William Computer Blog

Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so search engine can more intellegently crawl the site. Sitemaps helps speed up the discovery of your pages.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo agreed to support the same sitemap protocol. Anyone using Google Sitemap do not need to make any changes, Yahoo and Microsoft will index those sitemaps.

If you maintain a small site with static content, you can easily hand code the Sitemap by following the protocol.

Bloggers who are using WordPress can use the XML Sitemap generator plugin for Wordpress, which will automatically generate a sitemap for homepage, posts, static pages, categories and archive pages.

Movable Type users can create a Index Template and copy the following code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc><$MTBlogURL encode_xml="1"$></loc>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
<MTEntries lastn="9999">
<url>
<loc><$MTEntryPermalink encode_xml="1"$></loc>
<lastmod><$MTEntryModifiedDate utc="1" format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ"$></lastmod>
</url>
</MTEntries>
</urlset>

Save the file to something easy to rememember, save and rebuild it.

You can now submit your Sitemap XML file to Google Webmasters, MSN LiveSearch, and Yahoo Site Explorer.

Related Links:

• Sitemaps.org
• techmeme: Search Engines Unite On Unified Sitemaps System

Most operating system such as Windows and Mac OS X include utilities to capture screenshots. These tools are good enough to capture basic screenshot of your screen. However, most of them do not support the ability to record your screen and save it as video or they do not support the ability to capture objects such as menubar, or toolbar.

There are many reasons why you need a more advance software to capture your screen. Technology bloggers can provide a more detailed screenshot of software they are reviewing, Software Developers can publish video demos of their software, and Web Designer might want to take full screenshot of their work, and many more reasons.

Here are some advance screen capture software you can use on different operating systems:

Windows

SnagIt is a powerful screen capture software for Windows. By using SnagIt you can select and capture anything on your Windows screen and save it as movie or image. SnagIt has several nice features such as the ability to select specific rectangular region of the screen that you want to capture, scrolling window capture, menu capture ability, and text capture.

SnagIt also has a powerful built-in editor that allows you to crop, resize, adjust, add text and apply custom effects to your capture without ever opening another editing applications.

Developed by TechSmith, a single-user license of SnagIt costs $39.95.

Mac OS X

Snapz Pro X allows you to record anything on your screen and save it as a movie or screenshot picture. Snapz Pro X is much more powerful then Mac OS X built-in screenshot tools because it allows you to capture the screen, objects (menus), selections and movies.

Developed by Ambrosia Software, Snapz Pro X 2 costs $29 and $69.

X Window (KDE or GNOME)

KDE users can use the built-in KSnapShot to capture screenshot of the whole desktop, a single window, a selection of window, or a selected region. KSnapShot also support delay capture, which enables you to open a drop down menu and take picture of it.

To capture a screenshot on GNOME, you can use gnome-screenshot program included with GNOME. To access gnome-screenshot, you can either access it via command line which support different options such as delay and border effect. The fastest way to take screenshot of the whole screen is to access the “Take Screenshot” menu from the Applications - Accessories menubar.

Alternatively, linux users can capture some or all of an X Server screen and save the image using import program included with ImageMagick or use xwd.

Xvidcap is a tool to record your screen under X Window System.

Typically, when large companies such as Google or Apple launched a new products/services, everyone in the blogosphere are talking about the new products/services and those companies benefit the traffic, valuable feedback and the buzz.

New market players often find it hard to get the word out about their products. Those who find it difficult to get the word out could now use ReviewMe to find blogs with content related to their industry and pay the blogger to write about your sites/products/services.

By using blogs you can create buzz to make your company succeed in the marketplace. You can also receive feedback from both the bloggers and the comments submitted by the reader of the blog.

A good ReviewMe success story is ReviewMe itself. When ReviewMe launched, they are giving away $25,000 USD to bloggers who are accepted into the ReviewMe Network the opportunity to make money by reviewing ReviewMe itself. Reviewme created a successful buzz and a few days after they launched “ReviewMe” became the top searches and tags on Technorati, the popular blog search engine.

Bloggers get paid to review services/products that are related to the content of their blogs.

Submitting a new site to ReviewMe is a very process. Your account may only have up to 6 active sites. Once accepted, a site may publish an unlimited number of reviews. You need to provide details about your blogs such as Blog Name, URL, RSS Feed URL, Category, Tags, and Description.

ReviewMe charge advertisers different fees on different blogs depending on the blog’s ranking. The higher your blog ranked the higher you will get paid.

Ranking of your blog is recalculated monthly and blogs are given rank from 1 – 5. The ranking system uses statistics from Alexa, Technorati, and the number RSS readers to determine the Ranking of your site.

Reviewme shared 50% of the money they get from advertisers. It costs $60 for advertisers to request a review on William Computer Blog. There could be a bug in their ranking system because I know another blog with lower alexa rank, lower technorati rank and lower RSS subscribers and it cost $100 for advertisers to request a review from that blog.

Bloggers are required to disclose in their posts that they are being paid to review the particular product/services advertisers asked them to write about. Reviews must be at least 200 words.

A good reason for bloggers to signup to ReviewMe besides getting paid is it allows them to find unique contents they can publish in case they ran out of materials to blog about.

Advertisers, it’s time to join Reviewme. Bloggers, go and join Reviewme to earn cash!

Disclosure: The following entry is a paid review.

I uninstalled Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and switch back to Firefox 1.5 because the version 2.0 of the browser often stopped responding requiring me to force quit it.

I tried to clean install the browser by removing it with Appzapper, because I thought the problem could be caused by incompatible extensions. However, Firefox 2.0 kept on freezing even after the reinstallation.

So, I’m back to using Firefox 1.5 now

Reasons why I do not need Firefox 2.0:

1. New theme and user interface — Firefox 2.0 new default theme do look nicer but I prefer a browser that does not crash. The changes between the default theme of version 1 and 2 is not that much and I can always download and install a theme from Firefox add-ons.
2. Phising protection — I’m pretty good when it comes to identifying phising emails. I also have Google Toolbar for Firefox installed with Safe browsing option enabled. The built-in phising protection included in Firefox 2.0 is using Google anti-phising service. I also use OpenDNS as my DNS resolution service. OpenDNS offer phising protection that works with all browsers and operating systems.
3. Resuming browser session — I can use SessionSaver extension or Google Browser sync to restore my browsing sessions.
4. Better tabs — I find it annoying that Firefox open new window links as new tabs. If I want to open a link as new tab, I would right click and choose the option. Btw, I also find new window links annoying, find out why. I rarely use the tab close button because I use a faster way by pressing the close window keyboard shortcut. You can also install an extension called Tab X to add close button to each browser tab.

Things I’m missing out from Firefox 2.0

1. Inline spellchecking — useful when I’m sending emails or posting blog entries/comments
2. Client-side session and persistent storage
3. JavaScript 1.7
4. SVG-Text support