How to find out if someone is stealing your content

Have you ever wondered if someone is stealing all your posts and other content that you've published on the internet? Well, this post is all about finding out if someone is copying and pasting your content word for word. Plagiarism is not a great thing for your website because you might be loosing a lot of visitors and or revenue when someone else who has a higher pagerank/gets more visitors steals your content and posts it on their website. Even worse, someone else might be making money from the content that you worked hard to write and publish.

Here are a couple of tips on how to find the content stealing culprits!

Use Copyscape. Copyscape is a great little tool that auto-magically searches for content similiar to that of your website on other websites. All you need to do is mention the url of the website, after which copyscape will search the web for similar articles.

The only downside to this method is that if someone has rephrased some of the words in the article, copyscape might not be able to find it (you'll have to use the google method mentioned below). Another thing is that the free version will only show you a couple of websites that have plagarized content from your website, and not all the websites on the internet that have copied your content.Use Google. Yup, that's right, this wonderful search engine can also be utilized to search for copies of your posts. Here's how you can find out if someone else has similar posts. Take one of your post titles, or key sentences in posts that you might think are plagiarized and search for them on google. The trick here is to enclose the title or key phrases in quotations, so Google will only show those phrases and not phrases/titles related to the query. Here's an example:

Yes, in case you are wondering... that website pictured in the screenshot above stole my post =( !

Use digg.com/slashdot.com/shoutwire.com search. You'll be surprised how many websites out there copy your posts, submit it to digg, and get more visitors than you do. Many people have websites for the only one reason - making money. If a website gets dugg, it usually gets lot of visitors.

Even if it doesn't make it to the homepage of digg, there is a good chance that when someone searches for that particular phrase, they land up on the digg.com submission page and eventually visit the website (that stole your content) to see what the post is about. So, all you need to do is search for your title on digg, and if you find a website that has copied your post... bingo! You've found the content thief!

Check your web-analytics logs. Often you might have put a link to a post in your own website in one of your posts. Many you simply copy and paste also copy all the links in that post. This means that when a user clicks on one of your links, they'll be coming to your website. Most of the time all web statistic softwares will record this incoming link, and add the incoming entries to your log. So once in a while, simply browse through your logs and check for any websites that might have reposted your content.

If you use wordpress or any other CMS software, check any trackbacks, or incoming links that might help you find the website that is stealing your posts.

I'm sure, if you use these tips, it should be enough to catch anyone who is stealing your content and republishing it on their website. Once you've found out who is stealing your content... dealing with them is another long story, which I'll try to cover in some other post.

Firefox Tip: Navigate through Firefox Tabs Faster

Ever wanted to be able to cycle through your tabs really quickly instead of using your mouse? Well, guess what! You can! All you need to do is use these keyboard shortcuts in order to go to the tab you want. No Firefox extensions needed!

Just press Ctrl and 1 (the number 1 key) together to go to the first tab. Press Ctrl + 2 to go to the second tab and so on. Of course, if you're on a Mac, its Cmd + 1 and so on.

It's that simple!

How to find out if a .exe process is spyware or virus

Windows XP has thousands and thousands of .exe files, and usually a lot of those executables are running at any given time. But are all of those .exe files legit or are they spyware/malware/viruses that are bad for your computer... I recommend you follow these instructions

First get the usual spyware finding stuff (if you don't have it already - DOWNLOAD IT!) like:

1. Spybot Search and Destroy
2. AdAware (the free version works fine...)
   
3. Windows Defender

Any one or more (more = better) of the programs listed below should be downloaded and run in order to search for any viruses. If the programs above find something then bingo! You've found the culprit! If not you'll have to do more digging....

Download Process Explorer from Microsoft's website and unzip the stuff and open up procexp.exe. There look for the .EXE file that you had your doubts about and click on the entry corresponding that bears the name of the executable. If you don't know what that entry means just right click on it and click on 'Search Online...'

Now it's time time to see if there are any suspicious DLLs associated with it. So just press Ctrl+L and then Ctrl + D to take a look at all the DLLs that don't have 'Microsoft Corporation' under the company name. If you aren't sure about the DLL then you'll have to search for it online and see what you get.

You'll also want to double click on the process, go to the 'Performance Graph tab' and see how much memory it takes up. It its taking too much memory or hogging up all the resources in your computer, then its probably a virus and should be dealt with accordingly.

If it doesn't show any of the symptoms mentioned above then it's probably supposed to be there, so just let it be there. Remember to run AntiVirus and spyware checks all the time though, because only those checks will tell you if something is bad or not.

Another tip that I can offer is to use your AntiVirus scanner to scan the specific .exe file you are suspicious about. To figure out where the .exe file is stored on your computer - double click the process in Process Explorer > Under the 'Image' tab you should see the 'Path:' box which is going to tell you where the .exe file is stored. Just point your AntiVirus to that location so that it can figure out if the file is a virus or not.

If you find anything suspicious using the methods above (yes, using the methods above is a requirement) then please post about it in the comments. If you need help in figuring out if a process is malicious, feel free to email me, and I'll try to help.

Follow cricket scores online for free

Here's a tip for all my brown buddies out there with a slower internet connection. It's not as exiting as watching free cricket online, but its just as good to be able to follow the scores online.


It's pretty simple actually. Whenever a cricket game is going on, all you need to do is head on over to http://www.cricinfo.com/ and then just click the live scorecard link under the title of the game.

TipIf you want to a quick way to find out scores, just type cricket [name of the team] into Google. Of course, you'll have to replace '[name of team]' with the name of the team you want to follow. Example: cricket India. This will show you the score of the latest game india played.

For every live game that's going, it's going to show a link where you can access the live scorecard. Simply click on that link and the scorecard should open up.

By default it just shows a basic scorecard. I on the other hand prefer the full score card, so too might want to click on the full scorecard link in order to see the full scorecard. All scorecards refresh automatically, so there is not need to keep clicking refresh, unless you have ADHD or something.

And there you have it. - instant updatification. If you have high speed internet though, you might want to watch the game online, instead of just staring at the scores.

How to watch cricket online for free

I have a confession to make - I'm addicted to cricket. I pretty much can't live without watching cricket matches (especially if India and/or Pakistan is playing). So if you are wondering how you can watch cricket online for free, here's how you can watch LIVE online cricket. All you need is a passion for cricket, a internet connection (hi-speed preferably) and of course a computer that can handle live streaming video. (Note: If you don't have a high speed connection or a powerful connection - you might want to just stick to watching cricket scores online.. which is almost as exiting...)

Step 1

Download SopCast from SopCast.org. You'll most likely need this because it is necessary for most live broadcasting stuff. It works in the P2P style of bittorrent, so as you're downloading, you're also sharing it to others.
Step 2

Open IE (yes you'll need IE for getting some Active X controls) and go to a website that has sopcast embedded players in it. Here are some of them if you don't know any already:

• http://sayan.freehostia.com/cricket.html (the last video player should be the Twenty20 live broadcast) - This is the website I'll be giving instructions for.
  
• http://muftavideos.com (this site might go down quickly and registration might be needed)

Step 3

Click on the Yellow bar on the top to install the ActiveX control. You might have to click on the Play button (shown below) in order for the yellow ActiveX bar to come up. Once the pop up box comes up, click Install.
Step 4

Once the ActiveX control is installed, the video players on the website should automatically start. If not, just scroll down to one of the players (if you're looking to watch Twenty20 cricket its the last one - normal 4:3 ratio OR first one -widescreen).

Then simply just click on the play button and wait till it loads. Once it loads you can also right click on the player Zoom > Full Screen, if you want to enjoy your game full screen. The quality won't be excellent but it'll be quite good.

Step 5

Cheer for your team, and have fun. Yes, this step is the most important one, so make sure you follow this step =) !

Now all you can do is hope your team wins, and hope that you don't punch the monitor if they don't.

Enjoy! And if you find any other websites where you can watch live cricket, just e-mail me (the link's at the top of the sidebar) or leave a comment!

An update to Adobe Shockwave Player is available?

Ok, seriously, I thought Adobe was the creator of Photoshop right? Then what's up with the ugly "update your shockwave player" screens? Seriously though, at first I was reluctant to even click on the install button fearing that it was some kind of evil malicious spyware thing that might infect my already pre-infected Windows machine.

Anyway, I just went ahead and clicked on the install link anyway, and turns out it is the real deal, no spyware here. Still, I think adobe should update their ways of updating, and stop scaring people like this with ugly screens.

Oh and if anyone is wondering about the install.. it goes something like this:

1. Internet Explorer asks you if you want to install an ActiveX control. I click install...
2. Then it asks you for which language you want.. I choose English US..
3. Then it asks if I want to install google reader.. I say what the flip, is evil google really trying to take over the world, and I uncheck the box and move on..
4. Then it says RESTART YOUR COMPUTER? What?

Ok, wait, so I'm supposed to restart my computer to finish installation of a think called shockwave player? Why? This doesn't even make any sense. Oh well, I guess its no use about talking to big giants like Google and Adobe, they never seem to listen.

5 ways to speed up and improve your wireless network for free

First off I need to mention that I live in an apartment complex, and getting wireless to work properly is extremely hard, and I guess I can say that I've learnt a lot form tweaking it so much. Recently I read a similar article on Microsoft's website, but most of the stuff in there is impractical. All they seem to say is upgrade all your devices and buy more stuff.

So here are 5 tips that are guaranteed to make your wireless connection work better for free. These "tweaks" can be performed in most settings and it shouldn't be a much of a problem to implement in your home or even office network. Make sure you secure your wireless network too though.

1. Find the right channel for your router. First make sure that you don't have any cordless phone in your own house that might be causing interference. If you find that your wireless connection gets weaker whenever you get a call, try changing the channel on your cordless phone. Then download net stumbler on one of your computers with a wireless card (it should work with most cards). Open it and check what channel other people are broadcasting on. People will usually be using either channel 1, 6 or 11, so try to stay away from these channels, but you never know. Then change your router's channel to some other channel no one else is using. You'll need to know how to work with the router configuration page to do this.Keep in mind though that other people might have cordless phones running on the same channel which might interfere with the your signal, so you'll have to use the trial and error method to find the perfect channel.
2. Switch to OpenDNS. Although this tip is more of a improve your "Internet speed" tip, its still good for getting better speeds through your wireless network. And since most people use their wireless network for Internet, I recommend replacing your ISP's dns service with OpenDNS. Instructions on how to configure your router to use OpenDNS can be found on their website. Basically its just copying and pasting a couple of IP addresses, so I won't mention how to do that here.
3. Move your router. Yes, although this is pretty self explanatory, most people ignore this tip. Try to move your router to a central location in your home. Although this might be kind of hard, since you're bound by the location of your high speed modem, phone line or even your cable line, its not always impossible. You don't have to move the router from one room to another, just moving it from one side to another side of the room should suffice. All you need to do is get 2 long pieces of Ethernet cable, it doesn't matter which kind since most routers have "wire management" so it'll accept any kind of cat-5 crossover, rollover or straight through cable and use that instead of short cables. This will enable you to move your router so that it is a bit more closer to the center of your home or closer to your laptop if you only use a laptop.
4. Change your wireless card settings. Most wireless cards are configured to the default settings of using wireless QoS and so on, so you'll want to tweak it to make it interface faster with the network. To start tweaking first press the Windows + Pause Break key if you are on Windows > Go to the hard ware tab > Click on Device Manager > Under Network Adaptors double click on your wireless and go to the Advanced tab. Here's what you can tweak on most cards:
   • Mixed more protection - Use CTS-to-self. This will make the speed faster since you are in a small home network
   • Power Management - Use the highest value, because this will make your card work faster. You might want to choose a medium or low setting if you want extended battery life though.
   • Roaming Aggressiveness - Use either the medium or lowest value in a home setting, so that your card won't keep searching for new connections, it'll just stay happy with the network in your home and won't connect to your neighbour's network.
   • Throughput Enhancement - Make sure you enable throughput enhancement to have the fastest speeds
   • Transmit Power - Use the highest option to connect to your network properly and get the fastest speeds
5. Update drivers/firmware and maintain your network. Here are a couple of things you should do with your network:
1. Update your drivers for your wireless card (usually found on the manufacturer's website) and the firmware on your router. Go to the manufacturer's website to get the latest firmware. Instructions on updating your firmware can also be found there.
2. Give your network a unique SSID and encrypt it! Why? Because your neighbour might be accidentally using your connection and making it slower, or someone might be using your network to download stuff on the Internet... so it is best to give your network a unique SSID and use at least WPA encryption if WPA2 isn't a choice. More instructions on that coming soon...
3. Make sure to also change the password to the router so that some one else does not modify the setting. I recommend setting a big password so it is impossible to crack.
4. Make sure your laptop and the router are using the 802.11 (wi-fi) G standard. Sometimes, if your laptop is set to use only wi-fi 802.11 B, even though it supports G, your router will only communicate to it using B, and not G which is way faster.

Why does Google AdSense show public service ads?

Ok, so its only been a week so far and I've already had some experience with the way adsense works. Oh, and did I mention, I've discovered several AdSense NO-NOs. Oh and I also figured out when and why google displays public service ads. I figured that Google will usually display public service ads in one of the following scenarios:

1. Your publisher ID is wrong or improper. Or perhaps you did not comply to the google TOS.
   
2. You tried to modify the adsense code and accidently screw it up.
3. Google can't find any ads to match the content in the page.
4. You did not put the code in the template, and put it in a post instead - The thing that you should keep in mind is always have the adsense in your TEMPLATE ONLY. Don't try and put any adsense code into your posts, because it will not work. Instead you'll just get a ugly ad like the one shown below. Why? because once you post the code through most CMS systems the code will not stay in different lines (the linebrakes between the code will be removed), therefore it wont work.
5. Google might have "flagged" your page? (see below for more stuff on why I think that might be the case)
   
6. There was a hardware malfunction that occured at Google HQ.

Recently, I also had a problem on this page, where google kept showing public service ads. I'm not sure if Google has some approving system where someone has to come and approve a "flagged page" or if it was a hardware malfunction that caused public service ads to be displayed, but I'm sure it was one or the other. I'm certain that there were at least some ads that matched with the content. They page appears fine now though. This is how the page used to look before when the public service ads were displayed and had some intentional mistakes in it(I'm sure you'd agree it looked ugly with all that empty space) :

I've also pointed out some "imperfections" in the page when it was published for the first time (of course, they have been corrected now.. I think..). Perhaps that was what caused the page to be "flagged". I'm not sure. I'll be performing a couple of other tests to find out what the cause for public service ads might be.

Stop Internet Explorer from crashing

If you've ever experienced IE crashing.. you know its not a good thing. Here's how you can stop the famous Internet Explorer from crashing over and over..

If you have the latest version of IE and know that you shouldn’t be using IE all the time, please skip to the How to fix Internet Explorer section I apologize for the stuff about Firefox that you might already know…

First off, you really shouldn’t be using Internet Explorer 6 or even 7 a lot. Why you ask? Because it is less secure, slower and outdated, especially if you’re using the older version of Internet Explorer, IE Version 6.

I highly recommend you get Firefox... because its better go check it out!

Use it as your primary browser and only use IE 7 (that’s the latest version) only when needed. However, sometimes you might need to use Internet Explorer for things such as Microsoft Updates.

If you window looks like the picture below. Don’t even bother reading the article… unless you upgrade to Firefox first because it is secure, faster, and better!

Internet Explorer 6 is a really old browser, which was designed many moons ago. This only means that you will leaving your computer wide open so that viruses/spyware/credit card number stealing thieves/bad stuff can come and take advantage of it. If your browser looks like the picture below...

Please go to Microsoft and download Internet Explorer 7. You have no reason not to!

Ok, so once you know you have IE 7, this is what you normally need to do to stop crashes, especially if you get the sysfader.exe error occured problem. You need to have administrator privileges to do this. Or else you’ll not be able to open the Internet Options window.

Step 1
Press the ‘Alt’ key on your keyboard so that you can see the menu bar. Click on 'Tools', then click on ‘Internet Options…’.

Step 2
In the window that pops up, go to the ‘Advanced Tab’. Scroll down to where it says ‘Browsing’.

Step 3
Uncheck the check box beside the phrase that says ‘Enable third-party browser extensions’.


Click on OK and restart Internet Explorer.

This, in most cases this should stop Internet Explorer from crashing due to other extensions you might have installed. If in case you are getting a sysfader.exe error that should stop as well. However, this might not sure all the problems that you have with Internet explorer if other settings (such as cookies) were previously messed around with.

In that case, please try resetting the Internet Explorer settings. Click on Internet Options again (please see step 1 above and follow those steps first before reading more…), then go to the advanced tab again, and this time click on the reset button. Click OK and restart Internet explorer.

TIP If you constantly get sysfader.exe errors with IE, please take a look at the sysfader.exe error page. (link opens in a new window)

Also, please keep in mind that many crashes might also be caused due to malware, spyware, viruses and other bad stuff that can be on your computer. It is highly recommended that you get rid of all malware on your computer that might be causing the crashes. More on that stuff coming soon...

Stop green orange blinking lights on iPod - unplug iPod properly

If you are experiencing a lot off problems with your iPod shuffle or nano or mini or video any other type of iPod, even though you sync your iPod properly using iTunes, please read this post. It is important to know how to unplug your iPod from your computer so that you do not corrupt the music inside it. If you simply pull your iPod off the computer, chances are that it is going to ruin all the music that has been transferred to the iPod and give you the orange green blinking lights
.

Please be sure to reset your iPod if you get the orange green blinking lights error. Resetting instructions can be found here.

Step 1
Wait until iTunes tells you it is safe to unplug the iPod.
Step 2

Click (a normal left click..) on the safely remove hardware icon if you're using either Windows XP or Windows Vista. this icon should be on the bottom right hand corner of your screen in the "systray". You might have to click on the little arrow to show all the icons.Safely Remove Hardware icon in Windows XP:

Step 3
Click on the option that corresponds to your iPod. Once you get a tool tip that says it is safe to unplug the device, only then remove the iPod from your USB port.

That's it! if you follow these three simple steps or iPod should stop showing the orange/green blinking lights error.

You might also want to take a look at iPod shuffle problems part 1 and part 2 as well as how to fix the iPod shuffle posts, how to use iPod and iTunes post or other posts that are mentioned. Sadly, there are so many things you can do to completely fix your iPod!

Beyond Teck - Version 3.14159

With a handful of ideas in my OneNote document (testing out OneNote 07 at the moment) and voice recognition (DNS 9 is absolutely amazing!) by my side, I think it’s about time I start writing again - just like I used to before. This time I'm going to make it a point to blog every other day or so about something interesting, and keep the whole world updated about my tech endeavors and write way more often. Why am I motivated and confident more than I was last time, you ask? Because I know a lot more than I did before and I seemed to have acquired the right tools for the job. Also, this summer has taught me that there are a lot of people in this world who really need a lot of help with computers and technology in general. Teaching people about Microsoft Word at my local community center was an eye opening experience and I learned that stuff I thought were really intuitive and easy to use were not so for many people new to computers. I guess there are a lot of people out there who really hate experimenting and breaking stuff =( .

By the way you might have noticed that this page now has Google AdSense advertisements (in case you didn't read this blog before then I just want to let you know that this blog was ad free before) all over it. No, it’s not what you’re thinking - this blog has not been hacked! I put them there myself for a couple of reasons:

1. I want to see what actually happens to my PageRank and if it increases traffic from Google. It is an experiment I wanted to try out, and had plans of doing so for a long while. Now finally because of the guys over at OverheardDaily.com (OD is still under construction apparently - but I can't wait till it launches) I was able to get my hands on some AdSense code.
2. I want to experiment with different revenue generation techniques (ad placement, colours etc.) with AdSense and see if it actually works. Right now the ads AdSense is showing is really random and weird ads, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
3. I hope reason number 2 will motivate me to make more posts in this blog.
4. It's been a while since I've tinkered with blogger templates, and this was a great opportunity for me to force myself to actually look at the new blogger templates.

Okay, enough talking about the new BT. Stay tuned - really super interesting posts coming soon!