Don’t get me wrong I am not saying other networks are better than Adsense, all I am saying is, relying only on AdSense is wasting your ad inventory.

In fact when you first launch your blog the best network to go with is AdSense as it is easy to signup (no minimum traffic required), easy to setup, shows optimized ads and most of all when you start a blog have no idea which ad spots on the site will bring in the big buck but as you grow considering a combination of ad networks really helps.

After experimenting and looking around for a while I realized having a combination of PayPerClick (Adsense), Pay Per Impression (Tribal Fusion) and InLine Ads (Kontera) was the best way to go forward because of the way AdSense behaves when traffic spikes on a good day of the month or the week (read about AdSense Smart Pricing).

Once your traffic grows and you are in a position to understand which ad spot is working well and which isn’t that is when you should start adding other networks on your site. I originally had about 6 blocks of Adsense on a “Single” page which I later reduced to 3 and replaced other 3 with Impression based ads from Tribal Fusion. Reducing AdSense blocks actually increased the revenue from Adsense by a couple hundred dollars and the other 3 spots I replaced with Tribal Fusion brought in impressive revenues too.

Kontera is another sort of monetizing platform which converts selected words in your article to link-ads. Revenues from this source might not be as high as Adsense or others but will surely be enough to pay the cost of running a site (dedicated servers, etc..).

I’ve seen 70-80% jump in the ad revenues since these changes were made and today 40-50% revenues come in from the non-AdSense sources.

Today, there are more ways of monetizing your content than you are probably aware of. For example, Pixazza helps you monetize your blog images, Viglink helps you monetize the product links on your blog, etc.. while some of them help you monetize your content well, other will steer your readers away because of their in-your-face nature. Be a better judge of which monetization solution is good for your site and readers.

Though the secret formulae to higher revenue is “Great Content = Visitors = Revenue”, Optimization could be the low hanging fruit as you can do quite a bit to improve the conversion rate between “Visitors” and “Revenu”. So the key lies in experimenting and being open to changes.

Hope this helps, I am open to answer any questions without being too specific about numbers relating to total revenue or traffic.

If you are not comfortable leaving your site address or asking a question on this page you can email me your questions. Click on the following link to get my e-mail address http://scr.im/abbas

As these phones and services they run on get cheaper we will see more and more people making the switch from a regular phone to a smart phone.

This article discusses how to play music in car using Android phones. There are 3 ways of doing this, 1st method can be used by almost any car stereo but the latter two require Bluetooth and/or USB support.

Alright let’s jump right into it.

1. Analog Audio Input: This method requires a patch cable which connects your phone with the car stereo and start playing music. Patch cable is easy to find and pretty cheap too. You can find a good patch cable with regular cable size for under $3. Thought this is an easy way of playing music from Phone to stereo you might have to adjust with reduced sound quality.Click here to order a patch cable from Amazon.
2. Bluetooth Paring: Enable Bluetooth on the phone and initiate paring from the car stereo. Once your phone is paired with the stereo you can start playing music using from you phone to car stereo. I personally find this the easiest way to play music from the phone to car stereo as its wireless.
3. USB Cable: Use the USB cable to connect your phone to the car stereo and start playing all the music you want to play. This method is only supported by stereo systems can play music from external storage devices.

Watch the following video to see the above mentioned methods of playing music on the car stereo from the phone.

What he forgot to mention was the percentage of times browsers stops responding or crash because of Flash. I am not saying it’s useless, it’s just buggy!

This article will show you how to disable Flash on Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 (For God sake update your Internet explorer guys!)

Let’s start with my current favorite browser, Chrome.

There is an extension called FlashBlock which helps chrome users choose what sites they want to see flash on, except Youtube.com which is whitelisted all the other sites are excluded by default.

Once installed, you will see an icon in the right corner of your address bar. Remember, this icon appears only when a flash object is blocked on the page. Smart huh!

When you visit a site and see that icon on the address bar, click on it and select, “Allow Flash on this site”. Boom! Flash appears. Repeat the same step to block flash on a website, only this time, select “Block Flash on this site”.

Users can also dive into the options of this plugin to add and remove sites from the whitelist. Pretty handy!

Click here to download Flashblock for Chrome

How to Block Flash on Firefox: Similar to Chrome, an extension called FlashBlock for Firefox lets users choose the sites they want to see flash on. In addition it offers object level of control, meaning, you can not only select what sites you want to enable flash on but also choose which flash objects on the page should be enabled.

Once you download and install the plugin you start seeing a “Play” sign on the flash blocks, click on the one you’d like to see enabled.

The following image shows, how this plugin blocks objects on the page.

The following image shows adding/removing sites from the whitelist

Click here to download Flashblock for Firefox.

ClicktoFlash for Safari: This plugin does the job without offering fancy options like Whitelisting, etc. So every time you visit a page this plugin disables flash and shows buttons using which you can simply enable that particular flash object.

Unfortunately this plugin works only on Mac OS. So, windows users are out of luck on this one but then I don’t know too many people who use Safari on Windows.

Click here to download ClicktoFlash for Safari

Internet Explorer 8: IE has the Flash block functionality built-in so you don’t need to install any additional plugins to be able to block flash on IE 8.

Also remember, Flash does not pay on 64-bit IE 8 so you won’t be able to perform the following steps on a 64-bit IE 8, they work well on 32-bit IE 8.

Click on “Tools” and “Manage Add-ons”

Click on the dropdown under show and select “All Add-ons”

Click on “Shockwave Flash Object” and then click on “More Information”

Click on “Remove All Sites” button to remove * sign from the approved list of sites and click “Close”.

Now whenever you visit a site which flash on the page, you will see a message on top of the browser asking your approval to run the flash plugin. The approved sites will go to the approved list of sites which is nothing but a whitelist of sites.

I hope this will save you a lot of you from crashing browsers!

Update: OPERA: We mentioned “Opera” instead of “Safari” in title by mistake (Thanks to Shawn for pointing it out). For users who are looking for information to block Flash on Opera can find the solution here.

Google has since been working on improving the service, fixing what needs to be fixed to address the privacy concerns associated with the newly launched service.

Now here is a 2-click solution to completely disable Google Buzz from Gmail. As mentioned, this process deletes your public profile, unfollows all the followers you’ve been following, delete all your existing posts on Google Buzz, Disconnect all the sites linked to Google Buzz, etc..

Here is how to disable Google buzz from Gmail completely.

1) Click on “turn off buzz” at the bottom of the page

2) Click on “Disable Google Buzz”

That’s it, you just got rid of Google Buzz forever! Obviously unless you turn it back on!

But, this is not the case with BeautifulPeople.com, a social networking site for “beautiful” people. This social networking site has been rated as the elisist social networking site for allowing only beautiful members to participate and be a part of it.

Obviously, this means that this online community had only beautiful or handsome people as its members. And when other members of the community “signaled” about their acquaintances getting chubby and putting on weight, it decided to shrug them off.

The move came as a consequence to the demands of the argus-eyed members of the website, who ‘take pride in their standards and called for action’. And the community instantly responded by pulling back the ratings of the about 5000 users from their current grades, ah, that hurts.

Social Networking Sites : The Survival of The Beautiful

Seems like these ‘beautiful’ people weren’t too diet-conscious and lavishly enjoyed the feasts for the New Year and Christmas eves which ultimately forced them to get chubby and less beautiful.

As Benjamin Franklin said, “Beauty by supreme dominion is but supported by opinion”. Do  you think this justifies the act of the beautifulpeople.com community? Let us know what’s your opinion, ‘cause it’s as important as ours, and we’d appreciate it.

TuneUp Utilities

It’s the family pack of windows maintenance customization tools. It’s very utilitarian, easy-to-use and one of the basic requisites to keep your computer going smoothly, flawlessly.

I’ve used TuneUp utilities 2009 earlier for a considerable amount of time, and quite very much liked the software, particularly for the host of astounding functions that can be performed right from a simple and organized user interface.

The latest version of the product, i.e. TuneUp Utilities 2010 is already here and it’s provides surfeit amount of customizations and PC maintenance tools  that are essential to keep your system going and glowing.

To start with, the system maintenance feature of TuneUp Utilities 2010 allows you to optimize system startup and shutdown, defragment fragmented harddisks, remove broken shortcuts, defragment registry and clean registry errors. All this at just a click.

TuneUp Utilities 2010 : For PC Maintenance & Customization

It increases the performance of your PC by freeing up system space by deleting unnecessary system clutter and clearing up temporary resources that are no longer in use.

You can select what programs should be loaded on system start up and what should be driven off.

The Live Optimization feature works in the background and speeds up your system by increasing the response rate and speeding up program startups and also by allocating possibly available resources to the work being done.

With Tuneup utilities 2010, you can fix commonly encountered problems like the taskbar not being displayed, or restore missing icons, configure corrupted options in the folder/file menus, fix program installations and windows updates and even recover deleted files.

Yes, TuneUp utilities is also a data recovery tool that helps you restore the files that you have accidentally deleted.

You’ll be able to recover the deleted files as long as the drive is not formatted and the recovered file is in good condition or not overwritten.

Now comes the XP adornments, which allow you to configure windows appearance by changing the default logon screen, XP boot screen, and icon packages, visual styles and other appearance options that glorify the appearance of the windows user interface.

You can download tuneup bootscreens and logon screen, visual styles and icon packages for free from the tuneup product website. There are so many of it.

Browsing through the website will be a breeze, thanks to the fresh new guiding user interface.

When you are using a heavy program like a high resolution game, the turbo mode feature will gather as much resources as possible for smooth operation of this program.

Turbo mode instantly boost up your pc performance by temporarily turning off scheduled programs like automatic updates, disk defrag, etc.. and instantly switches windows appearance to classic style.

PC Maintenance Tools : Tuneup Disk Doctor

While in turbo mode, the system resources are freed up for better operation of the program on hand or the game that’s being played. Optimize your hard disk performance with the Tuneup Disk Doctor which checks for the condition of the drive and defragments it when required.

When you are all done with the configurations and customizations, you can secure your settings by using a program password, an inbuilt security feature of the software that’s prevents your profile settings from being accidentally or intentionally tampered.

Even you  are the one with naive computer knowledge, just use the One-click maintenance feature of the software to automatically tuneup and repair PC

Use the automatic maintenance feature to you will know why this is referred to as one of the best PC maintenance tools to optimize windows performance.

The product website has also bettered itself from what it was last year with a fresh, clean and new user interface.

Lots of visual styles, new booting screens and logon screens have been added to the website, which allow easy downloads and installs.

You can optionally configure even the logon screen to show the no of unread mails or display a message common to all users before they attempt a logon. This windows customization software also allows you to  tweak the look of drives and folders.

You can edit the options displayed in the file menus for options like ‘move to folder..’, “copy to folder..” and other options which would otherwise require you to tweak the Windows registry log.

All in all, this is one of the best windows maintenance softwares till date that allows this impressive bunch of options and customization features.

Click here for  Tuneup Utilities 2010 download (trial version)  or click here to buy Tuneup Utilities 2010 for $49.95 or upgrade your existing registered installation for $29.95.

But, then it’s always must to have a new year resolutions list to have faith in one’s self, no matter, whether you live up to it or not, what’s the harm in trying out.

Here is a short and simple, may be, interesting list of new year resolutions for geeks,  that one would scribble on the notepad for the upcoming year

1. I’ll not exercise illicit torrent downloads anymore and respect the copyrights of the data downloads.

2. I’ll try not to use pirated softwares until I’m genuinely in love with the anti-piracy policies that every software manufactures pins up with the software.

3. Since the future is open source, I’ll reconsider my opinions about using open source softwares unless they tend to be strictly recalcitrant like knowing greek and latin.

4. I’ll not let the viruses and trojans ridicule my computer security and shield myself with the best antivirus (if there is any) in the contemporary market.

5. Will try to read the terms and conditions gospel before installing any, should any misfortunate system break down knock up uninvited or unnoticed.

6. I’ll not involve in a debate with a geek over why the iPhone is good and why bad, why Palm Pre is still snail-slow directional to success, why Nokia still holds about 70% of customers in the mobile markets globally.

7. I’ll not indulge in any conversation or hint a debate on the caliber or outstanding attributes of Intel and AMDprocessors. They are already much talked about, let me not scribble anymore.

8. I’ll  not let the geeky stuff or new conceptual designs for upcoming gadgets take on my nerves, inevitably.

9. I’ll have patience while the download gets through its way and not critize the data provider unnecessarily for the data speed.

10. I’ll update my twitter account and facebook status as early and as good as it gets.

What’s your list of new year resolutions ?

Any more we missed out, you can always drop down a comment. Start scribbling!

Branding takes on a whole new meaning when you have nothing to spend but have to compete with the long existing giants within your niche on blogosphere. This calls for smart moves when it comes to investing money and time to creating a lasting impression for your blog.

One of the important things bloggers can do is attaching their signature to everything they do, this includes videos that go viral or embedded on other sites. It’s important for bloggers to add a watermark to the videos because you never know which video might go viral. This article will discuss HOW-TO Add Logo to Video using free and popular software.

The software we will be working with today is called VirtualDUB and can be downloaded from here. You will also need a plugin that makes the logo background transparent when added to the video file. The plugin/filter can be downloaded from here.

Watch the following video to see how to add a logo or a watermark to the video

The name suitably describes the function. However ensure before you even start enabling this mode that you have an excellent firewall which is configured correctly. Still you might face some security problems.

First step you need to do is to install a VNC client on your system. Download and install TightVNC for Linux from here. After completing the installation, launch the TightVNC Viewer and  enter the IP address (or host name) of the remote system in the resulting Connection details dialog and press OK.

If a password is required then enter the same. The screen should load and display the remote desktop. Click on the System and then Preferences and then Remote Desktop on the Gnome top menu. This window will be displayed.

To enable the remote desktop mode you need to check the first two boxes under the sharing section.

Under the security section if you select the “Ask you for confirmation” code, then your presence in front of the computer is compulsory in order to allow another person to access your desktop.

If that is not what you want then un-check the box. This is usually done when one is trying to remotely access one of his own computers. For security reasons the second check box should always be checked, and ensure that you enter a secure password. Each time you try to log on you will be prompted for this password.

The following steps help to connect from an Ubuntu Machine:-

• Open your terminal. To do so navigate through Applications—>Accessories—>Terminal and then enter the following command: vncviewer full-screen 192.168.2.23:0.
• The following message will be displayed prompting for the password. Enter the password. When you see the VNC authentication succeeded message below, you know that everything has gone right.

VNC Viewer version 3.3.7 – built Jul 4 2006 10:04:48 Copyright (C) 2002-2003 RealVNC Ltd. Copyright (C) 1994-2000 AT&T Laboratories Cambridge. See http://www.realvnc.com for information on VNC. VNC server supports protocol version 3.7 (viewer 3.3) Password: VNC authentication succeeded.

If you want to quit VNC Viewer, press ‘F8′ and select Quit viewer.

I hope the steps were easy to understand and follow. Ubuntu is not the tough is it!!

TNerd is hosted on Media Temple’s DV-Extreme with added RAM the server mostly holds up against the traffic it experiences, thanks to WP-Supercache. Once the server crashed I immediately rebooted the machine which usually solves the issue but it did not.

Logged into my SHELL (SSH) to see which process is eating away all the resources and I noticed MySQL shooting up to 600% of the CPU power. Called the Media Temple (MT) guys and they initially suggested me to upgrade RAM which should resolve the issue, I did add more RAM but no luck!

Called MT guys again and started working with Robert to solve the issue, we together zeroed down on the issue which was causing MySQL to consume all the resources. 

This query “SELECT c . * , p . * FROM wp_comments c INNER JOIN wp_posts p ON p.” with query status “Sending Data” was jamming the database by queuing up, up to 50 instances running for over 1500 seconds per instance.

So we figured out what the problem was but I simply had no idea what exactly was causing it or how to resolve it. I tried “Flush Tables”, etc in MySQL but no help.

I put up a new database and installed the latest backup and pointed the domain to the new database. So far things seem to be normal MySQL is consuming between 0-12% of CPU resources.

I still don’t know what really went wrong but one thing I realized is that it is extremely important to have a hosting service with good technical support and what’s even more important is backing up the database.

TNerd database is backedup every single day as new posts and comments are published on the site every day. I use WordPress Database Backup plugin to take schedule backups.

I would like to thank our readers for being patient, sending e-mails and try to reach me over to phone to let me know that the site is down or to know what is going on. Let’s hope this does not happen again!

UPDATE:

It happened again and continued to happen everytime I approved comments. The next logical thing to do was to check on the plugins and disable the ones causing trouble, and I did every other thing but that.

Eventually I got to the plugins and figured that a plugin in use, called "Comment Relish" is causing the problem. Removed the plugin and problem solved!!