
Too many graphic and/or line dividers
Multiple use of different fonts
Under construction signs
Busy, distracting backgrounds
Scrolling text in the status bar
Multiple banners and buttons
Large scrolling text across the page
Poor use of HTML code frames
Large fonts
Poor use of mouse over effect

Write Your Own IM Bot tutorial

This quick tutorial will show you how to develop your own functional IM bot that works with Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live and all other popular instant messaging clients.

If you like to write a personal IM bot, just follow these simple steps:

- Open this site and request an invite. You should also give your bot a decent name because you can have just one bot per email address.

http://www.imified.com/developers/index.cfm?sec=invite

- An email with a secret key should arrive in your Inbox the next minute. Copy that key to the clipboard and go here to redeem that key.

http://www.imified.com/developers/index.cfm

- Now it’s time to create a bot which is actually a simple script that resides on your public web server. It could be in PHP, Perl, Python or any other language.

This is the source of the PHP script for the labnol IM bot it reads your message, gets the relevant data from Google Suggest and echoes it back to the IM window.

// Get all the related keywords from Google Suggest
$u = "http://google.com/complete/search?output=toolbar";
$u = $u . "&q=" . $_REQUEST['msg'];

// Using the curl library since dreamhost doesn't allow fopen
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $u);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

$xml = simplexml_load_string(curl_exec($ch));
curl_close($ch);

// Parse the keywords and echo them out to the IM window
$result = $xml->xpath('//@data');
while (list($key, $value) = each($result)) {
echo $value ."
";
}
?>

- Once your script is ready, put it somewhere on your web server and copy the full URL to the clipboard.

- Now login to your imified account, paste the script URL and add that im bot to your friends list. This was a very basic bot but the possibilities are endless.

Ultimate Windows Vista Tweaker Utility

Ultimate Windows Tweaker is a Tweak UI Utility for tweaking and optimizing 32-bit & 64-bit Windows Vista. The utility features 130 registry tweaks, but is only 370 KB in size. It does not require any installation and can be run from the USB drive as well.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker is a must have application for all Vista users specially for the fact that its light weight and also portable.

Download Ultimate Windows Tweaker

Remove Viruses and Spyware Manually (Video instructions)

Introducing “The Botts Technique” to manually remove any virus or spyware - guaranteed to work!

(Part 1) - How to Remove Viruses and Spyware Manually


(Part 2) - How to Remove Viruses and Spyware Manually

Scan computer free online for viruses and malware

BitDefender is a very popular name for products to keep your computer safe and secure from viruses, malware and other infection.

They have introduced new online ‘QuickScan’ service that allows you to scan computer for infections without downloading anything.

It claims to detects running malware, hidden threats (rootkits) and keyloggers. It is very easy and quick way for extra protection for your computer. You can run this scan before doing important online activity like accessing bank account, sharing files or downloading stuff on the internet.

The site: BitDefender QuickScan

Create Images with ASCII Characters

ASCII-O-Matic is an online ASCII art generator that enables you to convert your images into ASCII art with just a few mouse clicks.

This web application is extremely simple to use. What’s you need to do is to first upload an image that you want to convert into ASCII code. Next, choose how you want your converted image to look like, under the output setting.

You can choose the colour between Black & White or Color. Also, you can choose between ASCII characters or squares to represent or make up the image.

Once you have done with the output setting, click “Apply” to create your image with ASCII characters.

You can generate an html output of the converted image by clicking the “Generating HTML” button.
Visit: http://www.typorganism.com/asciiomatic/

Why Hard Disk defragmentation is so important?

What is Defragging?

Defragging is process done to a hard disk in order to improve performance and recover some lost disk space. Defragging is an essential part of a PC's upkeep as it keeps all the data on your hard disk in an easily readable order. If a hard disk is left without defragging, then over time the disk will begin to lose performance and also slowly reduce the available capacity to data. As you will be aware if your hard disk is running slowly then this will affect the rest of the system performance, in all applications and especially in games, where frame rate is important.

How does Defragging improve performance?

When you defrag your hard disk you re-arrange the order in which the data is stored on the drive. The PC will arrange the data so that data that belongs together and needs to be read together is actually put in the same place on the drive. The obvious question here is why doesn't the PC store the data in the correct way in the first place? In an ideal situation (such as a blank disk) the PC would do these as a first option. However with the amount of data being deleted and wrote to the disk every second the PC is on it is no wonder that the data cannot be stored together.

Lets have a look at an example. Say you write 3 files to a disk all 10Mb in size the data would be all in a line each 10mb block after the other. This is how your PC would prefer to store the data for maximum performance. It stands to reason that this is how you would like it to be stored as well if you needed to search for the data. But now lets say that you decide to delete the middle file as its no longer any use to you. You now have a gap inbetween your files.

Lets say this time you write a file of 15mb in size. This file will be written in the first 10Mb of space and the remaining 5Mb added to the backend of the free space.As you can imagine with the millions of files being written to and deleted from the disk each day, not to mention the temporary files that windows uses on a frequent basis its not hard to imagine the state in which your hard disk can be in after months of use. After a defrag in this simple example your PC would re-arrange the disk to look as follows.

When files or indeed groups of files that belong together are stores next to each other the PC has a much easier time locating the data plus the disk heads don't have to travel to different parts of the disk to retrieve the data required. This of course speeds up the disks performance and so in turn increases overall system performance. There are of course levels of performance gains. It becomes more negligible as you move to faster hard disks with large memory buffers to compensate for file fragmentation however I would not ignore the problem of fragmentation, it doesn't take much effort to defrag your disk now and then

How does defragging increase disk space?

Simply put defragging doesn't really create any free space on your hard disk. It may appear when you look at the graphics that defrag programs show you, that the disk looks like it has more space, but all you are doing is moving data about not removing any. Any disk space gain is negligible and is caused when the defrag program puts together half clusters of data. Clusters can hold a number of files, but if not filled the next file is started at the next cluster. If a file is broken into pieces around the disk and defrag can put the file back into a single cluster, or just save a cluster somewhere a small amount of space will be released.

Advanced Defragging

Some defragging software can go a little beyond just sorting your files so they are all together. Programs such as Norton Speed Disk can also sort your entire sets of files and programs into the order that they are used. For example it can be set so that your windows swap file is at the fastest part of the disk, followed by games and most used applications which also need the fastest part of the hard disk., Then documents etc and rarely used application can be put to the back of the disk., This gives the priority speed access to the applications that need it most. Again this may only be a small increase in performance but every little helps.

Software to use for Defragging

You will be pleased to know that Windows comes with an adequate defrag program which everyone can use. There are also some other pieces of software out there for a more specific use. Norton Speed disk is one option on the market which comes as part of Norton Utilities and Norton Systemworks. Doing a search on Defrag software on your favourite search engine will give you some options of free to use and pay for software.

Blocking Security Scanners and Bots

Introduction
In this article I'll be showing you how to block and ban the IPs of users who try to use scanners to scan your site for weaknesses, along with blocking bots who try to dig too deep. A little coding can go a long way, and that is what I'll be showing you.

The Problems and Issues
The problem is, many of the bad bots either carry well known or bad user-agent names(well, most modern bad bots don't and hide behind faked UA strings) and ignore the robots.txt standard.

So even though you may have all the common bad bots blocked in the .htaccess file, some will bypass your protection using legit user-agent names. So what we will be working on is creating a bot/scanner trap that will block all the bots who attempt to scan too deep. However, this bot trap is not without fail and can be bypassed. Good thing is, most who attempt to scan the site for a security site are skids and won't know how to bypass this trap, and search engines won't even try.

Advantages

The advantage to blocking bots and scanners, is that they can drain your bandwidth and slow down site loading, especially if you are on shared hosting.


Creating The Bot Trap

Setting Up

The first thing that we will want to do is setup the trap, and we will be using a directory called /trap/ in the root directory. When a bot or scanner accesses this directory, they will be IP banned. You will also want to keep in mind that users and your guests will also be banned when they access that directory.

We also want to make sure that we don't ban any legit bots, so if you are not already using the robots.txt file or if you already are, add the following:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /trap/

Most bots like Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines will honor the robot settings, and won't touch the /trap/ directory.

The next step is to create index.php in the /trap/ directory and add the following:

$agent = $_SERVER['$HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
$datum = date("Y-m-d (D) H:i:s",$tmestamp);
$ipad = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$ban = "Deny from $ipad # /trap/ $agent - on $datum \r\n";
$file = "../.htaccess";
$search = file_get_contents($file);
$check = strpos($search, $ipad);
if ($check === FALSE) {
$open = @fopen($file, "a+");
$write = @fputs($open, $ban);
echo "The IP ".$ipad." has been blocked for an invalid access attempt to a file, directory, or a scanning atempt.;
@fclose($open);
} else {
echo "The IP ".$ipad." has been blocked for an invalid access attempt to a file, directory, or a scanning atempt.";
}
exit;
?>

* $ban - is what will be written to the .htaccess file. Everything after # is a comment, so if you are like me, you might have many traps setup and like to keep track of where they are getting blocked and what time it happened. NOTE: make sure you CHMOD .htaccess to 666
* $file - you need to edit this depending on where you place your trap


Enabling

Now that the system is in place and ready to go, we need to setup the bait for the bots. Place the code below at the bottom of your index file in the root directory.


<a href="/trap/"><img src="images/pix.JPG" border="0" alt=" " width="1" height="1"></a>


When a bot or scanner comes crawling by, they will see this link and travel to it to be IP banned unless they obey the robots.txt file.


The Results

Below is an example of the log when someone hits the trap directory. I currently have /admin/ trapped where the IPB ACP would normally be, and it seems like people try to access the ACP daily and they don't even have a reason to.

Deny from ***.***.***.*** # /admin/ - on 1969-12-31 (Wed) 16:00:00
(Viz0n)

Outlook tracking the source IP of an email

Here is nice little tutorial on tracking the source IP of an email (this only works when the source of the email was Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express as they encode the IP in the Message ID field).

Based on the header data:

Message-ID: <000701c89564$0115a292$cc4fb2bc@kagscc>

"kagscc" is the hostname of the source computer.

Break out the important portion (bolded between last $ and @):

cc 4f b2 bc

Reverse by octet and convert from hex:

bc = 188
b2 = 178
4f = 79
cc = 204

Source IP address is 188.178.79.204

Caveats:

1. Unless the message ID or original IP was spoofed (possible), this is the IP of the computer that originally sent the email.
2. If the email was sent using a private email address behind a router, you will get the private email address, which isn't exactly helpful.

To convert to hex format from octet

Free chat box (Shoutbox) for your website or a blog

MyShoutbox is a free service that lets you set chat box on your website or blog. Very simple create a user account, configure your Chat Box (Smiles, theme, number, etc.) and then copy the generated HTML code on your Web page.

Visit: Free cool shoutbox

Best search engines for code

Have you ever thought that it might be easier to learn programming from looking at other people's code? You might even get new ideas, techniques, and sometimes gain access to better programming code which could save you hours of work. But finding the perfect search platform that you could provide with invaluable information is not easy. Here is a list composed of the 8 best search engines for code:

1. Google Code Search

2. Koders

3. DZone Snippets

4. Github

5. Snipplr

6. Krugle

7. Codase

8. PHP Classes

Creating a custom 404 error page for your website

These notes apply to the Apache web server. Using a text editor create the file '.htaccess' without the quotes if you already dont have this file in place. It should contain either the line:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com/custom404page.htm

or:

ErrorDocument 404 /custom404page.htm

This assumes that your custom 404 page is called 'custom404page.htm'. If you have created the '.htaccess' file on a Windows machine then check and see that Windows has not added a file extension.

Difference between these two versions, both will give you a custom error page, but there are subtle differences:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com/custom404page.htm

This will cause the web server to issue a redirect, redirecting the user to the page. Should you want this allows you to redirect the visitor to a page on another site. Another key difference is that any web robots will receive the status 200 back from the server (page okay) rather than 404 which is page not found.

Whereas:

ErrorDocument 404 /custom404page.htm

Will cause the web server to use the page it finds at the root (i.e. the top or main) folder for your website. The slash at the start '/' tells the server to get the file from the root (or top most) folder. This method has the advantage that any web robots will receive the 404 status back from the server (i.e. page not found). It has the disadvantage that any relative links can easily be broken - because if the user were trying to view a page in a sub-folder then any relative links will be relative to that sub-folder, not the folder that the custom 404 page is in. So either use absolute URLs or use the BASE element to specify an absolute base for (relative) links.

Once you have written both '.htaccess' and 'custom404page.htm' files you should upload them to the server and that should be it.

Search engine submission simple guidelines

1. Beware of companies that promise an automatic submission of your website to hundreds of search engines which are most times nothing more than false promises. The best way to submit your website for search engine ranking and inclusion is to do it yourself or to hire an expert to do it manually, by contacting the search engine companies and directories.

2. As with many things, researching or getting referrals from other companies that have had great success with an SEO company is always the safest way to ensure that your website is going to be in genuinely caring hands. There are so many websites on the internet trying to make a quick buck by any means necessary.Business dealings with the wrong types of people can be very cut-throat if you're not careful in considering and researching where you decide to go in finding your marketing partners for life.

3. Before you begin to submit your website to search engines, it is best to ensure that your websites are thoroughly designed to a professional quality using the right key words, good graphics and pictures and appropriate, relevant content. Don't submit websites that are incomplete.While submitting to a search engine, make sure to provide information about your website, keywords and any other information that may be pertinent, including the name and contact information of your business.

4. The creation and growing life of your website in the infancy stages are always going to come with many great challenges. But once you have overcome those challenges and beaten the odds, you will most likely be able to repeat this pattern over and over if you wanted to do so.You could also decide to become a consultant and help others to become better with their dealings online. They could learn from your mistakes and discoveries just as you had with your wonderful mentors.

5. Mere submissions alone to search engine companies will not guarantee that your site would be immediately listed and the ranking will be at the very top. Because there are thousands of new websites coming up every day and it may take quite some time before they take up your site for review by human editors.One important factor to remember while submitting your website is to include a site map of your website which makes the crawling easy for the web robots. Search engines like Google hardly consider submissions without sitemaps.

6. It just makes sense to do everything that you can think of to make the robot's job in crawling your website as easy as it can possibly be from your end. It can also be referred to as optimizing your website to just flow very smoothly without hardly any interruption at all from the search engine programs that hit all kinds of dead ends and errors as people place businesses online.

7. There are many online companies that accept search engine submission services. You can choose to do it yourself with software packages available all over on the internet.The best way, as with anything, is to get to know your prospective source of help and information as much as you can. Over some time this will develop in your mind as a trustworthy source that you can always depend on for a very long time, you hope.

8. You will hear from many users online that you should stay as far away as you can get from these automatic submission companies. This is very much the case in most of what you may stumble onto online.I repeat that there are a few good, solid and dependable companies that you can find by knowing the right people and being associated with a good network of business minded people.
(iGraphiX)