Webpinoy's World

Microsoft announced Monday that Facebook chat is now available to Hotmail users worldwide, wherever Facebook has a presence.

Microsoft first added Facebook chat to Hotmail back in September, but at that point it was only available in six regions. Several weeks ago, the feature went global via Windows Live Messenger, and it is now available everywhere via Hotmail, too. (Read more…)

If you have your WordPress blog of course you like to know also more about statistics. How many visitors your blog had today, how many yesterday or last week etc. The solution for this and more is the Plugin “Count per Day“.

The developer of “Count per Day”, the German Tom, stated it is “a simple counter”. Well, simple to install, simple to handle, but the plugin is really a great tool and not just a “simple counter”.

It shows optional also where your visitor coming from, which pages and articles has how many reads and a lot more.

“Count per Day” is a must-have-plugin for WordPress. It can be downloaded here. And for help, suggestions or other concerns visit the plugin page of the developer and leave a comment.

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated,

‘If Ford had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.’

In response to Bill ‘s comments, Ford issued a press release stating:

If Ford had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash……..Twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive – but would run on only five percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single ‘This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation’ warning light.
7. The airbag system would ask ‘Are you sure?’ before deploying.
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
10. You’d have to press the ‘Start’ button to turn the engine off.

PS – I ‘d like to add that when all else fails, you could call ‘customer service’ in some foreign country and be instructed in some foreign language how to fix your car yourself!!!!

SearchStatus is a toolbar extension for Firefox and SeaMonkey that allows you to see how any and every website in the world is performing. Designed for the highly specialised needs of search engine marketers, this toolbar provides extensive search-related information about a site, all conveniently displayed in one discreet and compact toolbar.

For every site you visit using, SearchStatus lets you view its Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Compete.com ranking, SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank, Alexa related links and backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN. This combined search-related information means you can view not only the link importance of a site(according to Google and Linkscape), but also its traffic importance (according to Alexa and Compete), so providing a balanced view of site efficacy.

The SearchStatus Mozilla Firefox/SeaMonkey extension appears unobtrusively at the bottom of the browser on the status bar.

If you choose to view backward links for a particular page, they open in new tabs in the same browser window. Disable the automatic PageRank, Alexa, Compete or mozRank queries and they fold away from view.

Conclusion: A useful extension and indispensable for web marketing experts.

• Source: Quirk
• SearchStatus Download Page
  

While working on various web projects we also use free hosting for both projects with static pages as projects with WordPress and plugins. The following is a brief overview of our experiences which some webmasters may help if one is looking for free web hosting.

000webhost
http://www.000webhost.com
Account has been activated only on request after 2 weeks
WordPress is not running
In research, other negative experiences found

Award Space
http://www.awardspace.com
WordPress is not running

CWahi
http://www.cwahi.net
WordPress is not running

CwCity
http://www.cwcity.de
very good performance
No major problems with WordPress and Plugins

Funpic
http://www.funpic.de
for dynamic projects conditional suitable
WordPress runs with limitations, but some plugins do not work

Lima City
http://www.lima-city.de
respectable performance
WordPress runs, with most of the plugins no problems

Ohost
http://www.ohost.de
for dynamic projects conditional suitable
WordPress runs with limitations, but some plugins do not work

Xtreemhost
http://www.xtreemhost.com
good performance for static Web projects
major problems with plugins in WordPress

And the winners are:

1. CwCity (highly recommended)
2. Lima-City (recommended)

Do you know other free host? What experience have you had? We welcome your comments.

To study German language with a German teacher in one-on-one tutorials is a good opportunity to see in a short time good learning achievements. This opportunity is available to all interested parties in Cebu. In class established teaching materials are used. In addition, students receive multimedia (MP3, CD) as well as access to exclusive online help to make learning fun.

The courses are set in content and timing to the needs of the students. To prepare for the exam “Start Deutsch” (A1) at the Goethe Institut are currently in particular the following courses offered:

• Super-intensive course in the months of February and March – exam in April in Cebu or also in Manila possible
• Intensive course in the months of February to August – exam within the 2nd half of the year in Cebu or in Manila possible

For students outside Cebus is assistance in the search for a desired accommodation for the study period optional. Interested parties can request using the contact form.

Facebook Deals & Places

Facebook, the social network, is introducing its Places Deals service in several key European countries and Canada, allowing marketers to send tailored offers to mobile phone users. Places Deals, being launched in Canada, Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the UK, promotes discounts and incentives from retailers, restaurants and similar outlets to nearby Facebook members using wireless handsets.

It was unveiled in the US during November 2010, attracting organisations like H&M, Macy’s and Gap, and is accessible via iPhone, iTunes and Android apps. “The wisdom of friends has taken over from the wisdom of crowds, through a highly personal experience in the real world,” Emily White, Facebook’s director of local, told the Guardian.

“Facebook local enables users to take that Facebook identity out and about … Places is the ‘where’ to ‘what am I doing’ and ‘who am I with’. And it allows businesses to start joining the conversation.”

“Doing Deals does drive ‘liking’ of pages. Over time that relationship will become more explicit.”

In Germany leveraging this opportunity – which is currently available to clients for free – are Cinemaxx, Vapiano, Esprit, Benetton, Douglas, Gravis and the soccer club Bayern Munich. Benetton will donate €2 for every check-in to a technology center in Kenya.

According to Ian Maude, head of internet at research firm Enders Analysis, Facebook’s strategy should prove particularly profitable, as it merges the benefits of popular alternative properties. “This move is a no brainer for Facebook. Places Deals is a combination of Foursquare meets Groupon,” he said. “It is the company’s first major move into mobile, discounts and location based advertising. I think this has the potential to be a smash hit for them.”

But White suggested Facebook’s latest package is set to occupy an untapped position in the market. “I don’t think this will kill Groupon,” she said. “It is very different from Groupon’s offering today and takes advantage of the unique platform Facebook has. “We don’t want to kill Groupon, they have been an amazing partner on a number of fronts.”

The localisation of Facebook’s marketing services may also heighten its rivalry with Google, which has effectively monetised the long tail of advertising over recent years via search ads.

WordPress offers the possibility to save links and sort by category. These links can be shown at the blog using widgets. For most blogs, however, after a time it will more and more links one like to save permanently and use for future reference. From a certain number, however, many links remain in secret, if one uses the widget display only.

Link Library is a plugin for WordPress, which helps to display the collected links in a link directory. The plugin offers a number of administrative tools, to determine content and appearance of the directory. The link directory in this Weblog has been created with the plugin.

It is also possible to let visitors of the blog enter link suggestions through the plugin if one wish for.

Do you like to use this plugin on your blog? It’s easy:

1. Download the latest version
2. Unzip the package
3. Upload the files via FTP to the plugin directory
4. Activate the plugin in the admin panel of the blog
5. Do the settings in the admin area of Link Library
6. Create a new page and insert the short codes of your Link Library

Examples of using the plugin and also help you find at the author’s website Yannick Lefebvre

The world of the bloggers is big. There are many weblogs for all topics: private, hobby and business. There we have for example Maria. Her hobby is cooking, and so it’s all about in her blog around this topic. Every day she publish a new tip for the kitchen and lots of her own recipes. Maria also has many fans who visit her blog. Often, they also leave comments. This possibility can be found at the end of each article. So once you have read a post and would like to praise it, leave suggestions or critics, just type name, e-mail address (if you have a home page or a blog, the URL) and the comment in the provided form at the end of article and then click “Send”.

Today, Maria has tried a new pizza recipe and of course, immediately published an article on her blog. Peter has his own pizzeria. He finds the new pizza creation of Maria on their blog and tried it out hisself. Peter then writes an article in his blog about Pizza and offers suggestions on how this new pizza can be even more delicious. It has links in his article to that of Maria, because there he had found the new recipe.

In order to let Maria know and her blog readers too that he has tips for the refinement of the pizza on his blog, Peter set a trackback. Peter goes to the article on Maria’s blog and find there a trackback link. He copy this link and goes back to the draft article on his blog. Before he published the article, he adds the trackback in the “Send trackbacks to” field.

Then Peter publish his article. Automatically appears below the post on Mary’s blog a comment with the link to Peter’s blog. Now Mary and her visitors see that there are tips on refining the recipe at Peter’s blog.

Trackback

Instead of a comment below a post on another blog one write an article on its own block and then set a Trackback to

• to publish own opinions on the topic or/and
• to offer own tips or more information

A nice trackback tutorial can be found at optiniche

Trackback-Spam

Some bloggers try to get many trackbacks, because maybe they show paid advertising on their blogs. They hope to gain many new visitors in return of many trackbacks and so to make more money.

Therefore, they share trackbacks on articles that do not fit the theme and alson not include a link to the article. This method is called “Trackback Spam “. But one do not face this spam helpless. A useful guide to protect a blog from unwanted trackback spam, can be found at Dragon Blogger

Note: Trackbacks can be sent only if it is a related article and a link to the original article is included, otherwise one is an unwanted spammer.

The winners of Sinulog 2011 was awarded. A complete list of the winners within the different categories is to find here:

Sinulog 2011 Winners (SunStar Cebu)