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Archive - March, 2009

Getting More Traffic: SEO Tutorial and Guide

Saturday, March 28th, 2009

Anyway, I’ve been playing with my SEO for a long time, in face I think I’ve spent far more time learning about SEO than writing blog posts. SEO has to be one of the trickiest things I’ve ever encountered. Here’s a few things I’ve learned to *maybe* help some people out. Using these methods I rank okay in the search engines, or maybe really well since this is still a fairly new site, as far as Internet age goes.

These methods should all be white hat as far as I know

PermaLinks

First thing you want to do when setting up a WordPress blog is setup permalinks. Google and other search engines will like to see keywords in your url. They may also really hate the look of ?p= because it is a dynamic link, this may hurt your rankings in itself.

Link Building

If you want to get right down to it, back links are king. The more back links you have, the higher your PageRank, and the higher your rank in the search engines. You need lots and lots of back links from other sites. Some easy ways to get back links would be through Entrecard, they have “top dropper” days where you will get listed and pick up back links. Also, if you want a quick way to get indexed by Google and the other search engines, you’re going to want to use Entrecard. If you’re not a blog, you might want to try something like ProjectWonderful to start your site off. Advertising is a necessary evil to starting a site. Once people know your site exists, more links will come rolling in by themselves if you write good posts.

Social Networking

Submitting some of your articles to Digg or StumbleUpon is a good idea for a little while, because your dugg articles will show up in the search engines. However, you will get banned if you submit too many of your own articles.

You notice all that crap at the bottom of my site? Those are other blog networks that hold my RSS feed and list my articles there for people to find. Some also keep track of my traffic to a degree. MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, and Technorati are some examples. Even listing your site on Twitter can help. I have just recently started with Twitter to see how it goes.

Some other places you might want to list your articles would be MySpace and FaceBook if you have those accounts, let your friends know you have a blog. I use some WordPress plugins to automatically post there.

RSS Submissions

You should submit your RSS feed wherever you can, because it will list your articles more places, meaning more people are likely to find them and read your articles.

Keywords

Keywords are highly important. I don’t pay much attention to them myself, but if you really want to rank well you need to research keywords. The wording on your site can mean the difference of 50 unique/day and 0 people find your article through search engines. If you pick a term that is far too competitive for your site, you will not rank. I have only just begun to try and play with keywords in my articles. The point is, try to pick less competitive keywords when you write a post by using different wording.

Some useful SEO WordPress Plugins

All-in-one-seo - This plugin helps to automatically handle some SEO functions like title and description of the page.

Sociable – This plugin automatically puts Digg/Stumble/Etc links under each post.

TweetSuite – Puts the Tweet link under each post.

WordBook – Automatically posts your posts on the blog to FaceBook.

Google-XML-Sitemaps – Automatically creates site maps for Google and other search engines.

WordPress Related Posts – Shows related posts based on tags on each post. Helpful for getting people to read more than one article

Conclusion

That is about how far I have gotten with my SEO. I’m still working on it day by day, trying my best to optimize the site. Hopefully someone will find this information useful. Feel free to contribute more SEO and Traffic tips in the comments.

Tags: Guide, seo, traffic, Tutorial
Posted in seo | 3 Comments »

The Janty Dura-C Versus The DSE 901

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

If you’re not familiar with electronic cigarettes I would advise you to read this post before reading this one. : http://technologyinsanity.com/technology-reviews-guides/dse901-electronic-cigarette-review/ It was a review, but I basically went over electronic cigarettes in general

The DSE 901

I enjoy this electronic cigarette, it was my first and works very well. However, I did manage to kill one battery right off the bad, which I’m not too happy with, maybe I was just unlucky. One still works though, and I still vape with it.

The DSE 901 is also kind of hard to get a good hit of vapor. You have to suck kind of hard to get the atomizer activated. Not a real big deal, and the best performance is always dripping the e-liquid directly on to the atomizer. The carts were really weak for me. Other than that, I was satisfied with this e-cigarette.

Another thing I did not like about the DSE 901 was the mouth piece. I kept chewing on it for some reason, and it did hurt my teeth to a degree.

The Janty Dura-C

Just got this e-cigarette, and I’m really impressed. Everything I disliked about the dse 901 is gone. You push a button on the battery to activate the atomizer, letting me have more control over the vapor. This is a definite plus, you might not realize it now, but if you use e-cigarettes a lot you know that activating the atomizer can be a pain sometimes. With this, you just click the button and inhale.

The carts that come with the Janty Dura-C are also much better than the DSE 901, so if you’re a cart user, this is a much better option than the DSE 901.

The entire device, looks much more polished than the DSE 901. It has a nice rubberized feel to it, and offers plentiful amounts of vapor. I would go as far to say that the Janty Dura-C exceeds the vapor production in the DSE 901.

The mouth piece is much more comfortable, it is rounded and feels more like a cigarette. It also has that rubberized feel and I do not feel the need to chew on it with my teeth. When I drip on the Dura-C it produces PLENTIFUL amounts of vapor, maybe more than you even need. It’s very sleek.

The battery life isn’t much better or worse than the DSE 901 in my experience.

If you love the LED on the end of electronic cigarettes, then this will be a drawback for you, there is no LED.

Conclusion

If I was purchasing now, I wouldn’t even bother with the DSE 901. The Janty Dura-C is just a better device all around. However, they may be hard to get a hold of, and I would still wait until the new model is tested fully. I will update this post about any failures or anything of that nature within a few weeks.

YouTube Review

UPDATE - I’ve had the Dura-C for 2 weeks now, and there have been zero failures as of yet. I will update again in 2 weeks.

UPDATE #2 – No failures. I think it’s safe to assume I’m in the clear. I know others have reported issues, but I have had no problems except one battery *appeared* to have died, I tapped it on a hard surface a few times and it has been working fine now for over 2 weeks.

I buy some of my e-cigarette products from here you should check them out.

Tags: dse901, dura-c, electronic cigarette
Posted in Technology Reviews/Guides | No Comments »

Vista Start Menu Review

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

Tired of your start menu moving icons around every time you install or remove new software? Want a more polished look for your start menu? Want a more command/keyboard friendly start menu? Well, I’m happy to say that the Vista Start Menu has provided these features and more. Now, I for one hate vista, so don’t be confused, this program works on Windows NT, 2000, 2003, XP, and Vista.

What exactly does it do?

This program will order all your programs in the start menu, and keep them there. They will not move around. I always found this annoying, because I would go to look for a program, and I wouldn’t be able to find it right away, because the order changed.

This program also gives you a command and search option right on the start menu. The search function will try and find the program if you input it into the box. This is very helpful, I have been down a road where I couldn’t find a program I wanted to launch!

The start menu has also been made more friendly to using a keyboard 100% and not having to touch the mouse. For instance, I can hit the windows key and be presented with the programs menu. There are then different areas in the program list assigned letters. Once I hit that letter, some numbers for each program in that area show up. Then I can hit the number, and that program is selected. Then I can launch the program. This is very cool. In fact, I like this feature the most.

There are also tabs in place, so you can move to the quick start menu easily, and put in programs you use often.

New programs are highlighted, for quick reference. This is very helpful, because I would look around for a newly installed program for ages sometimes. If too many programs take up the screen, then they are scrolled through. I’ve never had this happen to me, but I suppose if it got to that point it would be useful.

I also really liked being able to re-size the menu and move it around wherever I wanted.

There’s a few different skins to choose from, such as Vista start menu classic, Windows classic, and Windows XP. Depending on what skin you’re using in windows, one of these skins will obviously blend better.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed using this software, I think everyone who runs windows should give it a shot. It really does make things easier to manage. It is basically the way the start menu *should* have been setup to begin with. I did not test the Pro version, but from their site it has some extended features like quick launch, quick uninstall, and menu customization. A lot of the complaints seem to be that you can’t customize the free version. However, the free version seems to have most of the features you would really want. In case you’re wondering, there was no spyware/adware attached to this program, and I’m actually surprised about that. It is very easy to uninstall if you don’t want it anymore, it doesn’t change any system settings.

You can check it out for yourself here: http://www.vistastartmenu.com/

Tags: review, Software, start menu
Posted in Software | 4 Comments »

Replacing a Motherboard

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

Well, if you remember my old GA-P35-DS3L failed. ( http://technologyinsanity.com/insanity/the-ga-p35-ds3l-has-failed/ ) I had to get a new motherboard. So, how hard is it to replace one? Probably about as hard as building from scratch

*Note* Always ground yourself by touching the metal case of the computer or using a grounding wrist band.

First of all you have to remove everything connected to the motherboard. That includes the PCI/PCI-Express/AGP cards, the IDE/Sata cables, case cables, and the power cables. Once that’s done, you must unscrew all the mounting screws used to keep the motherboard in place. They are located in many different areas on the board. Once you’re done, you should be able to gently lift the motherboard out of the case.

(This is how my case looked after I removed the motherboard. )

The next step is to remove the heat sink and fan from the old motherboard. The removal process should be documented if you have a stock heat sink/fan, or if you have an aftermarket cooler you should be able to look it up. The removal process will vary.

Once that’s done, you’ll have to remove the CPU, or processor from the old motherboard. There’s generally a latch by the cpu socket that you have to push down and then up to release the CPU. Place the CPU into the new motherboard and pull the latch down. Some older processors have pins on them so you should be careful. The next thing you’re going to want to do is remove the ram sticks from the old motherboard by pressing down on the release latches. Move them to the new motherboard as well, press them firmly into the memory socket.

(Processor and Ram moved to new location)

The next thing you want to do is wipe off the old thermal paste and create a mirror finish on the top of the processor. Then reapply artic silver, or some other kind of thermal paste.

Next, you will also want to create a mirror finish on the heat sink and attach the heat sink to the new motherboard.

With that done, it seems it’s time to move the motherboard over to the case and mount it with the screws taken off the old motherboard. Then, all that needs to be done is to attach all the PCI/PCI-Express/AGP Cards, connect the power, and IDE/Sata cables. Not quite finished yet. There are some little wires hanging off your case you’re probably going to want to connect again to your case, otherwise your power button isn’t going to work Look up the pins for the connector in your motherboard manual. Then, hit the power switch

Next you’ll probably have to reinstall Windows or whatever OS you choose. You can backup your data by using a Linux LiveCD and copying them to a flash drive or another hard drive. You could also try following this guide: Replace Your Motherboard Without Killing Windows

Hopefully this will prove useful to someone out there

Tags: Computers, pc, Processor, Tutorial
Posted in Tutorials | 3 Comments »