Technology Rants|Where technology meets humanity

If you are downloading anything from torrents ::ahem:: windows 7 beta download ::/ahem:: you better be careful with the files you are downloading. The only way to know the file you are downloading hasn’t been tampered with is to check it with an MD5 hash checker.  

Not all files have a verified source providing the hash marks. So in that case, run an updated virus scanner on the file and just hope you haven’t downloaded anything that will kill your computer.

Click here to download a FREE windows MD5 hash checker.

If you are interested in downloading the latest version of the windows operating system code name Blackcomb and Vienna, you are kind of out of luck. Microsoft has closed the customer windows 7 beta preview and are no longer offering the download. But if you’re an avid web surfer you know that you can get the software elsewhere. And if you act fast you can still get a serial number here 

If you are downloading the package via torrent make sure you check to see if the hash marks match the official version. Otherwise you might be getting a virus or a corrupt version. Below are the correct hash marks

CRC32: E8A1C394
MD5: 8867C13330F56A93944BCD46DCD73590
SHA-1: 7D1F486CA569EFFFFB719CFB48355BB7BF499712

If you are unsure how to check the hash marks check tomorrows post for a free md5 checker.

Oh and to be on the extra safe side you better run your download with a virus scanner.

April 15th came and went, but one thing is for sure. People will still be paying taxes until the day they die.

If you get a chance check out taxdayteaparty.com. As a protest there are nationwide tea parties to stand up against government spending and taxation. If you get a change today, go out; drink a cup of tea to show your support.

If you are on facebook and twitter you know that when you are updating your status you are limited to about 140 chars. If you want to post a link don’t post a link like this http://robbiekaze.com/internet-tips/how-to-by-pass-megavideo-time-limit/11

Goto http://uforgot.me and shrink your URL, here is the new URL after I shrunk it http://uforgot.me/ucuzeh

Give it a try for yourself!

Oh yea follow me on twitter @robbiekaze =)

With Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing becoming one of the hottest trends in web technology. There are hundreds of paid tools that cost well over 100 dollars a month. If you are just starting out there are a number of free tools that will help you optimize your site and increase conversion. Use this tools correctly and you will be on your way to increase traffic, page rank, and high search engine rankings.

1. Google External Keyword Tool - Google is one of the biggest and most powerful search engine, so it just makes sense to use them to give you detailed reports and related keywords. Google external keyword tool is great for PPC marketing, you can find out the search volume per month and also the price you will pay per click.
2. XML-Sitemaps – If your serious about SEO, then you know you need a sitemap. XML-Sitemaps.com has a great site map generator. I have used there free versions for many of my smaller websites, But i also own their paid version to handle my larger sites. I set up a cron job so it’s pretty much a set it and forget it type of thing
3. Google Trends – Google trends is a great way to optimize you PPC campaigns. You can use it to find what months that keyword or your product is most popular. For example type in roses in google trends, and no surprise there is one spike every year. can you guess what it is?
4. Google Toolbar for firefox – Here is another great tool provided by google. With this tool you can check the pagerank, back links, and the cached date with a single click.
5. MSN ADLabs – MSN ADLabs is used by almost every affiliate marketer. You can use this tool to determine the demographic of who is typing in your keywords. Why is this important? This is important so you can customize your ads for the demographic that is doing the searches, if your demo are males 18-25, you don’t want your ad to say “Moms, buy your sons roses”
6. Dead link checker – Do you have 404 errors and dead links? Search engines hate these. Find them and fix them
7. Seobook Toolbar – Among their useful set of tools they also have a rank checker to check the results of your hard work.
8. Web CEO – Web CEO is definitely my favorite tool out of this list. There are a lot of tools out there that promise this and that. But this product really delivers. It’s an all in one package that pretty much does all the SEO for you. If you are in need of a serious SEO Tool This is it.
9. Keywordspy – keyword spy has a limited free trial you can do use to determine if you competitor is using PPC and what keywords they are using. It’s a great way to check up on your competition.
10. SEO Chat – Just a lot of tools. you got to check it out.
11. Google Rank Checker – Type in your keyword and your domain, and you will find out where you rank with google. But honestly web CEO does a better join because you can have it search multiple keywords at once instead of one at a time.
12. Duplicate Article Checker – Google loves orginal content, remember content is king.
13. Google Analytics - This is a must have tool, simple to install, and has a lot of reporting features.
14. Google Website Optimizer – Another free tool from google. This tool is used for A/B testing. Before you do any design changes make sure you are getting a better conversion with the new design. 
15. More to come.

Paid tools

1. Shoemoney Tools -Has a limited time offer. For about 9 dollars you can get one month of access to their tools. I have poked around there tool for a little and they have some pretty good tools that I haven’t seen before.
2. More to come

Are you tried of the timelimit on mega video? Join the newsletter below and be entered to win 1 of 5 free megavideo accounts. All free megavideo accounts will be given at the end of the month.

There is no catch, Just fill out the form above. And be entered to win. 5 accounts, in 5 months. Join now!

Think you know the best day and time to send your email newsletter?

Ever wonder if your fellow email marketers are all sending at the same time you do?

Convinced your open rate is too low (or amazingly high)?

Some recent statistics pulled from all AWeber users may help you answer these questions:

What Kind of Open Rates Are People Getting?

If you’re sending HTML emails, you probably use your open rate to help gauge your success.

Even though it’s not a perfect measure of whether people are actually opening and reading your emails, it’s useful as a relative measure:

If it goes up over a short period of time, more people are probably reading

If it falls over a short period of time, it’s almost certain fewer people are reading.

Plus, all other things being equal, it can give you some motivation (if your open rates are lower than other senders’) or satisfaction (if your rates are higher).

So, here goes…

When Is/Was The Best Day To Send?

You’ll often hear (at least, I often hear) that Tuesday is the optimal day to send, because on Monday people are catching up from the weekend, and that on Tuesday morning you’ll have their undivided attention before they jump into their work for the upcoming week.

Do the numbers back up that theory? Let’s see.

The breakdown of open rates by day of the week:

Last month, Tuesday was actually the second-worst day to send, at least if you’re measuring by open rates.

(While we’re breaking assumptions, I should point out this, too: the hour of the day that got the best open rate was not 8-9AM, or 9-10AM, but in fact 2-3PM Eastern Time — email newsletters sent during that hour last month enjoyed a 19.1% open rate.)

Does This Mean I Should Switch My Campaigns To Thursdays?

In a word: No.

In both March and February, Thursday newsletters got the 3rd-worst opens vs. the rest of the week.

I hesitated a little to publish these stats, because I’m concerned that people might flock to sending their newsletters at the day or time that happened to get the best results lately.

Please, don’t drastically change your sending times/days just because you see that the average last month, or any month, happened to be higher on a different day or time.

Yes, you might eventually be able to shift your sending schedule, or split test some broadcasts, but if you up and move everything, you may throw off subscribers who are used to hearing from you at the usual time.

“It’s So Busy, Nobody Goes There Anymore”

To get at the other reason for not shifting your sending based on these stats, let’s paraphrase Yogi Berra (see above).

If everyone switches their sending schedule to send on say, Thursday, then recipients will start getting a ton of email that day, and start paying less attention to each individual email.

One possible reason for Thursday’s success last month may be that it wasn’t as popular as say, Tuesday or Wednesday for sending email:

Those higher-volume days mean more emails in readers’ inboxes, which might contribute to reduced open rates. Following that reasoning, some people may look at the low weekend volume (more email newsletters were sent on Tuesdays than on Saturdays and Sundays combined) and see an opportunity to get their audiences’ undivided attention.

My main point in showing these is to point out that our assumptions about what works are often quite wrong, and that you ultimately have to test for yourself to see what best suits your audience.

Free Email Marketing Test Drive

What statistics/benchmarks would you like to see and/or learn more about?
What are your results?
Share your comments below.

 007: Quantum of Solace, is out! Evenyone knows when it comes to action flicks 007 has to be one of the best movies in this category. As far as James bond films go the quantum of solace has to be one of my favorites movies. I was serious disappointed at casino royale, so im glad they stepped it up on the quantum of solace.

Conficker also known as Downup, Downadup and Kido, is a computer worm that surfaced in October 2008 and targets the Microsoft Windows operating system. The widely known virus was set to activate today on April 1st, once activated the virus will allow the hackers to capture secure data such as passwords and other critical operating information.

If you haven’t installed an antivirus package on your computer, this is the best time to do so. So far the virus has affected over a couple of million of computers. Although the virus was suppose to activate today there hasn’t been any major reports of the virus.

There are several reason why the virus hasn’t activated yet.

1. There was a bug in the system and it didn’t activate properly
2. The hackers decided to hold off until the heat about the virus cools down
3. The internet professionals and security experts stop the communication between the infected computers and the main host computer

Regardless of the reasons the virus didn’t activate your best bet is to stay safe, and install an antivirus software on your computer. There are a lot of free solutions to to protecting yourself. AVG offers a free download that will protect your computer. Stay protected.

Happy web surfing!

*** As of this writting, this virus only affects PC based computers.