GeekLimit

Renald Ebert has done an excellent comparison of the top 10 most used BitTorrent sites on the Internet.

• BTJunkie
  
• BitTorrent.com
• Bushtorrent & Torrentreactor
• isoHunt
• Meganova
• Mininova
• The Pirate Bay
• Torrent Portal
• TorrentSpy
• Torrentz

As the best of them all, he chooses BTJunkie (which I have discovered and started using recently) due to the large number of torrents indexed and added each day.

You can read his report, complete with pretty graphs, over at his blog page, CompareBT

When we originally stumbled upon the method for viewing hidden myspace comments, it was because MySpace was using a very ridiculous and insecure security measure, basically hiding text by formatting it as ‘invisible’ (using CSS). Our method was used to make it visible by removing the formatting from the page. This is kind of like turning your text white when using Microsoft Word OpenOffice Writer to “hide” the information. It may keep some people from seeing it, but it is a totally insecure way of keeping your data private.

For months, MySpace didn’t bother fixing this problem. However, when they suddenly had the opportunity to become profitable, they fixed this security problem immediately. (The link between MySpace’s opportunities and their security ethics are my own guesses – the official reason it took so long is anyone’s guess)

All in all, the bottom line is that MySpace has fixed its security problems, and has stopped showing private comments to the entire internet.

Are there still ways to get private comments? I’m sure. Are we able to tell you how to do it now? Absolutely not. By finally putting in some form of security, MySpace now has reason to prosecute anyone who breaks that security, no matter how weak it may be.

To recap, since MySpace has taken even the most basic approach towards security, it is now illegal to hack them for any reason, even to see private comments. However, if you would like to see the method we used to view hidden comments in the past, Taoski has written up an incredibly easy way to do so. Feel free to try this method, but if it doesn’t work, that’s the most we can do to guide you, as any more than this method would be illegal.

Conclusion
Overall, the re-hash of the old “DS Phat” as it’s now called is excellent. Nintendo have obviously watched the take off of the iPod in design terms and copied them to their benefit.

The games run smoothly on the brighter screens and the smaller and lighter design is also a real benefit.

I own a Belkin MIMO wireless router and found that I was’nt able to use it to go online, so check the router compatibility list first before you get upset after buying one and finding you can’t go online to play. Luckily for me, my neighbour owns an unrestricted standard Belkin Wireless router and the connection through that works a treat.

I would recommend getting a set of screen protectors too, especially if you have children that will play the DS Lite. I don’t think the lower screen will scratch easily, but who wants to risk it! A cleaning cloth and a protective case are also worth getting.

The only other problem I now have is..

What game to get next!

So I’m teaching this 6th grade class once a week, for 40 minutes, on ‘Computer Technology’. I also happen to be reading ‘The Long Tail’, and highly recommend it.

So far, Week 1 was Richard Sears and the railroad vs. Amazon.com and the internet. basically, we talk about how the internet is a business-changing communications medium, just like the railroad was in 1886.

Week 2 was on the merits of Wikipedia vs. Encyclopedia Britainnica. We learned that Wikipedia is a great place to go first for information due to it’s great variety, but due to the unknown expertise of the authors, a more reputable source of information should also be used.

Then came Week 3.

Today we talked about RIAA’s historical role in the music business, and their right to protect artists’ work. We also talked about how the RIAA oversteps their bounds and are countered by the EFF. We finished up with a short quiz and some Q&A on what’s right/wrong with different music-related scenarios.

The thing I love is the answers to my extra-credit question on the quiz. The question was

If you were the RIAA, and your job was to promote music, how would you do so? What would you do to keep people from taking music without paying for it?

Of those who bothered to answer, there were the obvious ‘Put it on the radio, make people pay for it’ answers, but also a few great ones. Here are the standouts, but please feel free to answer the extra credit question yourself in the comments! What is surprising is that some of their suggestions are exactly the type of stuff RIAA pulls to try and enforce themselves…

“I would put a place to put your house on a website with a camera so I could see when people were stealing”

“I would make them download a popup that wouldn’t go away until they paid for the song, and after 3 days it would make a continuous horn that couldn’t be turned down”

“I wouldn’t sell it online”

“Search the internet to see if they are stealing and if they know other people [that are stealing]“

“Let them keep 3 songs for free, and sue them if they have any more than 3″

“I call the police to track them down not myself” (AWESOME)

“Sell [music] in music stores and if people steal it track them down [through the music store]“

Games
I’ll admit something here and now. I’m not a gaming freak. I like playing games but don’t want to spend hours slaving away on getting through a level or getting the next powerup or best track time. I like to pick up a console, get in 10 to 15 minutes of good gaming done and then put it away again.

The games I have had on my Gameboy Advance in the past, have been games I could pick up and play quickly. Apart from Advance Wars, on which I never even completed the training missions, I have enjoyed the games I have owned. No Pokemon or Zelda for me. Just give me a few games of FIFA or a time challenge on Tekken Advance any day.

When I purchased by Nintendo DS Lite, I had this in mind. I decided to go for the new Super Mario Bros game and Metroid Prime Hunters. I thought that Mario would be a game with lots of longevity and a different style of play on each level and that Metroid would be good as I could play the single player levels but also dive online for a quick deathmatch too.

New Super Marios Bros
This game is possibly the best platformer I have played. Its fast, colorful, cute and damn frustrating too! The psuedo 3d graphics are good and the stero sound is also excellent. I was brought up on games like Manic Miner and Chucky Egg, so there will always be a plaformer fan in me – and Super Mario Bros fits that hole perfectly.

The game also has a selection of mini games that are just as good as the main title. You can bounce Mario’s off trampolines you have drawn with the stylus to kill enemies or play card games against Luigi. The addition of these games has meant that my children love playing the DS Lite and even my wife plays the mingame where you have to find the faces of Mario and his friends hidden in a multi layer scrolling image.

My rating out of 10 would be 8 i think. I’m not sure what they could do to improve on it though.

Metroid Prime Hunters
This was one of the original launch titles of the DS and I can remember playing it on a demo console but not thinking much of it at the time. The game still receives excellent reviews and I can now see why.

This is probably as close as you will get to playing a FPS on a handheld console. To control your “hunter” you must hold the console in your left hand which allows you to move using the directional pad and fire using the shoulder button. You right hand is used with the stylus on the lower screen to look around as you move. The control system is pretty much the same as using a keyboard and mouse to play Quake for example. The stylus is also used to select weapons and morph the hunter into his secondary form, such as a ball, which enables you to fit into smaller spaces and travel faster through levels.

This control method is excellent and feels very natural after a few minutes of play. I can achieve similar moves when playing Metroid that I can when playing Quake on a PC such as running away from an enemy, jumping and turning in mid air to shoot them and then continue running backwards. Try doing that on a PSP. You can’t. The controls are just too slow to allow it. You can even use the stylus to make headshots against opponents which on other similar handheld titles was impossible – or just a fluke.

The internet multiplayer mode is good too although there seems to be a limited number of opponents and it can take several minutes of searching for a game to get one going with more than two other people. I have experienced no lag at all either, which is excellent. Nintendo also produce a headset which you can plug into the DS Lite to verbally assault your opponents as you play – although as the DS has a built in microphone, is this necessary? I will try shouting at my next opponent to see what happens.

Out of 10, I give this game 9. It’s really, really, really good.

Hardware
Lets be honest. The design of the original Nintendo DS is bad. The shape, size and buttons on the unit are just poor. That was what put me off buying one in the first place.

But when I saw the DS Lite for the first time…. wow!

The DS has been redesigned to be smaller, lighter and much sexier. Gone are the cheap looking silver colorings and in are the sexy stylings of an iPod. The DS no longer looks like a cheap toy. It looks sexy! I feel quite happy to pull it out in public(!) too – which I normally find a little embarrasing with some of my gadgets.

The dual screens are brighter than the original DS and the controls seem better too and more responsive. I found the buttons on the original DS to be too fiddly and they did not feel right. If I pressed A i wanted to know that Mario was going to jump – not get killed by an enemy as the button failed to work.

The DS Lite is smaller than the original but still feels the perfect size and can be held in the hand with no problems. Even my seven and four year old children are able to use the DS Lite too with no problems. Even when playing a game such as Metroid Prime Hunters which requires one hand on the DS Lite and one hand on the stylus to control it. I did’nt suffer cramps the same way as I did when playing on my friends PSP either.

The bottom screen acts as a touch screen interface and is responsive and can be used with either the supplied stylus or your finger. Some games do not really work with your finger as they require a more delicate touch, but selecting powerups in Super Mario with your finger is perfect and just seems to make sense.

Before I purchased the console I was a little sceptical of using the touchscreen interface but I am pleased that it feels natural already. The OS that boots when you first power on the console also makes use of the stylus to start games and select options. It’s almost like using a mouse.

In conclusion, the redesign of the hardware is a real bonus for Nintendo fans. It does bring the console from being a toy to being a real gadget worthy of lavishing your money on. With the upcoming version of Opera for the device, Web Browsing will also be a reality soon – but what that is really like will be seen in time. I found browsing the web on a PSP a painful task. Lets hope that Nintendo do better.

I have owned a Nintendo DS for about one month now and have decided to do a mini-late-review of the portable console.

History
I have had Nintendo Gameboys for years and owned a black and white gameboy, a Nintendo Gameboy Advance and a Advance SP. The normal Advance version of the console I found on a train a few days after it launched complete with a copy of Super Mario Bros too. I handed it in to the lost property but no-one claimed it and I was sent it back in the post a few weeks later.

I have copies of Super Mario Advance, Tekken Advance, Advance Wars and Tony Hawk Skateboarding 2. I have also purchased an EZ-Flash 256mb cart from eBay to play homebrew and backups – which works brilliantly by the way!

After the DS was launched I was keen to see what the device was like but was put off by the design. Wireless gameplay was fun, but with that beast sticking out of your pocket, you could not be cool!

After the DS Lite was launched earlier this year I was again on the road for picking up a new portable console. My Xbox and Xbox360 are hardly played, mainly due to the TV being constantly used by my wife. It’s much easier to sit and play a Gameboy for five minutes, rather than fire up the Xbox360. I am the same with my PC too and tend to use my laptop more as it is more versatile and can be used (almost) anywhere.

On my birthday I purchased a Nintendo DS Lite with the new Super Mario Bros game and a copy of Metroid Prime Hunters. I was also talked into buying a box of extras including a sock to keep the DS clean when not in use, a spare stylus for when the kids loose the original one up their noses and a set of screen covers to protect the bottom screen of the unit.

My best friend owns a Sony PSP and was keen for me to purchase one so we could play wirelessly together. There were not many games for the PSP that took my fancy and the size and format of the PSP puts me off too. It has a brilliant screen – but it’s just too big!

What does Google see when it crawls your site?
What Adsense adverts will appear?
How can I get to the top of the Google results?
How can I target my Adsense adverts to my readers?

These are all common questions for website owners. Getting a site to the top of Google may not be an achieveable goal any more due to the large number of websites out there, but you can certainly give it a helping hand along the way.

Following these rules, you can help sites like Google “see” your content better and allow it to identify the critical “keywords” it uses to categorise your page. Not that this list is the “be all and end all” of SEO, but it will certainly help. Fine tuning the content on your site will also cause more relevant Adsense adverts to appear and banish the dreaded “public service ads” to the internet graveyard.

Frames
Try to avoid using frames for your site design. Google does see into frame based content but it will pay you dividends to use a CSS based layout.

Page Titles
Make sure your page titles, using the <TITLE> and </TITLE> tags contain keywords that you want Google to index.
example: “adsense and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) advertising explained for idiots” rather than just “adsense for idiots”.

Filenames
Make your filenames contain your keywords.
example: “http://www.mydomain.com/adsense-and-adsense-advertising.html” rather than “http://www.mydomain.com/article3.html”

META tags
Make sure your page has the relevant <META description=” “> and <META keywords=” “> entries within the <HEAD></HEAD> portion of your code.
example: <META description=”how to make jam on toast – a users guide”> <META keywords=”jam, toast, bread, butter, user, guide”>

Keyword positioning
Have your keywords mentioned in the page title, the meta tags, the headings and the first paragraph in the body text.

Headings
Make use of the <H1> </H1> heading tags to emphasise your keywords within your content.
example: <H1>Toast Making Techniques</H1> <H2>Toast – an introduction</H2>

Anchor Text
Be careful to put the best words on your links. Internal and External ones.
example: “<a xhref=”http://www.mydomain.com/adsense.html” mce_href=”http://www.mydomain.com/adsense.html” >Adsense For Beginners</a>” rather than “<a xhref=”http://www.mydomain.com/adsense.html” mce_href=”http://www.mydomain.com/adsense.html” >go here</a>”

ALT Tags
Always specify the ALT tags for images.
example: <img xsrc=”http://www.mydomain.com/images/toast.jpg” mce_src=”http://www.mydomain.com/images/toast.jpg” ALT=”Jam and toast”>

REL tags
Add REL=”TAG” to important links containing your keywords. This will also allow sites like Technorati to index your pages too.
example: <a xhref=”http://www.mydomain.com/jam-on-toast.hml REL=”TAG”>Jam</a>

Bold
It does’nt hurt to make some of your keywords bold to attract the attention of the search engine robots.
example: Here is a <B>Bold Keyword!</B>

Google Section Targeting
Insert some hidden code that tells Google to concentrate on the content in between when working out Adsense adverts and keyword analysis.
Example: <!–google_ad_section_start–>In this text area, talk about your keywords.<!–google_ad_section_end–>

Don’t go mad!
Google is not stupid. It will recognise that your page has overloaded on keywords and other techniques, so keep it simple. Also, sites that use Google Adsense are reviewed by one of the humans at Google HQ – so don’t try to be clever and make your whole site one big clickable advert frenzy!

Incoming Links
The more incoming links you get to your site, the higher up Google it will go. No-one really knows how they work these things out but this is certainly proved to be true.

If you can add to this list, then please leave a comment.

Tags: adsense, adwords, google, hints, tips, keywords, monetize