After having visited many blogs and websites recently, I can see where some people are making mistakes.

If you don’t want your blog to be popular, and don’t care how tasteless it is, then make it private, and only allow your own select group of fans/family to view it… and then ignore the rest of this post.

Otherwise… if you want your blog to be more popular, then don’t do any of the following:

9) Schizo- Blog has a topic, but you don’t stay on topic. OK, I admit it I’m as guilty as most bloggers with this. My computer blog sometimes has posts that have nothing to do with computers. But those posts are in the minority. And I aim to keep it that way. So should you.

8 ) Copycat- copying someone else’s content: also known as shooting yourself in the foot… and then shooting yourself in the other foot  . You quickly disappear off everyone’s radar, as most search engines will notice and punish appropriately. I only use copyscape to gloat over the poor suckers with too many guns and feet

7) Annoyingggg - music and/or videos that starts spontaneously. If you like the music, then make your blog private. Few people want to listen to your bad taste. I know few people would be interested in my heavy metal music.

6) Ad overload- too many adverts. Imagine you sit down to watch some TV… you find a show, but it splits the screen into 4  sections: 3 sections show bright, animated adverts, while a quarter of the screen actually displays the TV show. Would you watch the show? Probably not (maybe if its the superbowl, or world-cup soccer, or some other favorite).

5) Imitation - Copying the bigger blogs that make more money than you… This is similar to point 6), except you are trying to make money like the big boys. Remember: only the bigger blogs can get away with too many adverts… to some extent. You might find that by cutting down from 20 ads to 10, visitors are twice as likely to click on the 10 ads. People will only put up with ads if they really love the content (ie your blog is popular)

4) Anybody home? - Not updating your blog. Try to update at least once per week.

3) I wish nobody was home - You feel guilty about not updating your blog every week… but you don’t know what to write about… so you update your blog by apologising for not updating your blog. You know what they say: its better to keep your mouth shut, and have people think you’re an idiot… rather than open your mouth and remove all doubt.

2) Who am I? - Your blog doesn’t have a clear topic… you just write whatever comes into your head. You might find this hard to believe, but there are thousands of blogs like this out there, and millions of people trying to avoid them. Pick a hobby… anything! If you don’t have a hobby or anything you really feel strongly about, then please close down your blog (You’ll be doing the internet a favour).

1) Slowww- you have so many ads and trinkets (widgets), that your blog take 60 seconds to load. animations, calendars, large pictures. Cut out the clocks, calendars, world maps, FireFax download icons, and anything else that isn’t relevant. Almost nobody wants to know the weather/time in Upper Kumbukta West! Also try a cache plugin like “wp super cache” it can speed up a website significantly.

Posted by Computer Help as Hints, Humor, Rant, Technical, Tutorial at 1:21 PM EDT

5 Comments »

For a long time now, I find that when I’m looking for an application to do a particular task, I always take a look at various freeware offerings.

I’ve noticed that for many people, this is becoming increasingly difficult… not because there isn’t enough freeware, but because there is too much.

Realistically, few people want to install and test 20 different ftp programs, just to find the one that suits them best.

I used to do that, but now, I’ve found that I can usually get what I want by going to: Pricelessware

The website is the outlet for volunteers who participate in the usenet forum: alt.comp.freeware

These guys (and girls) do a fantastic job, and have saved me countless hours of testing. Well done!

The website has many different categories, such as: word processing, graphics, web design, web browsers, databases, etc

Posted by Computer Help as Hints, Technical at 1:07 PM EDT

1 Comment »

For most of my life, I’ve hated debt.

I’ll avoid borrowing money from friends / relatives, so I want to borrow money from a stranger (eg a bank) even less.

But in the last 2 years, I’ve realised that if used correctly, debt can be a good thing. Its taken me 20 years to figure it out, and a radical change in the way I think.

Please note that what I talk about in this post is just a general guide. You need to adjust it to suit your individual circumstances (or better yet, get qualified financial advice… as I’m not a qualified financial advisor) 

Most rich people in the world got there by what is known as “good debt”

As an example, bad debt is borrowing money for a car (or boat, TV, fridge, etc). Lets say you borrow $20,000 for a car. As you pay it off over a few years… due to interest, you end up paying, say, $30,000. During that same time, the value of the car drops to $10,000. Its a lose-lose situation (you pay more than it was worth, and it drops in value).

However, borrowing money for something like shares or an investment property is good in many ways.

Lets look at property (but shares are similar, but need less money up front).

Since most people will have had a mortgage for a few years, chances are that your house is now worth quite a bit more than what you paid for it. eg: you paid $200,000, you took out a loan for, say, $190,000, and you now owe $100,000. In the meantime, the house is now worth $350,000… Thats a win-win situation… you owe less, and what you bought is worth more than what you borrowed, and all the interest you paid, combined.

At that point, most people think: big deal, I can’t get my hand on the $250,000 of equity in my own home without selling it… and then where will I live?

At some point, I read a book by Jamie McIntyre. It was then that I realised (after a lot of thinking!) that I can access the equity in my own home without selling it.

I kept thinking “where’s the catch”… where’s the flaw… it can’t be this easy.

Using the above example, a bank will be prepared to refinance your loan as a “line of credit”. A line of credit is basically like a credit card with a huge credit limit (using your house as collateral).

Lets say you get a “no doc” line of credit (Ie the bank will lend you up to 70% of the house value, and you don’t need to provide proof of income). So, on $350,000, a bank will lend you $245,000. You already owe $100,000, so you can draw $145,000.

The other nice thing about a LOC, is that you can arrange to have the interest payments be drawn out of the LOC itself… you don’t really need to repay your house… sort of.

The catch is that by taking the interest payments out of the LOC, the $145,000 available will gradually decrease as its used to pay the interest on your remaining loan. Once the money runs out, you must pay the interest in full.

This can give you some “breathing room”, but its much better to put this money to good use like this:

From the $145,000, use $105,000 as a 30% deposit on a $350,000 investment property. Make sure you get an interest-only loan (I thought it was a crazy idea, but there is a reason for it).

So, you now “own” $700,000 worth of property (2 X $350K), but you owe the bank $450,000 (scary isn’t it!). the breakdown is: $100K on your own property, $105K from the LOC (as a deposit), and the remaining $245K as an interest-only loan (possibly from another bank).

Now, you need to make sure you can meet the repayments for the next few years (about $40,000 per year), but its not as bad as you might think:

• You still have $40,000 in your LOC. You can use this to meet repayments if you occasionally don’t have the money.
• You have a tenant in a house that will pay about $18,000 per year
• You need to pay the remaining $22,000 annual interest, but via negative gearing, the Aussie government will help you, so that you only need to pay, say, $11,000 per year (exactly how much depends on your income).

Now, as time goes on, things will get easier:

• The rent will increase as house prices increase (so the tenant pays for a bigger part of what you owe.
• Property values increase (I’ll demonstrate the effects in a moment)
• Your wage / salary will increase in line with inflation

Its generally accepted that in any 10 year timeframe, property values will, at least, double.

So, If you can hang out for 10 years, then here is your situation:

• You now “own” $1,400,000 worth of property (2 X $700K), but you (still) owe the bank $450,000 (not so scary now!)
• The tenant pays about $700 per week ($35,000 per year)… so you now need to pay $5,000 per year in interest…
• negative gearing will probably decrease the $5,000 a year even further.

What do you do now?

Repeat the process again: revalue the properties, refinance both properties to obtain 70% of $1,400,000. Then buy another investment property (or 2!).

Some say if you can own 10 average priced properties, then the renal income will be enough for you to retire.

With a bit of effort, you can pick properties whose value increase above average… then the process just happens quicker.

Personally, I’ve only just started going down this path, so it will be a few more years before I start seeing the benefits from borrowing to buy property and shares.

But I’ve got a good feeling about this… I only wish I was savvy enough to do this when I was twenty years old.

Posted by Computer Help as Hints, Tutorial at 1:40 PM EDT

1 Comment »

The things I think of while travelling from customer to  customer… 

I’ve noticed that some people look for a “magic” way to improve fuel economy.

Often, it involves adding tablets, or other additives to the tank… but usually at an extra expense…

Why bother?

I don’t see the point in saving, say, $2 per tank, where an additive can cost $1 per tank…

The are many other proven ways of improving your petrol mileage, but many people avoid them.

Why? usually because these methods involve changing driving styles, attitudes, and doing regular maintenance.

Whats the best way of improving fuel economy?

Slow down. It’s so difficult for most of us to do, but its also the most effective way to save petrol.

Depending on your vehicle type, driving at 90kph instead of 110kph can improve your fuel economy anywhere between 10% and 25%

How much time will you “lose” by travelling at 90kph?

At 110kph, you will travel 110Km in 60 minutes.

At 90kph, you will travel 90Km in 60 minutes.

At 90Kph, it will take you 73 minutes to travel 110Km (ie: at 110kph, you save 13 minutes, but it costs you lots more (in extra petrol).

I’ve heard some people disagree that a lower speed saves petrol… The argument goes something like this: by going faster, I get to my destination faster, so I spend less time running the engine, so it gets less chance to burn fuel… so I end up saving petrol.

Of course the argument is false, as its well known travelling at higher speeds means you use more fuel per Km compared to travelling more slowly. The harder you press the accelerator pedal, the more petrol you send to the engine

The ideal way to maximise your fuel economy by driving slowly, is to travel as slowly as possible while you are in top gear… for example: its more economical to travel at 70kph (in 5th gear), compared to 90kph (in 5th gear); but travelling at 60kph in 4th gear is not as economical as 70kph in 5th gear.

The other “simple” way to improve fuel economy, is to maintain correct tire pressure. A correctly inflated tyre has a slightly larger diameter than an underinflated tyre, so each rotation allows it to travel slightly further (and it also runs cooler, and is safer due to better vehicle handling characteristics).

Some people also use “accelerate, then coast” to save even more petrol. I don’t think its worth it. The way it works is you accelerate up to, say 80Kph, then you switch off the engine, and coast until the speed drops to say 40 kph, then you turn on the engine again, and accelerate again…

This works well in theory, but I don’t thinks its practical, and it can be dangerous (it you suddenly need to accelerate).

I believe hybrid cars are more capable of implementing the “accelerate then coast” method, but I think simplest solutions can sometimes be the best.

Posted by Computer Help as Hints at 1:06 PM EDT

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Soon after I first created this blog, I also connected it to feedburner, and activated the “email subscription” option.

I figure some people would like to read my posts without having to remember to regularly visit my website, or muck around with feed readers, etc.

since then, I’ve had 2 people send me some very exasperated-sounding emails eg:

can u STOP sending me messiges ok  it is anoying !!!!!!!
thanku!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Its probably someone playing a practical joke on them, as I cannot see how someone can go to the effort of subscribing to my email feed, and then not notice that each email has unsubscribe details within it. And given the infrequent nature of my posting (once every day or three), its nowhere near as annoying as some of the real spam emails.

Anyway I politely reply, saying that they should be able to unsubscribe themselves, but I’ve unsubscribed them anyway.

Posted by Computer Help as Hints, Humor, Musing at 1:58 PM EDT

2 Comments »

OK, I’m a few weeks late, but I’ve just realised that microsoft has effectively killed Autopatcher (autopatcher.com) in its current form.

I’ve found Autopatcher to be absolutely fantastic, when I need to reinstall XP (or do a fresh install), as it has saved me many gigabytes of downloads over the years.

Luckily, Antonis Kaladis is now looking at a way to resurrect autopatcher, so that microsoft cannot threaten autopatcher.

I just find it absurd that MS would move to prevent people from downloading Autopatcher, as it actually helps keep people “addicted” to windows… without it, Linux becomes an increasingly tempting alternative.

Even if a new autopatcher doesn’t materialise, the current Autopatcher has around 3 years worth of updates (and other useful extras), so I’ll be keeping and using my copy for a long time to come!

Posted by Computer Help as Hints, Rant, Technical at 12:06 AM EDT

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I’m totally amazed at the growth in traffic to the Computer Aid website.

Admittedly, I have spent a lot of time studying SEO techniques, and applying them to the website, and I can see that all my efforts are starting to pay off.

As they say, a picture is worth 1024 words, so here are the results to date:

To be honest, I just look at the figures for unique visitors (the orange bars), as its the most indicative of the true popularity.

A figure like “hits” and “page views” can be easily manipulated… I could double the the hits on Computer aid by just placing an extra 15 small pictures on most of my web pages, but it doesn’t change how many people actually look at my website.

Looking over the last 16 months of growth, I can see that there was no single factor that contributed to the 22-fold increase in unique visitors to the website.

There were a few minor hiccups along the way: the most notable of which was an unintentional “duplicate content” problem in the early days, which caused google to drop my ranking for the words “brisbane computer repairs” from 50th to 350th.

Anyone contemplating doing their own SEO to improve their own website ranking should probably consider the following tips:

• Start a blog.
• Update your blog REGULARLY
• Update your blog at LEAST twice per week.
• Make sure the vast majority of your blog posts, discuss topics directly relevant to whatever your website is about (eg a website about nuts and bolts should have a blog that only talks about nuts and bolts (eg sizes, shapes, metals, techniques, etc))
• Pick your wording and titles VERY carefully. A very good grasp of the (English) language is essential. You must consider what a typical “web surfer” would type into a google search, and then use those words in your title and body. This is not as easy as it sounds, yet its very important.
• Don’t post something that has already been talked about by thousands of others (eg the world trade center bombing in NY)
• The flipside of the last point is: Do post something you know, which few other people would know. It makes you appear (to google) as an expert in your field. Don’t be afraid of telling your trade “secrets”… chances are: only others in the same field will read your posts, and they probably already know the “secrets” anyway. The internet is a community that punishes those that keep secrets, and rewards those who share.
• You must think like a marketing executive. Read books about sales and marketing, then apply that knowledge to how you word your overall website. The wording is vital. You must think long and hard about what words and phrases you put on your website (this is not so important for blog posts). You must know what your customers want, and then appeal to them with what you write. Don’t take guesses, you must find out what they want (and sometimes asking the customers won’t give you the answers!)
• Monitor your own website statistics. If your hosting company cannot give you the statistics you need, then consider something like google analytics.
• Optimise your web pages. To see how google views your website, strip out all the images, videos, flash, and html tags. If what you have left looks meaningless, then google will rank you accordingly. Put some quality information in there.
• Check your website navigation. Don’t implement a huge structure of spaghetti links. Ideally, aim for 5 - 10 links per page, and you should be able to get from any page on your site, to any other page, with just 2 mouse clicks.
• Optimise your .htaccess file (learn about 301 redirect), and make sure xyz.com and www.xyz.com both redirect to www.xyz.com. I’ve seen some sites, where xyz.com returns a 404 error!
• Read all you can about SEO (or if you don’t have time, then hire an SEO expert)

For some businesses, correct SE Optimisation can lead to giant leaps in profits.

And remember: some SEO experts are better than others. But to get good optimisation, be prepared to pay more than the original cost of developing the website… any cheaper, and your website probably won’t reach its full potential (or at worst, will drop in popularity).

Posted by Computer Help as Business, Hints, SEO, Technical, Tutorial at 1:12 AM EDT

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In June 2006, I purchased a satnav unit (navman icn320). It was a great price, and it came with the option of a free upgrade to the 2006 maps when they became available (in september 2006).

I thought: thats great, I’ll buy it, as it will make my travels safer.

As I used it, it worked really well, but I started finding the outdated map frustrating… I good example is a nearby road (warroo drive). It was once split into 2 parts, but the 2 parts were joined before I moved to qld (ie Warroo drive must have been joined before 2005).

So I put up with it, and in september, I send away a form, requesting a map upgrade, together with a copy of my receipt.

A month later, I phoned navman, and I’m told sorry, you cannot get map upgrades for the icn320… its no longer a current product… its not for sale anymore.

OK, I explain that one of the reasons I bought it was because it was advertised with a “free upgrade to the 2006 maps”, so you had better deliver on your advertised promises.

So then I get: “Oh in that case, let me check”.

Then I’m then told: yes, you can get upgrades, but they will only be ready in November, and we also don’t have your details on file anywhere… could you send them again…

OK, I get their email address, so I can send it via email.

I email again at the end of November, and I’m told there has been a delay, and the maps will only be ready in december. Oh, and could you please send the scan of the receipt again?

Ok, I send the receipt, application form, etc again, then in Jan I email again, asking about the maps.

I get yet another apology… sorry for the inconvenience, and am told the map will be shipped to me in Feb.

Nothing in Feb, so I fire off another email, and this time I get a more meaningful reply:

map updates were sent to me in Jan and again in Feb… I should have received them. I then get a commitment to send the map via express post… I think: good

Well, work gets very busy, so about 2 weeks later, I’m about to call navman, and I receive an express post letter with the map upgrade. Hooray!!! (Although 2 weeks for en express post letter from NSW to QLD seems a tad slow…)

its a navman icn330 map chip, so I hope it works with an icn320…

Well, it does work (to my relief), and it has 1 or 2 extra features, which is nice.

I then look to see what new roads it has… Hold on. Warroo drive is still split into 2 parts… plus about 15 other places I know were wrong in the 2005 maps, are still wrong in the 2006 maps.

Is this a navman problem, or a whereis problem?

I check the info menus on the navman, and it shows that the maps were generated around mid 2006… so it could be Whereis / Sensis (I like to call them Sensless ).

Yep, I go to the whereis website, and it still shows warroo drive as being split in 2… Grrr

Just to get a second opinion, I take a look at the Street Directory website. It has NO errors… as far as I can see, it is fully up to date… even recent road alterations (from 1 month ago) are there.

Since I’m from Melbourne, I’ve grown up with the local melbourne street map (called melway)… recently, they have branched out to create the Sydway, Brisway, etc… and they also provide the maps behind street directory… They really seem to be on the ball!

I must say, after this whole saga, I’d be prepared to spend an extra $100 on a satnav that uses the brisway/sydway/melway maps, rather than the crappy whereis maps.

Sensis really need to get their act together… if/when the melway people can come out with satnav maps, I reckon Sensis will be scrambling to catch up.

Posted by Computer Help as Hints, Rant, Technical at 12:55 PM EDT

10 Comments »

Some of you might have noticed that this blog doesn’t have many comments, and none of them are spam.

This is not by accident. But I don’t manually remove spam.

I started by activating the akismet anti-spam plugin that came with my copy of wordpress. It was great for a few months, but since it occasionally marked legitimate comments as spam, I needed to manually check the akismet logs for the rare legit comment.

It recently got to the point where akismet was blocking 100 spam comments per day! A bit much for me to check manually.

I then started looking at manually excluding bad IP addresses via the .htaccess file, but it was too much work to maintain.

I recently found a post in a forum somewhere (I lost the link), where someone said using akismet together with “bad behaviour” worked wonders.

So after some reading/research, I installed bad behaviour.

I must say: bad behaviour, in combination with akismet is just fantastic!

Anybody who is sick of checking through a huge aksimet spam log, will find this combination of wordpress plugins will work very well.

Bad behaviour also has a whitelist, just in case it blocks legitimate comments. But since it blocks comments based on the form of the HTTP requests, someone would have to go out of their way to post a comment, and make it appear to originate from a comment robot.

In the month since installing bad behaviour, I’m finding that akismet is blocking less than 10 spam comments per day, and bad behaviour started off blocking about 800 comments per day, but its now down to just under 700… With a bit of luck, the spammers might start leaving my blog alone…

Posted by Computer Help as Hints, Technical at 12:55 AM EST

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As part of my efforts to promote my business I do regular searches on google, yahoo, and msn, just to see where my site ranks, compared to my competition.

There is nothing wrong with doing some research (or so I thought).

But in the last 3 or 4 months, I’ve noticed my msn searches always return with a page that starts with:

We are seeing an increased volume of traffic by some malware software …

The page then goes on to mention phpBB flaws.

I figured: ah, microsoft are struggling with this vulnerability, so they have gone the heavy-handed approach, and have been blocking LOTS of searches. I believe they are only harming themselves by forcing people to use other search engines… not an intelligent way to run a search engine.

Well, after many months, I’m starting to wonder whats going on?

I also noticed that if I do a search from a customers PC, I get valid search findings… so why don’t I get any results from home?

I start to suspect that maybe my IP address is blocked for some reason. So I start looking at anonymous proxies, so I can bypass any block I might have.

In the process, I find an excellent site called Proxify. It allows me to surf the internet anonymously. If you want to see if it actually works, just use it to load up ipchicken.com, and you’ll see a different IP address from what you would normally get from your browser.

So, I can now do MSN searches again (via proxify), but it doesn’t explain why I’ve been banned.

I don’t run any php sites (or any other server applications that I know of) from my local computers.

It has been mentioned, in some forums, that msn are blocking anyone who does ‘excessive’ searches.

But that still doesn’t make sense, as I’m sure that a site like proxify would be much more likely to qualify as performing ‘excessive’ searches, compared to all the manual searches that I am capable of doing (yet proxify is not banned).

For the moment, this will remain a mystery, and maybe one day, MS will un-ban my IP address.

But then, should I really care?

Just looking at my website stats for September, I see google accounted for 348 page hits, yahoo: 45, msn: 32. Yahoo and msn seem to be a very distant 2nd and 3rd (even though my site ranks higher in yahoo and msn).

Since I’m the only person affected, its just a mild annoyance.

Has anyone else had this problem?

Update: shortly after this post, my msn searches started working normally… what a coincidence!

Posted by Computer Help as Business, Hints, Technical at 2:56 PM EDT

2 Comments »

Without really knowing it, I’ve actually been using RSS feeds for the last 3 years.

Of course, there is a lot more fanfare now (particularly with ie7), and every man and his dog are rushing to provide RSS support, and make is easy to subscribe to RSS feeds.

I must admit I’ve tried using the RSS features built in to a few browsers, but it never feels right.

It always feels like browser-based RSS ’viewers’ are forcing me to view RSS feeds like a large collection of web pages… and it just doesn’t work for me.

Since I learnt about the internet during the early 1990’s (before browsers), I’ve just gotten used to the idea of using different applications for each type internet ‘media’.

As an example: I use a web browser to view web pages, an email program to read emails, and a usenet reader to read usenet… So I also use an RSS reader to view my RSS feeds (It feels, to me, that there is an odd resemblance between usenet and RSS… but I can’t quite put my finger on it).

There have been a few apps (eg netscape) which tried to integrate email and browsing, but nobody seems interested (probably because a program that does on one job and does it well, is better than a jack-of-all-trades program).

So, about 3 years ago, I stumbled over a nifty program called desktop sidebar. It was nice, in that it stayed hidden on the left on my screen, yet it had many useful plugins that I could use without having to run 6 different applications. Apparently you can get a similar tool from google (the google sidebar, which is part of the Google Desktop).

There is a good comparison between the two, at: Hmm.

Here is what my sidebar looks like:

 

Although I have added a clock, an internet slideshow (which is automatically refreshed when new images are available… you could call it an image RSS feed), winamp controls… I also have a ‘newsroom’… which is just a different name for RSS feeds.

And although adding new feeds is not totally smooth and polished, reading the feeds is just effortless!

I don’t care if adding new feeds is a little awkward, since I only do it every few months, but I read RSS feeds every day, so it needs to work with a minimum of hassle.

Its really nice to be able to just browse the RSS titles, and as soon as I see one I like, I can either hover my mouse over it (to get a popup of the full article, or I can click on it, and have a new browser window open up with the article in it.

If I decide to change browsers, I won’t have to learn any new RSS tool that is built into the browser… Desktop Sidebar and google sidebar work with any browser.

So what are you waiting for? give it a go!

Posted by Computer Help as Hints, Technical at 6:17 PM EDT

3 Comments »