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Continuing to the Part ][ of the series started by Apple Gazette of the 5 Predictions for Apple in 2007, here are the list of the 5 Predictions for Linux in 2007! Before we look ahead, a small flashback over 2006. This was The year that changed Linux, with Oracle becoming a Linux distributor, Microsoft and Novell partnering to make Linux and Windows more compatible, rift between the Linux core developers and FSF and a lot more happening.

What is really interesting is the fact that the Linux community itself is forking considering that even old-schoolers and pioneers joining hands with proprietary licenses, with reference to ESR joining the Freespire board. It was in ESR’s book itself and as part of the Halloween document 1 discussion that ESR noticed and acknowledged the strongest point of the Linux community being a central control over “no-forking” as forking decreases the amount of glory received as part of the contribution to the community. However, like any human, I love drama and this is exactly why watching the Linux community is going to be really interesting over 2007. Here are a list of things that I am going to be on the lookout for. In no particular order

1. Rise of the Linux “Big Business” Corporates
These include all the Big Business boys who promote Open Source Software and are earning bucks out of the Open Source Business Model. All of them are eyeing to make some $$$, now that Linux has proved itself to be a mission critical trustworthy player. That includes Debian, Novell, Red Hat, and joining the latest into the race signing a deal with Sun, is Canonical [the parent of Ubuntu]

2. Rise/Race of the Desktop Linux
Linux has certainly evolved from a command line “toy” for the green-glowing screen CRTs to a slick desktop, with a lot more interesting eye-candy than Vista or OSX. [Well at least to the eyes of the slightly more than average computer user]. thanks to Compiz, Beryl! Furthermore these effects are to a large extent community support based and independent of the hardware - whether it be a PC or a Mac. Ubuntu Linux is _the_ most popular free Linux that’s being used, in both the PCs and the Macs. What are the other communities going to do? And how is this going to affect the rise of the desktop Linux?

3. What are the FSF policies going to be in GPLv3.0
FSF is against DRM. Vista and OS X.5 [Leopard] have built in support for DRM based working environments. Who’s going to win in this war[???]? Is there going to be scuffle between the big vendors supporting DRM and the FSF community?

4. Any chance of Googubuntu?
There was a rumor that Google was working on a desktop OS that is googlicized [I call this term :D]. Will it be coming true as part of 2007 list of surprises by Google? Will they finally decide to have a “consumer-first” based OS? We’ll have to wait and see

5. How many forks are going to happen as a result of people against GPLv3.0?
Firefox vs IceWeasel, Linux core developers against FSF. Who goes where? Or is there going to be peace and harmony and solid work, which has been the success of Linux rising as a desktop OS today!

All this and more to be looked forward to!! Coming soon to a world near you - 2007!!

This marks an end to our list of predictions of the Windows and Linux community. Wishing you all and happy and fun and prosperous 2007.

Got more, disagree, or just wanna tip us off with more information? Pop in a comment here…

Originally posted by gurupanguji @ Bracketed Bull…

Linux - and free software in general - have been traditionally plagued with one constant concern by the non-users [by that I mean the Windows and the Mac bandwagon] that there are far too many choices. Which Linux flavor to choose? You have Red Hat, Suse, Debian, Gentoo, Fedora, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Unnamedubuntu, and what not. Windows has XP and Mac has OSX. I personally believed [as highlighted here] that it was perfect with the ideology of FSF. Concept of freedom [as in free speech] brings about a related concept of choice. There are many people believing in many ideologies, methods and concepts there. The same is obviously extended to the software developers as well. [They are human for uninitiated] So, you have very many software that are generated.

Saying you have just way too many choices is like saying you have too many choices when you go to buy a pair of running shoes. Or saying you have far too many options when you go to buy a mobile connection. Why should software be any different? You’d expect the user to be aware of the options, and choose or make a mistake just like _any_ consumer market!!

Anyway, Microsoft, with its release of multiple options for Windows Vista may have either finally accepted this or have joined the bandwagon.

Microsoft offers 4 separate versions of Windows Vista - Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business and Vista Ultimate! Hmm, maybe it’s the year for options after all ;-)!

Does more choice generally mean that it’s better or is it confusing? What do you think? Post your thoughts in the comments section!!

Originally posted by gurupanguji @ Bracketed Bull…

This is an article that stemmed in my head when I was thinking about starting my own web 2.0 based business. Considering the various factors that go into any such business, one of the chief concerns that pop into this is the web-design itself. The typical way this would work is I approach a Web-designer and buy a design / pay him to develop a design for me. And then I buy the design from him. The web-designer, if he’s smart enough would charge for

1. Time for designing
2. The design itself
3. Implementing / Customizing the design for a webpage.

Now, thinking as a smart web-designer, if you think that the Web-site is going to be a hit and will involve evolution of the site itself, you’d swarm the entity [person/firm] who’s enrolled you to create the design into a maintenance contract. This would ensure you that you are paid enough money for enhancing the current design. This could also be offered by you as a designer for a certain amount of money.

Thinking as an smarter web-designer, with a little bit of know-how on the Web2.0 upcoming boom, with enough money slowly being pumped in, you can advertise yourself as a Web2.0 Web-designer [basically pastel shades, with Aqua like alpha, AJAX based interfaces yada yada yada] and what you can actually do, is if you feel that the web-site is going to a tremendous hit, you should try and rope in a “percentage cut model”. IOW, depending on the traffic, you can ask for a cut of the profit that the website is making. More like an investment. Now, depending on your experience you’ll know how to rope in your customers and offer which model ;-)! However, this is just a suggestion that I thought many web-designers may not have thought about.

As a web-designer, what do you think about this particular business model? Is it good/bad/so-so? Lemme know in your comments.

Posted by gurupanguji.

Thats my result from thesuperheroquiz.com a pretty cool site where you take their quiz and it will let you know based on what you have answered. And I think its pretty accurate from what I have seen from other peoples results check out David Winer(scripting.com), Arrington (Techcrunch.com) Steve Rubel (www.micropersuasion.com) and Jason calacanis

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 70% The Flash 70% Supergirl 60% Green Lantern 55% Superman 50% Robin 45% Hulk 45% Wonder Woman 40% Iron Man 40% Catwoman 30% Batman 20%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the “Which Superhero are you?” quiz…

I thought Apple Gazette had an endearing article on the 5 Predictions for Apple in 2007. I thought it must follow that the same should be extended to Microsoft and also the Linux community and this is the prediction for Microsoft and the Windows Community for 2007.

Strong Disclaimer [in tradition with Microsoft :-P]: This is hypothesis based on the little bit of internet that I have seen. IOW, I am serving it with salt. Put it according to your taste :)!

2006 is coming to a close indeed. And about 90% of the internet browsing world [1] is looking out for Microsoft’s upcoming release of Windows Vista! However, what are the next steps in 2007 that Microsoft/Windows is planning to take in the year 2007? With the plummeting PC sales and the increasing market share of Apple, what’s Microsoft/Windows doing to maintain the bottom line that is going to be on Bill Gates’s mind, considering that he has only 2007 to prove his mettle?

1) Windows Vista Release
As much as people might spit and rake up the fact that WIndows Vista is a copy of OSX, it’s still going to sell like hot pancakes come January 31, 2007. If you consider footnote 1, that was the OS platform statistics from the Internet Browsing World taken from a largely unbiased source [The W3School website]. This is not only going to boost Microsoft’s earnings for 2007, but is going to sell enough material to more than justify its $5 billion [:O] investment in Windows Vista and give enough money to Microsoft to warrant another 10 years in the next next-generation OS from Microsoft :-P! Jokes apart, I really don’t understand the hue and cry about Vista. The only serious thing that I have noted recently, to which people should pay attention is the publication by Dr Peter Gutmann in his website on the DRM related protection mechanism of Windows Vista and how it can potentially harm the world, which brings to my second point!

2) How Microsoft is going to respond to Dr Peter Gutmann’s paper on DRM Protection Mechanism in Windows Vista
This is something I am eagerly looking forward to as a technology lover! What Dr Peter Gutmann has actually analyzed and written [and well] is how DRM Protection mechanism in Windows Vista could alter a lot of things! Ranging from increased hardware costs as a result of this to potentially harmful use-cases, it’s a comprehensive analysis. Read it in depth here. I am waiting to how Microsoft is going to respond to this. Is it going sue the @$$ off Dr Peter Gutmann, for blasphemy without proof or actually indulge in a technical debate?

On a side note - DRM protection is also going to be built into OSX 10.5 Leopard. However, nobody is really bothering about it considering that they have a low market share and are not really used in any mission critical applications. [Ok, pardon me for taking the jibe here @ Apple. However, I am playing sour-grapes phenomenon. I have been pondering over buying a MacBook for a LONG time now. I just cannot get myself to shell out so much cash tho :(]

3) How Zune is going to fare
Microsoft has definitely not gone into portable media devices with its Zune line without a paramount reason. It knows for sure that Apple has the monopoly in this section, with its delicious iPod line up! So, there is something that we are not seeing here that Microsoft is yet to come up with. Maybe 2007 is the year Microsoft unleashes a feature with Zune - say distributed connectivity with its Zune line to internet?? [ok I am just thinking wild here :-P] that is going to make the Zune a worthy competitor to the iPod. Looks wise - NO WAY!! iPod looks just way too sexy!!

4) How Microsoft is going to handle support to OSX
Redmond must have had a shock when they saw the Office 2007 support from a text editor in OSX Leopard [still in beta until Jan 2007 mind you]. They must be running around circles trying to find a way to get either the Microsoft Office 2007 line up ready for the Mac OSX [You dont wanna lose market share there M$] The other thing in this line is of course how Microsoft is going to capitalize on the fact that the Apple computers are finding a rising market share. With the ability to boot Windows XP, Microsoft now has to capitalize on this market to come up with a unique way to either create a Virtual Machine within Windows Vista to provide support for OSX [Of course the logic that Microsoft can supply is that OSX just doesn’t have enough market to warrant a virtual machine for Mac within Windows]

5) Microsoft Office 2007
Having won excellent reviews, we are going to find out how the overpriced Office Suite of Microsoft is going to compete with the Internet world of Google Docs and Spreadsheet and the rising market share of OpenOffice. Radical new features have been implemented in Office 2007 [read: Ribbons] that are supposed to “revolutionize producitivity” [hopefully for the better]

6) As a bonus, Live and Microsoft AdCenter
With 2007 being a year where in competing technologies for the almost monopolistic AdWords, have finally evolved and matured, we are going to see a radical change in Online Search and Advertisement. Leading the Microsoft side would be Live.com and supported features [including a possible Live! Office] [If you still haven’t tried out Live.com’s Image Search, you should!! It’s a treat!!]

What do you think are the important predictions for Microsoft and the Windows fraternity in 2007? Let us know by scribing in the comments section…

Footnotes:
[1]

OS Platform Statistics

Windows XP is the most popular operating system. The windows family counts for nearly 90%:

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
- Under OS Platform Statistics

Originally posted by gurupanguji @ Bracketed Bull…

Orkut - one of the most popular social communities out there. Of course nothing beats MySpace [just check out the number of hits we get to the post referring to MySpace :-D]. However, I prefer[red] orkut to the rising community sites of that time [Yeah I enrolled in orkut about 4 years ago] - Hi5. Now, the reason why I chose orkut was a point noted by one of my best friends. Orkut did NOT allow just anyone to join. Consequently, this had reduced/limited the potential possibility of unruly, uncouth people and stuck to the concept of being a truly social community site. You’d invite only your real friends to the site.

However, things have changed now. Orkut is now open - Check out the “Join Now” option at Orkut.com login page! Now, Google has been very good at blocking people with malicious intent in orkut, however, inspite of all that Google tries, orkut still has a lot of flab in terms of porn and other unsocial stuff. Ok, I am never averse to porn, it’s just that I really don’t wanna use a service where in most of my friends/family are present to search and utilize for something like porn :-D! But then again, that’s a personal choice.

Ok, I am digressing! Coming back to the topic - orkut being open and now containing the ability to message communities as a whole, might be the next viral marketing platform. And this extends to any social community based websites. For e.g. since orkut has opened, “agents” have already have started it to communicate about land availability, buildings for sale, LIC insurance options, tax saving investments, and what not? I have already posted about resumes being posted left, right and center in the communities of firms/organizations!

There are some questions you can ask here in terms of - why is Google not stopping that, considering that this is spam? Well, the truth is - these firms with huge investments / returns from the ad-market, would definitely want to capitalize on their investments into the social community pie!! I am saying that orkut is going to be one of the most useful investments that Google made ever. [I am sure that they would know exactly why they invested in orkut. This is nothing but a hypothesis]

Why is orkut going to be useful for Google in the future?

And in a broader sense, why are the major Ad Players raking up on the social communities pie? You have Microsoft with MSN Spaces - Oops, Windows Live Spaces, Yahoo! - with Y! 360 and Google with orkut! What sense does it make for companies like Microsoft to even invest in an ONLINE SOCIAL COMMUNITY?

Well, apart from the fact that they are now becoming an essential part of the Internet package - email/IM/community, they are sitting gold-mines! Rightly predicted in the 2007 Predictions over at Read/Write Web

Expect some shakeups in the online advertising market next year. AdSense will have some competition, in the form of MSN AdCenter and Yahoo’s advertising platform

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/2007_web_predictions.php
- under Search and Online Advertising

Social Community Advantage #1: A sitting gold-mine for advertisement. Companies can post advertisements pertaining to the community. You can bet your life’s savings that people are going to click. And you can put all your eggs saying that that’s going to be the case soon enough.

Social Community Advantage #2: They are consumer-base. People who are using your packages are bound to at least “test” your social community. Make it a success, with enough people and enough contact with people within that community hitch up [ok going too much] but at least meet, you are setting up your consumer base.

Social Community Advantage #3: What better than YOUR community to evangelize your products? Let’s take the latest example - How many orkut users would have decided to give Google Talk a Go - since the tight [almost] integration of orkut and Google Talk. [Btw this was long due for Google, considering that MSN Spaces or is it Live Spaces now? is tightly integrated with Live Messenger and Y! 360 is tightly integrated with Y! Messenger].

The war on Advertising is definitely going to be interesting in 2007. We see that people are already starting to realize the potential of orkut/social communities as a perfect way to reach a niche crowd. For e.g. an insurance salesman could easily target an IT firm and post a message regarding insurance options / tax saving investments. While this is largely beneficial to the salesman and the community, it might be misused!! Are Google and other players taking the necessary precautions to prevent the next generation of spamming through this?

Let us know by your comments and trackbacks, what do _you_ think are the reason for social communities for these big players in the Internet?

Originally Posted by gurupanguji @ Bracketed Bull…

Open Source: The buzz word for the year 2007. From being a bunch of geeks who revolutionized the computing industry, it has grown quite a lot. The world, well at least the computing world, agrees that it’s the next best thing to sliced cheese [and trust me sliced cheese is God sent to the people in the computing world]. I was reading up on the Open Source Business Model, wondering how and what was the money maker of Open Source based companies - web based and stand-alone applications wise. This got me thinking, as a professional software developer, the amount of opportunity and the threats it presents and poses to people like me.

Now, let me define Professional Software Developer: It’s a term that I coined right now to define, and include those developers who write code to make a living, well at least anyone who develops software to make some money out of the process of “coding”.

Now, what is the Open Source Business Model for Software? Traditionally, companies put a lot of value to the actual source code, for a variety of reasons [1]. Now, the code itself is not idolized anymore. How? Well, by providing the source code, free of charge to anyone who wants to use it / understand it / contribute to it, under a variety of “public licenses” - viz. GPL, CC, to name a few. This is a major shift from the “closed source” paradigm.

Under the closed source paradigm, software developers were paid - a lot of money at times - to develop the code base. This had a lot of value, understandably as the company paid quite a hefty amount of money to get it developed, in spite of getting it done real cheap in outsourcing sweatshops in India ;-).

Under the open source paradigm, most of the companies rely on volunteers [a queer word comes into my mind - developer volunteers ???] to develop the code - read Software Developers with a lot of free time??! Now, this cuts down the value of the “source code” to NIL! Save for the laptop sticker (optional), a few T-shirts and due credits given in the “About Us” page ;-), which costs the company practically NOTHING! Now, this also shifts the company’s focus from a traditional software sweatshop to focusing on products, features, service, support, and other value-add services. And it’s these things, which is going to fetch the money to the company anyway, at least in the long run. The software code base itself has no value. Furthermore, it only makes sense for people to contribute to it and have a community based brainstorming for adding features, removing bugs etc.

E.g. Consider the major technologies used in the Web-Applications today - Java, Apache, Linux, MySQL, PHP, etc!! All Open Source, Worthy mentions are of course .Net Web Services, however, let’s not include that here. =D!

P.S. This makes an excellent case for any start-up with limited technology resources to vote and opt - Open Source btw

So, what does this mean to you as a Professional Software Developer? There are two situations you can read from here - Opportunity and Despair.

Let’s tackle the positive one first - Opportunity. One word - NDAs / Contracts. The Closed Source Paradigm typically enforces the software developer cannot use code from his just done / developing project for any of his practical use. Furthermore, majority of the companies for which you will work for, will also have a “Service Agreement” clause, which will not let you work for ANY OTHER COMPANY/product other than for the one you are working, until your contract expires/is revoked by your company. Also, any development you do is NOT your property but is officially the company’s Intellectual Property, for which it gets to file the patents and get the royalty.

The Open Source Paradigm caters to the I-want-variety-in-this-boring-existence-of-mine side of the software development. You can go independent and work for any project you want, which is ready to “hire” you for major concerns of development as well as design decisions. Not only that, it also allows you to go independent and put your hand in a variety of projects, some which pay, some which cater to your interest in the world [Ok!! Development world :-P]. So, you can consider this as an opportunity to grow and expand your profile.

Now, if you can write as well, start a blog, which accounts for your daily experience in the programming world. As there are no NDAs with the projects you work on, you can use real life example code for your work, put Adsense and tada - you’re making money out of what you do best and what you really like - developing code. So, that’s so much for opportunity!!

Despair: Now, let’s give some attention to despair - the negative aspect of this. As a software developer, as soon as the company you are working for realizes that the ROI in maintaining closed source is not worth paying the current set of developers in the payroll, you are out of a job. Just as outsourcing was a major job-cutter, Open Source and Ready to work for real cheap money College Students with development experience are going to handle the code! As tough as this may seem, this could be a prediction of the future.

However, things are not so glum. As part of your “career objectives” set in your company, I am sure that one of the clauses would be “Improve Technology Knowledge” or “Update yourself with the latest trends in technology” or something to that effect. Everybody’s been through that. Now, it’s time to actually make use of some company time to actually enforce that particular Responsibility Area. Get involved in the latest Open Source Technologies / trends like PHP, Python, Java, Ruby, Apache, AJAX, yada yada yada. You get what I mean, learn it and make sure that you highlight that you have done justice to that objective in your next appraisal. And when the time comes that the company decides to try out Open Source technologies, you are way up there in the forefront, already having knowledge of the same. A time for promotion?? I think so ;-)!

Note: This situation is applicable ONLY to the general software development companies and it DOES NOT incorporate the niche software development companies like Medical Solutions or Financial Solutions. Although certain aspects of even these applications will be at the very least BASED on Open Source Technologies soon. Companies involved in these have already spent WAY too much money and resources in developing something that’s so highly proprietary that they will not, at least for a very good amount of time, say 10-20 years even consider making the source code of the binaries that earns them MILLIONS of $$$ a year, OPEN!!

Also, there are companies like IBM and Novell, who are neither here, nor fully there, the in-betweens, who are software houses developing Open Source software - Ideal place to work right now for the Open Source oriented Professional Software Developer, eh ;-)!

Footnotes:
[1] Reasons include theft, software / IP patents on the source code, competitors using to reverse engineer the system design, malicious use of the source code for hacking/cracking/gain private information etc.

Sources / Further Reading about Open Source Business Models
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_vs._closed_source
[2] http://www.extropia.com/tutorials/misc/opensourcebiz.html
[3] http://web.corante.com/editorial/archives/2006/07/the_open_source_revenue_model.php

Posted by gurupanguji

Ok looks like both google and yahoo are in getting into a very festive mood and are looking to increase there PR. Here are some new bunch of Easter eggs from them.

Easter Eggs from The Yahoo Santa.

Flickr increases storage limits.

First of all Flickr has increased the upload limit for free accounts from 25MB to 100MB per month, ( on a side note for free accounts  did you know that this is just a marketing ploy because you cannot upload more than 200 photos even if you are using less than 100MB. You won’t find it anywhere in their FAQ or help site but when you hit the 200MB limit your older photographs starts disappearing) and for the pro account they increased it to unlimited uploads with no limits again read the fine print since there are certain limits but nothing you should be bother about if you have a Pro account. 

Flickr Easter Eggs 

Go to any Flickr photo and try posting a note on any of your photos using the following words

ho ho ho hat : you’ll get a Santa hat which you can drag around to put on anyone :).

ho ho ho beard :  you’ll get a Santa beard
Check it out here
Thanks to boing Boing originally discovered by http://a.wholelottanothing.org/

Psst Yahoo photos has Unlimited uploads with no upload limits

Ok this has bee there for a long time since Yahoo revamped Yahoo Photos, but most people don’t seem to know about it. Yahoo photos went for a complete revamp and it looks really slick but like the new revamped Yahoo mail it makes use of really heavy AJAX which runs a bit slow on the Firefox browser but runs fine in I.E the interface is still buggy though. Again read the fine print.

We offer free, unlimited storage! So upload as many photos as you want.
Keep in mind – we did build a couple of procedural limits into the uploading process.
First, we limit each album to 300 photos. So if you’re uploading into an album and you reach 300, Yahoo! Photos will stop uploading. If this happens, re-start uploading from where you left off. You can direct photos into All My Photos, or a different album, or into a new album you create.
We also limit uploads per day to protect ourselves from abuse. This will probably never be an issue for you, but if you’re uploading several hundred large photos (2-5 Mb) we encourage you to do this over a few sessions. We apologize for this limit, but ultimately it’s for the good of all our users that we manage this type of abuse.

But in this case it sounds very reasonable.

Easter Eggs from The Google Santa.

Join the hunt for Giant toys on Google earth

Head over to google earth and search for Giant toys on Google earth.

Hello boys and girls. Ready to find some toys? Santa has hidden a treasure trove of presents somewhere in Google Earth (actually, it was a few of his elves, but you get the idea) . Every day from December 12th until Christmas Eve, a clue will appear outside Santa’s North Pole workshop which, if you can solve it, will lead you to a toy hidden in a Google Earth satellite image. And every day, the location of the previous day’s toy will be revealed.

Note: To participate you need to download and install the Google earth and The Santa Tracker and Toy Hunt you read more about it on the official google Santa page

Read the announcement at the official google blog.  

Picasa web Gets lots of new features.

Picasa Web Albums has many new features.
Uploading videos. Until today, only users that paid for extra storage could upload videos. Now everyone can do that, but only using Picasa.
Prints. You can now order prints for your photos.
Tags. Picasa Web Albums lets you tag photos.
Search. You can search your photos and your friend’s public photos. Google looks at photo captions, photo tags, album titles, album descriptions, and album locations.

Courtesy googlesystem

Update: A lot of people misunderstood what I meant by Link spamming. First of all Modifying and releasing the themes with your link in the credit is not at all wrong. But when you do underhand stuff like adding NOFollow Tags to the original authors and on top of that making minimal changes and try to hid your link in the credit it is VERY VERY Wrong.
Update: Since a Lot of people don’t know or can’t seem to understand I added an explanation of the NOFOLLOW tag from the Official Google Blog.
Update:Melvin Ng the owner of
http://wpthemegallery.com/ has resolved the issue with Sadish here and has removed his links from Sadish Themes.
Update: Thilak said he released those themes a long time ago.
Update: This Topics of this post was not in order of Priority. If you feel that not giving Credit to the Orginal theme owner and Adding NOFOLLOW Tags is ok they my friend you have a major crisis with your moral values that is all I can say. But you are right its not illegal.

Explanation of the NoFollow Tag read more from the Official Google Blog

If you’re a blogger (or a blog reader), you’re painfully familiar with people who try to raise their own websites’ search engine rankings by submitting linked blog comments like “Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site.” This is called comment spam, we don’t like it either, and we’ve been testing a new tag that blocks it. From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn’t a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it’s just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.

We’ve also discussed this issue with colleagues at our fellow search engines and would like to thank MSN Search and Yahoo! for supporting this initiative. Here are a few guidelines for anyone else who wants to join the cause.

I might be kicking up a lot of dirt and upsetting a few people here. Originally I was going to write about Link Spamming after I caught a few well know blogs actively doing it, but after reading the post on wpthemes: Please Respect our Copyright, CopyBlogger: Is it ok to steal Someones Design and the recent fiasco where Google got royally screwed from blogger all over the blogsphere for copying the IE7’s Promotion Page design from Yahoo. I decided to generalize it. to include Plagiarism, Splogs and Paid Reviews. Some of these terms might not sound familiar to the average Joe or reader but if your are a regular blogger you need to know these things.

• Link Spamming
• Plagiarism And Splogs
• Paid Reviews

To understand some of these terms you need to know what SEO is, most average Internet surfers know what this is and I can already see some people yawning so don’t worry I am not going to go into it much. If your a noob when it comes to SEO then head towards the end of this post to read a brief introduction to SEO. We’ll tackle more serious issues here. So what do Link Spamming, Plagiarism, Splogs and Paid Reviews have in common? Its WordPress. Its a well know fact that most of the top bloggers TechCrunch, Scoble use WordPress heck even Matt Cutts Google’s Engineer and SEO Expert uses WordPress even though Google has its own Blogging platform Blogger. Apart from the excellent blogging features which other free blogging platforms lack it is an excellent tool when it comes to SEO and also because of the large number of excellent themes which are SEO Oriented.

Link Spamming

If your on wordpress you know what Askimet is and chances are that you get a lot of spam Comments which Askiment catches for you. The purpose of these spam comments are to leave a link on your blog to their site that they rank well in search Engines for that particular keywords(A typical Black Hat SEO Technique). A while back I found that some people had found a legitimate way to link spam using Wordpress Themes/Templates.

Case 1: http://tech-buzz.net/ I noticed it when I chanced upon a blog run by Thilak called Tech-Buzz while searching on Technorati, he seemed to have a high Technorati Rank since a large number of people seemed to be linking to him his blog. What he did was, modify Themes/Templates to a certain degree and release those Themes/Templates on his website while adding his link to the footer of the theme with those of the original theme owners and designers. At first it was hard for me to notice his link since he seemed to have hidden it somewhere inside the source code Check out Coalitionagainsthate.org , http://www.scottgrizzard.com or http://www.nhlanalysis.com they are all running one of Thilak theme which is originally a K2 theme modified into a 3 column by John T P (who is Currently seems busy trying to get into the Top Techorati ranking with a Technorati Fav exchage SIGH People) which was further modified by Thilak. But the funny thing is you won’t notice the link added by thilak in the footer of the theme it is cleverly hidden (Hover your Mouse over the T in word TripleK2 to see his link) you need to go to the HTML source to see the link to his blog but it gets worse he added a NOFOLLOW Html Tag (Special HTML Code to tell search engines not to take the link into account) to the original authors links.

Case 2: http://www.kaushalsheth.com/ This guy’s themes get regularly featured on http://planet.wordpress.org/ The official aggregation of blogs talking about WordPress from around the world. While I appreciate what he does by porting other people’s CSS/XHTML themes to wordpress he also makes it a point to leave a sponsored link in all his themes.

Case 3. http://wpthemegallery.com/ Collects themes from different locations and adds a link to his site and distributes them.

Its more of a matter of ethics here since most of the Themes for wordpress are released under GPL or Creative Commons Share Alike Licence then these people do have a right to modify and add their links i.e. without removing the original copyright links. Though Case 1: is very questionable.

Plagiarism and Splogs.

I don’t have to define Plagiarism, Splogs are Blogs which are automated using programs that steal other people content word for words this mostly done using software called scrapers. These Scarper site are leechs that feed off other people content and have Google Ads(Adsense). Initially when I had switched to partial feeds on Scribez a while back few of our authors and readers voiced their displeasure since Full Feeds are one of the most common ways by which these scraper sites work (Scribez currently has Full feeds you might want to read http://www.fullfeeds.com and debate on Full Feeds Vs Partial Feeds ). Lorelle hates full feed. The Cartoon below illustrators this very well.

Case 1. http://33rockers.com/ The Previous Owner of 33rockers.com (its been sold to Warren Cardinal) Karthik Kastury was caught plagiarising by Maxpower Ironically Thilak seems to be very upset that Karthik Kastury was stealing his content.

Case 2. People are so lazy in the blogsphere that they blog about what other people blogging and leave a link back to the original source because they are too lazy to write their own content. While technically not plagiarising or Splogging a lot of blogger especially tech blogger make it seem that this is OK. Which is also why Thilaks blog got banned from DIGG.

My URL has been banned (reported as a middle man), but they never lifted the ban.. more over they give rude replies when I tried to contact them

Example of a Splog: http://digitalnewsflash.com this site feeds of other people RSS Feeds.

How to deal with sploggers and plagiarists

What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content Dealing With Website Plagiarism: When Someone Copies Your Blog Content ?

Paid Blogging

This is a grey area a lot of blogger out there in the blogsphere seem to be divided over this issue. I am talking about services like payperpost.com and reviewme.com which pay the blogger to write a review for a particular product. payperpost.com is more controversial since you have the option on not disclosing to your readers that your being paid to write a review. This could lead to a more sophisticated form of spam example a company which is just starting out could pay blogger to blog about them this not only help to achieve their Viral marketing strategy but also helps boost their presence on Search engines to outdo their rivals. Jason Calacanis has a good post about it here and Labnol both have confirmed this in Matt Cutts own words “Google wants to do a good job of detecting paid links. Paid links that affect search engines (whether paid text links or a paid review) can cause a site to lose trust in Google.”

Why Bother with SEO in the first place

SEO is a vast subject I am just going to touch upon it here. I suggest you read up Aaron Wall’s blog if your interested to know more about it especially his article on Search engine relevancy he is one of the best SEO gurus out there. For the average blogger this is not a big issue but if your a pro blogger or are trying to reach a wider audience you need to know about SEO since 80% of the traffic on the Internet is generated from search engines and if the search engines cannot find you then your losing a major chunk of your audience. SEO are factors which if implemented correctly help to boost your reach and visibility on search engines. Factors for SEO can be divided in two categories

• Internal SEO
• External SEO

Internal Factors

Without getting too technical these are factors which the the blogger has to take care of such as the Content on your blog the keywords/Keyword density that you use, the way you code your Website/Web pages. With wordpress and some of the excellent themes developed by the community members this factor is not such a big issue. Which is why blogs on Wordpress.com and wordpress blogs in general have a better chance on search engines than blogs created on blogger, live journal etc (I’ll do a post on this later on why wordpress is much better if your into SEO than other blogging platforms)

External Factors

These factors are how many website are linking to your website/blog etc that why you see people building up there Blog rolls.

[source: http://www.mihaidragan.ro/kindablog/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/leopard2.jpg]

Disclaimer: I haver never owned a Mac or used / worked in OSX, however respect both the machine and the OS.

Year - 1998: As a junior editor for the yearbook, I was introduced to a PC, well a computer at least that had a mouse which had only one mouse button! This was the year I had actually been given a computer @ home and I was hooked to Windows 95 and Motoracer and a game called G-Nome! I used to scoff @ the links leading me to the desktop from where I am typing this particular post when I used to search for cheat codes for the game - GNome! The Intenet Explorer was a true boon to me - a source of games, cheat codes, chatting and PORN! ;-)! Windows was GOD, as it allowed me to do all that - play games and check out porn!

I had an AMD K6 processor based machine, which clocked 200Mhz and well it was AWESOME ;-)! I never realised at that point of time, the magnitude of change, literally a radical revolution that was going to occur with the electronics industry and 8 years later, I’d be typing away on a laptop that’s easily 20 times more powerful than my desktop in 1998, will run a version of the Operating Sytem, which was named after a game I knew and I’d be using that same OS to type something known as a blog, about what I thought about [or didn’t] 8 years ago over a hi-speed internet connection.

Anyhoo, the point is that the world has changed. Now, getting back to the main topic. At that point of time, I NEVER imagined that I’d be drooling over a laptop created by those same SINGLE-MOUSE-COMPUTER guys and Id be lusting behind a version of the Operating System, which I thought was complete crap. I am smitten people, yes, truly crazy about the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. These notebooks are an exquisite mesh of sound engineering design, power and eye-candy! Something Apple has been excelling at - a good-looking gadget that according to them “JUST WORKS”

Consequently, my free time, this is the time other than the time I don’t work and I am not writing to my better half, I have been checking out videos and pictures of the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Well, all-in-all, I have just one statement tomake - I WANNA GET MYSELF ONE OF THOSE!! Well, at least that was the case until today afternoon, where I came across a very interesting video.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=N-2C2gb6ws8]

What I found appalling about this video was the constant mockery of Windows Vista by the Apple people. I agree that OSX is an amazing Operating System - a software wonder. Be kind enough to share it with the PC world! If you think people all over the world would appreciate it so much, why is Mac not release OSX - PC Version? Well, the answer is simple - it can’t!!

OSX will run offcially ONLY on a Mac. Talk about proprietary to the core. This is something along the lines of how Sony works as well. Sony has its own brand of adapters, chargers, even alkaline cell policies, which allow ONLY Sony Battery chargers to run on it!

Now, whilst I agree that this is important to maintain Mac sales, and also is the reason why the Mac running OSX is a lot more stable than the PC running Windows, Apple guys were twisting the fact, trying to make us consumers believe that OSX is a lot better than Windows, Windows Vista in this case. That too based on the “similarity” of “looks” of certain applications.

However, Apple _conveniently_ forgot to mention the following - Windows is targeted at a mainstream customer base, where in the hardware is NOT an issue. A Windows copy [mite not be all the features all the time] will definitely run on any PC, as long as it maintains the requirements of the Operating System!! Now, I agree that Microsoft might have spent an awful lot of money and resources on developing Windows Vista. However, what I am considering what Microsoft has done, if at all they have copied features of Mac, is bring the features of OSX into the PC world, which is going to be received with open arms. I am still shocked @ the negative publicity given to an operating system, which wasn’t even released at the point of time the video was shot.

I had great respect for Steve Jobs, however his stupid bullish attitude is now making me take a fresh look at his products. There’s NO reason for him to take such a bullish attitude with Microsoft and Windows. This is also shown in the Mac vs PC ads. So, Steve, seriously, your products look great and I have heard that they work amazingly well as well, however what you did in that show, was rude, and totally uncalled for. I have not seen, so far at least any ads by Microsoft against any of your products, and trust me, your products are NOT flawless.

The Mac is picking up sales thanks to the shift to the Intel Chips. However, you must also take note Steve, the multitude of videos in youtube, the tremendous number of pics in Flickr, etc, which show a Mac running WIndows. Apple itself is working on BootCamp so that it “does” windows now.

But, Steve ever considered this - A Mac now runs Windows, but can any PC run OSX?

So, chill guys, I mean there’s market for everyone!! Peace in the cyber world!! I am all up for innuendos, but downright flagrant attack on your competitor’s products is NOT good marketing =D! It’s a good way to get attention to yourself, however, make sure that you have a product that can handle all that attention!!

Update: 2006-12-09 Check out this video during MacWorld 1997. Hmm, interesting how Steve Jobs has changed his perception after Apple has pulled itself back together.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY]

I was apprehensive about what I wrote wondering I were indeed a bit strong about Apple, not being a sportive player in the market. However, after seeing the video above, where in Apple was down and under and Microsoft and Apple “tying the knot” literally, really speaks something about Steve Jobs doesn’t it?

Crossposted @ Ramblings of an Eccentric Soul… - by gurupanguji