Dastar.org

Sometime back I made a post about Wireless adapter alternatives for the Xbox 360 anyway, not long after I posted that write up buy.com showed out of stock for the SMC. Just wanted to point out that many months later, it’s back in stock. Check the original post which I have hyperlinked above for more info on why this is a cheaper solution then the wireless adapter provided by Microsoft, but only the technically inclined need apply.

While some of us are still waiting for season two to come out on DVD, Venture Brothers has been renewed for another 2 seasons.

http://tv.ign.com/articles/767/767719p1.html

Never see an episode? Read more about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Venture_Bros.

Unlike the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 does not have built in wifi. You’ve got to string out an ethernet cable to your 360 if you want to get on Xbox live if your router isn’t close to the console.

Microsoft has an easy, yet overpriced wireless solution in their Xbox 360 Wireless Network Adapter. This device is likely the easiest solution on the market, but it’s $80 - $100 price tag leaves allot to be desired. I was determined to find a cheaper solution to the overpriced adapter.

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A few people have recently asked what seo/sem/affiliate marketing blogs I keep up with. I actually spend my time reading quite a few. One needs to bare in mind there are hundreds and maybe even thousands out there, a few good, many extremely average, but here goes.

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Annual Credit Report provides you with access to a free credit report every year from each of the 3 credit bureaus. Thus, you can basically get a free credit report several times a year by spreading out when you check your credit at each of the credit agencies. This is an invaluable asset to checking your credit history often and avoiding any attempts at identity theft.

Don’t trust them (or us) they are linked to from the ftc website: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/freereports.htm

I’ve been doing a fair amount of research in regards to finding the best *free* resources when it comes to protecting your computer from viruses, trojan horses, spyware, adware and malware in general. Free programs and applications might not be as feature rich or give you quite as much coverage as a commercial product, but i’ve found in my research that with the right combo of software, the gap between using commercial and free products is marginal.

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For DreamHost users, you might be surprised to know not all your domains on your account will necessarily be on the same c block. This is all dependent on the timing of when you add your domains to their system. If you add several domains all on the same day, your chances of them all being on the same c block are increased. However, if you wait a day or more between adding them, you *might* end up on different c blocks.

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I’ve been using DreamHost for quite sometime now. Overall, I have to say i’m quite impressed. They use their own, custom backend and not CPanel or any other sort of 3rd party control interface. I find the interface to be quite simplistic and intuitive (about as much as you can get, anyway). They don’t use fantastico, but opted to develop their own 1 click installer, which works pretty well for the most part (about as well as 1 click installers get). In fact, the installer can upgrade some versions of installed software, but it usually overwrites changes you made, so you have to becareful about this.

I’ve never used support, so I can’t comment on it. But from what others have told me, their support is usually pretty decent with reasonable load times.

The thing with Dreamhost is that, experiences overall are good, but i’ve heard some so-so stuff, ranging from the control panel being loaded (or not loading half the time), to some of the settings security they have configued that can be rather restrictive.

Dreamhost’s control panel lets you choose rather to use php 4 or 5, extra security, among other feature when setting up a domain and will even let you change those options later on without having to delete and readd the domain. This is importnant, because their PHP 4 has more open configuration/security settings then their installations of php 5 do. In their install of PHP 5 the register_long_arrays directive is disabled. They also note that in PHP 6 register_long_arrays directive and $HTTP_*_VARS array variables will not exist. I suppose this is better for security and since it’s being omited down the road, it’s better not to use it at all. Also, using fopen for external calls has also been disabled but you can use CURL instead.

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Register_long_arrays
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Allow_url_fopen

Click here for DreamHost.

If you ever do a install of SpyBot - Search & Destroy, make sure to install the tea timer. The tea timer basically runs in your windows tray and alerts you to any registry changes a program is trying to make to your OS. At this point, it tells you what’s trying to make the change and gives you the option of allow or denying the change, then logs your decision. Granted, if you are installing software on purpose, you’ll want to allow the registry changes. I do find it helpful when some software tries to install spyware along with it, because you can actually still install the product but leave out any other unwanted software in the process. The only downside i’ve experienced with this is that novice computer users won’t always posses the best judgement of what reigstry changed to accept and which ones to deny, so it’s not a all inclusive anti-spyware software solution for many end users, but it sure does make your life easier and beats spending hours removing parasites from your computer when you learn how to effectively use it.

Item Bids Price Ends NEW McAfee Total Protection 2008 for 5 PCs 12 in 1 0 $0.99 2d 5h McAfee VirusScan Plus 2008 + Site Advisor Brand NEW! 1 $0.99 2d 5h NEW MCAFEE TOTAL PROTECTION 2008 12-in-1 3-User Retail 1 $2.99 2d 5h Retail Sealed McAfee VirusScan Plus 2007 AntiVirus Fire 0 $0.99 2d 6h NEW MCAFEE INTERNET SECURITY SUITE 2008 10-in-1 PROTECT 0 $2.99 2d 6h   View all items on eBay Disclaimer   These results were generated from eBay on 08-8-2008 10:44 pm.

Adwords needs better click reporting, on impressions, that is.

When running an ad campaign, rather it’s solely on the publisher network (with inserting the search results disabled) or a combination of the publisher network and search results, one has no idea what keywords made the ad show up in the first place for it to get a click. A good example of this are campaigns I run with thousands of keywords. It gives you no data as to what keywords are generating impressions for you. One might ask why not break down each keyword into it’s own adgroup, but that’s not always a realistic option when dealing with thousands of keyword variations. Our best guess is that you can go off of whatever search impressions you are getting, assuming you are using search inclusion as well. Still, having an idea of what keywords in a page prompted your ad to appear would be helpful in further optimizing ads and use the “peel and stick method”, where by you create an ad solely for a keyword that gains impressions or clicks and deleted it from the ad group it originates from, to futher your cost cutting and improve your conversion process.

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