Category Archives: Internet

YouTube Ad Program

The YouTube Ad Program enables users of YouTube who upload their videos, to earn money from ads that show when people view their videos. It can be a good stream of income if you have original videos that are likely to get a lot of views.

There are two ways of getting into the YouTube Ad Program – the first is to get invited by YouTube and the second is to apply for your account to be included. However, don;t hold your breath for too long if you apply as it can and probably will take months for your application to be processed.

The most obvious criteria that YouTube set for becoming part of the program is to have a video that is completely your own content and that attracts a large number of views in a shortish period of time. However, we have heard of people who got invited with just one video of a few thousand views and others who got turned down with a number of videos of tens of thousands of views – so acceptance to the YouTube Ad Program is not in any way guaranteed.

Once accepted to the program, you can select which of your videos you monetise – so if you only have some that are individual to you then you can just select those. As YouTube is part of Google you will need to have a valid Adsense account as that is how the money is earned.

Discounted Web Hosting

If you are looking for discounted web hosting then there are a fair few option available.  However, you should not only look for good value in the price that you pay for your web hosting but also other features such as up-time, reliability, service and limits on what you can host.

For example you can get discounted web hosting from the company that is known as the best in the industry – Hostgator – and it is top quality hosting. You can get packages that offer you unlimited domain name and web site hosting for a fixed fee each month – all you need to pay for is the domain name fees.

Hostgator is the best in the industry and if you sign up with them then you can get a 25% discount off their hosting fees using the coupon code AZURE25OFF. Make sure to put that code in at the checkout to get the discount.

You can host as many websites as you like for less than $10 a month which is great if you are running a few websites. And if you are trying to earn money by running websites then the more sites you have, the more you are saving money.

Web Traffic From Portland Oregon

As website developers we have a number of websites on the go right now and it seems that something strange is happening in the Google Analytics stats. Quite a few websites have been showing increased views so I did a bit of investigating on why this might be and found something strange.

A number of websites have a bunch of direct traffic from Portland, Oregon, US. This traffic is direct (i.e. not coming through a search engine) and it has a 100% bounce rate and zero time spent on the site. This leads me to believe that this Portland Oregon web traffic is being sent by some kind of automated system. By why would anyone bother doing this? What would be the point and what would they achieve by doing it? Maybe it is some kind of testing.

Also is it only a small number of websites that this is happening to or are there other people that are affected? Maybe if you have got to this page then you are experiencing the same weird direct traffic from Portland, Oregon. If you are then please let me know by leaving a comment and if you have any idea why this might be happening we would be interested to hear from you.

How To Add a Network Place

When Microsoft change things with each new edition of the Windows sofware it can sometimes be difficult to find how to do something that you thought was pretty simple and commonplace in the past. One example of this for me was to use ‘Add Network Place’ when you wanted to connect to a folder that was on a website where you had documents or images stored – previously this was a pretty simple thing to do.

But now in Windows 7 I have found that it seems to be hidden in the depths of things and is not immediately obvious.

Anyway, to add a network place in Microsoft Windows 7 you need to do this:

Open Windows Explorer
Click on Tools
Map Network Drive
At the bottom of the next dialog box you have the link to ‘Connect to a website that you use to store your documents and pictures’
After that you just need to enter the website address and you are sorted.

You will then find the link under the Computer section in the left hand folders menu.

Google Translate

Among the many and expanding services that Google offers is Google translate. Not only can you get a web page or section of text translated into many different languages but you can also use the Google translate API to translate large amounts of text for you.

However, what you have to remember about Google translate is that it is an automated tool. It is never therefore going to give you a translation that sounds like the spoken word in a foreign language, unless the sentence is short and easy to translate.

So if you are looking for a real life translation of something then you cannot get any better than the human brain, and someone who speaks both languages fluently.

If you only want to know what something means though, you can use Google translate – at least this will give you a grasp of what is being said and you can reword it if it is then in your own language. So although useful, Google translate has its limitations.

Google translate now covers over 50 languages and the translation can take place between any two languages while passing through an English translation if necessary.

Some languages that are included in Google translate are:

French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Catalan, Filipino, Hebrew, Indonesian, Latvian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Arabic

This is just a selection and more languages are constantly being added.