I hate facebook, from the deepness of my guts! However, unfortunately in one of the companies I'm employed, occasionally I have to use it as an advertisement media to improve the Search Engine visibility for their websites (gather them some more likes). As a not big lover of facebook, I'm also not a facebook-pro, anyways with this circumstances, I'm starting to learn basic tips on, making a facebook page / profile more user friendly and hence more attracting to facebook users.
From what, i"ve read there are plenty of factors that can affect on how attractive a facebook page / company profile , anyways some of the factors are more important to tamper than others. Such two factors of top importance are:
Let me evaluate a bit on each of the three aforementioned fb marketing weight factors.
1. Using Page likes for popularization.
– Lets say that you would like to make marketing to a company websites which is involved in Financial or Investment market. Enter with the company created page or profile and facebook and think for and search for as many keywords related to the company business as possible. Check each of the results if the Page / Group is liked by hundred thousands of other people, then just give it a like too. By doing so for a couple of seconds all this (hundred thousands or millions) of people who has also liked it will see for a second (or less), what hangs on your Facebook profile 😉 The chance someone gets interested into what is your profile saying here is high especially if this pops up to a some 100 000+ of logged people who previously liked a fb page 🙂
2. Joining groups as a way to drive more visitors to a facebook profile
Joining big groups consisting ot thousands or millions's logic is the same like with the page likes. The only difference is some groups are kept private the so called (Closed Group). Finding a number of similar (Open Groups) to your company activities and joining them will possibly display your company facebook profile to as many profiles as the group has. Most of the groups are not too active therefore joing groups as a way to drive attention of facebook users to a desired profile is not so efficient as with Page Likes Adjusting a profile picture logo dimensions to a wide skyscraper.
It might seem strange but actually the size of profile picture set to pages or profiles in facebook matters, different profiles dimensions could have impact on Page Likes 🙂 The reason for the fb picture profile having influence on the marketing is very simple. If you have a wider picture you can graphically include more data visible for the user that is always stuck to the page and hence seen by the user.
I've realized this after, I've red few articles online on the same topic along with that I've noticed many big brand pages on Facebook like for instance BMW (Cars) with over 8 000 000 of likes, Adidas and Nike – with over 6 000 000 likes, have set up this wide skyscraper dimensions logos.
Here is a crop taken displaying the wide skyscraper profile picture set by BMW cars.The profile picture used by BWM (cars) has an image dimensions of: 180×500 heigh x widthAdidas's profile logo has a size of 180×489.
Nike uses a bit of unstandard 390×720 (but while uploaded facebook website automatically crops the image to a size which is fittable for a wide skyscraper) with dimensions like (200×400)Another franchising company with big likes base, I've seen is McDonald's with 19 900 000+ likes! again with a banner logo consisting of wide scraper with picture dimenions (180×439 – height / width )There are some comparatively big user base facebook pages, like Ubuntu's non-profit organization with 555 000+ thousands of likes, and their logo has dimensions of 180×181 pixels.
Not all of the highly liked (visited) facebook pages however use a wide skyscraper as a profile logo and still has enormous number of likes. One contra-example showing that there is no clear relation between facebook profile picture dimensions and page popularity (number of likes) is Metallica (Musician/Band) fan page – (http://www.facebook.com/Metallica), which as of the time of writting this article has the UNIQUE HIGH NUMBER of 23,725,897 LIKES! 🙂
As far as, I've further red on many blogs, there are two general facebook standard banner profile picture recommendations:
1. One is facebook square like profile picture
– (this is the classics), if you just place a picture that is not too wide automatically facebook upload scripts will tailer the picture to have dimensions like: 180×180 pixels
The other recommended facebook pictures size is the wide wide-scraper and it should possess an image dimensions size similar to: width x height -180×500 pixels
This is pretty much the few basics I so far, know of can help to easily gather a custom fb company Page Likes. As facebook is really HUGE nowdays fb marketing has advanced tremendously.
I'll be glad to hear some cool tips & tricks you know?which can help a facebook page / profile popularity rise up. Looking forward to hear for your good or bad facebook experiences 🙂
Likes of pages, which are liked by thousands of hundreds or millions of people
Belongings to groups / Membering to big groups (consisting of thousands) which hold similar interest or business activity
he Joomla CMS default behaviour is that Page titles of the Joomla Articles created are always set to the page Title assigned to each of the articles.
This is not very good behaviour in terms of SEO, as the page title of each link on the main page is different and there is no continuous repeating pattern in all of the joomla pages. Everyone that has even basic idea of SEO knows that page titles are very important weight factor to make indexing inside Search Engines succesful.
There is a well know SEO rule which is the more reoccuring pattern one has in his page titles, more is stressed on the keywords contained in the title. As I said for some weird reason Joomla has no common page Title for all my the created Article pages linked via the Main Menu*
Thus in order to improve this bad default Joomla SEO behaviour one has to change the default auto assigned titles for created pages, manually.
Two things are necessery to change each of the joomla already existing TITLES.
1. Go to each of the pages (.e.g. Home etc.) and change the Parameters System Page Title settings
After logging in with administrator in Joomla, navigate to
Menus -> Main Menu*
Further on choose a menu item from all your existing items, let’s say Home and click on it.
On the left side below the Save, Apply, Close and Help buttons you will notice the menus:
When clicked on Parameters (System) a submenu will appear:
Above is a screenshot of the up-described Parameters (System) [Page Title] location
You need to change where it reads on the screenshot CHANGE THE TITLE HERE !!!!!! 😉
After entering your own desired page title go and save the article via the Apply or Save button (also visible in the screenshot).
Now as the custom Page Title is set, next step is to enable the custom Page Title for the respective Article in Article Manager
2. Enable custom Page Title for created pages in Joomla
Go to the Article Manager by following the menus:
Content -> Article Manager
Select the Article of which you want to change the Page Title to some custom text and click over it.
As the article opens for edit in an html editor, navigate to Parameters (Advanced) tab and therein change the Show Title from default setting value: Use Global to Yes
Once again use the Save or Apply button to confirm the new settings and open your website in a new tab, try to browse and check the title of the articles parameters just edited. It should show up in the Title (page heading) the custom input Title.
Now repeat the same procedure for all pages (Articles), existing in Joomla to attune the Page Titles to some Google friendly strings and enjoy the better Search engine indexing which should likely follow.
One of the qmail servers I manage today has started returning strange errors in Squirrel webmail and via POP3/IMAP connections with Thunderbird.
What was rather strange is if the email doesn’t contain a link to a webpage or and attachment, e.g. mail consists of just plain text the mail was sent properly, if not however it failed to sent with an error message of:
Requested action aborted: error in processing Server replied: 451 qq temporary problem (#4.3.0)
After looking up in the logs and some quick search in Google, I come across some online threads reporting that the whole issues are caused by malfunction of the qmail-scanner.pl (script checking mail for viruses).
After a close examination on what is happening I found out /usr/sbin/clamd was not running at all?! Then I remembered a bit earlier I applied some updates on the server with apt-get update && apt-get upgrade , some of the packages which were updated were exactly clamav-daemon and clamav-freshclam . Hence, the reason for the error:
451 qq temporary problem (#4.3.0)
was pretty obvious qmail-scanner.pl which is using the clamd daemon to check incoming and outgoing mail for viruses failed to respond, so any mail which contained any content which needed to go through clamd for a check and returned back to qmail-scanner.pl did not make it and therefore qmail returned the weird error message. Apparently for some reason apparently the earlier update of clamav-daemon failed to properly restart, the init script /etc/init.d/clamav-daemon .
Following fix was very simple all I had to do is launch clamav-daemon again:
linux:~# /etc/inid.d/clamav-daemon restart
Afterwards the error is gone and all mails worked just fine 😉
I've recently decided to add Comment as OpenID functionality to my wordpress blog. The reasons to do that is that I myself have today created an OpenID account. Already million of people have OpenID account without even knowing. Most major search engines and social websites like Google, Yahoo, Live Journal, Hyves, Blogger, Flicker, MySpace automatically creates an OpenID account for newly registered users. It is up to the user to check with each of the aforementioned providers what is the URL of their OpenID account.
Even though OpenID popularity is steadly rising, I'm sure there are still plenty of users who did not heard, used or noticed OpenID yet.
So What the heck is OpenID? For all those who still haven't heard about it, OpenID is a universal web site login system With just one "unified" OpenID account the user can login to multiple websites with no need to create multiple accounts across each and every different website on the internet. The only requirement for the user to be able to use OpenID is that the website in question to have (support) for OpenID credential and the user to have existing OpenID account.
Therefore using one single OpenID you can sign in as a certain user to multiple websites on the internet with no need for annoying registration process to each and every new website you encounter. Another benefit OpenID gives to the user is that you don't have to memorize or keep notes of a tens or thousands of different login accounts across the many different websites on the net. Using OpenID also saves the user from troubles with forgotten password or username as just one OpenID login is used to login you everywhere.
For WordPress blogging platform the Russian Igor Korolev, has written a wordpress plugin – comments-to-wordpress . This plugin adds support for OpenID authentication in WordPress comments.
Here is how to OpenID to WordPress:
1. Download the comments-with-wordpress plugin and unzipAs of writting of this article latest comments-to-wordpress plugin is ver. 1.4. Download the plugin to blog path directory lets say, /var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins/ and unzip:
Next the plugin has to be Enabled, just like any other wordpress plugin via admin menus:
Plugins -> Inactive -> Comments with OpenID (enable)
Once the plugin is enaabled it is necessery to add some code with a text editor in file /var/www/blog/wp-content/themes/default/comments.php
Small noet to make here: If you're not using the default WordPress theme (like I do), you will have to edit the /themes/your-theme-name/comments.php instead.
Save the comments.php file and you Identification for new comments with OpenID will appear in your wordpress Comments form.
The OpenID plugin will add a number of service OpenIDs to choose between like you can see in my blog's plugin section or the screenshot below:
The URL https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id is just a sample and showed because I clicked on the Google icon. If you have a Google profile you can check the exact ID and use it as URL there. Simply if your browser is logged in Gmail and you have Google profile. OpenID should work. As you can see the plugin supports a number of services which already support OpenID auth, the list of services can be easily extended by adding minor changes in …/plugins/comments-with-openid/comments-with-openid.php
There is also another wordpress plugin with the openid name – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/openid/
Downloading and enabling the other openid plugin also adds support for OpenID login in your http://your-url.com/wp-admin/ login page.
Installing the OpenID plugin is needed especially if you're a blogger blogging on 5 or 10 different topic oriented blogs, once downloading and installing the OpenID plugin will allow you to login across the blog ring without loosing time or bothering to remember different passwords across all the blogs. Here is a screenshot of the /wp-admin wordpress login page with the OpenID wp plugin enabled:
As of time of writting according to http://openid.net/get-an-openid/what-is-openid/'s website there are over 50000 major websites on the net already accepting OpenID login. Of course as every technlogy OpenID is not perfect and along with its convenience in some cases it could impose security hole. OpenID opponents claim under some circumstances OpenID is prone to forgery, XSS (cross site scripting) and XSFR attacks. Everyone who is about to use OpenID should be also aware of the great security risk it impose if one OpenID account gets stolen through sniffing, this could mean multiple websites can be accesses with the one single OpenID by the malicious user and a lot of confidential data owned by the user can be revealed or deleted … With this said I think OpenID is not a recommended login technology for Windows users, as windows is famous for being vulnerable to so many Viruses and Spyware/Malware etc.. With non-free software OSes like MS Windows, the user never cannot for sure if the system is infected, hence using OpenID to transfer credentials over the internet or store an OpenID SSL/(TLS) certificate to identify in websites is TOO DANGEROUS! Hope this article was helpful. Cya
I've installed Jabber as a platform for internal company communication for a company. It was a requirement for this jabber server to be accessed from a different type of computers / devices different in size, hardware and OS e.g. (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Ipad, mobile phones etc.)
Happily there is plenty of free software programs which allows access to jabber for free. On the major operating systems GNU / Linux, Mac OS X and Windows the client jabber accounts are working fine with the wonderful free software Pidgin – The Universal Chat Client
One of the jabber clients, however was primary had to be used on Apple's proprietary IPad / IBad as Richard Stallman likes to call it 😉
The person who had to have the Jabber protocol working on IPad program was not a proficient user and therefore I had the task to find a program to be able to talk to the Jabber protocol for him. A quick search in Google for jabber ipad client led me to few programs said to support Jabber on Ipad :
BeejiveIM for IPad
Jabba
Jabba was looking quite, nice but unfortunately costs $1.99 and should be purchased in Apple's App Store and it was preferrable not to spend money on a trivial thing as a Jabber client. I gave BeejiveIM a try but it required some very complex registration, as well as again required to be purchased (if I remember correctly), so it wasn't an option either.
Then thanksfully, I found TalknOut which is free and it is a perfect jabber client for Apple Ipad Talkonaut is a program also supporting both Jabber (XMPP) and GTalk2VoIP, hence supporting Google Talk and MSN/Live Messanger. It is written Java and therefore works on any device that has Java installed. Talkonaut supports the following mobile architectures:
Apple's IPhone and Ipad
Google Android Phones
Many of the Nokia Symbian's S60 3rd and 5th edition "smart" phones
Windows Mobile 5.x and 6.x
Java J2ME based phones
Installing TalkonAut is a piece of cake from Ipod's Safari you click on the Install link and it gets installed. I will not get into details on how it is configured as this also is pretty easy. Here is how it looks like on Ipad after configured and the user is logged in Jabber:
Something really unique and nice for the program is the way the chat dialogs gets ordered, the idea to place one person's sending on the left side and the replying one on right is innovative and something I've not seen in another chat client 😉
Talkonaut should also support VoIP (voice conversations), between mobile users, I'm curious if somebody used the program for VoIP and can share feedback?
Christmas has just passed away. As a Christian I was curious what is the reason in so many Christian countries, we decorate Pine trees and I did a quick research on the topic. In this small article, I'll present my findings.
Observing the Christmas Pine Tree tradition has been quite ancient and probably according to many sources dates back to the XIIth century. The first written records of a Christmas tree are of an anonymous Frenchman who visited Strasbourg, Germany in 1601. His description of the decoratd pine tree says like "wafers and golden sugar-twists (Barley sugar), roses cut out of many-colored paper, apples, gold foil and sweets."
Later in the 1800s, the local German Christmas pine tree tradition was spread across America by German emmigrants. In UK the Pine tree decorating tradition appeard in 1841, where a royalty (Prince Albert) decorated his castle (Winston Castle).
A little later after the Queen Victoria adopted the pine tree, United Kingdom citizens started to decorate pine trees for themselves, folliwng the highly regarded Queen. Usually the pine tree has historically been decorated with gifts as well as an Bright star is put atop.
One of the Christian interpretations for the Christmas tree is that it represents the same Cross (tree) on which Christ was crucifixed. Then after Christ's resurrection because of (or through that) tree, the humanity received the Lord big spiritual blessings. These blessings are represented by the gifts decorated on the Fir tree. The pine tree itself is in Christianity a reference for the symbol of Salvation that we received came from the Holy Cross, where our saviour was crucified.
The Fir is decorated with lights to represent the joy and the lights of Christmas (that burns in our hearts), the star atop the tree is a reminder of the Star that rised in the East during the night of Christ's birth as we read in the gospels.
Decorating Pine trees is commonly observed mostly in Roman Catholic Church and often followed by some protestant denominations and less used in Orthodox Church (though this is changing nowdays).
In Eastern Europe, the Christmas tree appeared quite late and the whole concept was unknown in the Orthodox Christian countries, just until the end of the 19th century.
With the recent severe globalization the pine tree was silenty adopted in almost all parts of the world, including even communist countries and even sometimes in muslim ones.
Unfortunately, the relation between the Fir tree and our Christian faith is little known today and with the years to come it will be less and less associated with Christianity.
Here are few interesting legends which I found explaining, some of the possible roots of the Christmas tree decoration:
1. Legend of the Pine Tree Saving the Holy Family
When the Holy family was pursued by Herod's soldiers, many plants offered to provide them with shelter. One such plant was the Pine tree. With Mary too weary to travel any longer, the family stopped at the edge of a forest to rest. A gnarled old Pine which had grown hollow with the years invited them to rest within its trunk. Then, it closed its branches down upon them, keeping the family safe until the soldiers had passed. Upon leaving, the Christ Child blessed the Pine and the imprint of his tiny hand was left forever in the tree's fruit… the Pine cone. If a cone is cut lengthwise, the hand may still be seen.
2. Pine tree and Easter Legend
There is a legend that pine trees "know" when it's Easter. The pine trees start their new growth in the weeks before Easter. If you look at the tops of the pine trees two weeks before Easter you'll see the yellow shoots. As the days get closer to Easter Sunday, the tallest shoot will branch off and form a cross. By the time Easter Sunday comes around, you will see that most of the pine trees will have small yellow crosses on all of the tallest shoots. This really happens we live where there are lots of pines, and each year this actually happens, it is amazing to watch, and the process of the new growth appears as crosses on the ends of each branch.
I've not personally observed that, but according to people who live in pine tree forest areas this is a fact.
3. Legend about M. Luther and the Pine tree
Martin Luther, founder of the Protestant religion, was taking a stroll through the woods late one night. The sky was clear and many stars were shining through the branches of the trees, giving the impression of twinkling lights. Luther was so captivated and inspired by the beautiful brilliance of the sight that he cut down a small evergreen and brought it home. He recreated the stars by placing candles upon the tree's branches to imitate their radiance and presented it to his children.
This story explains why, the pine tree become so wide spread initially in the "western world", as it gives some connection between the Pine tree and Protestant Christianity.
4. The Children Legend of the Fir Tree (Kids Story)
On the night of the Christ Child's birth, all living creatures, both flora and fauna, traveled to Bethlehem bearing gifts. The Olive tree, for example, brought its fruit and the Palm tree its dates. But the little Fir tree had no gift and was so tired that it was unable to resist when the larger trees pushed it into the background and hid it from view. But then, a nearby Angel took pity and commanded a cluster of stars to descend and rest upon its delicate boughs. When the Baby Jesus beheld this lovely lighted tree, he smiled and blessed it, declaring henceforth that Fir trees should always be filled with lights at Christmastime to please little children. When Christianity first came to Northern Europe, three personages representing virtues were dispatched from Heaven to place lights on the original Christmas tree. These personages were Faith, Hope and Charity. Their search was long, since they were required to find a tree as high as hope, as great as love and as sweet as charity. In addition, the tree had to bear the sign of the cross on every bough. Their search finally ended in the forests of the North where they found the Fir. Lit by the radiance of the stars, it became the first Christmas tree. The triangular design of the Fir has also been usedto describe the Holy Trinity of God the Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. Eventually, converts began to revere the Fir as God's Tree…as they had once revered the Oak. By the Twelfth Century it was being hung, upside-down, from ceilings at Christmastime in Central Europe, as a symbol of Christianity.
5. The Paradise Tree Legend
A very old and delightful European custom centers around decorating a Fir tree with apples and small white wafers which represents the Holy Eucharist. These wafers were later replaced by small pieces of pastry cut into the shapes of stars, angels, hearts, flowers and bells. Eventually additional pastries were introduced bearing the shapes of men, birds, roosters and other animals.
During the middle Ages, around the Eleventh century, religious theater was born. One of the most popular plays … The German mystery play concerned Adam and Eve and their fall and expulsion from the Garden of Eden, represented by a Fir tree hung with apples. This tree was symbolic of both the Tree of Life and the Tree of Discernment of Good and Evil, which stood in the center of Paradise. The play ended with the prophecy of a coming Saviour. For this reason, it was often enacted during Advent.
The one piece of scenery, the "Paradeisbaum" or "Paradise Tree" become a popular object and was often set up in churches. Eventually it also found its way in private homes and became symbol of the Saviour. Since the tree was representative not only to Paradise and the fall of man, but also the premise of salvation. It was hung not merely with apples, but with bread of wafers (Holy Eucharist) and often sweet to represent the sweetness of redemption. In some areas of Bavaria, fir branches and little trees decorated with lights, apples and tinsel are still called "Paradeis".
According to some other Christian legends, it was a Fir tree that grew as the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. When Eve plucked its fruit, the foliage and flowers shrank to nothing but needles. Only on the night of Nativity would the Fir tree bloom again a moment marked perhaps by the Christmas tree we Christians use.
Of course these are just legends and as with every legend there is plenty of romantism included. Nevertheless I consider most legends similar to proverbs contain deep truth and contain truthful facts. Moreover knowing the legends of our forefathers connect us to who and what we are and from antropological point of view is precious knowledge, we should try to sustain and spread to our children.
Since I've blogged about my recent skype issues. I've played a lot with pulseaudio, alsa, alsa-oss to experimented a lot until I figured out why Skype was failing to properly delivery sound and record via my embedded laptop mic.
Anyways, while researching on the cause of my Thinkpad r61 mic issues, I've red a bunch of blog posts by people experiencing microphone oddities with Lenovo Thinkpads
Throughout the search I come across one very good article, which explained that in many cases the Thinkpad sound problems are caused by the snd-hda-intel alsa kernel module. snd-hda-intel fails to automatically set proper sb model type argument during Linux install when the soundcard is initialized with some argument like options snd-hda-intel model=auto
Hence, the suggested fix which should resolve this on many Thinkpad notebooks is up to passing the right module argument:
To fix its neceessery to edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf .
debian:~# vim /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
Find the line in the file starting with: options snd-hda-intel model=
and substitute with:
options snd-hda-intel model=thinkpad
Finally a restart of Advaned Linux Sound Architecture (alsa) is required:
debian:~# /etc/init.d/alsa restart
...
At most cases just restarting the alsa via its init script is not enough, since the ssnd-hda-intel kernel module is already in use by some program or something, so its best to do a reboot to make sure the module is loaded with the new model=thinkpad argument.
Facebook and Youtube has become for just a few years a defacto standard service for 80% of computer users in our age. This is true and it seems there is growing tendency for people to adopt new easy to use services and a boom in the social networks. We’ve seen that with the fast adoption of the anti-human freedom program Skype , the own privacy breaching FaceBook as well as the people interests tracking service YouTube.
We’ve seen similar high adoption rates in earlier times as well with the already dying (if not dead MySpace), with the early yahoo mail boom etc and in even earlier times with the AltaVista search engine use. However this time it appears Youtube and FaceBook are here to stay with us and become standard online services for longer times … Many people who work in office all day staring in a computer screen as well as growing teenagers and practically anyone in the developed and the development world is using those services heavily for (in between 5 to 10 hours a day or more). The Software as a Service users spends approximately half of their time spend on the internet in Youtube or and Facebook.
Its true Youtube can be massively educative with this global database of videos on all kind of topics and in some cases facebook can be considered helpful in keeping in touch people or keeping a catalog of pictures easily accessible from everywhere, however when few services becomes more used and influential than other provided services on the internet this makes these services harmful to the communities and destroyes cultures. The concentration of most of the human popuplation who uses high technologies around few online services creates a big electronic monopoly. In other words the tendency, we see of amalgamation of businesses in real world (building of big malls and destroyment of small and middle sized shops is being observed in the Internet space.
Besides that Facebook and Youtube and Twitter are highly contrary to the true hacker spirit and creates a big harm for intellectuals and other kind of tight and technical community culture by creating one imaginative casual disco culture without any deepness of thought or spirit.
Its observable that most of the people that are heavily using those services are turning into (if not exaggerate) a brainless consumer zombies, a crowd of pathless people who watch videos and pictures and write meaningless commentaries all day long.
You have as a result a “unified dumbness” (dumbness which unifies people).
Even if we can accept the grown and fully formed character people are aware of the threats of using Youtube or Facebook, this is definitely not the case with the growing people which are still in a process of building personality and personal likings. The harmful resuls that the so called Social networks create can be seen almost everywhere, most of the cafeterias I visit the bar tender uses facebook or youtube all da long, most of random people I see outside in a coffee or university or any public institution where internet access is available they are again in Youtube and Facebook. The result is people almost did not use the Net but just hang around in those few services wasting network bandwidth and loading networks and computer equipment and spending energy for nothing. The wasteful computer and Internet deepens the ecologic problems as energy is spend on nonsense and not goal oriented tasks but on “empty” false entertainment. Hence the whole original idea of internet for many is changed and comes to few words ( Skype, Youtube, Facebook etc.
Besides that youngsters instead of reading some classical valuable books, are staring in the computer screen most of their cognitive time at only this few “services” and are learned to become more a consumers than self opinion thinkers and inventors. I have not lately met any growing real thinking man. I’ve seen already by own experience the IQ level of younger generations than mine (I’m 28) is getting downer and downer. Where I see as a main cause the constant interaction with technology built in a way to restrict, a consumers technology so to say. Facebook and Youtube puts in young and growing man’s mind, the wrong idea that they should be limited choice people always praising what is newest and brightest (without taking in consideration any sight effects). These services lead people to the idea that one should always be with the crowds and never have a solid own opinion or solid state on lifely matters. As said own opionion is highly mitigated especially in facebook where all young people try to look not what they really are but copy / paste some trendy buzz words, modern style or just copying the today’s hearoes of the day. This as one can imagine prevents a person of getting a strong unique self identity and preference on things.
Many of the older people or computer illiterates can hardly recognize the severe problems, as they’re not aware on the technical side of things and does not realize how much security compromising as well as binding the constant exposure to those online hives are. The purpose of this small post is hence just a small attempt to try to raise up some awareness of the potential problems, we as society might face very soon if we continue to follow the latest buzz trends instead of stop for a moment have a profound think on what is the moral consequences of giving so much power on Internet medias like Facebook and Youtube? …
It took me like 1 hour of search on the Internet and looking through forum threads and sites to properly install all the hardware. In hope to help someone out there looking to install the hardware Window drivers on ATI RAdeon HD 2600 XT, I’ve made a small archive of all the drivers necessery to make the Video card , Sound Card and Ethernet be properly installed and operating.
Installation of the drivers on Windows is pretty straight forward download the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT archive extract and install each one of the files contained in the archive. A few restarts will also be necessery after some of the installed drivers to make the drivers work.
ATI Catalyst (included in the archive) will install the Video drivers for the Radeon XT 2600, whether AD1988AB_Audio_V6585_XpVistaWin7 and 11-11_xp32-64_hdmiaudio will install the Audio drivers. Attansic_L1_Lan_V1737907_V10560011159 contained in the archive needs to be extracted and installed to make the Attensic L1 Gigabit ethernet to show up as installed hardware in Windows device manager.
Hope this post will save some time to ppl looking to install the same drivers on XP 😉 Cheers 😉
And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth. -- 1 Samuel 28:13
How to add OpenID functionality to WordPress Comments / What is OpenID?
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012I've recently decided to add Comment as OpenID functionality to my wordpress blog. The reasons to do that is that I myself have today created an OpenID account. Already million of people have OpenID account without even knowing. Most major search engines and social websites like Google, Yahoo, Live Journal, Hyves, Blogger, Flicker, MySpace automatically creates an OpenID account for newly registered users.
It is up to the user to check with each of the aforementioned providers what is the URL of their OpenID account.
Even though OpenID popularity is steadly rising, I'm sure there are still plenty of users who did not heard, used or noticed OpenID yet.
So What the heck is OpenID?
For all those who still haven't heard about it, OpenID is a universal web site login system With just one "unified" OpenID account the user can login to multiple websites with no need to create multiple accounts across each and every different website on the internet.
The only requirement for the user to be able to use OpenID is that the website in question to have (support) for OpenID credential and the user to have existing OpenID account.
Therefore using one single OpenID you can sign in as a certain user to multiple websites on the internet with no need for annoying registration process to each and every new website you encounter. Another benefit OpenID gives to the user is that you don't have to memorize or keep notes of a tens or thousands of different login accounts across the many different websites on the net.
Using OpenID also saves the user from troubles with forgotten password or username as just one OpenID login is used to login you everywhere.
For WordPress blogging platform the Russian Igor Korolev, has written a wordpress plugin – comments-to-wordpress . This plugin adds support for OpenID authentication in WordPress comments.
Here is how to OpenID to WordPress:
1. Download the comments-with-wordpress plugin and unzipAs of writting of this article latest comments-to-wordpress plugin is ver. 1.4.
Download the plugin to blog path directory lets say, /var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins/ and unzip:
# cd /var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins
# wget http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/comments-with-openid.zip
...
# unzip comments-with-openid.zip
...
I've also done a mirror for download of comments-with-openid 1.4 here
2. Enable Comments with OpenID wp plugin
Next the plugin has to be Enabled, just like any other wordpress plugin via admin menus:
Plugins -> Inactive -> Comments with OpenID (enable)
Once the plugin is enaabled it is necessery to add some code with a text editor in file /var/www/blog/wp-content/themes/default/comments.php
Small noet to make here: If you're not using the default WordPress theme (like I do), you will have to edit the /themes/your-theme-name/comments.php instead.
Inside the file look for the form input fields:
<p> <input type="text" name="author" ....
...
<p> <input type="text" name="email" id="email" ....
...
<p> <input type="text" name="url" id="url" ....
...
Before the html tags code:
Paste the following code:
<?php comments_with_openid(); ?>
Save the comments.php file and you Identification for new comments with OpenID will appear in your wordpress Comments form.
The OpenID plugin will add a number of service OpenIDs to choose between like you can see in my blog's plugin section or the screenshot below:
The URL https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id is just a sample and showed because I clicked on the Google icon. If you have a Google profile you can check the exact ID and use it as URL there. Simply if your browser is logged in Gmail and you have Google profile. OpenID should work. As you can see the plugin supports a number of services which already support OpenID auth, the list of services can be easily extended by adding minor changes in …/plugins/comments-with-openid/comments-with-openid.php
There is also another wordpress plugin with the openid name – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/openid/
Downloading and enabling the other openid plugin also adds support for OpenID login in your http://your-url.com/wp-admin/ login page.
Installing the OpenID plugin is needed especially if you're a blogger blogging on 5 or 10 different topic oriented blogs, once downloading and installing the OpenID plugin will allow you to login across the blog ring without loosing time or bothering to remember different passwords across all the blogs. Here is a screenshot of the /wp-admin wordpress login page with the OpenID wp plugin enabled:
As of time of writting according to http://openid.net/get-an-openid/what-is-openid/'s website there are over 50000 major websites on the net already accepting OpenID login.
Of course as every technlogy OpenID is not perfect and along with its convenience in some cases it could impose security hole. OpenID opponents claim under some circumstances OpenID is prone to forgery, XSS (cross site scripting) and XSFR attacks. Everyone who is about to use OpenID should be also aware of the great security risk it impose if one OpenID account gets stolen through sniffing, this could mean multiple websites can be accesses with the one single OpenID by the malicious user and a lot of confidential data owned by the user can be revealed or deleted …
With this said I think OpenID is not a recommended login technology for Windows users, as windows is famous for being vulnerable to so many Viruses and Spyware/Malware etc..
With non-free software OSes like MS Windows, the user never cannot for sure if the system is infected, hence using OpenID to transfer credentials over the internet or store an OpenID SSL/(TLS) certificate to identify in websites is TOO DANGEROUS!
Hope this article was helpful. Cya
Tags: authentication, Auto, benefit, code, Comment, Draft, file, functionality, google, hyves, igor korolev, Journal, login, login accounts, major search engines, need, openid, password, php, platform, plugin, popularity, quot, Russian, Search, support, tens, text, type, universal web, url, username, wget, what the heck, Wordpress, writting, Yahoo
Posted in System Administration, Web and CMS, Wordpress | 2 Comments »