Blog24h: Tricks - Widget - Templates: 05/2010

Earn money by directing users to signup with BidVertiser

Place a Referral button or a text link on your site and you will start to earn money when a user clicks on your button or link and signs as an advertiser or a publisher:

When a user signs as an advertiser and first spends $10, we'll

credit your account with $5. When that same advertiser

spends $50, you will be credited with an additional $20.

When a user signs as a publisher and first earns $10, we'll

credit your account with $10. When that same publisher

earns $50, you will be credited with an additional $40.

Your earnings will be tracked in your Referral control panel, including clicks, sign-ups and conversions.
We pay monthly, either by check or instantly through PayPal with a minimum of only $10.

How does it work?

Sample Referral Buttons:

Choose whether you wish to refer advertisers or publishers (or both)

Choose your preferred button size or text link

Add the Referral code to your website or emails

Track your earnings

Bidvertiser - Make Money For Blogger

Make money from your Website or Blog - get paid for every click!
Join BidVertiser now and we will turn your advertising space into cash!

Simply display the BidVertiser text ads on your website and let advertisers bid against each other!

We will always display the highest bidders to maximize your revenue so you will make more money!

New! BidVertiser Ads For Feeds - Now you can also make money from your feeds!

Make money with affiliate program that pays you for every click
You get paid for every visitor that clicks on an ad. Our goal is to enable you to make as much as possible from your advertising space, by letting advertisers bid on your ad space. We pay monthly, either by check, or instantly through PayPal with a minimum of only $10

Always have the highest bidders displayed on your website
BidVertiser will always display the highest bidders on your site, assuring the maximum revenue possible at any given time.

Have your bidding steadily improved over time
You will see a constant improvement in your bidding over time, as both your visitors and our advertisers will be exposed to the opportunity of bidding against each other on your ad space.

Customize the layout of your ads
BidVertiser gives you a simple point-and-click tool to help you customize the layout of the ads to fit your site's look and feel, in order to retain the high quality of your website.

Block any unwanted ad
BidVertiser enables you to filter-out any unwanted ads. Prior to your own filtering, each ad has to be pre-approved by our editorial team. This mechanism gives you a peace of mind with regards to the ads displayed on your website.

Generate detailed reports to monitor your ads performance
Use the Publisher Center to generate detailed online reports to monitor your ads performance, including the number of page impressions, clicks, click-through rate, and the total amount you've earned.

Bidvertiser - eBay Sellers

Drive Buyers to your eBay Listings and Stores

Run your ad on our pay per click advertising network and start receiving new targeted and easy-to-convert prospects in less than 10 minutes:

Browse our directory of participating sites and use our keyword tool to target the ones that are appropriate for your eBay item(s).
Choose your geographical targeting, to only show your ads to users from specific locations.
Set your max bid and budget.
Choose any of your eBay Items.
Your ad is created automaticaly.
Your ad runs on the categories you have selected.

Pay per click advertising on sites of your choice
With BidVertiser, you choose the categories to place your ad on. Simply browse through our categorized directory of sites and choose the appropriate ones for your ad.

Pay only for the clicks you receive
We use a pay per click advertising (ppc) model which means that you only pay for the clicks you receive. You choose how much you are willing to pay for each click, in each of the categories you have chosen to display your ads on.

Set the max price you are willing to pay per click
We automatically adjust your cost-per-click to just $0.01 above the next closest competitor, so you get the best price available for your traffic.

Choose your geographical targeting
BidVertiser allows you to display your ads within a geographic range you determine. Simply choose your geographical targeting and we will show your ads only to users located anywhere in the country or countries you selected.

Monitor the performance of your ads
Use the Advertiser Center to monitor the performance of your ads by customizing dozens of online reports such as the number of page impressions, clicks, click-through rate and the total amount you've spent.

Twitter and its benefits

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service which can be used by its users to send and read other users updates. Updates on Twitter are called Tweets. Tweets are text-based posts which contains up to 140 characters. Using tweets anyone can share his/her ideas, political views, personal interests and any of the news happening in all around the world. Everyone is free to share his/her ideas on twitter.
Tweets are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them. Subscribers on Twitter are called followers. You can follow to anyone on twitter whose thought or news you want to know.
Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. This service is free to use over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey in 2006. Within a very short period of time Twitter has become very popular worldwide.

Benefits of Twitter:

One of the best benefits of Twitter is that it’s a link sharing resource. You can share your website/blog link over there.
Using tweets you can share any articles of your interest with people on twitter.
You can share any hot news or upcoming stories through twitter.

By seoprofessional24

Top Blog Directories

Blog Directories are somewhat like to web directories. Like you submit your website in web directory, similarly you can submit blogs in blog directories. By submitting your blog in blog directories you can get a valuable link for your blog. Below is the list of top blog directories.

http://blogs.botw.org/
http://www.bloghub.com
http://www.britblog.com/
http://www.blogcatalog.com
http://www.blogged.com/
http://www.biggerblogger.com/
http://www.bloggernity.com/
http://www.superblogdirectory.com/
http://www.blogio.ne/
http://www.bloglisting.net/

By seoprofessional24

PPC Management and Tips

Pay Per Click(PPC) is one of the SEO strategy that comes under paid SEO category. It is one of the best way to drive visitors to a website when you have not done enough organic SEO on the website. PPC is a guaranteed method that bring visitors to your website. This is the strategy in which a advertiser pay for every click on the ad hosted by him. Through this method a website is advertised in search engine results based on keyword or key phrases typed by users in search engines. The search result is maintained on the basis of bid rate. Highest bid comes on top in search results.

PPC ads are also placed on content sites. Content sites mainly charge a fixed price for every click rather than the bid system. PPC should always be done with proper care, otherwise it can cost you a lot. To get the valuable visitors, first you must perform a keywords research. Only your targeted keywords should be used while doing PPC. It required targeted keywords, key phrases and appropriate titles. Next and most important aspect of PPC campaign is the Click Through Rate(CTR). CTR is calculated as Cost Per Click(CPC) divided by number of impressions. You need to sep up a monthly budget. You can also change your bid rates if you feel that its very low or high. You may get to know about the current bid rates on particular keywords through Google traffic estimator tool i.e. https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

One of the most popular PPC advertisers are Google Adwards, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft Ad Center. The minimum Cost Per Click(CPC) varies upon competition on the keywords and the search engine standards.

By seoprofessional24

Keyword Research

Keyword Research is also known as Keyword Analysis. Keyword Analysis is probably one of the first steps in search engine optimization(SEO). To start the SEO task first you need to know the targeted keywords of your website. For this keyword research is done.
To start with keyword research the theme of the website is identified. Keyword research depends on some of important factors. Like theme of website, whether the website is offering products or services. If the website is a product selling website then first you need to maintain a list of all the products on website to be sold. And also all the sub categories are listed. An example of a product selling website is ebay. Here you can buy as well as sell products. So, the first important keywords are buy, sell, buy products, sell products. And after this products will be specified as keywords with the keywords buy, sell and also separately. For example some products on ebay are cars, camera, books, computers, mobile and so on. All these product names are the keywords for the website. Then these products will be combined with the keyword buy and sell, like buy camera, sell camera, buy books, sell books, buy mobile, sell mobile. Now all these products will have sub categories like for computers we can have monitors, laptops, printers and many more.
Keywords research include analysis of important keywords and after that for those keywords, keyword phrases are identified. Keyword phrase is one which combines two or more important keywords. Example of keyword phrases are buy nokia mobile phone, buy old nokia mobile phone, buy nokia 7200 online etc.
A website which is offering services can be a web development website. For this we can choose keywords like web development, web development company, web services. Now keywords phrases will target many other factors like locations, programming language based on which company works. Like web development India, web development company India, Java web development, web development in Java etc.
As we mentioned above that keywords research is the first step of search engine optimization, that is why it must be done with proper care and accurately. Because the success of any website in search engines is measured in terms of Search Engine Ranking Placement( SERP) of its targeted keywords. And it totally depends on that exactly which keywords we have chosen as the targeted keywords for the website and for the same we need to perform SEO tasks in terms of on page optimization and off page optimization.
There also some online tools available for keywords research, which makes keywords research more simplified and accurate for you. The fact is that you need to know your website theme, important products or services. After that you can put your important keywords(one at a time) in the available tool and tool will generate lots of keywords phrases for you automatically. After that you can choose keywords from the generated list as per your requirements.
Here is the list of some keywords generation tools:
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
http://www.selfseo.com/keyword_suggestion_tool.php

By seoprofessional24

How to use Meta Tags in Search Engine Promotion

Meta tags are associated with Search Engine Optimization Process. After keywords analysis, second step is to use appropriate meta tags on all the pages of a website. Meta tags are mainly used to provide information to search engines about website and all its pages. When we talk about meta tags, it mainly relates to meta descriptions and meta keyword tags. Some search engines like Google display the meta tags as part of the search results. However meta keywords do not appear in the search results.
Using meta tags you can give a small overview about your web page. Meta tags should be very informative, with a small summary about your complete web page. This way you can get most targeted visitors on your website. However, if you don’t use meta tag, search engines automatically extract some data from page content, based on the searched keyword.
Meta tags are basically written in HTML code. Meta tags are placed before closing the head, i.e. (in between of ). To write the meta description it’s a very simple code here. and for the meta keywords code is . Different keywords are written using a comma(,) after each keyword. The length of meta description is around 155 characters. Anything more than this will not be considered by Google.
Well written meta tags and titles can attract more targeted visitors to your website. If you have written very good description about your products or services on every web page, then after reading it in the search results, you will surely get good clicks. Meta descriptions should always be written based on the content of the web page.

By seoprofessional24

How to make your website Search Engine Friendly

By making a website search engine friendly you can achieve good Search Engine Ranking Placements(SERP). A search engine friendly website will come up in searches easily and by the same you can get good increased traffic on your targeted keywords. To make a website search engine friendly means to optimize a website on its targeted keywords. Below are some of the important steps by which you can make your website more search engine friendly.
To start with first you must know your targeted keywords for the website. You can check out the keywords using Google keywords tool. The tool will also tell you about the number of searches on a particular keyword. Based on that you can set your most targeted keywords.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Title tag of every page should be based on the most important keyword(s) of that page. Meta description in some little words should properly describe the whole page.
Now it comes to the h1 tag implementation. There should only be one h1 tag on a page. H1 tag should be set the most important keyword of page, after that for other keywords you can use two h2 tags.
Keywords density on a page should be 3 to 4%. Use strong tag on the repeated keywords or key phrases. This helps search engine crawlers to easily crawl the important keywords of a web page.
For image optimization give an appropriate alt tag to every image. Set title for every hyperlink. Like .
Create RSS feed for the website and upload on server.
Most important is to create a sitemap for the website. There are two types of sitemaps, one is HTML sitemap and other is XML sitemap. HTML sitemap is mainly for website users from where they can check all the pages of website at one place and the XML sitemap is created for search engine crawlers. An XML sitemap helps search engine crawlers to easily get and crawl all the pages of website. XML sitemap is very useful for easy and early crawling of web pages of a website.
All the above points considered while doing on page optimization of a website can really give a good advantage to a website.

By seoprofessional24

Why Search Engine Submissions are Important?

Search Engine submission is one of the ways to promote a website. Whenever you create a website or blog, that needs to be crawled by search engine crawlers. Only after crawling the web pages of your website, search engines show them in the search queries. But if your website or web pages have not been crawled by search engine crawlers, your website can never be come into search results. For this you always need to submit your website in search engines. But it doesn’t mean that if you don’t submit a website in search engines, that will never be crawled. Crawling may be a delayed process without search engine submissions. So, if you are looking for easy and fast crawling of your pages then submit website in search engines.
Some of the very important search engines in which submissions are very necessary are Google, Yahoo and MSN(Bing). Submissions in other search engines is also important. Check below the list of Search Engines where you can make submissions.
http://www.google.com/
http://www.yahoo.com/
http://www.bing.com/
http://www.altavista.com/
http://www.aol.com/
http://www.alltheweb.com/
http://www.lycos.com/
http://search.netscape.com/
http://www.hotbot.com/
http://www.ask.com/
http://www.gigablast.com/
http://www.dogpile.com/
http://infoseek.go.com/
http://www.excite.com/
http://www.webcrawler.com/
http://www.whatUseek.com/
http://www.comfind.com/

By seoprofessional24

How Social Networks help in Promotion?

Now a days social networks are not only limited for entertainment. They have become a business place where you can share you business ideas, services, products etc. Social networks are one where you can communicate with thousands or even lakhs of people and can introduce them about your business services. On social networks you will get number of professionals of different fields. You can add them as per your business or personal interests.
Social networks are the best to use for business promotions. On these networks you can share any of your new business services or product by giving your web address. This will be shared on the wall of all of your friends and from there they can read and contact you about your products or services. This is how social networks help in business promotion. There are number of social networks on internet to which you can join. Even some professional social networks are also there. One of the big names in the list of professional social networks is linkedin.com. Over here you will get professionals and companies related to every field.
Some of the most popular social networks for business promotion are facebook, myspace, bigadda, ibibo, orkut, hi5, desimartini, indyarocks, tagged any many more.

By seoprofessional24

Ideas for SEO Link Building

Link building is an important aspect of SEO. It is completely related to improve back links of a web page or website. To get high page rank on particular keywords you need to perform link building based on those keywords. Link building can be performed in many ways.
The first and easy way to improve links is perform directory submissions i.e. submit website in web directories. There are number of web directories available on internet where you can submit website using targeted titles and description of your website. You can perform submissions in paid or free web directories.
You can also perform one way link building or reciprocal link building on similar theme websites. Blog comments are also very effective to improve back links of a site. You can make comments on do follow blogs, which is very beneficial.
One of the stronger form of link building is article submissions. Write articles based on your theme and submit them in popular article directories. Links through article sites get easily cached by Google. One of the latest trend of SEO is blogging. Write blogs and give back links to your website through blog posts. A good number of links in blogs provide high search engine rankings in less times, because blogs are easily cached by Google. Most important content in blogs should be original and unique.
Forum posts with signature links are also a good way to improve back links. You can also do yahoo answering by giving a link of your website. Link building is very wide and these days there are number of sources to perform link building. If you give all the links wisely and accurately in different sources, high search engine rankings are not far to you.

By seoprofessional24

Increase Traffic: How to increase Search Engine Traffic

To grow a website naturally, organic search engines traffic is really important. To increase traffic, search engine optimizers apply number of SEO methods. One of the very common method to increase traffic is link exchange. Some of other methods for traffic increase is social bookmarking, blog comments, forum posting, yahoo answers, classified posts, B2B promotions, Promotion through squidoo lenses and hubpages. But, now a days social media marketing has become very important to increase traffic.
Social media marketing has a direct effect on traffic increase. Some of the effective social media sites through which you can gain good traffic are twitter, stumbleupon, digg, facebook, myspace, flickr, vox, blogger, livejournal, multiply. You can make daily updates on these sites about the latest news and new coming pages of your website. You can also join communities and groups on social networking websites.
And at last one of the most prominent and stable way of increasing traffic is to get search engine rankings on your major keywords of your site. For this first you must know the most important keywords of your site through keywords analysis. If you get high search engine rankings on your targeted keywords, then automatically you will get search traffic through search engines. To increase search engine traffic you need a good number of quality links on your targeted keywords. For this you can increase links through link exchange, article postings, blog postings and other off page SEO techniques.

By seoprofessional24

Importance of SEO in Website Development

Website Development doesn’t only mean to design a website and upload it on a web server. If you have designed a very good website and it’s not coming in search results of search engines then your all efforts are waste. You can’t reach to your targeted visitors and will not be able to sell your services and products online.

To make your website visible on search engines you need to perform internet marketing of your website by using the techniques of search engine optimization(SEO). While designing of website you must use SEO friendly tags on website. Like your website should be fully optimized with title tags, meta tags, H1, H2 and H3 tags. Give titles on hyperlinks, perform image optimization. Interlinking in website is very important. Try to use less number of images and flash on website. XML sitemap is very important for good crawling of web pages. All these points will make a website search engine friendly i.e SEO friendly.

Next role of SEO is through Off Page SEO. Off page SEO is very important to increase back links of a website and to improve its web presence on social networks and social media sites. There are number of sources for off page SEO. Some of the important off page SEO techniques are: Submit website in Search Engines, Perform Directory Submissions, Article submissions in top article directories, Social Bookmarking, Promotion in related forums, Promotion through yahoo answers, blog postings and blog comments, Promotion of company’s services and products on social media sites and social networking site. You can also communities and groups on these sites which helps in tremendous increase in traffic. More is exchange links on similar theme sites. Use Squidoo Lenses, Google knol and Hubpages for promotion.

SEO makes your website development complete, so always consider SEO strategies while designing of a website and after that off page SEO Promotion is very important to increase visitors on website.

By seoprofessional24

Make Money Online With Forex

Gary McKinnon lawyers lobby new home secretary

The new home secretary has been urged to overrule her predecessor's decision to allow the extradition of UK computer hacker Gary McKinnon.

Mr McKinnon's lawyers have made "representations" to Conservative Theresa May as part of a long campaign to prevent a US trial for their client.
A judge is due to rule on whether the previous home secretary Alan Johnson was wrong to allow the extradition.
Both David Cameron and Nick Clegg have previously criticised the move.
The new Foreign Secretary William Hague has not commented on this specific case but has promised a fresh look at extradition arrangements between the UK and the US.
Glasgow-born Mr McKinnon, who has Asperger's syndrome, is accused of breaking into the US military computer system. He says he was seeking evidence of UFOs.
Judicial review
The computer systems Mr McKinnon is accused of breaking into include those at the Pentagon. If convicted, the 43-year-old - now of Wood Green, north London - faces 60 years in prison.
Mr McKinnon's lawyer Karen Todner said the solicitors firm Kaim Todner had asked Mrs May to "intervene and prevent the extradition".
"We hope the new Liberal-Conservative Government will act upon their previous public statements that it would be unjust to extradite Mr McKinnon," she said.
Last year, Mr Cameron said that if Mr McKinnon had questions to answer there was "a clear argument to be made that he should answer them in a British court".
In January Mr McKinnon's legal team was granted permission for a judicial review of Mr Johnson's decision that sending him to the US for trial would not breach his human rights.
Election candidate
At the time the Home Office said it had "noted" the court's decision.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said the judicial review was "heartening news" and said he hoped the courts would "display more courage than our ministers".
Mr McKinnon's mother, Janis Sharp, has often spoken of the stress of the long campaign.
Speaking earlier this year she said: "We've fought for so long for compassion and understanding. Gary's health has badly declined, it's been traumatic to see."
Earlier this month she stood for election as an independent in Jack Straw's Blackburn constituency, saying she blamed the justice secretary for pushing through the extradition treaty with the US.
She came last with 173 votes.

By BBC

No proof of mobile cancer risk, major study concludes

Using a mobile phone does not appear to increase the risk of developing certain types of brain cancer, the largest study of its kind has concluded.

Analysis of more than 10,000 people by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) found no relationship between years of use and risk.
There is no known biological mechanism by which mobiles could cause cancer, but there has been public concern.
It is hoped this study will allay some anxieties, as research continues.
The overall rate of brain cancer has not risen in countries where use has long been prevalent - like Sweden, and studies have mostly found no evidence of an increased risk. This latest research is consistent with this.
The 20m euro (£17m) Interphone study, which received some funding from the mobile industry, involved more than 5,000 men and women from 13 countries who had been diagnosed with one of two types of brain cancer - glioma and meningioma - between 2000 and 2004.
These cancers, both rare, were judged to be among the most likely to be influenced by phone use.
The patients were asked to record their mobile phone usage, and then the results were compared with adults of similar age, sex and background who did not have the disease.
Some had been using their phones for more than a decade, making this one of the longest-ranging studies to date.
Extreme results
In fact, most regular users - defined as people who made use of their phone at least once a week - appeared to have a lower risk of brain cancer than those who rarely used a phone. The report authors stressed however this was unlikely to be down to any protective effect of phone use, and more a quirk of the study.

This is consistent with published biological studies, which have not established any effect of exposure to radiation from mobile phones at a cellular level nor found a mechanism by which cancer could be caused

Professor Patricia McKinney
Interphone researcher
University of Leeds

But they also dismissed as problematic the finding that at the other extreme end of the spectrum those using the phone for the longest cumulative periods, more than 1,640 hours, appeared to have a higher risk, regardless of over what period of time this was spread. This was as much as 40% higher for glioma, and 15% higher for meningioma.
Nearly 50 cancer patients reported using their phone more than five hours every day of the week, with 10 recalling that they had used it for 12 hours each day.
"It's not impossible that people were using their phones for this long, but it is highly unlikely," said Professor Anthony Swerdlow of the Institute of Cancer Research, which carried out one of the two UK arms of the study.
The report noted that people with brain tumours were more likely to overestimate the role of a potential risk factor, and that the disease interferes with memory and cognition, undermining the accuracy of the recollections of such extreme use.
Unlike lung cancer, where the risk rises the more cigarettes are smoked, this mobile phone data shows no increased risk until the very heaviest use begins. This was also seen as casting doubt on the reliability of the reports.
"This study cannot answer whether there are long-term risks beyond fifteen years, nor would it have been able to pick up much, much smaller risks," says Professor Swerdlow. "But if there was a large and immediate risk we would have seen it.
"Whether it is worth doing more research, that is a question for society. These are expensive studies, and there are many other things in the world that should be investigated.
"It is society which has to answer the question of how long you continue to investigate something that does not have a biological basis."
There were however reports of some differences within the research team as to how best to interpret the data, and the authors do say that further analysis of long-term, heavy use is in order.
A prospective study was in fact launched last month to examine the long term effects of mobile phone use. Cosmos, the cohort study on mobile communications, will recruit 250,000 and follow them for as long as 30 years.
The lobby group Mast was not assuaged by the Interphone findings, arguing that it wanted to see results for other cancers including salivary gland tumours and acoustic neuromas.

By BBC

Facebook downplays privacy crisis meeting

Facebook has downplayed the significance of a company-wide meeting to discuss privacy issues.

The blogosphere described the meeting as a panic measure following weeks of criticism over the way it handles members' data.
Several US senators have made public calls for Facebook to rethink its privacy safeguards.
The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, launched a petition directed at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
It called on him to regain the trust of users by giving them control over all the information shared via Facebook.
Earlier this week European data protection officials weighed in on the controversy and called privacy changes "unacceptable".
A number of high-profile users have also deleted their Facebook accounts after the site introduced a new feature that lets non-Facebook websites, or third parties, post the personal views of Facebook users without their consent.
'Back to basics'
Facebook described its internal get together as part of its "open culture" giving employees "a forum to ask questions on a topic that has received a lot of outside interest".
Industry watchers said the company, which is the world's biggest social network, has shown it has "lost touch" over the issue.

Facebook's more than 400 million users share 25 billion things a month

"Most of us got onto Facebook because we want to know what our high school quarterback is doing or to reconnect with old school friends, not worry about how our information is going to be used," Catharine P Taylor, media blogger with news site BNET.com told the BBC.
"They need to get back to basics, throw out their policy and start all over again," she said. "It's way too complex for most people to understand how to change their settings and if they can't make it simple for people to make choices, it will cost them."

Digital marketing expert Mike Teasdale and BBC Click's technology reporter LJ Rich on Facebook's flaws

A report this week by the New York Times revealed that Facebook's privacy policy has 50 different settings and 170 options.
The paper also found that the policy is longer than the US Constitution with 5,830 words.
'How to quit'
Recently the issue of how to deactivate a Facebook account has gained traction.
The blog SearchEngineLand reported that anyone who typed the query "How to quit..." into Google got as their number eight automated result "how to quit Facebook". It followed results for how to quit smoking, your job and drinking.

tweet about someone deleting their Facebook account

More and more people are investigating how to quit the site

A number of well respected technologists have pulled the plug on their account.
Peter Rojas, co-founder of the gadget site gdgt.com, told ABC News he quit because he "was spending more time managing my account than actually using my account.
"Having to constantly monitor the privacy settings was way too complicated. You can never be sure you caught everything."
As a result of the disquiet over Facebook's approach to privacy, a project that is being viewed as an alternative has been getting a lot of attention.
Diaspora is the brainchild of four students from New York University, which they described as "privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network".
The students originally set a target to raise $10,000 to get their open source project off the ground over the summer but to date more than 3,300 backers have pledged in excess of $125,000.
"This is proof that people are scared and they don't have anywhere to go," Diaspora co-founder Max Salzberg told BBC News.
"I think a distributed social network is what people want. People value all their information online and we want to put users back in control of what they share."

HAVE YOUR SAY

Why do they have to keep messing with something that works just fine as it is

Capella, UK

Send us your comments

Diaspora is just one of many other alternatives to Facebook starting to spring up that includes OneSocialWeb, Elgg and Appleseed.
Security upgrades
On the same day as the all-hands meeting at Facebook, the company launched new security measures to battle spam and other malicious attacks.
The upgrades include being able to approve the devices users commonly use to log in and being notified when that account has been accessed via a device that has not been approved. Another feature is giving users the ability to block suspicious logins before they happen.
"We're confident that these new tools and systems will do a lot to prevent unauthorised logins and the nuisance they can cause," said Lev Popov, a software engineer on Facebook's site integrity team.
"As always, though, the first line of defence is you. We need you to help by practicing safe behaviour on Facebook and wherever you go online."

Geoff Thompson named 2018 World Cup bid chairman

Ex-Football Association chairman Geoff Thompson has been appointed chairman of England's 2018 World Cup bid team after Lord Triesman resigned on Sunday.

Triesman was caught up in a newspaper sting suggesting Spain could drop its bid if rival bidder Russia helped bribe referees at this summer's World Cup.
Thompson is vice-president of world football's governing body Fifa.
And fellow 2018 board member Sebastian Coe insists the bid can overcome the setback of Triesman's abrupt departure.
Coe, who masterminded the 2005 campaign to bring the Olympic Games to London, has devised a rescue plan for the 2018 bid.

Damage to World Cup bid 'not fatal'

"It has been traumatic but it does not become a bad bid overnight," said Coe.
"Solid foundations are in place: we have the best venues, the most passionate fans, the best market for sponsors and an unparalleled ability to deliver this tournament in safe and secure surroundings.
"The only thing we don't have is the private views of the former chairman."
Thompson is well known in the upper reaches of football administration, having previously served as FA chairman for nine years before Triesman.
The 64-year-old is also vice-president of European football's governing body Uefa and was part of the five-man delegation that presented England's bid book to Fifa in Zurich on Friday.
Coe, who is a lifelong Chelsea fan, has already briefed Fifa general secretary Jerome Valcke and is set to speak to president Sepp Blatter on Monday.
Although the healing may begin when Thompson attends a meeting of the International FA board (the body which oversees the laws of football) in Zurich on Tuesday.

DAVID BOND'S BLOG

I am told that at least one other newspaper was offered the story and turned it down

Meanwhile, Coe - along with Thompson, 2018 chief executive Andy Anson, 2012 official Sir Keith Mills and other board members and bid executives - will continue talking to Fifa to explain the circumstances behind Triesman's departure.
Double Olympic gold medallist Coe took leave of absence from his position as chairman of Fifa's ethics committee in February 2009 after he was appointed as a non-executive member of the bid board.
Mills, the deputy chairman of the London Organising Committee and a Tottenham director, stepped down from the 2018 bid board when it was streamlined late last year.
Russian bid chief Alexey Sorokin responded by describing the allegations as "absurd" and urged Fifa to "take appropriate measures" ahead of the decision on who will host the showpiece event, which is expected to be made in December.

England fans 'fed up' with press

But former England keeper Peter Shilton believes there will be no long-term impact on the World Cup bid.
"One person does not make a bid," said Shilton, who holds a record 125 England appearances and is an ambassador for the 2018 bid.
"Everybody makes mistakes, it has happened in the past and will happen in the future.
"I am part of the World Cup bid, and feel it does not take anything away.
"Things do die down, and it is the actual substance of the case, which I think is very strong for us to host the World Cup, is what will be the deciding factor."
Triesman was secretly recorded allegedly divulging sensitive information to a former aide, including a claim that Spain and Russia, rival bidders for the 2018 World Cup, were conspiring to bribe referees at next month's finals as part of efforts to win the right to host the tournament.
The former Labour peer accused the Mail on Sunday newspaper of engaging in "entrapment" tactics in order to cause him personal embarrassment.

Lord Triesman resigns as FA chairman

"In that conversation I commentated on speculation circulating about conspiracies around the world," said Triesman.
"Those comments were never intended to be taken seriously as indeed is the case with many private conversations."
Before Triesman's unwanted spell in the headlines England's 2018 World Cup candidacy was generally viewed as having a good chance of success.
But the bid team now faces an uphill task to persuade Fifa's executive to award them the event for the first time since 1966.
Triesman has also resigned as FA chairman and will be replaced by board members David Sheepshanks and Roger Burden who will be drafted in as acting joint-chairmen.
The revelations came only two days after the FA submitted their 1,752-page bid book to try to persuade Fifa to award England the 2018 event.

2018 BID TEAM BOARD

Geoff Thompson - chairman

Andy Anson - chief executive

Brian Mawhinney

Paul Elliott

Lord Sebastian Coe

A European bid is tipped to get the 2018 tournament with England up against Russia and joint bids from Spain/Portugal and Belgium/Netherlands.
The other bidders, although they are mainly focused on the 2022 tournament, are Australia, the United States, Japan, Qatar and South Korea.
And the new the minister for sport and the Olympics, Hugh Robertson, is certain England's bid team can recover.
"I don't think anybody would pretend it's been particularly helpful," Robertson told BBC Radio 5 live.
"But London 2012 went through exactly this process. You may remember there was an extraordinarily unhelpful Panorama programme that attacked the entire integrity of the IOC.
"After that, London 2012 were told that their bid was dead but they overcame that.

COMMENT FROM PAPERS AND BLOGS

This was a very English coup, not the result of some fierce row over principle

"Whatever Lord Triesman may or may not have said, he didn't attack Sepp Blatter personally, or the entire integrity of either Fifa or Uefa.
"In some ways this is an offence of a much lesser order."
As for the validity of the reported claims from Triesman, Robertson said: "Nothing I have heard at any stage in the process, either in opposition or in Government, suggests there is any truth in these allegations whatsoever."

By BBC

European car sales fall for first time in 10 months

New car registrations in Europe fell in April from a year ago, the first year-on-year drop for 10 months.

The figures, from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association, Acea, show 1.14 million cars were registered, down 7.4% on last year.
Acea said the fall - as much as 25% in some countries - came as government schemes designed to stimulate sales of new cars were wound up.
These were launched in many European countries early last year.
The programmes succeeded in boosting sales, but now they have either finished or are coming to an end, sales have dropped compared with a year ago.
Acea said in a statement: "In the first months of the present year ... government support has ended or begun to fade out and the economic situation remains difficult."
Germany, whose scheme ended in September, saw the biggest year-on-year fall in registrations, with a drop of 31.7% on last April.
France, whose scrappage scheme is still in place, albeit at a reduced level, saw a 1.9% rise in registrations.
Nissan ahead In terms of companies, the clear winner was Japan's Nissan, which saw 38.3% more new Nissans on the road in April compared with a year ago.
BMW recorded an increase of 13.1%, while Renault sales rose 8.7%.
Fiat was the biggest loser with registrations down 27.3%, Toyota - which has seen a raft of high-profile safety recalls - saw its sales drop by 20.7%, while GM saw registrations decline by 19.1%.
Taking the first four months of the year together, registrations were 4.8% higher than a year ago. However, they were well down on levels before the crisis hit - 11.6% fewer cars were registered in the same period in 2010 than in 2008.

By BBC

Vodafone profit rises on emerging markets

Mobile phone operator Vodafone has reported a big rise in profits, with emerging markets performing well.

Pre-tax profits for the year to March totalled £8.7bn, the UK-based company said, with revenues up in Asia and Africa.
That is more than double the £4.2bn profit reported last year, though one-off charges hit those figures.
The company now has 341 million customers, with 8.5 million net additions in the past three months.
Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao said the company was in shape to weather the economic problems and benefit from economic recovery.
"We are creating a stronger Vodafone, which is positioned to return to revenue growth during the 2011 financial year, as economic recovery should benefit our key markets," he said.
The company said that a third of its income was now coming from products other than "mobile voice", with fixed-line and mobile broadband services continuing to grow strongly.
Vodafone also benefited from its focus on emerging markets, with India showing providing strong revenue growth.
But it also said the introduction of new charges on Indian licences, together with increased competition, would result in an impairment charge this year of £2.3bn.
The company also reported falls in revenues in some of its more established European markets, with the UK seeing a 4.7% decline.

By BBC

Google's Wi-Fi Spying: What Were They Thinking?

"Don't be evil" has gone all 1984 on us. Or so it seems after Google revealed Friday that its Street View cars, in addition to snapping photos of the world's roadways, have also been collecting sensitive personal information from unencrypted wireless networks.
It was no secret that Google's cars had already been collecting publicly broadcast SSID information (Wi-Fi network names) and MAC addresses (unique numbers for devices like Wi-Fi routers). But this techie data, which is used for location-based services such as Google Maps, didn't include any "payload data," or personal information sent over the network.
Or so "Big Brother" Google claimed on April 27. But yesterday the search behemoth 'fessed up to a security gaffe of Orwellian proportions. Due to a piece of code written in 2006 by an engineer for an experimental Wi-Fi project, Google had in fact been collecting those private bits after all:
"But it's now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products," wrote Alan Eustace, Google senior VP, engineering & research.
Wow. That's freaky and strange. And not in a good way, either.
Google was smart to open up about the spying incident. An attempted cover-up would have proven disastrous, particularly when numerous consumer and government agencies worldwide have criticized the search company's seemingly insatiable appetite for personal information, a quest that critics say infringes on individual privacy rights.
There's little doubt the Wi-Fi spying incident won't fade away quietly. In fact, the Electronic Frontiers Association (EFA) and Australia Privacy Foundation (APF) have joined forces to question potential security mishaps by Google's Street View, according to a report by Computerworld Australia.
The latest Street View controversy is sweet fodder for conspiracy theorists. As someone said to me responding to the news: "Imagine, Google driving around in vans, taking pictures of EVERYTHING, and gobbling up Wi-Fi signals like some new-age techno CIA." Sweet conspiracy fodder, indeed.
If nothing else, Google's security gaffe should serve as a wake-up call to clueless folk who've yet to encrypt their home Wi-Fi networks. Do you get it now? Anybody may be snooping on you.

Sprint 4G: The Home Broadband Alternative?

In addition to being a pretty cool phone with all the latest bells and whistles, the HTC Evo 4G has one very unique attribute: It's the first U.S. handset designed for 4G (fourth generation) mobile broadband networks.

Sprint says its 4G WiMax network, a partnership between the wireless carrier and its broadband partner Clearwire, is up to 10 times faster than today's 3G speeds. That translates into download speeds of up to 6 megabits per second (Mbps), although performance will vary by location.
PC World's Mark Sullivan, who tested the Sprint/Clearwire network in Las Vegas in March, saw download rates ranging from a blistering 11 Mbps to 13 Mbps at the high end, to a not-too-shabby 2 Mbps at the low end. At those speeds, WiMax is a viable alternative to today's home broadband offerings, including DSL, cable, and fiber (e.g., FiOS).
Sprint sees a potential market there too. "We see Sprint 4G as a tremendous opportunity for customers who are interested in choosing a wireless solution over Cable/DSL/fiber," company spokesman Mark Elliott told me recently. The company's 4G service is currently available in 32 U.S. markets, and Sprint hopes to reach 120 million people by end of 2010.
Evo For The Home?
Some early adopters of the HTC Evo 4G may be tempted to ditch their home broadband service and use the handset as a wireless alternative. However, there are added expenses and other caveats with that approach.
Evo owners have to shell out $30 per month for mobile hotspot service--and that's in addition to $80 per month for Evo phone service. Sprint told me: "EVO 4G, in addition to being a 3G/4G phone, is also a WiFi hotspot which will enable up to 8 Wi-Fi devices to connect to the Sprint 4G or 3G network at one time so it does not need an Overdrive in order to be used as a hotspot."
On the plus side, Sprint's $30 hotspot fee is competitive with today's DSL/cable broadband prices. Where I live, AT&T sells poky 1.5 Mbps DSL (without landline phone service) for $35 per month.
Potential Problems
If you live alone, the Evo would probably work just fine for home broadband, provided the 4G signal was strong. But if you live with roommates or a family, things might get ugly. A mobile phone, after all, is designed to be mobile. Whenever you'd leave the house with your Evo, Internet access would go away too. (WiMax fans have another option: Clearwire's home broadband service. The $40 per month plan offers download speeds of up to 6 Mbps.)
Sprint may be the first wireless carrier to offer 4G service in the U.S., but AT&T and Verizon Wireless will follow in 2011 with a competing technology known as Long-Term Evolution (LTE). Earlier this week, Verizon Wireless posted a YouTube video showing its LTE network running at 8.55 Mbps downstream, and 2.8 Mbps upstream. The good news is that home broadband uses will soon have affordable, wireless alternatives to DSL and cable.
Contact Jeff Bertolucci via Twitter (@jbertolucci ) or at jbertolucci.blogspot.com .

Wi-Fi's Fast-Changing Future

Almost any mobile device you buy today either has a Wi-Fi radio chip in it, or can be fitted with one. But the still annoying and baffling part of Wi-Fi is that while it lets you move around, you still have to move around from one place to another, each having a Wi-Fi hotspot or network.

What WiMAX 2 promises

The feverish vision of Wi-Fi networks blanketing entire cities has pretty much shriveled, (though some observers think federal stimulus dollars may re-energize it) even as mobile carriers now race to deploy Wi-MAX or, as even Clearwire now is hinting, WiMAX-like Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks as the foundation for pervasive wireless connectivity.

Yet LTE will remain a relatively expensive service. Wi-Fi is becoming a comparatively low-cost, high-bandwidth wireless technology that's being embedded in a growing number of devices as well as a growing number of locations, including vehicles and carrier hotspots, like proliferating lilypads of connectivity.

Many of the most immediate changes ahead for Wi-Fi are those that will strengthen wireless connectivity as an increasingly pervasive "utility."

This week, for example, the WiGig Alliance is announcing the next moves in bringing the Wi-Fi to a new frequency band: 60 GHz. The new band will make it possible to deliver up to 7Gbps over relatively short distances, say the size of a living room or den.

That's a huge increase compared with what is now becoming the Wi-Fi standard for access points and a growing number of client adapters: 802.11n. The 802.11n radios use two or three simultaneous data streams, and can merge two 20MHz channels together. The results are data rates that can start at over 100Mbps and reach 300Mbps, though useable throughput is much less. By comparison 802.11g and 802.11a have a maximum data rate of 54Mbps and throughput in the 20M to 24Mbps range in ideal conditions.

The WGA's plan is to support a rapid industry deployment of its specification into products that will support existing Wi-Fi standards, notably 802.11n, while adding the 60GHz frequency to support very high data transfers over short distances. Applications include wireless I/O, uncompressed video streaming, high-speed data networking and the like.

This week, WGA makes its 1.0 specification available to a much larger group of vendors. Vendors that agree to the royalty-free licensing terms can take the spec and begin developing products based on it. The WGA is also partnering with the Wi-Fi Alliance to create an interoperability testing and certification program, modeled on the one the WFA has developed in the past for proving compatibility among Wi-Fi equipment.

Later this month, WGA will submit to the IEEE standards group a unified proposal to use the WGA specification as the foundation for a new 802.11 standard supporting multi-gigabyte data rates in 60GHz. Last year, the IEEE created two new 802.11 groups, 11ad for the 60GHz band, the other, 11ac, in the bands below 6GHz.

The WGA plans to fully support the IEEE's 60GHz work, but if that work bogs down, WGA plans to push ahead, according to Mark Grodzinsky, marketing work group chair for the WiGig Alliance. "We'll participate actively in the IEEE process," he says. "But we're not going to wait for another seven-year-long [standards] process [a reference to the 11n approval cycle]."