USB Hubs

USB hubs catch attention of many people using desktop or laptops computers . Since most of the tools like digital cameras , flash drives , iPod , scanners etc can be connected to their computers easily through USB port ( if supported ) . But different devices have different power requirement and one can not get all of them to work properly if connected through one of these USB hubs . For example a digital camera or a scanner requires more power than a flash drive .

There are two types of USB hubs available . One is bus-powered and the other one is self-powered . Bus powered USB hubs receive all their power through the host computer they are connected . On the other hand a self-powered USB hub takes its power either from the PC power supply or has its own power supply .

To function correctly a single USB port requires current from 100 mA to 500 mA depending upon the device . So if a bus-powered 4 port USB hub ( shown in the above picture ) is used , each of its ports will get a maximum of 100 mA ( 100 mA for the port which is used to connect the HUB ) . If you connect any USB device to this HUB which requires more than 100 mA to operate then it will not work . No argument why I could not operate my web cam through the HUB shown in the above picture .

Many PC users are not aware of this simple fact and are obsessed by those cool looking USB hubs available at local PC stores . They buy those bus-powered HUBs and end up cursing themselves . If you really want a fully functional USB hub that will not cause you any trouble in connecting any USB device available then I suggest that you only buy one that is self powered . The good thing is that there is not much price difference between the two .

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Google Page Rank update : July 2008

photo credit Elliance

Yes Google has started updating the Page Rank and they have started to reflect on Google toolbar . I was notified from Digital Point forum . There is a buzz still there about this recent Google Page Rank update . Many websites have increased their Page Ranks but some showed a decrease and the rest showed no change at all .

The previous Page Rank update took place at the end of April 2008 and exactly after 3 months Google has updated them again . So if I am not wrong one more update for Page Rank still to follow this year .

Many webmasters do not worry about Pare Ranks , instead they show more concern over their search engine rankings and rightly so . I will not be happy if I had a PR5 site and it only gets 100 daily visits from search engines . On the other hand I would be more than happy if I had a PR2 site which gets over 3000 daily visits from search engines .

Page Ranks has its importance if you want to sell advertisements and do paid reviews . This is where your blog Page Rank comes into play and the higher ( with PR10 being the highest ) it is the more amount you can earn from advertisers and paid postings and reviews .

My this blog gained a PR1 from no PR . According to the stats shown my SEOpro , Kashifblog.com has over 1700 backlinks and still it was only awarded a PR1 .

My other blog which is about food recipes also gained PR1 and that also had no PR before . This blog has over 450 backlinks and many of them are from PR3-5 pages on the web .

So Google is playing some mind games here I can sense them .

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Difference between 'Splogs' & 'Spam in Blogs'

'Splogs' are blogs that do not have original content and are just created to increase the traffic and link love to an affiliate site . These type of blogs mostly consists of links to that affiliate network and are often categorized as 'SPAM BLOGS' which offer nothing useful and informative to its readers .

On the other hand 'Spam in Blogs' is in the form of comments which are made just for the purpose of gaining backlinks to any other site . The comments can be of different types and one can easily identify them and get rid of those spam comments very easily . Here is how most of the spam comments will look like :

1. "Hey nice post keep up the good work"
2. "Thanks nice info"
3. "I agree"

These type of spam comments are made within few seconds and the person (Spammer) making these comments makes sure that he generates plenty of such useless comments on as many blog as he can in order to get plenty of easy backlinks . Remember that comments also contain link to the person's site who has made the comment and that link might carry some link juice which these spammers know very well how to exploit .


HOW TO DEAL WITH SPAM COMMENTS ?

First I want to make it clear that I believe in no spam policy . So I make sure that by blog remains spam free in terms of comments . So for this purpose I have taken the following steps :

- Manually approve comments : This will take some of your precious time but in this way you make sure that your comment section is free from stupid , pointless and spammy content .

- Make the comments No-Follow : By making the comments No-follow you will not be giving any link juice to the spammer as the link in his comment will not carry any search engine love and this will also cut down the number of daily spam that your blog receives . If you use a Blogger blog then you need not to worry as all the comments are no-follow by default .

I will not recommend to use any spam filtering plug ins because that might block some of the comments from your loyal readers and friends so I advise you do it manually . If you are still not sure about which comment to approve then first go through the comment and make sure it does not fulfil any of the following :

- The comment says nothing about your blog or the blog post .
- The comment says me I our and we only .
- Comment points ( URL ) to an advertisement page .
- Comment contains affiliate links .
- Comment contains many links in text .
- Repeated comment

I follow the above rule when moderating comments with little to no exception for my friends and regular readers . I hope you have enjoyed reading this post . Feel free to share this with your friends .

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Download YouTube Video / Audio

YouTube videos can be downloaded in various different formats . For example your favorite music video is on Youtube but you only need the song so you extract the audio from that Youtube video without even downloading the video . For this purpose I recommend you visit Vixy.net .

The above site downloads the online Youtube video file on its server and has the ability to convert YouTube videos into the following formats :

• AVI
• MOV
• MP4
• 3GP for mobile
• MP3 audio only

You just have to give the URL of the YouTube video and it will do the rest . Cool isn't it .

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Good bye BlogRush !

For those of you who do not know what BlogRush is I will put it straight forward . BlogRush is a widget for blogs that shows post titles of other blogs in BlogRush network . If you place their widget on your blog then you earn credits whenever your blog receives traffic and then those credits are utilized in syndicating your blog posts on other blogs in BlogRush network .

The idea of free traffic seems good in the beginning but then it was all gone as after placing the widget there is very little to no traffic that one gets . There are many factors that are responsible for a very poor traffic from BlogRush network . One of them might be the layout of the widget which seems more like an advert and this results in a very low CTR ( click through rate ) and hence low traffic .

I do not find any reason to keep BlogRush widget on this blog since the stats that are shown at my BlogRush dashboard indicates that out of 22,000 syndications I didn't even received 30 visitors ( in over 3 months ) .

The other reason for removing BlogRush widget is the space it occupies on a blog can be utilized for some other purpose that will get you something in return ( $$ ) which blog rush failed to deliver .

So I do not have much to say other than just Good bye BlogRush.

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How to customize YouTube videos for your blog

Today I will share with you how you can customize YouTube videos so the they fit in nicely in your blog posts . First find a video for your blog on YouTube then once you are on the video page you are provided a "customize" link just above the video code . Click the following image and make sure you follow the instructions to get your desired code for your customized YouTube video .

( Click Image to enlarge )

I assume that you have followed all the above instructions well and now you have your customized YouTube video code. You can directly paste your code in your blog HTML and you will get the different feel of the YouTube video all customized for your blog.


Adjust Dimensions

If you want to adjust the dimensions of the video then all you have to do is look for the terms "width" and "height" in your customized Youtube video code . It will look like this :

Example : width="425" height="344"

Remember that mostly used dimensions are :

• 450 x 395
• 500 x 439
• 550 x 483
• 600 x 527

Choose the one that fits well in your template and also make sure that video runs smoothly and that you are not watching a pixel blocks show.


Align(Center) YouTube Videos

Some bloggers like the YouTube video to appear in the center of their blog post . For this you have to put the customized video code within the HTML center tags as shown below in an example :

Example : <center>YouTube Video Code Comes Here</center>

Below is the preview of how a YouTube video will look like after you have customized its border,dimensions and alignment(center) for your blog or site.





I hope you enjoyed this little tip for customizing YouTube videos feel free to share this tip with your friends.

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My little experiment with default Bookmark image

In the past month I removed the default image at the end of my each blog post which says Bookmark ! I replaced it with a custom designed bookmark image which can be seen in the above image . If you read carefully the custom image says "Enjoyed reading do me a favor share with your friends before you leave" . This was done intentionally to get extra bookmarks from my visitors which I actually did received . Remember that with every extra bookmark on any of the social bookmarking sites you can get a free backlink to your blog from the favorite's page of the person who just bookmarked you .

The following photo shows the number of bookmarks this blog got during this little experiment .



As you can see that the highest number of bookmarks came from stumbleupon users who kind of enjoy reading Kashifblog.com. So the point here is that if you modify and do little effort you can also get extra bookmarks for your blog which will bring extra traffic to your blog .

So the first thing you better do is design an eye catching bookmark image , NO . The first and the most important thing you should always be concentrating on should be writing interesting blog posts that others might find worth reading and then if they think it really deserves a bookmark then they no doubt will look at your image and say ok this is a really nice post and it deserves a bookmark and here it is . So this is the way you better be planning on getting more bookmarks and hence more traffic to your blog .

Drop me a comment on what you think about my little experiemnt and what else you think can be done to further increase the number of bookmarks . I am always open to interesting sugestions and opoinions .

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PayPal in Pakistan

PayPal is one of the top or you can say is the top and most widely used online payment processor worldwide . It supports more than 190 countries to date and new countries are adding up as well but being a Pakistani webmaster and a blogger for the past few years I still find it difficult to do business in Pakistan without PayPal . PayPal in Pakistan is a question that has been asked from time to time on many webmaster forums including the DP forum but the fact is that PayPal is still not available to the people of Pakistan and many Pakistani webmasters and freelancers are finding it extremely difficult to carry on their online work without PayPal .

Many qualified web programmers and designers loose their potential clients just because the client ( having a PayPal account ) feels comfortable when paying with PayPal but we , Pakistanis can not receive payments through PayPal and this leaves the client with no other option and he or she looks for those freelancers that have PayPal accounts. Pakistanis can only look for an alternative which might not be as good as PayPal.

Very much similar is the case when a Pakistani webmaster tries to sell his or her product online through their website but not having PayPal as an option for receiving payments results in less sales which leaves us with the only option to look for PayPal alternative but the fact is the there is no other option which is as good and as big as PayPal . Many have signed up for MoneyBookers which might not be as good as PayPal but it works fine and has over 5.8 million users across the globe.

As a Pakistani and as a blogger I someday might decide to sell advertising on my few blogs and still then if there is no PayPal in Pakistan then I am afraid there is not much I as a Pakistani can do because PayPal has established itself for the past few years as a symbol of trust and when people spend their money online they also make sure that they do not reveal their credit card details to everyone and PayPal takes care of this as well .

I did some google search on "PayPal in Pakistan" and there is not much I found just few frustrated Pakistani webmasters and freelancers cursing themselves just because PayPal has not yet allowed them to open their accounts.

I myself have contacted PayPal support several times but have not received any positive reply on this matter . On my most recent query ( DATED : 1st Jul 2008 ) about when PayPal will be listing Pakistan in their list of supported countries , I got this reply from one of their support representative :

Thank you for contacting PayPal, my name is Robert and I am happy to assist you today.

Hi there Kashif, how are you doing today? We sincerely appreciate your interest in becoming a PayPal member. Unfortunately, we are not yet providing services for the country or region in question. Establishing our service in each new country or region involves complex changes due to different regulations. We are always looking to expand our availability; however, due to the complexities of global expansion, we cannot provide a specific time frame. We are working hard and look forward to expanding our services to additional countries and regions in the future.

Visit https://www.paypal.com/ and click the "Worldwide" link in the footer of the page for more information on the countries and regions that PayPal supports.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us again.

Sincerely,
Robert
PayPal Consumer Support
PayPal, an eBay Company

I am leaving this post as an open discussion on what would be your mind set if PayPal was not in your country or what problems you might be facing when it comes to buying and selling online without PayPal . So are you a Pakistani or from some other country which is still not supported by PayPal.

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Kashif is back on Kashif's BLog

For the past 16 days I had abandoned my blog and didn't even bothered to check the traffic stats . The reason behind this is that I was seriously ill due to which I was unable to post on my blog .

I always had this feeling that once I had access to a computer , I can easily post on my blog under all circumstances but I was wrong . Health is a big question mark and my recent sickness proved me that I may not be always right.

Checking the stats today and not surprisingly the continuous stream of traffic to this blog is all broken and my average daily visit count is hardly at double figures . So this leaves me with no other choice to hit back ever harder which I will. So lets get back to business as lots of milestones are yet to be achieved !

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