Disqus - Latest Comments for Martin

Re: WinExtra joins the Grand Effect Network

Martin — Wed, 07 May 2008 03:00:37 -0000

Great that you decided to join our little network ;) Welcome !

Re: Google Page Rank Updates, Penalities, and Spam War Escalation

Martin — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:37:32 -0000

A little correction: Pagerank is a number from 0-10 but can also be unassigned :)

Re: How To Search Rapidshare

Martin — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 07:04:55 -0000

I prefer Rapidshare Search Engines instead of searching Google for files. They have the big advantage that files are regularly checked for availablity.

Re: Unlike Vista, People Actually Stand in Line to Buy Windows 7

Martin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:20:12 -0000

I personally think that the pre-order phase is a disaster in Germany. It seems to be more stable in the UK though. Every online and offline store seems to be sold out already in Germany.

Re: 300 - Prepare for glory!

Martin — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 08:17:35 -0000

The movie is yet to come out here in Germany but if any of you are interested in a good read about the subject I suggest you take a look at the excellent book called Gates of Fire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_of_Fire)

Re: Smugmug Private Photos are for Anyone to See

Martin — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:35:00 -0000

You actually do not need a bot to download all pictures, just a Firefox extension called Batch Download. I've written an article explaining the process.

http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/28/batch-download...

Re: IE8 Beta 1 Blocks Access to Windows Update

Martin — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 11:00:50 -0000

Working fine for me

Re: IE8 Beta 1 Blocks Access to Windows Update

Martin — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 12:39:17 -0000

I'm using IE 8 beta 1

Re: 15 Search Engines to Search Files on Rapidshare

Martin — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:36:10 -0000

Nice list, I only knew half of them. Thanks a lot.

Re: How to Search Rapidshare Files using Google

Martin — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:58:07 -0000

I prefer to use websites that do that for me ;)

Re: Sorry About The Site Problems Today

Martin — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 19:15:07 -0000

Hi Everton,

I hope your odysee is finally coming to an end. I had a similar problem last year when ghacks was hosted at godaddy and they decided to cut the site off without warning because it was using to many ressources.

I decided to rent a rootserver so that a situation like that would never ever happen again to me. Care to tell me how much you are paying for your virtual server ?

take care and all the best
Martin

Re: Sorry About The Site Problems Today

Martin — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 03:31:16 -0000

I noticed the problems when the site was not showing earlier but only a empty directory structure (default) was showing and it was hinting at a vps.

90$ seems a lot to me but I donÃ‚Â´t know the package of course. Is it a managed vps ?

IÃ‚Â´am paying 59Ã¢â€šÂ¬ for my rootserver that hosts ghacks and all my other sites.

Re: Sorry About The Site Problems Today

Martin — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 08:01:44 -0000

I do understand the situation. I always pondered making the move to a rootserver but could not convince myself to do it. When godaddy locked my account I had to make a decison fast and I ordered the server the day they locked me out.

They also offered me a switch to a vps or rootserver but theirs are mighty expensive.

I know that you probably donÃ‚Â´t want to hear my advice to check on the account that you purchased and decide if it is an appropriate one or not. I would do so.

It is really expensive for a VPS if it is not managed.

wish you the best ;)

Re: Sorry About The Site Problems Today

Martin — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 08:55:56 -0000

I did take a look and I think itÃ‚Â´s this expensive because they offer "management features". See here http://www.siteground.com/vps_management_servic...

Managed Servers are always more expensive, they donÃ‚Â´t seem to offer unmanaged servers at all.

Re: Poll Results: England To Win World Cup

Martin — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 12:51:26 -0000

Brazil is leading on my blog with 23% followed by Argentina (14%), Germany (13%) and Italy (12%). England recieved 8% of all votes ;)

Re: Poll Results: England To Win World Cup

Martin — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 13:32:09 -0000

IÃ‚Â´am using Democracy http://blog.jalenack.com/archives/democracy/

Re: WordPress Plugin Overload!

Martin — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 16:45:50 -0000

I found another great plugin that you might take a look at if you are not using it already: ItÃ‚Â´s called Blank Target Comments. It opens all links in the comments in a new page instead of opening the link in the same page, i.e. the visitor stays on the main site.

http://www.techwench.com/wp/entry/blank_target_...

Re: WordPress Plugin Overload!

Martin — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 17:35:06 -0000

And one that combats comment spam by displaying some chars that the user has to type in..

http://www.boriel.com/?page_id=17

Easy installation, copy the folder with the single php file into your wordpress plugin directory, download a free ttf font from http://www.dafont.com/, enable the plugin, go into options captcha and enter the url of the font.

Re: The PS3 Is Over-Specced For The Average User – Are Sony Missing The Point?

Martin — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 15:17:41 -0000

Welcome back, it is good to see you started blogging again.

From all three next-gen systems I will only be buying a Wii. Why ? Xbox and PS3 have better graphics, that is for sure but they have the same boring games and gameplay that I played for over ten years now.

I'am tired and sick of those games like Tekken, Halo, EA Sports games and all the other crap that introduces better graphics and animations but leaves everything as it was ten years ago.

I do not want to play those games anymore. Wii offers a new experience and I hope it brings that back what I want when playing games: Fun.

Hope the PS3 flops miserably.. Hate Sony since they started the ****** campaign against the Dreamcast. Remember, better graphics, able to control rockets with it.. All PR bullshit and the PS3 introduces even more of that.

Nice Intros and everyone thinks that it is ingame graphics and when the first games come out they suck ass compared to the videos that were shown earlier.

Re: The PS3 Is Over-Specced For The Average User – Are Sony Missing The Point?

Martin — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 03:25:39 -0000

Sorry, Xbox 360 and PS3 are all about hardware and the same games that look better than in the previous generation. No innovation at all.

Re: Who Reads My Blog?

Martin — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:14:53 -0000

Christian I think I know you from digitalpoints ?

Re: Permanently Remove Incriminating Personal Information From The Web

Martin — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 02:54:24 -0000

I would be very cautious about this service. How would they be able to change details on websites that they do not own ? I can only think of sueing the webmaster, everything else would fail (unless it would involve illegal activity like hacking)

Re: Apologies For Any Site Problems – Working On A New Theme

Martin — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 18:26:47 -0000

hej just a question, why don't you use a local installation to test the template ?

Re: Help Installing WP-Cache2. I Can’t Fix a Fatal Error

Martin — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 04:19:01 -0000

Do you have the file wp-cache-config.php in /wp-content/ ?
Do you have the line define(Ã¢â‚¬â„¢WP_CACHEÃ¢â‚¬â„¢, true); in wp-config.php ?
Gzip compression is off ?

Re: Apologies For Any Site Problems – Working On A New Theme

Martin — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 04:23:49 -0000

let me help..

download XAMPP (http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html)
install it on your system.

The main folder for all WWW documents is at \xampp\htdocs

you access the server by typing in localhost in your address bar

Backup your webserver files and copy them in that directory
Backup your database (from phpmyadmin) and import them into a new database
Change the wp-config.php settings (password, user, database name)

That should be everything..

Re: Apologies For Any Site Problems – Working On A New Theme

Martin — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 05:00:25 -0000

I do not think it is that easy to add metas from the theme, i would stick with the plugin for now..

Re: Does OpenDNS Really Speedup Web Pages?

Martin — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 04:03:04 -0000

Good question Everton. I was also thinking about ways to measure the gain in speed.. We are talking about milliseconds here, right ? Should not make that much of a difference to the human eye..

Re: How To Get More Traffic From Technorati – Tips Straight From The Horse’s Mouth

Martin — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 04:05:35 -0000

The biggest problem I see with this approach is that you will loose lots of visitors who click on the technorati tags leaving your site this way.

I don't think technorati won't pick up the keywords if you have them at the end of the article and ping them every time you write a new one.

Re: How To Get More Traffic From Technorati – Tips Straight From The Horse’s Mouth

Martin — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 08:26:09 -0000

How would you add the tags to your feed ?

Re: How To Get More Traffic From Technorati – Tips Straight From The Horse’s Mouth

Martin — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 08:42:50 -0000

Found the settings, will try that out. My previous tags plugin did not seem to work that well. Hope the new one will do me a better service.

Re: How To Get More Traffic From Technorati – Tips Straight From The Horse’s Mouth

Martin — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 18:35:50 -0000

I switched and like it really much..

Re: I’m Ranked #2 On Google For “Playstation 3 Preorder” – How Do I Monetise?

Martin — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 04:08:16 -0000

I send you a mail on that matter ;)

Re: Last Week On Connected Internet

Martin — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 16:56:03 -0000

Hej,

are you using a plugin to create those weekly posts or are you doing that by your own ? Just thought it would be a nice addition to ghacks as well :P

Martin

Re: Help Please With Trackback Spam On WordPress Blog

Martin — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 04:18:14 -0000

I'm not using Akismet but Spam Karma. Spam Karma lists all comments that it declared spam in a list (20 default, but you can change that number).

I mark all with the press of a button and quickly take a look at each, 99% is spam all the time. Once this is done I click on remove selected and all are gone. Takes about 1-5 minutes each day.

Re: 50K Wiis Sold In 12 Hours In UK

Martin — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 11:04:01 -0000

Yeah I got mine :P

Re: 50K Wiis Sold In 12 Hours In UK

Martin — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 06:25:45 -0000

I'm :) Not that much anymore than a few years ago but still.. If Nintendo would not have offered a different experience I wouldn't have bought a system from this generation.

I only have Wii Sports and Wii Play at the moment and it is fun.. Will play it today with some friends which is probably THE way to play. I love playing games with friends, more fun than playing alone.

btw epic megagames suck :P

Re: Site Back Up And Running

Martin — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 17:46:38 -0000

I know that this situation really sucks. I experienced a similar one when I had to change from webhost to dedicated server. It is really stressful, hope everything is sorted out now.

Re: Happy Birthday To Me!

Martin — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 03:41:53 -0000

Happy Birthday Mate. It is nice to know that you are older than I'm :)

Re: Site Problems Were Caused By A Massive Spam Attack

Martin — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 12:54:09 -0000

nice to hear that you have switched to SK2, I have great success with it. Good luck and a nice new years eve to you.

Re: Guide To Starting Up A Blog – Part I

Martin — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 16:46:02 -0000

You are right this is my first post about blogging. It is pretty basic stuff but I think it can be helpful for some who start a blog. I might continue writing more articles that are of interest to webmasters in the future but I'm not sure yet.

Thanks for the link ;)

Re: What Do You Use For Your AlternateURL?

Martin — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 03:14:01 -0000

You have to create a blank htm file, add the text-link-ads code to it, upload it and link to the url. That should work. Have not tried it though.

Re: What Do You Use For Your AlternateURL?

Martin — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 03:22:41 -0000

Another note, I never used alternate ads before but I will try it out now. Nice tip.

Re: What Do You Use For Your AlternateURL?

Martin — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 05:32:43 -0000

Ajay I experienced the same yesterday but my comments have been there for some time now. (and yours have not been there at that time)

Re: What Do You Use For Your AlternateURL?

Martin — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 09:34:45 -0000

Ajay it happened to me on a different post. Took between 30-60 minutes before I was able to see the comments.

Re: Submit Your Site Now For Free SEO And Revenue Generation Advice!

Martin — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 05:40:30 -0000

Interesting idea Everton :) I registered a domain name yesterday which would fit this concept nicely. (monetizr.net) Thought of developing something like this on a large scale ;) Care to join

Re: Double AdSense CTR – Use Section Targetting

Martin — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 05:49:06 -0000

did it double your ctr ?

Re: Pirated HD DVD Movies Already On BitTorrent

Martin — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 12:47:23 -0000

They should start giving their customers what they want and I bet that they would earn more. DRM is just a way to squeeze more money out of the customers, it does not influence piracy at all.

Other movies have been released as well like Superman Returns with a filesize of about 30 gigs.

Re: I Need Laptop Buying Advice Please

Martin — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 07:01:03 -0000

Well the first question that comes to my mind is why do you want to buy a laptop ? Do you want a desktop replacement or something to work with when you travel ? Do you want to play a game every now and then or only work with it ? Maybe watch movies as well ?

You should write down what you want and what you do not need first and then ask again :P

Re: Subscribe To Comments 2.1 Plugin Released

Martin — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 11:17:04 -0000

Great find, I'm currently updating all of my blogs to wordpress 2.1 and some are using the plugin. It is definitely a great plugin.

Re: Very Strange Subscribe To Comments 2.1 Stats

Martin — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 13:28:13 -0000

My top 5 articles have more than 1000 subscribers together, never thought it would be that much.

Re: 22% Of Windows Installations “Non Genuine”

Martin — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:54:43 -0000

It is interesting to note that more than 1 million of the failed checks were false positives.

Re: Google Adsense Smart Pricing – Help Please

Martin — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 11:46:40 -0000

Well Smart Pricing affects all sites under an Adsense account even though only one site might have activated it. This is a pretty stupid ruling by Google.

Smart Pricing normally drops the price per click to some cents the most, if that is not the case here you should not be worried.

Re: Google Adsense Smart Pricing – Help Please

Martin — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 15:21:44 -0000

Everton I have the same problem this month, same difference in ECPM for ghacks. I have not found a reason for this other than the possible reason that sometimes I get worse ad feeds from google.

It also is affected by which ads are clicked on by the users which can make a difference as well. Don't think you can influence this though.

Re: Windows Vista – Upgrading Not For The Faint-Hearted

Martin — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 09:42:55 -0000

Buying the same mouse three times for this purpose is kinda nerdy, don't you think :P

Re: NSFW: BioShock Xbox 360 Trailer

Martin — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 04:30:45 -0000

instead of using a plugin you could simply switch into code mode and add the video that way

Re: NSFW: BioShock Xbox 360 Trailer

Martin — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 04:31:34 -0000

to be more precise, remove "Use the visual editor when writing" in your profile.

Re: What Features Would You Like Me To Add To/Remove From The Blog?

Martin — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 03:04:48 -0000

I added ratings some weeks ago and they give me a good overview of what the ones who rate think of my articles. It is not as good as comments but it still shows me what I should concentrate on.

I would not add more links to the blog because to many links could make it to messy in my opinion. I was always wondering if I should remove the latest posts and add the most popular posts instead to my blog.

If you do remove ads for registered users I would remove the recommends Google Adsense blog because they have seen it enough and it is unlikely that they will ever click on it.

I would remove the ad below the articles as well for them, it should not make such a big difference anyway.

Other than that some nude pics would be great ^^

Re: Finally Proof That The Digg Bury Brigade (aka Digg Mafia) Does Exist

Martin — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 05:59:55 -0000

Ajay they could very well do something against this. Ban accounts of users who dump articles, ban IPs, make it harder for articles to get dumped, restrict the amount of dumps per day aso.

They are not doing enough to stop it, this is clear.

Re: Do You Declare Your Blog Income And Pay Taxes?

Martin — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 11:41:41 -0000

I think this is a rather sensible topic and you probably will not get lots of feedback from bloggers who do not declare the money.

I for one decided to pay taxes to be on the safe side. Could mean serious punishment in my country (heavy fines, jail).

Re: WordPress Plugins I’m Currently Using

Martin — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:30:22 -0000

Everton convinced me to post a quick comment about the feedburner feed replacement plugin. It raised the number of subscribers by roughly 1000 for my blog which was really nice ;) Thanks for the great plugin

Re: Connected Internet Is Two Years Old!

Martin — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 03:07:45 -0000

congrats Everton, two years is really a great achievement :)

Re: Connected Internet $100 Birthday Giveaway

Martin — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 07:14:44 -0000

I'd say $4811,34 if the rev of the 6 month ciao ad will be added fully to march, if not I'd say $3192,34. :)

Re: Connected Internet $100 Birthday Giveaway

Martin — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 11:19:32 -0000

I would suggest only one vote for every voter :P

Re: ShareYourScore.com: Show Off Your Vista Experience Index Score

Martin — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 09:58:10 -0000

I did purchase a notebook today and it got a score of 4.5 which is really nice I think.

Re: New Data Tariffs From Vodafone Coming In June

Martin — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 06:03:11 -0000

You should probably ask them why teh Germans get a data flatrate for ~ 50 Euros. Not a real flatrate but a fair use one with a 5 GB limit and 0.50 Euros for every MB after that.

http://www.vodafone.de/privat/tarife-flatrate-v...

Re: Just How Good Are Translator Plugins?

Martin — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 04:29:13 -0000

Well I can tell you how accurate the German translation is. The only good thing I can say about it is that you do understand what the article is about. You can get an idea when you translate the article into another language and then back into English. This is your above text:

Martin of gHacks is a drawing in human translator its place of assembly into other languages converts, so that he can extend the range of its place of assembly. I of' VE, which is of the plug-in type on the unpleasant Angsuman a translator is based, in order to accomplish the same task automatically on my place of assembly, but, I' of VE never really stopped, over to think on, how exactly the translations are. Can someone explain to me, how exactly my translated sides are? Unfortunately I CAN' t do this, there my language abilities are so terrible, a I didn' to t payment quantity of attention in my French lessons, also as at my school, the one language was takes GCSE, alternatively released, on and I always knew that I would take a second science. I estimate that, you use a second question the translation service at this place of assembly are?

Re: Just How Good Are Translator Plugins?

Martin — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 10:57:06 -0000

I would not get that pessimistic. Sure the translations are not that good but they can be helpful to someone who is not that proficient in English. I still think that the next big thing will be websites that get translated by users who receive a share of the revenue in return.

This could work out pretty well for both parties. Results are better and more relevant, native speakers will not think they visited a spam blog aso.

Re: Just How Good Are Translator Plugins?

Martin — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 11:26:09 -0000

TJP you are right, the service is sometimes not working, I changed to Bablefish for now which seems to be working fine. I removed some entries that did not make that much sense, dutch, arabic and some other minor languages and some that do not support Adsense at all.

I will replace the computer languages with the ones that users translate soon which will get rid of that problem.

Re: Just How Good Are Translator Plugins?

Martin — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 11:43:45 -0000

Well I do the German translations by myself. Want to translate 20 pages a day which would mean I will need about 100 days to translate them all.

I share revenue with the users who translate them into other languages. They receive 50% of the Adsense revenue from each article that they translate which could be a nice sum if Google picks them off as nicely as the articles from my main page.

So, no big secrets. It actually costs time to create the blogs and configure them properly but that's all.

Re: MYBlogEarnings For March 2007

Martin — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 16:14:20 -0000

Ev that is really a nice increase and I'm happy that you mad this much this month.

Hope we get back on track with Adsense in April though. Pagerank btw has nothing to do with Adsense..

Re: Adding A Robots.txt File Has Increased My Google Traffic By 16% In 4 Days

Martin — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 03:09:49 -0000

It took a while longer for my supplemental results to decrease and I heard that it could take a long time for some. Mine dropped from 12600 to 50 in the last days which is really nice.

Re: MYBlogEarnings For March 2007

Martin — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:58:48 -0000

Tribalfusion is a great addition to Adsense. Can only recommend it to everyone who has more than 2000 visitors a day.

Re: What To Expect From Starcraft II

Martin — Wed, 23 May 2007 09:39:24 -0000

My favorite unit from SC1 was the Terran Siege Tank. Loved to add bunkers, Siege Tanks all around my bases..

Re: I Read Connected Internet!

Martin — Mon, 28 May 2007 04:34:36 -0000

nice idea Everton :P

Re: I Read Connected Internet!

Martin — Mon, 28 May 2007 06:38:14 -0000

haha :P

Re: CD-Wow Fined Â£41m And Told To Stop Selling Cheap CDs

Martin — Wed, 30 May 2007 05:16:27 -0000

This is typical. Every company is propagating globalization but as soon as the consumer is also using the benefits of it they cry out loud and pressure politicians to create laws that forbid imports for example.

Re: Video Of President Bush Robbed Of His Watch In Public

Martin — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:38:15 -0000

Ev they did not steal his watch. He put it in his pocket during the hand shaking :)

Re: What’s Your Strongest Video Game?

Martin — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 10:11:15 -0000

Well the real problem that most of us face is that you need time to be good. You need to practice a lot, learn the levels, shortcuts, build orders, strenght and weakness of players, races and units.

When I had the time I played CTF in a very successful Unreal Tournament clan but stopped putting to much time into playing games since then. My next big games will probably be Starcraft 2 and Hellgate London.

Unless you know the game in and out and practice daily there will always be someone better online. think of all the kids that come home from school and play all day, think you can beat them ?

so, it basically sums up to this. Invest time, become better, if you got talent you become a top player, if not you become above average.

Re: Is WordPress Getting Stale?

Martin — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:13:25 -0000

Everton what is your expectation ? I honestly can't think of anything big at this moment that would make Wordpress any better. Sure, it would be fine if they would reduce loading times, database requests and the like but when it comes to features I'm pretty satisfied.

BTW. did you try this one http://guff.szub.net/head-meta-description/

Re: 83% Of People In UK Use Online Dating Sites

Martin — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:17:36 -0000

Was the survey conducted on the Top Dates website ;)

Re: Why Do Printer Ink Cartridges Cost So Much?

Martin — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:18:57 -0000

I'd say it is that expensive because the market pays the price. It is probably cheaper to replace the printer instead of buying a new cartridge for it.

Re: 83% Of People In UK Use Online Dating Sites

Martin — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 14:09:52 -0000

Well it say that 50% have registered and 83% have been on a dating site before which does not mean that they have been using their own Internet account for it. I personally find it really interesting that they mention the 50% which has been probably computed by adding the members of both sites.

If that is the case the figure might be lower than that. There are surely many users who registered on both sites. As you can see, I doubt these figures.. They want to make it seem like something normal, that everyone does and I think it is not.

Re: Manhunt 2 First Game To Be Banned In UK For 10 Years

Martin — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 03:53:03 -0000

I personally think that banning a game is the absolute wrong way. I think we all agree that certain games are not suitable for minors but I strongly disagree that the state or some official institution should ban or censor media for adults.

It is solely the responsibility of adults to make sure that their kids don't come into contact with this type of games. It is the responsibility of the shop owners and clerks to sell games only to people that may legally purchase such a game.

Re: Will You Buy An iPhone Survey

Martin — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 03:59:34 -0000

I won't buy one either. Sure, it has a nice interface and design but I think it is not living up to the hype at all. I will get a new Nokia (or Samsung) in the next months instead.

Re: MyBlogEarnings For June 2007

Martin — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 10:01:11 -0000

Everton the figures are really impressive, congrats to them. When I compare our figures I realize that I have to work on text link sales and direct ad sales. Maybe you would like to write an article about your success with direct ad sales ? This would be really nice, hehe.

Re: MyBlogEarnings For June 2007

Martin — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 14:40:53 -0000

3GP I personally think that it is actually 50/50. You do need a certain traffic level, pagerank and / or authority to be approached by advertisers or be successful when approaching them. You also need to know how to sell and advertise the blog in the right way.

I honestly never approached advertisers before and I might do so in the near future. I'm just trying to figure out how Everton is that successful in getting direct ad sales which account for almost 10% of his blog earnings so I can try a similar strategy.

Re: How Much Is Your Domain Name Worth

Martin — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:27:28 -0000

Nice my blog is valued at $170498,00

Re: PageRank Prediction Tool – How To Check If Your PageRank Is Going To Increase?

Martin — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 04:40:33 -0000

The prediction tools are just guesses and not that accurate. No one knows how the Google Pagerank algorithm looks like. My site went from PR6 to PR5 although the Pagerank tools said it would stay a PR6..

Hope I make it to PR6 again in this update. Good luck.

Re: Install the New Alexa Firefox Toolbar To Improve Alexa Rank

Martin — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 11:47:55 -0000

Nice it is finally working with firefox 2.0.0.5 :)

Re: WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin

Martin — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 04:30:19 -0000

I'm really cautious when using such automatic scripts. This might be nice for small blogs but I prefer to manually update my blogs to be in charge. What if something goes wrong along the line ?

Could be really problematic to figure out when and why and what. It is also not working if you changed code in the Wordpress files and not only in your templates.

Re: ISPs Beware! Joost Is Coming At The End Of The Year

Martin — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:21:37 -0000

The question is not when but whether there will be mainstream content at all to watch. I have my doubts at this moment..

Re: Why My Adsense Earnings Are Better Than Other Blogs

Martin — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 08:23:12 -0000

I agree that search engine traffic is far better for Adsense than regular visitors who probably only click if they want to reward the site owner.

I would not advise new bloggers to only look at optimizing their posts for search engines and revenue. It is my experience that it is most often better to simply write about subjects that you are enthusiastic about. Traffic will come in eventually.

Re: Why My Adsense Earnings Are Better Than Other Blogs

Martin — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 08:30:28 -0000

It is rather obvious that Problogger is not really monetized correctly and Darren mentioned (on his blog I think) that it was far more useful for image building and reputation than for making money from it.

I fell into that trap when I started using Adsense because I copied the ad layout from Problogger for a few weeks until I realized that this was not the perfect spot.

Everton you should probably mention that it could be counter productive to run more than one Adsense banner on your site.

Re: Why My Adsense Earnings Are Better Than Other Blogs

Martin — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 06:22:01 -0000

Everton Feedburner ads never seemed to work for my site and I'm only using them on my feed to make a few - really few - bucks. I keep the feed ads in the hope that the service will finally kick of after the Google purchase.

A second reason why I never put them up was that I did not want to ad more ads on my site. I already had serious difficulties convincing myself to add Tribal Fusion to my blog ;)

I never thought it would make much sense to add another ad on my blog for just an increase of 1% or even less in revenue

Re: Why My Adsense Earnings Are Better Than Other Blogs

Martin — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 11:36:22 -0000

Mint has the advantage that it is running on your server and the disadvantage that it is not free and uses system resources.

Google Analytics is free but it increases the loading times for the visitor and it could give problems if the service has a problem.

You could also check your webhost to see if he offers any statistics for your site, awstats for instance is a nice program.

Re: MyBlogEarnings For July 2007

Martin — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:06:35 -0000

The weak dollar is really beginning to be problematic for European webmasters. I'm really happy that Intellitxt is paying in Euro. Hopefully the next Pres of the USA will do something to make the $ rise again.

Nice earnings again Everton ;)

Re: I’m Lost Without My Nokia N95

Martin — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 09:16:46 -0000

I was always wondering what kind of people would lose their phones and notebooks in cabs: Now I know :P

Re: Make Money Online With CashCrate

Martin — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 07:22:08 -0000

Everton how many surveys do you see when you login into the site ? I have the feeling that you are having more opportunities if you live in the US, Canada or the UK.

I see two survey and two offers to make purchases to get some money back.

Re: Make Money Online With CashCrate

Martin — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 11:37:38 -0000

briguy if those 4 people would be active it would count towards the number that you need, right ?

Re: Improve Alexa Rankings With ‘Better Alexa Redirect Plugin’

Martin — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 15:29:19 -0000

I can't remember where I read it but someone from Alexa confirmed that this does not influence the Alexa rank at all

Re: Please No Anchor Text In Comment Names

Martin — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 08:37:09 -0000

That blog spam is really a big problem, I tend to delete any comment that looks spammy.

Re: How To Spend Next to Nothing in Adwords- And Rake In A Profit

Martin — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 04:58:25 -0000

an action word is simply what you want to achieve. If you want to sell something you choose "buy" or "purchase" or "signup". The subject is the object that you want to sell in this example.

For instance 'ipod nano', 'samsung sata hard drive' or 'harry potter and the goblets of fire'

Re: How To Choke More Cash from Adsense

Martin — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:01:47 -0000

Joseph: Everton is using a 300x250 box which does convert best next to 336x280

Hoto: Most webmasters changed their payment method from Checks to Bank Deposits which is far more convenient.

If you do get 4%+ CTR you should not change anything. If it is below that figure and you are running a blog or similar website you should consider changing ad placement and appearance.

Re: Bloggers Cribs: Martin Brinkman!

Martin — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:36:42 -0000

Well if you want to know, I'm 33 ;)

Re: Bloggers Cribs: Martin Brinkman!

Martin — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:08:18 -0000

well I'm shy ;)

Re: Have You Signed Up With TNX Yet?

Martin — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 04:22:18 -0000

Everton please write more about your results please. I'm missing that part in your article. I have mixed feelings as well due to two reasons.

First, Google is after webmasters who are selling links that do not have the nofollow attribute which could become a huge problem for services like Text Link Ads and TNX.

The second one is even more troubling in my opinion. I have currently about 2200 article pages in my blog, many of them PR0 because of the missing PR-update. A PR0 page earns me 7.5 points which is 5 cents if you convert it.

This is not acceptable and I consequently delete all PR0 links.

Another factor is that the categories are to general. If you add your software blog for instance it will be placed in the software and music category which means that you could get a lot of music advertisement on your blog.

They should create more categories and offer webmasters a way to block certain Pageranks from being sold to advertisers.

I will keep a close look but at the moment I will probably stop using them pretty soon. Made 70000 points so far.

Could you tell me what happened to your video ads and how they performed ? Please send me a mail ;)

Re: Top 5 Video Games Of 2007

Martin — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 09:11:04 -0000

If you would ask 1000 gamers about their top 5 games you would get 1000 different answers. Your list contains one game that I would recommend as well, that is Bioshock.

I think you are missing some great games and definitely the best game that has been released in 2007 so far, that is Team Fortress 2.

btw, UT99 is the only real game in the Unreal Tournament series :)

Re: What On Earth Is Going On With The Latest Google PageRank Update?

Martin — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 13:48:54 -0000

What I really can't understand is that Google is not releasing a statement about the current situation. There is no transparency whatsoever.

It surely looks to be like random picks but I could be wrong. I think that someone probably reported lots of those sites in the Webmaster Tools area to hurt the competition.

Re: Connected Internet Drops 3 Belt Sizes to Page Rank 3

Martin — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 07:01:06 -0000

Everton don't worry, mine went up from 3 to 5 again today. It does look pretty random to me :)

Re: MyBlogEarnings For October 2007

Martin — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:42:01 -0000

congrats Everton, thats really great. The funny thing is that I'm not able to spot the direct advertising on your pages ;)

Maybe we could join forces in our search for an Ad Sales Manager ? I would be interested in that as well. If you like the idea let us discuss it further..

Re: Upgrading To WordPress 2.3 This Weekend – Any Tips?

Martin — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:54:29 -0000

Here are some tips :)

1. Backup everything !
2. Remove the code for the tagging plugin in your blog to avoid errors
3. Deactivate the tagging plugin and the sitemap plugin
4. Copy the new tagging plugin to your plugin directory
5. Copy the new Wordpress files over your old ones (worked fine for me, if you are cautious delete the old files, upload the new ones)
6. Check the site for errors, if none proceed. If you see errors remove the corresponding code
7. activate the new taggin plugin.
8. import the tags from your old plugin, run it twice if you get a timeout
9. add the new tagging code to your blog

well that's it basically. the new tagging code is the default Wordpress function for tags, you find it in the default theme in single.php

Please note that some tags will be changed which leads to several 404s on your site. I think _ will be - or the other way round. not a huge problem though.

Re: Aborted Upgrade To WordPress 2.3

Martin — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 07:22:01 -0000

Everton which problems occur with Simple Tags ? You know that you have to import the old tags and that simple tags uses the same php function to display the code ?

Re: Rubicon Project – Are You On The Beta?

Martin — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 03:37:46 -0000

There is one aspect that is keeping me away from those "give us your ad inventory and we will find the best company for you" type of service, and that is that you have to provide your login data to that company.

I really can see the advantages, that you could earn more if their algorithm is good enough but I guess there is a test period before they found out which ad works best on which page and in that time you probably loose money.

Do they pay in Dollar or Euro ? I'm asking because one of my advertiser pays in Euro which I love and others pay in Dollar. I wished more US companies would support EFT. Checks and Paypal are not the best of options for most Europeans, with Paypal being 1000times better than Checks though.

Let me know how this works out for you Ev.

Re: Rubicon Project – Are You On The Beta?

Martin — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 07:42:39 -0000

Tash that is an interesting idea. Replace a low paying ad spot with it and see how it performs. I still do not like the idea of giving away my login details for all those services..

Re: Feedback: How Much Traffic Before Dedicated Hosting Becomes Necessary?

Martin — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 16:24:37 -0000

I say this depends on your webhoster. Some put so many users on a shared host that you would need it pretty fast. It's also important what type of sites are hosted on the same server. If you have lots of users with cpu hungry scripts (like proxies) you might face slow downs p with just a few users who connect to your website at the same time.

I know that Godaddy kicked me from their webhosting when my site hit the Digg frontpage (which meant roughly 80000 visitors at that day alone and several hundreds at the same time).

You can still face the same probs with a dedicated or virtual server if that one is badly configured.

Re: Is Akismet The Best Tool To Block WordPress Comment Spam?

Martin — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 04:06:58 -0000

Everton you won't believe it but I switched to Akismet a week ago and switched back to Spam Karma yesterday.Akismet is blocking more spam but puts more false positives into the spam folder as well.

The real problem that I had with Akismet was that you had to look at ALL spam messages to pick the the real comments from the spam folder. This took ages. There are no filters in Akismet, no options and the only button that you can press is to delete all spam comments.

I prefer the Spam Karma way which reduces the time spent on moderating comments to several minutes a day.

Re: WidgetBucks – Worth Considering As An Adsense Alternative

Martin — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 06:38:59 -0000

I did apply two weeks ago but have not heard from then ever since.. Did you try Bidvertiser ? They CPC is higher than that of my best Adsense units. Unfortunately though their CTR is worse - and I mean bad bad bad - in comparison to Adsense.

Re: Early Days But Pay Per Play Ads Payout Is $4CPM

Martin — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:55:45 -0000

Well one of the main questions is how many of your visitors will be annoyed by this ad. Visitors are not used to these kind of ads and could really get annoyed by them. I for one would not like such audio ads on a site that I visit regularly.

Still $4 ECPM is indeed nice if you consider that no ppm advertiser can meet that currently.

I will still not use it on my website ;)

Re: Remembering The Sega Saturn

Martin — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:55:49 -0000

The Saturn was awesome but Sega's marketing campaign outside Japan was awful. Don't forget Shining Force 3, Nights into Dreams, Dragonforce, Guardian Heroes and the ultimate party game of all time Saturn Bomberman with 10 players !

Re: Hundreds of Passwords? No Sweat!

Martin — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:00:22 -0000

The best encryption algorithm can be broken if your password can be guessed :)

btw you have an error at the end of the article, I think you want people to download Lockcrypt and not Truecrypt. Have you tried True Crypt 5 yet, it comes with System Partition encryption which could get rid of the problem that you have to mount the volumes after the OS has started.

Re: Does Your Blog Have A Privacy Policy?

Martin — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:22:49 -0000

I've actually read somewhere that a privacy policy (plus terms of service) and a contact us page increase the (internal) Google ranking of that site because it normally means it is more trustworthy..

Re: How To Increase Your Adsense CTR by 1% With One Simple Change

Martin — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:35:35 -0000

I'm glad I could be of service :)

Re: Start Your Own SEO Company with Axandra

Martin — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:53:47 -0000

The last two comments are spam. I was looking into SEO software for some time and found WEB CEO to be very effective. The advantage is that a free version is offered that has some limitations. Great way to explore the software though.

I also tried SEO Elite but that soft crashed on two of my computers (one XP, one Vista) all the time.

Re: Savvy Backlink Strategies You Should Be Doing

Martin — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:11:16 -0000

Joseph do you have an invitation to Piqq.us by chance ?

Re: Windows 7 News Relaunched!!

Martin — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:41:01 -0000

This website will truly be something special. I'm confident about that. Now we only need to rank for the most searched for term better than we currently do, will definitely triple or quadruple our daily visitors ;)

Btw I would never buy links, Google punishes websites who do.

Re: HD TV In The UK – No Real Progress In 2 Years

Martin — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:37:53 -0000

So Ev, who will you route for ;)

Re: Overclockers UK: Great Customer Service

Martin — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:40:35 -0000

Well the naked lady on the first page might by why your partner spends so much time on the site Lady Banana ;) Nice avatar you have there

Re: Speedup Your Website With HTML Optimizer Pro

Martin — Tue, 20 May 2008 16:16:50 -0000

I think that you can also enable gz compression which has an even better effect.

Read Martin's latest blog post....Google Inline MP3 Player>>>

Re: Help!! Why Is My Site Showing HTML Code For Characters In Posts?

Martin — Fri, 23 May 2008 04:43:28 -0000

Wordpress has troubles during upgrade if you use a new wp-config file. To fix this issue delete (or put // before) the following two lines

define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
define('DB_COLLATE', '');

Read Martin's latest blog post....Ultimate Defrag>>>

Re: Help!! Why Is My Site Showing HTML Code For Characters In Posts?

Martin — Fri, 23 May 2008 06:17:13 -0000

have you tried adding them ;)

Read Martin's latest blog post....Firefox Referrer Control>>>

Re: Choosing A New Dedicated Server

Martin — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 04:55:14 -0000

The specs are not bad at all. I was just looking at the specs of the dedicated server that Ghacks is running on:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ Dual Core
4 GB DDR2
2 x 400 GB SATA II (Software RAID 1)

Maybe the problem is not caused by the server's hardware but by other factors, e.g. configuration, software installed and running, provider's backbone.

If you got root access you could run a few basic commands like "top" or "netstat" to find out more about the resource usage.

I personally would not say that a dedicated server running the three sites would need more than 4 GB of RAM. More is better of course but 4 Gigabytes should be sufficient. I would definitely take a look at the cpu and get a modern Intel or AMD cpu instead if you change servers.

Re: 50Mb Broadband Experiences With Virgin Media

Martin — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:59:15 -0000

Everton what cap do you get when you download from Giganews? Are you using their US or European servers? How many connections do you establish? Are you using Giganews Accelerator?

Re: Now Read This Site Better With Mobiles

Martin — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:36:45 -0000

Not enough apps for Android phones? Try http://www.cyrket.com/

Re: AntiVirus And AntiSpamBee Plugins For WordPress

Martin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:35:26 -0000

I personally think that the most important part of any disaster recovery strategy are regular backups. If everything else fails then you still got the backups to restore the sites.

I really like the idea of the antivirus plugin to scan the template files for signs of malicious content especially the function to send out an email message when a possible infection is discovered.

Antispam Bee works pretty well, as good as Akismet I would say. While you might be right that you save a bit of resources as Akismet processes the comments and pings on their server you do loose a bit because of the connections that have to be established. And it is also better for the privacy of your users as no data is being submitted to third party servers.

Re: When Should You Remove Ads From Your Site?

Martin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:38:39 -0000

I think it is interesting to note that ads can make an impact on how users perceive the website. It is for example true that users on social media sites like Digg like to vote down sites if they have ads next to the content. That's one of the reasons why big network blogs like Lifehacker or ArsTechnica do much better on these sites as they do not have ads next to the main content of their posts.

Re: Migrated To New Server Over The Weekend

Martin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:43:20 -0000

I actually recommend to download a backup every day even if you have an automated backup solution in place on a second server. If the hoster decides to disable access you still got the backup you can work with. And if they are hit with an atombob you still got your backups although that might not be the most important thing at this moment.

Re: Migrated To New Server Over The Weekend

Martin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:43:45 -0000

it should read atombomb :)

Re: Use Wowzio Widgets To Increase Page Impressions

Martin — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:52:24 -0000

I personally am a bit cautious when it comes to these widgets. They might be worth a try if they really increase pageviews in the long run (let me know if they do, will you) and do not cause excessive load on the server.

Re: Test Post For Disqus

Martin — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 05:15:10 -0000

Okay this is a test reply. I personally think that the amount of links that are displayed by the plugin can be quite confusing. I'm by the way testing apture on Otakugadgets.com, something that you might want to check out as well. It basically allows you to embedd (in a window overlay on your site) contents like Youtube videos, Wikipedia entries and stuff from a few dozen sources.

You can check it out at Otaku if you like.

Re: Can Microsoft Achieve A Sub 15 Seconds Boot Time With Windows 7?

Martin — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:12:13 -0000

I think that it is not likely that Windows 7 will boot that fast and think that everything under 30 seconds would be amazing.

Re: AIMP: Free Media Player For Windows 7

Martin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:07:56 -0000

Not necessarily Klompie. It is always good to know that alternatives are there and working already.

Re: AIMP: Free Media Player For Windows 7

Martin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:08:37 -0000

Hej Ev,

don't tell me you've never heard about AIMP2, best music player ever?

Re: Microsoft Removes Release Candidate Information

Martin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:10:39 -0000

The leaks and blunders are definitely piling up. Seems that it is working though no matter if it is intended guerrilla marketing or a series of human mistakes.

Re: Mike Halsey joins Windows7News.com

Martin — Sun, 10 May 2009 07:31:54 -0000

Looks good, welcome Mike ;)

Re: Windows 7 7229 Leaks, Not RTM Escrow

Martin — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:59:33 -0000

Alex the username and password are displayed on the front page.

Re: Windows 7 Pre-Orders Starting Tomorrow

Martin — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:14:00 -0000

Pre-order date varies depending on the country. It starts on June 26 in the US, Canada and Japan.

Re: Windows 7 ISO Verifier

Martin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:34:39 -0000

Zach chance is that the developers continue the project once Microsoft releases updates (like the first service pack for Windows 7).

Re: Windows 7 Pre-Orders In Europe

Martin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:51:11 -0000

Mdesilva I prefer that to users who do not say a thing. Keep it up :)

Re: Windows 7 Pre-Orders In Europe

Martin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:53:54 -0000

According to unofficial sources (store manager at one of the stores that was selling the reduced pre-orders) a total of 24.000 items were available for the reduced price in the whole of Germany. A big store in Berlin for example received only 8 copies of Windows 7. That explains why everyone is already sold out in Germany.

Re: Installing a Browser in Windows 7 E

Martin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:55:00 -0000

As I stated earlier you can add IE8 to your shopping cart over at Amazon and also buy it at the Microsoft Windows 7 website. It is not free but can be bought for roughly 4 Euro / Pounds.

Re: Vote For Your Favourite Windows 7 Website

Martin — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 10:37:39 -0000

That's definitely a huge gap between our site and the top four sites. There is some discussion going on about cheating in the competition: http://thewindows7site.com/w7-news/best-windows...

I personally think that the difference is really huge and that these sites must either have a very dedicated user base or huge traffic levels for those vote counts (or be cheating).

Re: Recording an Internet Radio Stream

Martin — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:03:11 -0000

Wow that comparison chart looks awful. They missed the best, Streamripper.

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