Archive Page 29

Nuffnang Has A New Feature

Published July 13, 2007 in Nuffnang. 2 Comments

The last time I heard, Nuffnang hired a “specialist” to handle their occasional slow loading ads. The investment must have paid off when they finally found a solution to that problem. Therefore, the ads do not influence the loading time of the blog anymore.

Apart from that, I have just noticed that they added a new feature in the admin menus. Previously when a publisher is not served any ads, their default ads (skyscraper) such as the one below will appear.

Nuffnang default ads

With the new feature, whenever a publisher is not served any ads, they are given the option to select whether to:

  • Show default ads
  • Show cost-per-click ads (if any), or
  • Minimize ads

All you need to do is to login to your account and click on the “Add Ads” menu. There will be a “When there are no Cost Per Unique Visitor Campaigns, show:” text with a dropdownlist on the right. Select the option you want and click on the “Save” button.

Admin settings

When you select the “Minimize Ads” option, the space taken for the ad will be greatly reduced and a new button with the text “I serve nuffnang ads !!!” will appear. I guess you cannot completely hide the banner since potential advertisers need to know where the ads will be place when they visit your blog.

Nuffnang minimized ads

I do notice a disadvantage of “minimizing” your banner ads — you don’t get a referral link when someone clicks on the banner and signs up with Nuffnang. Anyway, I don’t really mind it at all.

Since I only have a skyscraper banner in my blog, I do not know how the leaderboard and large rectangle banners will look like when they are “minimized”. Maybe you can try it out and drop me a link in the comments area for me to have a look. Thanks in advance!

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Online Advertising Killer! Make Money Reading Ads

Published July 5, 2007 in Reviews. 10 Comments

Online Advertising Killer — another uprising Malaysian advertising website?

As advertised in the website, you can earn money from them with 3 simple steps:

  1. Register an Account
  2. Read Advertisement
  3. Get Paid

Online Advertising Killer is a newly launched website. It started operation mid April 2007. Currently, it has slightly over 10,000 registered members. Not bad for a new company. The website is available in 3 major languages — English, Mandarin and Bahasa Malaysia.

Here’s a sampel of their advertisement. The advertisement will be accompanied by two (or more) questions. The answers can be found from the advertisement itself. This is to ensure that the members look through the advertisment.

Online Advertising Killer’s form of advertising is different compared to other advertising companies like Google Adsense and Nuffnang. With Nuffnang, the advertisement is displayed to a group of readers. Meanwhile with Online Advertising Killer, the advertisement is only displayed to the member. Therefore, the potential buyer for an advertisement at Online Advertising Killer is only the member him/herself.

I don’t think Online Advertising Killer will make it big (I may be wrong). The main reason is that people who joined this program are looking for money, not to spend money. For example, what’s the point (for the member) to earn RM1 for an advertisement but end up paying RM10 for a set meal advertised by KFC? That way, the more advertisements the member views, the more he/she loses.

If you’re thinking that the members will only view the advertisements but will not purchase the products or services advertised, then why should an advertiser even bother to advertise?

These are just my views. Mind to share yours?

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How To Compress Video Before Uploading To YouTube

Published July 2, 2007 in Tips & Tricks. 9 Comments

Recording videos and uploading them to YouTube to share is a common practice nowadays. However, most video sharing websites limit the video by either length, file size or both. Therefore, compressing the video before uploading it is important. It also shortens the uploading time.

For example, recording an 8 minutes video (320 X 240 pixels and 30fps) on my digital camera took over 200mb. After compressing the video, the size was reduced to 60mb. That is roughly a 70% reduction.

I am currently using eRightSoft’s SUPER to compress my video files. To download the software, click here and scroll to the bottom of the page. Click on one of the four links that says “SUPER © setup file”.

I notice a problem with the audio when I first compressed a video using its default settings. It sounded like “chipmunks” talking instead of a human (ie. Fast and high pitch tone). I tweaked the settings a little and it solved the problem. Below is a screenshot of the settings I am using. It may not be the optimum compression so post up your settings if it is better.

Modified settings for SUPER

Do you have any other suggestions for software with better compression quality?

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3 Methods To Optimize The Size Of Pictures Before Uploading To Blog

Published June 29, 2007 in Tips & Tricks. 9 Comments

If you blog, chances are that you have uploaded a picture file into your blog in the past. I noticed some bloggers do not optimize the size of the pictures before uploading them into their blog. Failure to do so not only increases the uploading time of the pictures but also increases the downloading time and bandwidth of the server.

The 3 methods to optimize the size of the pictures are:

Method #1: Image Resizer (Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP)

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP is packed with a tool called Image Resizer. It enables a user to quickly resize an image by right-clicking on the image and selecting “Resize Pictures”. Image Resizer can be downloaded here.

Examples on how to use it can be found here and here. This tool requires Windows XP to run. I do not know if it works on other OS.

Method #2: Picasa from Google

If you haven’t downloaded Picasa, get it from the link below. The software is free to download.


Select the file you want to resize and click on the Export button at the bottom right of the program.

Export the image

Insert the number of pixels you want to resize the image into. Set the “Image Quality” to “Normal” or the desired setting you want. Click OK to export the image.

Export settings

Method #3: Adobe Photoshop

This is a two step process. Firstly, resize the picture to the desired size by selecting the menu (Image –> Image Size) or Ctrl+Alt+I. Select the “Constrain Proportions” checkbox to ensure the image is resized with the original ratio.

Resize image

Next, further optimize the size of the image by saving it to web quality. You can do so by selecting the menu (File –> Save for Web) or Alt+Shift+Ctrl+S. Select the “Optimized” tab. Check out the size of the image if it were to be saved as gif or jpg as circled at the bottom left in the screenshot below. Depending on the image itself, sometimes saving it as gif will result in a smaller file size, or vice versa.

To get the best quality for jpg, select the “JPEG High” preset option. To get the best quality for gif, select the “GIF 128 Dithered” preset option. Save the image.

Save for web

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Blog Second Major Outage

Published June 28, 2007 in Domain & Hosting. 4 Comments

The server where my blog is hosted suffered its second major outage yesterday. The first one happened 2 months ago when the harddisk busted after one month of operation. The cause of this outage is not identified yet. It could be due to the harddisk or the server itself.

My hosting company didn’t want to gamble on the same server anymore. A new server was bought to replace the old (3 months old) server. Below is the specification of the new server:

Intel Quad Core Xeon 5310
2G FB ECC RAM
320G HDD Western Digital (Say no to Seagate)

Do you notice the “Say no to Seagate” notice? I guess the previous harddisk was from Seagate.

Anyway, they have done a good job backing up the harddisk before replacing the old server. I didn’t lose any posts or comments. However, some comments that I replied were not restored. I guess I’ll just have to reply to the comments again. *deja vu*

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