DailyBloggr.com » Blogging

Easy hack to leech email Id’s on Twitter (sorta)

Mani Karthik — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 08:24:11 +0000

Well, this isn’t exactly a hack, but nevertheless lets you reap a load of valid email Id’s off Twitter. If you’re a spammer / email marketer (pun intended) you know what that means.

Typically, people who’re concerned about privacy would not publish their email ids on twitter. But there are many who does. I assume they’d like some attention, which is why the ids are published on their profiles.

However, if you go to Twitter people search and do a simple search on “gmail.com” (See example here), you’ll get a boat load of email IDs.

Now, is this a security issue ? Not really. Because these folks voluntarily published their email IDs on their profiles. But as long as these are valid ID’s, this is a gold mine for email marketers..err I mean spammers !

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Easy hack to leech email Id’s on Twitter (sorta) was posted at DailyBloggr.com by Mani Karthik.

Use Google multiple IDs simultaneously – Now live !

Mani Karthik — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 07:58:16 +0000

If you’re the type of guy who has one Google ID for email, another for Webmasters and multiple IDs for other purposes (or anything faintly similar) then you’ve got help !

Signing in with multiple IDs to Google services was a pain in the a@# ! So much that I used multiple browsers for each, just for that purpose.

I use one Google ID for email, another for Webmasters and another one for Google reader, so its tough managing each. But it looks like Google now silently enabled multiple ID logins on the same browser. That is if you have multiple Google IDs for each service you can switch between each ID when you’re using that service.

Go to your Google Accounts Manage settings and you’ll find something similar to this.

Clicking on the Edit button will take you to another page (Link) that has the details about multiple sessions.

It says that this is an advanced feature, and that you can switch between Gmail, Calendar, Code, Reader and Google sites. For Google webmasters and Analytics, you got to signout/use another browser.

When you’ve enabled the multiple Google ID sign in feature, whenever you access the above mentioned services, a drop down menu appears on the top right where you can select the ID that you wish to use. Sweet !

Nice move from Google, wish if it included other Google services as well. May be soon.

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Use Google multiple IDs simultaneously – Now live ! was posted at DailyBloggr.com by Mani Karthik.

Top Mashable Editor Ben Parr’s website hacked (and he doesn’t know?)

Mani Karthik — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 06:52:32 +0000

I was doing my research on top tech journos on the web and stumbled up on this one ! And I’m glad I did. Ben Parr, the lead Editor at Mashable has got his personal blog hacked. Take a look at this Google search result and you’ll see the "trouble".

Ben probably is a victim of one of those infamous SERPs injection attacks, that he couldn’t have known about it. The hack is normally undetectable that the site’s Meta info changes without admins knowledge and by the time Google indexes it, to show up on the SERPs, it would’ve gotten too late.

Typically the meta info is injected with pharma, medicine those kind of regular spam, and Ben’s case is no different.

What should you do if you get attacked ?

1. Check for malwares from GWT.

2. Report the problem to Google via Google Webmasters Tool asap.
3. Check for infected files on your server (your host could help) and remove them. Detailed instructions from Google here.
4. Wait patiently for a re-indexing from Google.
5. After re-indexing test again for malware, if its not removed, contact Google via WebMasters Tool.

If you don’t report this problem to Google, it might consider the site spam and chuck you out of the search index mostly (or might label you as "harmful site"). A lucky (or is it really lucky?) few stays on without even realizing such a thing happened.

I emailed Ben about this last week, but there was no reply. I hope he’s already fixed it. If you have access to him, let him know.

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Top Mashable Editor Ben Parr’s website hacked (and he doesn’t know?) was posted at DailyBloggr.com by Mani Karthik.

Top 30 Influential bloggers on Twitter

Mani Karthik — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:14:05 +0000

Bloggers are the most loved and the most hated group on social media. People love them for their valuable information, while companies (some uncool one’s obviously!) look at them with raised eye brows. However, bloggers are the most powerful community out there that can make or break a product.

We’ve seen lot of successful examples recently where bloggers have contributed to the success of brands. With that in mind, here are the top 30 bloggers on Twitter I found interesting. In no particular order, that is.

1. Ryan Penagos

2. Stephen Fry

3. Kevin Rose

4. Garry Vee

5. Kogure – Influential blogger in Japan

6. Duane Patterson

7. Rob McNealy

8. Bruce Attridge

9. Robert Scoble

10. Gary Arndt

11. Sean Malarkey

12. Pramit J Nathan

13. Gerard Weber

14. Orrin Woodward

15. Wolfgang Niederhausen

16. Jeremy Schoemaker

17. Joel Mackey

18. Enrique Dans

19. Renee Blodgett

20. Arnold Aranez

21. Dan Schawbel

22. Michael Hyatt

23. Peter Robert Casey

24. Warren Whitlock

25. Will Francis

26. Anita Nelson

27. Stephanie Quilao

28. Ben Parr

29. Fabio Sasso

30. Gina Tripani

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Top 30 Influential bloggers on Twitter was posted at DailyBloggr.com by Mani Karthik.

A new & advanced search engine for SEOs

Mani Karthik — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:32:14 +0000

Well, the founders think that others might like the tool too, and it will go popular beyond SEOs. But from what we’ve seen, advanced users like SEO’s are going to love this search engine ! Which one you ask – Blekko, the new kid on the block !

I don’t think Blekko is the best name they could find but that’s okay, if the search tool does the thing neatly, then I’m happy.

TechCrunch reports that they’ve done an impressive job at simplifying advanced search. Like advanced search on Google with operators now become easy and more insightful with this tool.

From the screenshot, it looks like Blekko will be able to give you insightful data like SEO stats, and then visualize them on charts right in the search. How accurate the data is, will decide how accepted the tool will be. As for now, I’m pretty excited about it.

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A new & advanced search engine for SEOs was posted at DailyBloggr.com by Mani Karthik.

Gorgeous WordPress theme for iPhone Apps !

Mani Karthik — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:27:46 +0000

Just love this theme, absolutely… what a beauty !

Elegant Themes have released yet another WordPress theme that’s just supremely gorgeous to any other iPhone related theme I’ve seen lately. Well, this one’s a WordPress theme for those who’d like to sell their iPhone apps via their website. Kind of like a sales page but built entirely on WordPress and fully customizable !

The buttons are super sleek, with gradients and sharp curves, with features that are very iPhone centric (check out the platforms supported graphic) and customizable PSD for every slice of the theme is available too.

If you have an iPhone app/ affiliate to sell, just grab this theme, customize it and go live ! There’s absolutely nothing that goes waste here.

Available for $19 with the rest of 20+ gorgeous themes on Elegant Themes.

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Gorgeous WordPress theme for iPhone Apps ! was posted at DailyBloggr.com by Mani Karthik.

Ex-Employee says work at Apple is all about Corporate Red Tape & Politics !

Mani Karthik — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 12:54:42 +0000

Apple’s aura is so much large that its enough to blind us all – anti-apple and fan boys alike. We see Apple as the company that’s set out to change the world. And quite honestly it does. With Steve Jobs as the captain Apple is without doubt one of those powerful companies that shapes our future, at least in technology. But how many of us have wondered how it is to work at Apple ? Is it all about fun and frolic as the Google folks are known to be ? Or is it a different story ?

Looks like its more towards the latter – a completely different story.

Chad Little, who is currently the Product Designer at Facebook was an employee at Apple.

At the Quora website, he reveals certain startling (not-so-startling to some) facts about working at Apple.

Projects gets finished first if its for Steve, while others stall.

Chad says that projects at Apple in which Steve is directly involved finishes off at inhuman speeds while others don’t really get the attention – at all.

In his words –

If you have a project that Steve is not involved in, it will take months of meetings to move things forward. If Steve wants it done, it’s done faster than anyone thinks is humanly possible. The best way to get any cross departmental work done was to say its for Steve and you’d probably have it the same day.

Nothing is free at Apple like Google. Including Coffee.

Folks at Google are lucky in that aspect. They get to grab everything free. I’ve visited the Hyderabad Google office once, where I could see snacks and cookies everywhere and anyone would grab them while walking near them. If you thought that was cool, Apple is not your place. It charges you for everything. Right from coffee to gym ! And Steve Jobs has a fairly reasonable explanation for that. (But then he has one for everything!)

Steve says –

It’s my job to make your stock go up so you can afford these things

Chad goes on to say that the employees are extremely committed to the projects and the team work nothing like you’ve seen anywhere. That is the Apple effect.

But Coffee ? C’mon !

Read the entire thread here.

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Ex-Employee says work at Apple is all about Corporate Red Tape & Politics ! was posted at DailyBloggr.com by Mani Karthik.

Which are your favorite iPad Apps ?

Mani Karthik — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 17:24:37 +0000

No, I haven’t bought an iPad myself (but Flip has enough of them for testing purposes).

One thing I’ve noted with iPad owners is that once they meet another iPad user, the first thing they ask is what apps they use. And then on, there is a fight with words for domination. To prove that your iPad apps are better than his. Reminds me of the trump cards we used to play with in school. “Who’s you ? Biceps 42, Weight 200 Lbs Hah ! I beat you. I’m Yokozuna.” Sorta the same drill.

Anyways, proud iPad owners out there, one simple question. Which are your favorite iPad apps ? Free and Paid. Just doing a bit of research here, hope you don’t mind questions on your baby.

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Which are your favorite iPad Apps ? was posted at DailyBloggr.com by Mani Karthik.

Use media files a lot ? Save bandwidth with Amazon S3 plugin for WordPress

Mani Karthik — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 06:07:53 +0000

If you’re the type of blogger who uses lots of media, like images, video, and files on your website, then you’re going to need some solid bandwidth to make them all available smoothly. For this, normally webmasters use the S3 (Simple Storage Service) Amazon cloud, that is an excellent service to store your media files and make them available where ever you want on the web !

So if you have lot of media on the site, go for Amazon S3, and if you use Amazon S3 already, here’s a brand new plugin that will help you use it seamlessly with WordPress.

The Amazon S3 WordPress Plugin – What it does ?

- Transfers all the images/media in your WordPress blog to the Amazon S3 cloud on its own.

- Transfers any image/media file in old posts to Amazon S3 cloud automatically.

- Saves bandwidth by heaps and bounds on your website.

- No settings required, no tweaking, no hassle.

- Easy as “Plug and play”

Some in-depth details from the author

It will not create any Amazon S3 buckets
It will not work if you have not configured your wordpress corn file [wp-cron.php]
You have to have a make sure s3temp folder is writable on the media upload folder. This help the plugin to avoid database hit for checking the availability of the files in S3 cloud.
This plugin will not manage the files in Amazon S3 cloud. You can use S3fm or S3Fox
If you want to reset the files and upload everything again, please delete all files in s3 folder, delete the files in S3 bucket or use a new bucket.

The plugin is available for download from WordPress here.

Author’s website – Imthi

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Use media files a lot ? Save bandwidth with Amazon S3 plugin for WordPress was posted at DailyBloggr.com by Mani Karthik.

Why webmasters shouldn’t worry too much about domain names

Mani Karthik — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 08:10:44 +0000

We heard recently that the internet is approaching another milestone – its approaching 200 million domain names ! That is amazing. Just goes out to say how many domain names
are being bought as we speak. The reality is that there are about hundreds of domain names being bought and registered, every single second.

The bigger question is what is being done with all these domain names ?

I know for a fact that webmasters buy loads of domain names, just by impulse and do nothing with it until it gets expired. They would buy it either spotting a nice domain name or because they have a new business idea. Reality is that, out of all the domains being bought this way, only less than 5% is being used.

Its easy to pick up a domain name, doesn’t need lot of thinking. Research, look for options and grab one as soon as you can – that’s the process many go through.
And I believe this is one of the reasons why so many domain names are being bought in bulk.

But when it comes to using/utilizing a domain, there has to be some rules involved, and indeed there are, just that they are overlooked most often.
Even though buying a domain is easy, in order to make a domain worthwhile, either by standing out from the rest or by branding it, there are certain things one need to know.

1. Short is always not the best

There is a popular belief that short domain names are best. This came up during the web 2.0 times when there was a scarcity for actual word-by-word match and people opted for shorter, catchy domain names. Although I agree that they are catchy, in terms of search engines, they aren’t really giving you any advantage.
If you’re starting fresh and does not plan for any aggressive link building strategy anytime soon, its better to opt for a meaningful domain name than a catchy short one.
However, if you have a branding strategy in place there is nothing like a great short, catchy name.

2. Exact word match does not give you any advantage

Though technically, search engines prefer direct word match on the domain, and they help make sense out of it, its best not to take it to the extremes.
Like finding a direct match for a long keyword. Te average length of a domain name ranges anywhere from 7-15 characters, and if you can find an exact match between that limit, its best, otherwise its best not to extrapolate it.

3. Top level domain names are best for SEO

Top level domain names like .com are best when it comes to preference, but that’s not a thumb rule. If you have an option between a dot com and a dot org, go for the dot com version. But otherwise it doesn’t make sense to work around and come up with an awkward domain name just because you need a top level domain name.

4. Domain name may not matter at all in the long run

That’s a fact. When your content is so good that it attracts lots of backlinks, you don’t really bother what the domain name is. With amazing content and tons of relevant backlinks pointing, a domain name like "123exeray.com" can outrank "xray.com". So the focus is not really on the domain name, but on the content and the relevancy in search engine algorithms.

5. If not for branding, don’t really worry about domain names

I mean, if you have a proper strategy in place, then don’t worry about domain names. It only helps initially. In the long run, its the branding, content strategy and volume of content that will speak and get you laurels not the domain name. But when you start a business/blog its natural for people to get carried away and spent an un necessary amount of time deciding on the domain name.

Get over it. Webmasters should spend more time figuring out what to do with the site and the content more than the domain name – this one should go in probably at last.

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Why webmasters shouldn’t worry too much about domain names was posted at DailyBloggr.com by Mani Karthik.