Reaper-X .:[ ID ]:. » Internet

Baidu hijacking traffic from Major Search Engine ?

Reaper-X — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:11:31 +0000

I just read this yesterday (based on my local time of course), about an ISP in China automatically redirecting search query that goes into Google Blogsearch, Live.com and Yahoo into their own local search engine named Baidu.

According to comments posted at techcrunch, it seems that some people also experiencing the same redirect problem, while some other don’t … although this comment posted by Serge looks interesting :

I lived in China (Beijing) for quite awhile and hosted my own dedicated servers at China Netcom data center.

Here is the story with Baidu:

It has a partnership with both China Netcom and China Telecom to redirect all invalid (or blocked) dns entries to baidu. In practice that’s how Baidu gets all of its users. What you see is probably not the change that Baidu made but a recent blocking of Google Blogsearch in China – and yes, this affects the whole mainland China (since China Netcom covers north and educational networks, while Telecom covers the rest).

As a note, Danny Sullivan also wrote about this issue too

While i know that Baidu is the #1 search engine in China especially to those who loves searching for Warez / illegal stuff, but automatically redirecting people who pay for their internet access service into Baidu is just a dirty trick, because they just tricking their users especially to those who’s can be considered as newcomer to the internet world (read: those who didn’t know that major search engine like Google exists) thinking that Baidu is just the same as Google, Live.com and Yahoo Search

I think it’d be better for them to show a page telling that this site blocked as shown on below image for an example instead of using DNS Redirection at the ISP Level to prevent confusion for some people

yes,i live in hangzhou, and i found the same thing like this, when a visit google blog serch, i found it was baidu’s page. i thought my computer had something wrong, and i know the reason now.

0x87485B96 | Tags : Internet

Chitika RPU … Rocks !!!

Reaper-X — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:11:45 +0000

Well … perhaps i’m a little bit overreacting over this Chitika RPU, but just in case you didn’t know that i’ve used Chitika code since last year and haven’t actually made any money from it (from that Chitika eMinimalls thing) and constantly removed and re-add the chitika code into this blog just for testing purpose or as cosmetic purpose since i don’t use too many images on my post

But … you know what ? ever since i got accepted into their RPU program which is still in beta stage currently and you’ll , i’ve seen an increase in my earnings from $0.00 – $0.02 (most of the time it usually stays around this area) into $2.00 – $4.00 which is not bad at all considering if i could make around $120 per month (unaudited and it could be lower after get audited, but let’s just hope that i could at least get $100 / month from it), i could pay my monthly hosting bill from Chitika only or even better i could move this site into a dedicated server from VPS (thought it’s still not necessary for me to move into dedicated hosting)

So what next ? are you interested on trying Chitika RPU too ? if you’re interested that’s great but unfortunately unlike the normal Chitika eMinimalls, your site needs to fulfill these requirements first in order to get accepted into their RPU program :

Be a current Chitika Publisher who has made at least $100 with us (i do not pass this requirement just as i said before because i haven’t made anything with them)
OR Have a site or blog that receives at least 50,000 page views a month (we use compete and alexa to determine this)

Since this site generates more than 100.000 pageviews per month, i’ve decided to contact the Chitika team directly and ask whether they can accept me into their RPU program … and ? thanks God i got accepted by them (and ooh don’t worry Chitika staff are friendly and also response quickly to your email, so you don’t need to worry about it)

So to those who’s previously running Chitika eMinimalls and haven’t tried Chitika RPU yet … i’d suggest you to do the same and try Chitika RPU on your site ;)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Income Sources, Internet, Making Money

BlogRush Beta … let’s see how it goes

Reaper-X — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 01:23:01 +0000

So today i just installed yet another tracking code in this blog, and this time the tracking code comes from Blogrush (after reading various website … erm blog … talking about Blogrush). And to those who didn’t know or never heard about Blogrush, here’s some description about Blogrush taken from their website :

BlogRush is a free service that was created to help bloggers solve their #1 need: More Readers For Their Blog

After testing what Blogrush actually does by clocking on other blog that use Blogrush code, i assume that basically Blogrush is just another traffic exchange program, with the exception because Blogrush code use javascript, you don’t have to worry about being punished by Google because of linking to bad neighborhood

But how BlogRush works ?

BlogRush is a Cooperative Syndication Network that rewards its users for their contributions to the network from the impressions they provide of the BlogRush Widget to the referral of other users through 10 generations of activity and the impressions of the widget that they provide

Which mean, for every impression your site received there’s a chance that your headline will be shown at other blog who’s using Blogrush Widget. For example, if there are 10 visitors viewing your page (10 impression), you’ll get a chance for your headline to show up 10 times on other blog who’s using the blogrush widget in the same category as your blog, which is not really good for small traffic blog

Well … but that’s just my own opinion because i’m pretty sure that there are other factors involved such as how many times your visitors clicking on your Blogrush widget

As for now, i’m just going to see how well it's going to perform on this blog ;)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Blog, Internet

Adware maker sues Anti Spyware maker

Reaper-X — Sun, 20 May 2007 02:38:29 +0000

I just never thought that Adware maker can also sues Anti Spyware maker because of their product (Spyware Doctor) helping people to solve their adware / malware problem on their computer (Full Story)

Zango Inc. v. PC Tools Pty Ltd.

5/15/2007 07-2-15844-8 CBC

Complaint for injunctive relief and tortious interference with business expectancy. The plaintiff's software, which "has been consensually installed by millions of users," is being destroyed by the defendant's "Spyware Doctor Starter Edition" application. The application does not give users specific warning that Zango's software will be deleted. The defendant's product has been distributed as part of a "Google Pack" of software tools, causing the plaintiff "irreparable harm." The plaintiff seeks at least $35 million in damages – via Spamnotes

They says that Spyware Doctor does not give users specific warning that Zango’s software will be deleted ?

Based on my experience when repairing or configuring someone else computer. I always ask them first if they want me to configure the anti spyware / antivirus product to automatically delete all kind of threat without warning / prompting the user first … all of them are saying “Yes” to that question … and i think you can guess why

But this ??? …. well … i think i’ve said enough ;)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Computer Security, Internet, Opinion, Personal, Tech News

Just when i thought i’m the only one ..

Reaper-X — Thu, 10 May 2007 15:03:38 +0000

I saw the Problogger interview with Tim Ferris, author of The 4–Hour Workweek book … and it writes :

Darren : What have you learnt about blogging since starting yours a month ago? Teach us oh wise one!

Tim : LOL… I don’t claim to have all of the answers, of course. Not even most of them, but I’m a pretty good “reductionist”. That just means that I question what everyone is doing and ask myself: if I ignore what’s popular, what everyone says you “have to do,” what actually works? I cut out all the fat and look at just the highest-impact variables.

For example, I’ve been told I need to post everyday, but when I really looked at the facts, a different picture emerged.

i’ve found that if i post less often, my blog has a sine wave sign-up curve. in other words: if i post just infrequently enough (for me, once every 4-6 days), the comments add up on each post, making the site look very popular, and rss subscriptions spike. if i post too often, it doesn’t look popular (since posts get pushed down and comment-count is low), so it is actually better for my site to post less often! love it when that happens…

Well … at first i thought i'm the only one who’s experiencing this but after reading that post … now i'm sure there’re other who’s experiencing the same situation like me too. So what’s the point of telling you this ? well … im sure that most of you already read various blogging tips, and most of them says write often for various reasons. And as you can see, not all the tips from various sources can be applied to your site, because every site has difference audience (for example, i can be categorized as a full-time lurker and rarely leave comment unless i feel necessary)

Although in reality when i search for Tim Ferris blog and found it at Fourhourworkweek.com … i saw that his site has more comments compared to this site, even i can see comments on all of his post lol …

0x87485B96 | Tags : Blog, Blogging, Internet, Journal, Personal

Wordpress dot com Stats Tracking or Reinvigorate ?

Reaper-X — Sun, 06 May 2007 07:15:50 +0000

Today i just saw something interesting on my dashboard … and that is the previosly stats tracking software which is used by every blog hosted at wordpress.com now can be used on self hosted blog too. But i'm sure you already knew about this anyway since this is a global news that is broadcasted on every wordpress blog

But after finished downloading, uploading and configuring the stats package, i saw there’s a new email message in my inbox which is from Reinvigorate stats tracking service (currently in beta stage) and they say i’ve been invited to join their private beta (i'm really grateful for this, because finally they accept my site)

I like the wordpress.com stats because i’ve been there before but the new stats tracking package from Reinvigorate also looks nice (even better this stats tracking can also shows you the ip address of your visitor, trends, keywords used by your visitor, hourly / monthly / daily statistic, and such stuff) other than that i really like their site design

I guess for now i'm going to use them both, but at later time i have to decided which stats tracking package i should remove from this blog, because if you’re using to many stats tracking service (in this case i mean remote stats tracking) there’ll be a possibility, it’ll slow down your blog loading time

0x87485B96 | Tags : Internet, Personal, Webmaster Tools, Website

My site has been accepted as Text Link Ads publisher

Reaper-X — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 08:24:47 +0000

I do not know why too, but today i just received an email message from Text Link ads saying that my site has been accepted into their publisher program (after waiting for more than 4 / 5 months if i recall correctly). And of course i'm really happy about this, although im not really sure if their program are going to worked as it should on this site

Some says that eventhough they’ve been accepted into TLA, they removed the code because they did not received any offers from advertisers .. and i'm pretty sure that’s because their site was listed in the middle or the last page of text link ads publisher page while some other made lots of money from TLA .. and a good example of TLA best publisher is Andreas Viklund website (i read his post on web design forums a while ago on how he make lots of money from TLA but i highly doubt i can reach the same amount of money he get from TLA :( )

And how this site are going to perform ? well .. we’ll see about that because i’ll post an update to this post at later time (probably one to two months from now because that’s how you test if something is worked for you or not)

As an side note, previously i made a post about text link ads requirements which is very confusing (at least for me) .. such as some website with 1000 ++ visitors per day did not get accepted while someone that has PR4 website with only 3 pages get accepted, and so on .. and that’s the reason, why i got confused on how their system work

0x87485B96 | Tags : Income Sources, Internet, Journal, Making Money

Adsense checks in local currency

Reaper-X — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:13:42 +0000

Well .. yesterday, i logged in into my adsense account and i saw a message there saying that right now it is possible for me to set the adsense payment using my local currency automatically (in this case it was Indonesian Rupiah)

But what’s the big deal about it ? well .. here’s what the adsense help center explain about local currency in adsense

Local currency checks: Google will convert your earnings from US dollars into your local currency if this option is selected. Available to publishers in more than 40 countries, local currency checks are generally less expensive to deposit at your bank, and take less time to clear. For instructions on selecting local currency checks as your form of payment, read How do I sign up for local currency checks?

And as you can see that by using local currency checks, i can clear my adsense checks faster than the usual (although i havent tried it yet because i only saw it yesterday) and they said that it would be less expensive to cashed it

But what make it strange is, when i look at the supported countries that Google was able to send checks in local currency. Indonesia wasnt listed there :( … hm … i guess this new feature is still new for Indonesian adsense users

0x87485B96 | Tags : Google Adsense, Income Sources, Internet, Making Money

Busy .. playing Ragnarok Online

Reaper-X — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 04:27:34 +0000

It’s been a while since the last time i wrote into my blog, and that’ss because i’ve been busy playing Ragnarok Online once more just as i said before. At first i thought im going to play in low rate server (private server of course) .. but after re-thinking about it, i think i’ve had enough of hard leveling my own character before in the official server so i decided to play in High Rate server

After searching for a good high rate ragnarok private server for a while, i found Q-RO (Quality Ragnarok Online) and began playing there. Surprisingly its really easy to level up my character there (the max level is 255) ! .. my first character was an Assassin Cross Critical Type and i reached level 255 in just one day without botting :D (here’s the screenshot) because of fast leveling (i do not pick up items dropped by mobs except for important items, no break after die, etc)

And now because i already finished playing as SinX, i created another character which is a High Wizard and Lord Knight. My second character is Lord Knight and the Third Character is High Wizard (both of them already reached 220++ level and using the same Ryu as their nickname which is taken from Wikipedia – MugaiRyu, JigenRyu, and SekiguchiRyu)

The online population in QRO server reached 1000+ population and that’s including bots for sure (or at least that’s what i thought). And QRO also offers low rate server too just in case you want to play at more harder level .. lol

So .. by creating this post i just want to tell you that i'm still alive and kicking :P … and btw if you’re also interested on playing ragnarok online private server might i suggest you to try QRO too (or even better meet me in QRO because i do not have friends there .. lol)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Internet, Journal, Misc. Games, Video Games

Wordpress 2.1.3 and 2.0.10 has been released

Reaper-X — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 04:02:11 +0000

Time for another wordpress upgrade, because right now there’s another update to the Wordpress 2.1.x series and 2.0.x series. And this update file contains security update from several publicly known XSS vulnerabilities and one major XMLRPC issue. Here’s what Matt said about this releases :

These releases include fixes for several publicly known minor XSS issues, one major XML-RPC issue, and a proactive full sweep of the WordPress codebase to protect against future problems

And the conclusion is you’d better upgrade your wordpress installation as soon as possible to prevent issue on your wordpress installation

As an addition i’ve upgraded several blogs managed by myself to the latest wordpress version available for download without problem at all :)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Internet, Network and Security, PHP, Software, Wordpress

Back to playing Ragnarok Online once again

Reaper-X — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 08:34:00 +0000

I never thought that i'm going to play this game once again, previously i have already quit playing this game since December 2003 (official server), and back playing Ragnarok in 2005 (private server) for about a month or so .. and now .. because i got bored, i decided to play this game once again (on private server of course and the only server i have found so far is AnimaRO because the old RO Private server i used to play – Aero2 – already down) but this time instead of playing ragnarok immediately, i have to download tons of updates / patches from the official korean ragnarok ftp server because my ragnarok installation is already out dated (i'm using the old Sakray before September 27 2005)

Yesterday i have finished downloading all sakray update files since 09–27–2005 and at the moment, and i thought by simply downloading the sakray update i can play instanly on various RO private server .. but .. it seems i havent had much luck because by updating the sakray data only, i can not even access the main interface of ro client (it says that shadow.act and shadow.spr is missing) and by doing simple trick to fool this game by creating dummy file named shadow.act and shadow.spr i was finally be able to get pass that message. But ..

There’s another error message saying that cursors.act and cursors.spr can’t be found .. and i tried doing the same trick again. And i can get pass that message .. unfortunately this time i get another error message that looks like a korean language in ascii mode because my system lack the language file for korean language :P .. and i'm sure that even if i can get pass this error message, there will be another cryptic error message appear on my desktop .. :(

I guess .. the only way for me to do it is just by updating each file manually .. and i hope i can play it without problem if i have updated my kRO installation but if it’s not working, then i guess i have to give up playing this game because there’s no way i can download the full installation of kRO

as a side note, just in case you’re looking for the kRO FTP server. It can be found at ftp://ragnarok.nefficient.co.kr/pub/ragnarok/ (random ftp server)

but if it’s for me i choose to download from this IP address of the kro ftp server : 221.139.3.74 because it is the fastest for me

0x87485B96 | Tags : Internet, Journal, Misc. Games, Personal, Video Games

Matt Cutts Blog got hacked ? Fact or Fiction ?

Reaper-X — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 09:11:58 +0000

Well .. It seems that i can’t trust anything which is flowing around the internet for today .. even if it comes from trusted source from Apple buying Sony, Google going bankrupt, Webmasterworld placing adsense ads on them, Matt Cutts Blog got hacked, and more

But which one is giving me the truth ? about Webmasterworld placing adsense ads .. well .. if WMW truly placing adsense ads on their website .. i do not really care about it simply because i did not see those ads. So i think it’s not really a big deal for me

As for Google going bankrupt and Apple buying Sony Corporation .. hm .. everyone knows that it’s a fake. Simply because there’s no way Apple are going to buy Sony even if there’s someone says that Microsoft are going to buy Sony .. i still can not trust them .. and i'm sure you already knew the reason

Now what about Matt Cutts Blog got hacked by Black Hat SEO team ? it’s really hard to tell the differences if it were true or not. But in my own opinion, the Matt Cutts blog are hacked. Because every page of matt cutts blog are showing the same defaced message from the Black hat seo team. Even someone at Webmasterworld are saying the same thing

Screenshot :

Beside if it were true if Matt are playing april fools, i'm pretty sure that he doesnt want to leave link to the black hat seo team (or he’s using the nofollow tag on the link) .. and so the conclusion is Matt cutts blog got hacked

Well .. i do not know what is the actual problem is, but if it’s not an April Fools and Matt already back and i'm interested on reading his post about this hacking for sure

0x87485B96 | Tags : Hackers, Hacking, Internet, Opinion, Personal

SSH Access and WGET on Hostgator

Reaper-X — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 03:57:52 +0000

Previously i have said that Hostgator doesn’t allow you to have SSH access for your shared hosting account, but since Hostgator allows you to use Ruby on Rails on your shared hosting account, this policies have been changed completely. Because now you can get SSH access (Jailed SSH), or if you’re also interested on using Ruby on Rails web framework for your website, you can also use it (although i havent tried Ruby on Rails yet, … and to be honest i'm still playing and learning Ruby on Rails right now) and that’s all thanks to Hostgator by allowing the use of SSH access

Beside by using SSH (with WGet) you can also install various script easily without the need to upload each files again using FTP program (well this is really useful for me, because of my slow internet connection)

How to get SSH Access on your shared hosting account ?

It’s real simple, you just have to send a photo id to the Hostgator support team and provide your hosting account information.

For example, i'm sending out my KTP (Kartu Tanda Penduduk, the personal identification card used in Indonesia) information to the Hostgator Support team, and then you just have to wait for them to activate your ssh access

After Hostgator activated your ssh access, you’ll notice that if you try to use WGet you’ll see the permission denied message, that’s because you do not have the necessary priviledges to use WGET by default so in order to get WGET activated for your account, you can tell them to activate WGET too (if it is for me, i sent them 2 email message, the first message to activate my ssh access, and the second email message to activate WGET)

How to fetch / retrieve files from remote server using WGET ?

The easiest way to retrieve wget from remote server is by using this command :

wget http://remoteserver/sample/files.tgz

and to extract it you can simply type this :

tar zxf files.tgz

What about SVN ? can you use it too on Hostgator ?

Yes, you can use svn too. But if it’s for me i only use SVN to fetch the latest files from SVN repositories on remote server.

To fetch it (checkout), you can simply type this command :

svn co http://svn.server.com/files/trunk

And to update it, you can just type this command :

svn update

What about Ruby on Rails ?

You can use it too, but because i'm still learning about this topic, i prefer not to say it here maybe at a later time when i reached the begginer level (currently at novice level now) i could post another topic about this. So if you’re interested on learning about Ruby on rails you might try visiting their official website instead

Well .. that’s all about it :)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Guide, Internet, Linux, Web Hosting, Web Servers, Webmaster Tools

Three out of every four Blogspot URL’s were spam

Reaper-X — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:37:16 +0000

Now this is a good reason on why you shouldn’t choose Blogspot to blog if you’re serious about blogging :

Three out of every four unique Blogspot.com URLs that appeared in the top 50 results for commercial queries were spam, the study said. Blogspot is the hosting site for Google's blogging service. Blogs created for marketing purposes are sometimes referred to as splogs

Also, one domain – topsearch10.com – hosted many other redirection domains that were responsible for 22 percent to 25 percent of the spam detected during the researchers' tests, the study said – Full Story

If you’re serious about blogging without thinking about anything else maybe you should consider using free wordpress.com service rather than blogspot because of their strict spam policy, other than that they also restrict you to put ads on your website (i know there would be different opinion about this but if you’re really serious, you should try to get a domain name and get real webhosting instead) or using any redirection technique which results in less spam

0x87485B96 | Tags : Blog, Blogging, Internet, Opinion, Personal

Korean Website sues Google because of Click Fraud

Reaper-X — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 10:52:04 +0000

It seems the click fraud activity still exists but the question is .. who’s telling the truth ? is it Google or the suspected website (The Local Humor Website) ?

Google, the U.S. web search giant, faces a W30 million (US$1=W945) lawsuit in Korea. Humor University, a local humor website, announced on Sunday that it filed a suit against Google demanding W20 million in payments and W10 million in damages. Humor University said the American firm allegedly failed to pay for three months of online ads

Humor University said that it signed an agreement to host Google's Adsense ads and ran them for three months in late 2005, but Google refused to pay, citing click fraud. Humor University said Google never provided evidence to back up those claims – Full Story

0x87485B96 | Tags : Google, Google Adsense, Internet, Tech News