Microsoft Criticized For Gifts to Bloggers

Microsoft has been accused of trying to influence and even bribe tech bloggers by 'gifting' them Acer Ferrari PCs, loaded with Microsoft Vista. The two models (Acer Ferrari 1000 and 5000), worth approximately $2,400 each, were handed to big and small bloggers as Christmas gifts.

Microsoft issued a statement last week, saying the company "sent out machines loaded with Windows Vista, to bloggers to encourage them to experience the product and to solicit their valuable feedback, offering full disclosure that no editorial commentary was expected as a condition of acceptance." However, the issue has drawn criticism from some of the bloggers themselves, as well as others, on grounds that these bloggers are bound by journalistic ethics which prohibits 'gifts' from companies they write about.

After the matter was publicized on the net and widely criticized by internet surfers, a Microsoft employee sent an e-mail to some of the recipients of the laptops, asking them to return or give away the machines when they had finished evaluating Vista. However, the spokeswoman for Microsoft stated that the follow-up message had caused confusion and that the bloggers were still welcome to keep the computers they had been given.

The Most Useful Sites-II

Here is the second series of the most useful sites-II.This series consist of the popular sites which have topped their category list by various means.

Video

The crowds are all over at YouTube, the poster child of online video. But it's not the only place to find video. And sites like brightcove and currenttv even let you start your own TV station

• YouTube
• Revver
• Brightcove
• CurrentTv
• VideoJug

Blogs

The open-source and free software project Wordpress has risen to prominence, elbowing aside, many rivals with its blog creation, management and (importantly) spam-beating tools.

• Wordpress
• Blogger
• Vox
• Statcounter
• Google Analytics

Virtual worlds

The key distinction from social sites like Myspace is that virtual worlds give you an avatar - your representation of yourself in the online world.

• Secondlife
• Habbohotel
• World Of Warcraft
• The Sims Online
• EQ Players

Wordpress Blog Pinging - List of Ping Services For Your Wordpress Blog

Pinging the blog directories is one of the most important ongoing tasks after listing your blog in the various directories. If you use Wordpress, you can add this list for automatic pinging after every post. Simply add the list in your admin under Options…Writing after scrolling to the bottom of the page.
The current default entry is http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

Internet Tips: New Tools Help Take Your Blog to the Next Level

If you're a new blogger, Google's free Blogger service will meet your needs. But if you're a born-to-blog pundit then, you want additional features, personalization, and control.

Blog-o-Matic

Top-flight bloggers are increasingly moving to WordPress, Automattic Productions' no-cost, open-source blogging software. Unlike the basic blogging tools found in Blogger, Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces, and Yahoo 360, WordPress offers tons of plug-ins and widgets for customizing your blog. One of my favorite WordPress features is its spam filter, which weeds out spam posted as comments. You can also make your blog private, allowing only the people you specify to read and comment on your postings.

But WordPress gives you more than a simple chronological Weblog: The program's pages feature makes it a full-blown content-management system supporting complex Web sites. For example, WordPress templates let you keep your bio, contact info, or other static content easy for your blog visitors to access.

WordPress's PHP script files require the MySQL database and PHP software running on the host server. After editing one of the scripts to include your MySQL and PHP user names and passwords, you upload the scripts to the server--and just like that, you have a blog.

If this seems like programming voodoo to you, relax. WordPress and most of its hosting partners provide point-and-click tools that have you blogging in minutes.

If you're happy using a subdomain (such as scottspanbauer.wordpress.com) rather than your own domain (www.scottspanbauer.com, for example) and don't mind an occasional text ad among your postings, you can create a free account on Automattic's WordPress.com, a blog-hosting service much like Google's BlogSpot. At the time of writing, free WordPress.com blogs were limited to 25MB of images, PDFs, and other files. The amount of text that you and your readers can post is unlimited, however. (Automattic plans to add commercial account options that increase storage.)

If you choose WordPress.com as your host, setup is a breeze. When you log in, a toolbar of configuration options appears at the top for creating posts and pages, changing themes, moderating comments, and adding links to a page's sidebar. You can receive e-mail support from WordPress's creators, too.

For collaboration, create additional author and moderator accounts and set the blog to be invisible until it's ready.

Vista still requires antivirus, MS stresses

Windows Vista does require antivirus software after all, Windows chief Jim Allchin wrote on a company blog (windowsvistablog.com).“I want to be clear, most users will use some form of antivirus software, and that will be appropriate for their scenarios,” Allchin wrote.

The co-president of platform and services responded to media reports recently that quoted him as saying that the forthcoming operating system didn’t need any antivirus software because of it’s enhanced security. Allchin countered that the remarks were taken out of context.

“I made a comment about how attacks on the Internet are getting more and more sophisticated, and some of the security features in Windows Vista really help our customers. This somehow morphed into people thinking I said customers shouldn’t use antivirus software with Windows Vista.”

The intended point, said Allchin, was that in certain situations, Vista would provide much better security for users.The initial reports stemmed from a comment Allchin made during a conference call recently, when the company announced that Windows Vista had been released to manufacturing and would be launched on 30 January.

Allston was talking about his home computer, on which his seven-year-old son runs a Vista machine without antivirus software.“Even if there is a remote exploit on one machine, and a worm tries to jump from one machine to another, the probability of that actually succeeding is very small. My seven year-old runs Windows Vista and, honestly, he doesn’t have an antivirus system on his machine,” Allchin was quoted as saying.Allchin also said that the machine used strict parental controls that limited access. Allchin recommends that users do have antivirus software on their Vista machines, and that the example he listed was an extreme and very specific situation.

How To Start A Money-making Blog? - Beginner

If you are the beginner in blogging, you do not have to worry now. There are thousands of blogging tools that can help you start blogging just by a few simple clicks. You can use Blogger, Wordpress, Blogspirit, BlogEasy and etc. And, most of these blogging services are FREE. But, if you are beginner in blogging, I do advise you to use Blogger as your blogging tool because Blogger is owned by Google. And, the welknown advertising tool which has made thousands of bloggers becoming rich - “Adsense” is provided by Google. But, what is the linking here? The answer is easy because you can easily incorporate Adsense in your blog by using Blogger. The pros and cons of free blog-hosting:

Pros:

Low Cost - Most of the blogging services provided here are FREE. This means that you don’t have to give out any cent to make a money-making blog.
Easy To Set Up - You can set up your blog easily. Besides, there are thousands of templates to help you have your own design to your blog. You can also incorporate easily some advertising tool like Adsense if you are using blogging service like Blogger. Besides, sign-up for these blogging services is relatively easy.
Indexed Quickly - You don’t have to worry how to index your blog in famous search engine because many blogging service providers help you to index your blog in search engine once you sign up for them.
Cons:

Less Configurable - You may face difficulties when you want to add in plugins like newsletter subscription, and etc. to your blog. Somemore, you may find difficult if you want to set up your own design without using the provided templates.
Non-Upgradable Friendly - If you want to upgrade your blog by using webhosting service in future, you may find difficulties because it is very hard to transfer posts and comments from free bloghosting to your own new webhosting server.
Generic Domain Name - If you are using free bloghosting services, you may find that many of your blog domain name is under restriction which can only use domian name like www.xxx.blogger.com, www.xxx.wordpress.com. These types of domain names look very unprofessional. And, these domain names may also give a bad impression to your readers.
But, if you are serious in making money by blogging, I do advise you to find a webhosting company to host your blog. And, there are also many standalone blog platform like Wordpress, Movable Type, and etc. These are the pros and cons of using standalone blog platform:

Pros:

URL - You can use your own domain name which is easy to remember and looking more professional to your readers. And, by short and simple domain name, your readers will come back to your blog easily. And, your readers can also help you to promote your blog by mouth becaus your domain name is easy to remember.
Easy Configurable - I like to use standalone blog platform because there are many programmers write specially-made plugins for blog platform like WordPress and Movable Type. Each plugin serves different purpose. And, you will find them useful.
Own Design - You can configurate your own design for your own blog. By designing your own blog, you can easily impress your readers. And, your blog will also become more personal, unique, and attractive.
Cons:

Technical Problems - You may face a lots of technical problems if you are not very good in simple scripting like HTML, PHP or some other popular scripting languages. You will find difficulties when you want to set up your own design or maybe add certain plugins to your blog.
High Cost - You won’t have free hosting here. You have to pay for your hosting and this may cost you a lot if there are more and more visitors to your website.(More visitors normally bring more revenue to you. So, you don’t have to worry here. ) Besides, you also have to pay for your own domain name.

Hosting Problems - You may find that there are many webhosting services facing downtime even though many webhosting service providers claim that they have 99% uptime. Try to do a simple calculation here. 365days X 99% = 361.35 days. This means that you will have 3.65 days when your server is down for maintence. Besides, you also have to do your own backup.( If you server are drown, all your posts and comments will be missing! T_T )

Actually, it is up to you to decide on which method you want to use to start your blogging. But, my advice here is better to start a free blogging first if you are new to the world of blogging~!

Best stuff to put on your blog sidebar

Jaxtr Widget Lets Social Networkers Chat On Real Live Phones

A company called jaxtr, which launches in private beta today, allows users to connect their personal phone to their digital personality.
Jaxr is a widget that users can put into their social networking sites or blogs. When someone has a jaxtr widget, it means you can call them in real-time. Jaxtr members assign a specific number to their widget.
When a caller sees that widget, they can click it and jaxtr will ask them for their own phone number. The caller’s phone will ring, and when the caller picks up, jaxtr will ring the recipient who originated the widget. If the recipient was not available, jaxtr will notify them that they have a voicemail that they can access by calling into their jaxt service.


Fortunately, jaxtr never discloses the call recipient’s phone number so you can install a widget without ever exposing personal information. Users can also block callers or specify on a per-caller basis which callers can reach them live and which get routed to voice mail. The service is free but local phone rates apply.

“There is nothing less satisfying than creating a social network page or blog and not getting a response,” said Guericke. “Social networks are a catalyst for people to meet, and jaxtr ‘jacks up’ the power of networks to help users make new connections. By putting a widget on their social network page or blog, jaxtr users can hear from callers worldwide on their existing landline or mobile phone.”
I have to say, I don’t always find it unsatisfying to blog and not get a response. There are several responses to my posts that I could certainly live without