Entrecard controversy

Posted by multippt

My earlier post on Entrecard didn’t capture much attention - it was a plain old boring post about a few Entrecard contests. The second one did better (technically the third one, but since the first post was rejected anyway for being too controversial…) - funny to think that Entrecarders will feel so uncomfortable at having suggestions for them to lower their drop rate. What inspired the controversy was none other than a post from John Cow (not John Chow), who decided to temporarily drop the Entrecard because they feel that it isn’t appropriate for them.

I have to agree with John Cow*, even if that meant taking a stance against Entrecard. While Entrecard gives a large amount of traffic, what good would it do if they just went to your site so as to click on “Drop”? Entrecarders are too concerned with optimising their Entrecards, the EC market, etc. Others spend hours dropping cards, in the end actually forgetting about their blogs they were meant to promote.

Entrecarders themselves also feel the pinch. Everyone is so obsessed with dropping that if you were to take a day-off from dropping, the value of your card will fall tremendously (and so will the Entrecard rank).

Naturally, most Entrecarders will not comment on a post that says otherwise. They’ll prefer to stick to the topic of Entrecard/community optimisation (seriously, even if the Entrecard blog were to have hundreds of those same-old posts, it won’t matter since the community will read them anyway).

*Great… I fell for his link-bait

Wordpress 2.5 delayed

Posted by multippt

Wordpress 2.5 has been delayed, but it should be released within the next few days. The next scheduled release is on the 21st of March, according to Wordpress Trac. Already, some feature changes are now quite visible, particularly the revamped administration panel.

Currently, Wordpress 2.5 have been released as a Release Candidate. By all means try, but it’ll probably be much better to actually wait for the final release which would be due in just 2 days time.

What to expect of Wordpress 2.5

Wordpress 2.5 is a new milestone, and as expected, it’s packed with features. Sadly, these features are visible mainly in the administration interface. However, aside from that, the internals of Wordpress have been changed significantly. The following are some notable changes

-Adminstration interface change: Now much more “Web 2.0″ and professional looking. Some details are removed, particularly those that are not of much use to normal users.
-Posting: The post editor have been revamped and now it looks quite similar to Blogger. Some items will moved, such as image uploading.
-Password protection: More have been done to protect your passwords. New passwords will be stored in a more secure manner. There is also a password strength tool which indicates how good your password is, and ranges from “bad” to “strong”.
-Function profiling: Not really much of a big thing to normal users, but a big help to modders who want to tweak their blog inside out.
-Tag management: The earlier version of Wordpress didn’t have the ability to properly manage tags. Wordpress 2.5 changes that with a nice and convenient way of managing your tags.
-Media management: Same as tag management, and is one of the missing feature of Wordpress. This feature allows you to manage your stuff that you embed in your posts, most commonly images that were uploaded.

Absurd PageRank allocation in Firefox

Posted by multippt

Update: Ironically, this doesn’t show up on the Google toolbar for Firefox. Pretty odd, ain’t it? 

Looks like Google is showering a whole lot of PageRank juice on Mozilla.org. Alone in the Add-ons section of the site, over 800,000 pages have a PageRank of 8, as if the PageRank on these pages are spoofed.

Here are the following pages which have a PageRank of 8
-All extension pages
-All user profiles
-All themes
-All pages in discussions about any extensions

This is not exclusive to Firefox as well; Pages about Thunderbird, Seamonkey and Sunbird also have the mysterious PageRank 8 allocation for almost all pages viewable.

Even W3 is not able to match up with the amount of PageRank 8 pages one can find on the site. Wordpress isn’t any closer either.

Wordpress 2.5 due in one week’s time

Posted by multippt

Looks like the next update for Wordpress 2.5 would be delayed by another week (i.e. to be released on 17th March instead of yesterday). According to the Wordpress trac (the system which tracks Wordpress developments), the new version of Wordpress is about 60% complete, with most issues addressed.

The new release of Wordpress 2.5 consist mainly of bug-fixes and some upgrades to the Wordpress administration system. In short:
-The installation procedure is now much cleaner and more nicer-looking.
-New encryption protection for passwords
-A cool-looking administration interface
-”Grouping” of more important tabs in the administration interface
-More visual feedback (e.g. comments icons to indicate a new comment was made)
-Tons of other enhancements

Another thing of note is that Wordpress 2.5 is developed alongside with 2.3.4. Of course, do not expect 2.3.4 to be released, since most features would probably be carried over to Wordpress 2.5.

Entrecard opens up blog to contributors

Posted by multippt

I might be a little late to announce this, but I’m going to do it anyway. Entrecard has decided to “hire” regular bloggers to contribute to their blog. This is probably a perfect opportunity for any blogger to try their hand at guest posting (if they haven’t).

In order to register as a guest blogger on Entrecard, you will need to send a message to their support E-mail, with the title as “Contributor”. Of course, you would need to give a portfolio of your blogging experience, which includes your blog. They are also looking for idea-generators as well, and the creative sort of bloggers. There are only 10 slots available, and at this point in time, it does look like there are probably lesser than 5 contributor slots left. Even if you missed your chance, you need not fret as Entrecard would probably be not sticking to permanently 10 contributors - more slots would eventually be released to the public in due time.

Posts wanted by Entrecard: Those that cover on anything with “Entrecard” in it, as long as it is not too controversial or off-topic. Posts made by contributors would be subjected to vetting (i.e. moderation), and if it meets the (very) high standards required of it, it would be approved and scheduled for posting. Nonetheless, it’s a great experience and honor to contribute to the Entrecard blog.

Yet another story on plagiarism - Friends turned plagiarists

Posted by multippt

I feel utterly disappointed that there are some who do copy from others… and profiteer from it. It’s even more disappointing if they are your friends. Well, looks like I have to live with that for now. Plagiarism is nothing new. Someone makes a identical sounding thing off you, and attempts to profit. But it is certainly something unfortunate if they happen to be your friends.

MSN can be a scary thing. Once you set off rumors, you’ll be assured that you’ll not benefit from it, despite getting the “pioneer advantage”. For example, I let off word of the PageRank update. Perhaps I said a lot more than I should. Then, within the next 5 minutes of telling someone about that rumor and my opinions on it, they began posting on their blogs - down to the complete details I’ve mentioned! That’s convenient.

In the dog-eat-dog world of news sites, having the pioneer advantage seems to help. Though, probably not anymore since once something is out, everyone begins copying from god-knows-where. Blogging is no different. If your friends happen to be bloggers as well, particularly ones dealing with news, rest be assured that if you post something on your site, you’ll have friends that will attempt to do the same, perhaps even adapting your entire story to theirs. This may be great news if they do attribute the source to you, but what if they didn’t? I guess it really hurts to give one link back.

This was probably not the only time which I had friends copying from me. It’s fine if they did rephrase part of the idea and add other stuff, but what if it contains practically 100% of the stuff that I say? Time and again history has repeated itself. It could be that I was ignorant and let it pass. Maybe it could be that because they are my friends, and I would not want to anger them. Almost 1 of every 5 posts on this site is adapted to at least one friend’s blog. The part that makes me feel disappointed is that they did it for the money. AdSense probably changed the world of blogging - to one that is more obsessed with money.

Maybe one day, I shall ask for attribution from my own fellow friends who “stole” my work.

PageRank Q2 2008: Silent February update & Webmasters Central

Posted by multippt

Google is sure quick in updating the new PageRanks - this time 2 months faster than expected (well, the update is just 1 month away from the previous, and the expected cycle is about 3 months). Though, the update is once again… sloppy and probably incomplete. Though, you should be able to see a change in the front page of your site. Sadly, this update also appears to be the opposite of the previous update - chances are inner pages may sometimes be stripped off their PageRank, despite being linked all over the place.

Note that the update is probably not completed, as most sites may not have a change in PageRank. Then again, Google usually dishes out everything within 24 hours. It’s still a hit-and-miss though.

Interestingly, PageRank appears to be going down yet once again this time round, with Google even hitting its OWN pages (iGoogle, anyone?). The great news, is that the new PageRanks now probably comes without a penalty in most cases (unlike that horrid update last year). The fall in PageRank for particular pages shows that Google has changed something somewhere in its algorithm. Even backlinks shown by the inaccurate “link:” command shows a change, though an unusual one since apparently the link count is reduced even further by half.

There are also some unusual PageRanks - particularly high PageRanks given to blogs which have no backlinks (or blogs with mainly exchanged links). Sites which previously have no PageRank originally appears to have their PageRank restored, such as Technorati.

Back on the Google webmasters central, it does seem that Google has got all the backlink counts a lot more less compared to the past. It’s as if Google lost a large chunk of your backlinks, particularly internal links. It’s also pretty unusual that most of the links were stated as being discovered in “February”, despite being actually shown in the Webmasters tools several months ago.

*Certain pages on this site appear to have got nuked by Google. :p