Web Talk

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.

There are a lot of ways to look for things on the Internet. Anyway, a lot of them might be simply too tricky and difficult to use because they involve the use of complicated pieces of code. If simplicity is the thing you are looking for when searching in the web, then you have to got to try Boolify.org. As a matter of fact, by using its boolean terms you can refine your search and exclude a lot of useless results, just to focalize your search on the things that really matters to you. But what does Boolean searh mean? They are instructions (AND, OR, NOT) which tell Google what and how to search, including and/or excluding infos you are or you are not interested in. Of course you don’t have to learn anything about boolean codes because Boolify.org, thanks to its simple interface, makes the use of these instructions extremely easy. Here is a brief explanation of how this website works.

If you are a webmaster you know only too well how important to speak with your visitors is. This, not only to solve some issue or questions they may have about your blog, but also to link them to it, so that they will come back to see what is new. A wonderful and easy solution to start talking with your visitors is to open a chat to speak with them while online. Hab.la is a website offering you such a service for free. Basically, Hab.la is an easy-to-use chat to integrate in your blog. It doesn’t need any extra software nor special requirements to work, plus it is very simple to install. It works with Safari, Firefox, IE6, IE7, and Opera and rely on any Jabber client (such as: Meebo. Trillian. Pidgin. iChat …) to operate. Reading from the website: ” Hab.la lets visitors to your website chat with you without any extra chat software. Their messages show up in your favorite instant messaging app. Hab.la is easy for webmasters to set up and friendly to your visitors’ web browsers. Better yet, Hab.la is free.” I like the idea these guys have got. Chatting is a wonderful way to entartain your visitors, above all if you want your blog to get away from the idea somebody might have about it being cold, deserted and with no life. Showing the webmaster online gives people the impression they are not alone, and can get help whenever they want. Again, great idea!

Every year in the Internet are sold hundreds of domains for a lot of dollars. Some of them are quite famous, other ones are not but anyway all of them are worth so much money that the battle to get them is so hard that it is fought by offering millions of dollars at a time. Here is the list of the most expensive domains in the Internet:

1. Sex.com (sold between 11 and 14 millions of dollars in January 2006). This tells you a lot about what make the Web spin.
2. Porn.com (sold for 9,5 millions of dollars in 2007). It is incredible how the Internet is so strongly connected with sex, isn’t it?
3. Business.com (sold for 7,5 millions of dollars in 1999)
4. Diamonds.com (sold for 7,5 millions of dollars. The date of selling is unknown)
5. Beer.com (sold for 7 millions of dollars. The date of selling is unknown)
6. AsSeenOnTv.com (sold for 5,1 millions of dollars in 2000)
7. Shop.com (sold for 3,5 millions of dollars. The date of selling is unknown)
8. Wine.com (sold for 2,9 millions of dollars in September 1999)
9. Creditcards.com (sold for 2,75 millions of dollars in July 2004)
10. VIP.com: 9sold for 1,4 millions of dollars in September 2005)

Have you ever seen those nice pictures which are made by hundreds of small, really small different pictures (a.k.a. mosaics) ? I have ever wondered about the procedure to make them, thinking that maybe just Photoshop experts could really produce those beautiful masterpieces. Well, now I know how to make them, and I know that it is not difficult at all. In fact, Picartia promises to change your ordinary pictures into beautiful mosaics composed by hundreds of different colorful pictures! The whole procedure is quite simply. First of all you have to go to Picartia website. No registration is required. Once there, upload your picture, pick up the gallery ( each gallery has a particular theme such as: babies, cities,birds, batterflies, kitties etc.) which is composed by pictures which will become part of the mosaic, and you are done: an email containing a link to your mosaic will be delivered to your email account! No extra knowledge is required. From now on you will be able to boast with your friends about the stunning creativity you have got!

If you are a webmaster and a member of the famous Google Adsense program, you may be interested in knowing what kind of ads your blog displays in a certain country. This is useful to determine not only if the ads are pertinent and relevant to your blog’s topics, but also helps you get rid of those ads which pay very little (of course you have to use the Competitive Ad Filter to do that). Adsense Sandbox does a very simple and important task. It shows you which ads are running in a country. It displays most of the ads available in the Adsense program namely: Leaderboard 728 x 90, Banner (468 x 60), Square (250 x 250), Small Square (200 x 200), Adlinks (200 x 90), Large Rectangle (336 x 280), Skyscraper (120 x 600), Wide Skyscraper (160 x 600), Medium Rectangle (300 x 250). Alternatively you can also download a Preview Tool directly from Google by clicking here.

This website is a a web content management suite that allows you to edit a website in seconds, thanks to an easy interface that uploads your website and lets you work on it, even with the help of other people. Of course everything is done while you are online. No special knowledge is required, no back-end skills necessary, you don’t even have to look at any piece of code. Just drag and drop. Type in the name of your blog in the field and you can start personalising it right away. It is very easy to use and is highly advisable to people who know very little about coding or don’t want to spend too much time to modify their websites.

If you have issues writing on your computer because you are sidetracked by icons, sidebars, bright colors, different useless options which confuse you etc., then you have got to try this nice website. As a matter of fact DarkCopy contains a nice, simple, bare-bone, black text editor which promises you not to distract when you are writing something. There are just two simple options: Save as a file to save what you have written as .txt format and Start full screen to enlarge the typing area to the whole screen. The rest is up to you. After all the only thing which really matters is what you write!