Web Talk

If you are a webmaster you know only too well how dangerous to put your email address on your website is. In fact, if you don’t use any protection to trick spam bots, in a matter of  a few hours or even less, your inbox could be pestered with hundreds of emails having the most different and dreadful topics. So, what solution do we have to prevent all this? A nice trick is to create an image of your email address so that malevolent bots won’t be able to read it. Another solution is to protect your email by converting it into an encrypted JavaScript code in order to hide it from spam bots, but at the same time make it  fully readable to human beings. The Enkoder Form does exactly this: hide your email address to email harvester aka spam. Once you have typed your email address in its form you will get a code which you will have to copy-and-past directly on your website without other worries such as: understand how it works, modify it etc. It doesn’t matter how tricky the code is, just put it wherever you want and you are done. Guaranteed!

A few months ago I posted an article where I spoke about a hack which let you watch YouTube videos with a higher resolution. A few weeks ago YouTube has started offering high resolution videos as default. To take advantage of this new feature it is sufficient to follow this simple trick:

1. Go to your YouTube account (if you don’t have one, you have to create it!).
2. Under Account , click the Video Playback Quality link.
3. Select the radio button I have a fast connection. Always play higher-quality video when it’s available to play video in higher quality by default.
4. Click Save Settings.
5. Next time you watch a YouTube video, you could see a link teasing you to watch it in high quality.
   

There are a lot of ways to hack YouTube videos nowadays. In fact, you can download a video without using any software or you can even watch videos with a higher resolution than the one offered by YouTube itself. Today I want to speak of another hack which lets you embed high resolution videos in your blog (MP4 -H264 with AAC audio encoded at 480×360). This hack is completely different in comparison to the one offered by following the link above because the famous strings &fmt=6 and &fmt=18 won’t work in this case. In fact you will have to use another string namely &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 at the end of the video clip’s URL. Once done, you will have to put the modified URL into a special code and paste it into your website. But let’s see an example.

Let’s say that you want to embed this high resolution video in your blog:

1. Click on the right bottom icon in the YouTube video, copy and past the code you want to embed in your blog:

<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/DFYfbHLkaRQ”></param><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/DFYfbHLkaRQ” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”transparent” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>

2. Now add the string &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 as shown here:

<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/DFYfbHLkaRQ&ap=%2526fmt%3D18“>
</param><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/DFYfbHLkaRQ&ap=%2526fmt%3D18” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”transparent” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>

If you are an English learner, if you want to improve your English or if you are just looking for some fun while studying, then you have got to try this nice website called Listen-and-write.com. Listen and Write lets you learn English thanks to a lot of online dictations to exercise yourself with. The main page, apart from being very simple and with no eye candy stuff, contains a tidy list of dictations to play. If you click on one of them you will be taken to a page divided into two sections. The first one containing the whole audio file. The second one containing a space where you will have to write down all the words you will be able to recognize during the dictation. Usually every dictation is divided into chapters. You can select either which chapter to play first or the whole story. You can even choose your own level and start with something as simple as listening to separate words. A very useful website which is not just for students but for all of those people who desire to improve their English knowledge in a different way.

There are a lot, really a lot of websites and free software letting you watch TV channels on your computer, so I am not telling you anything new. If you want to see some good example just visit these links here and here and here. Anyway what struck me when I first visited this website called Tvchannelsfree.com was the big amount of TV channels it offers. Ok, the website itself is not a big deal, I mean, it is very simple and it doesn’t amaze you with special effects, but who cares when the only thing you want to do is watch some good TV? Tvchannelsfree.com offers you an incredible amount of TV channels to play with (around 3064 channels). They are tidily ordered by country and categories. On the website you will be able to find Live streaming TV, recorded news, broadband internet TV stations, and videos from all over the world. You will also find interesting and quite famous TV channels such as: CNN, NBA, Disney Channel, NBC and other ones. Next to every channel link there is an icon of the media player you need to watch it, while on the left a vertical sidebar tells you which are the latest channels watched with the number of times they were hit. That’s it! Simple but quite practical!

If you are a webmaster and you are always concerned about your blog popularity, then this nice website is for you. As a matter of fact just by writing your blog’s web address in its form you will be able to check your blog popularity thanks to a list of results coming from the most important and authoritative websites specialised in judging blogs namely: Google PageRank, Alexa rank, Quantcast rank, Technorati Rank. Furthermore it will also give you the following results: Google Index, Yahoo Index, Google BackLinks, Google BackLinks, Google BackLinks etc. Try it now!

This simple website called Convertico.com does a very important task, which usually is found on expensive software, namely it converts .png files into .ico files and vice versa, for free. It is just sufficient to upload an image or enter its URL, hit the “convert” button and in a matter of seconds you will get your file converted into one of the two most important extensions, usually used for blogs and websites! The website is fully Vista compatible and it supports all the major web browsers. Try it now!

A few days ago Yahoo launched, in collaboration with McAfee, its new service called SearchScan. This web application, integrated in the Yahoo’s search engine, is a site advisor malware scanning product. But what does it do? Well, apart of warning you from potentially dangerous websites, it simply removes those sites which are really dangerous and could harm and damage your computer or steal your sensitive information. The new service is available in the following countries: USA, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. SearchScan warns you in three different ways:

• Dangerous websites which install malware on the fly (it is sufficent to open them to get malware).
• Dangerous websites which want you to download dangerous software such as: infected screensaver, games etc.
• Dangerous websites which use fake web addresses or fake emails to convince you they belong to big, famous companies.