Friday, August 30, 2013

Facebook - The Social Cigarette!




Facebook - The most popular site of the world with more than 1 billion users. If Facebook were a country it could be in the third place- Just next to the China and India! And within next few years hopefully Facebook will exceed the population of China. Currently Facebook is the strongest online media. 


Why people use Facebook? Why they waste or pass their idle time or even working time on it? Why they can't go a single day without it? 

The answer is Addiction

As the chain smoker smokes cigarettes one by one just for bad habits, many Facebookers waste their time on Facebook without any break. You may browse Facebook at most 2/3 hours a day. But spending more than 6 hours on Facebook is not a good sign at all. 


I'm not a serious critic of Facebook or Facebookers. I'm just anxious about the future of the earth. Few factors are responsible to create imbalance. And Facebook is one of them. By the name of social networking site, Facebook is leading to social imbalance! Should I explain? Let's start - 

  • Leading to Wars: Within less than a decade of launch, Facebook has already led to several national wars. The wars occured in Lebanon, Libya, Egypt are all accelerated by the Facebook communities in those countries. When the Governments of those countries tried to stop the opponent parties, Facebook communities went against Governments. 

  • Spreading Aggression: A very common news throughout the world. But this is Facebook which is spreading racial, cultural and religious aggression among different communities. Sometimes a person of different values attack others directly through Facebook comments and posts. And this is the starting of endless aggression! 

  • Slow Down Productivity: Facebook is banned in many offices and educational institutes. Survey reports show that, many people waste half of their working time on Facebook! As it can also be visited from Mobile devices, people keep it open all the time.

  • Hackers' Target: Your Facebook ID is the hackers' target! Because it is easy to hack. Though Facebook authority has already increased security, but hackers are smarter. They can easily beat you as well as Facebook. Anytime you can lose your account. You may be able to recover it. But within short time, they can steal your sensitive information. 

  • Privacy: A very very serious issue of today's world. You're an smart user of Facebook. You use secured connection of Facebook, sign out of Facebook every time, use secured password etc etc. But when one of your FB friends lose his account then what? Your chat records as well as sharing are there! Then how can you ensure your privacy? 

  • Detrimental to Health: Excessive use of something is always bad. Same rules apply to Facebook. When you're using Facebook, you can't do other tasks. Maybe you use Facebook sitting on a chair. And certainly this will have a negative impact on your physical fitness. Know more . . .  

  • Mental Instability: Facebook is great for creating new friends. It can also help you to find your old friends. But it creates distance among existing friends! Boys and girls often fall in love through Facebook within moments! And some of them break up within few days. Sometimes your status, likes and comments may lead to serious conflicts among your friends. Divorce, Suicide, Attempt to Murder are very common incidents. 

  • Family Crisis: This problem usually belongs to so called modern families or modern countries of the world. When all the members of a family use Facebook then it is very easy to arise family crisis. Suppose a husband may communicate with his ex wife. Or a wife may communicate with his ex husband. And a husband may not accept his wife's friend request due to privacy problem. Even the crisis may grow between the children and parents. Parents may send friend request to the children. But they may not accept their requests. Few days ago, an Indian husband forget to change his marital status on Facebook. Consequently his wife divorced him! 

  • Fraud and Cheating: This is a very common problem of Facebook. Millions of people are being deceived by Fake IDs every day. Some of them are losing money. Some of them are losing privacy. Even some people are losing their IDs by sharing  passwords with wrong people! 

  • Unnecessary/ Irrelevant Ads: For their own betterment, Facebook show ads on people's pages. Sometimes irrelevant and stupid advertisements are being shown on profile. Which may look odd. Sometimes you will see the ads of different products and manufacturers' ads. Sometimes Facebook forces users to like pages, join groups, share posts which are very irritating. 

  • Millions of Traps: Millions of traps are always trying to hunt you. Anytime you can caught by those traps. Suppose you get a link from your friend which says- See who have unfriend you, or See who have watched your profile. Never click on such links. Remove them as spam. If you even click on these links, it will be automatically shared with your friends and groups. 

  • Spam/ Virus/ Malware: This is a very common suffering for the web users. But Facebook is the land of cultivating virus, spam and malware. Spam or virus may take the form of a link or even could be normal image. Whenever you click on it, you're . . .

  • Criminals' Weapon: Facebook is becoming a popular medium for blackmailing and threatening day by day. A criminal can easily go to a Cybercafe with his fake ID. And he can easily threats a person. For example, he may get your sensitive information. It could be a video, audio, image or text which belong to you. And which are capable of damaging your honor. He may demand monetary or other benefits from you instead of sharing these on Facebook. Even after you fulfill his requirements, he may share those things on Facebook. 



There are only few problems discussed here. Millions of problems are being generated by Facebook everyday. Don't know how to get rid of these. A shortcut way to avoid problems is to use Facebook only when it is necessary. 


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Saturday, August 17, 2013

AdSense Tips: Best Performing Ad Types & Sizes


Most Successful Ad Types and Sizes for AdSense Publishers


I'm currently working with AdSense and learning different tips. And you know, when I learn something I share my knowledge with you. I am willing to share AdSense tips with you. Today I will share the best performing Ad Types and Sizes for AdSense publishers. 


You may also like: 


Those who are currently working with AdSense should know, it has different types of Ad Types and Sizes available for the publishers. 

The available sizes are: 
  • Large, Medium and Small Rectangle
  • Banner and Half Banner
  • Leaderboard
  • Wide and Large Skyscraper
  • Square, Small Square
  • Horizontal Row
  • Different Types of Buttons


AdSense allows you publish three types of Ads: 
  • Text & Image Ads
  • Only Text Ads
  • Rich Media Ads (ie. Flash) 


Depending on users' demands AdSense provides these ad types and sizes. But all of them are not effective for always. 


The sizes that AdSense found most effective are as follows: 

Large Rectangle: The size of a large rectangle is 336x280. Looks better when you place this within a post or after the post. Sometimes placed at the right sidebar. But placing it within contents is more effective.

Ideal for Text/Image ads or Rich media. 


336x280 Ad Unit


Medium Rectangle: Almost similar to large rectangle. But little bit smaller in size: 300x250. Used when the publisher wanna save the site space. Or when you don't have sufficient room to place large rectangle within contents or side bar. 

Ideal for Text/Image Ads. But can be used with rich media too. 


300x250 Ad Unit


Leaderboard: Usually placed at the top of the site. These ads are attractive when used with rich media or flash ads. The size of this ads is 728x90. 

But when your site has a side bar on the left or right, then it can only be placed at the top. Just below the site title. I mean huge space is required to place a leaderboard ad. 

728x90 Ad Size







160x600 Ad for Right Side Bar





Wide Skyscraper: The most successful ad size I believe personally. Usually placed at the side bar of a site. And I think without a left or right sidebar, you can't use wide skyscraper. 

Skyscraper is ideal for Image/Rich Media/Flash ads. Though AdSense sometimes shows text ads here. But when rich media ads are shown on skyscraper, the chance of attracting the visitors increase significantly. 

The size of wide skyscraper is 160x600. So you must have at least 200 px side bar. It can be left or right. But I think right sidebar is more effective. 

There is a large skyscraper too. Which is 300x600. But I think this will be really space consuming. And if rich media ads are shown on large skyscraper, definitely it will slow down your site which could be dangerous for you. 

So I suggest you to use this ad with rich media, at the right sidebar of your site. 








Adjusting Ad Size with the Site: 

It's true that these 4 ad sizes perform well. But if your site doesn't match with these sizes, don't worry. Choose the ad size that complements your pages most. Read the guide to ad sizes

When your space is low you can use Five Links Ad Units:
  • Horizontal Row: 728 x 15
  • Horizontal Row: 468 x 15
These two ads has more CTR. And they can hardly slow down your site. 




Most Successful Ad Types: 

AdSense usually provides three types of Ads:
  • Text Ads (with Links)
  • Text/ Image Ads
  • Rich Media/ Flash (Also known as Display Ads) 


AdSense recommends to use all of these types of ads. So you have to allow all of them to be appeared on your site. Because sometimes rich media ads are not available to be displayed. Though the text ads will pay you low but sometimes your ad space might be blank if your disallow them. 

To maximize your earning, you've to show all these three types of ads on your site. 



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Sunday, August 11, 2013

How to Type More than 15 Digits in MS Excel?




If you are a regular user of Microsoft Excel then you might be in danger while typing more than 15 digits in a cell. If you type 1111222233334444 then it will be 1111222233334440. Or if you type 25127680876675435 then it will be 25127680876675400. Simply the digits after 15th place will be changed to zeros! Doesn't it seem peculiar? 


Today I will explain when & why this problem occurs and how you can solve it easily. 


When the Problem Occurs?

The problem occurs when you try to type more than 15 digits in a cell like below: 

####-####-####-####
1234324545679876

But when you press Enter, the output will be 1234324545679870. Excel changes the last digit to a 0. And why someone needs to type more than 15 digits in a cell? It can't be a currency figure. 

Usually when you type a Credit Card/ Debit Card/ BO Account Number you have to type 16 digits. And the calculation of excel doesn't allow you to type more than 15 digits. That's why it converts the last digits (after 15th place) into zeros.  


Reason

You may ask - why Excel restricts users to type 15 digits in a cell? I'm also searching for a satisfactory answer. I found the following reason from Microsoft Support

Excel follows the IEEE 754 specification on how to store and calculate floating-point numbers. Excel therefore stores only 15 significant digits in a number, and changes digits after the fifteenth place to zeroes. 

I don't know what does it mean! :) Anyway, I can show you several ways to get rid of this problem . . . 


Solution

There are several ways through which you can avoid this problem. First I'd like to show you an easy way:

Method 1: Putting Inverted (') Before the Number

When you type more than 15 digits in a cell, just place an inverted comma ( ' ) before that number. And that mark will not be displayed on the sheet after pressing Enter! Though it will be displayed in the formula bar. Look at the image below: 


I don't know why the inverted mark disappears automatically. But I can explain why the 16th digit doesn't change to 0. Because when you type ' before a number then Excel doesn't consider this value as Number. It maybe consider the cell as text. That's why it remains unchanged. 


Method 2: Format the Cell as Text

Maybe the 2nd method is more useful. Before typing more than 16 digits in a cell, you have to format those cells as text. 

You need to select the cells first. Office 2003 users will find the Format Cell options from the Format Menu > Cells > Format Cells. And Office 2007 and 2010 users will get this as below: 


Format Cells Menu in Excel 2010


Format cell window is same in all version of MS Excel. After selecting the cells, you will just need to choose the Text option and then hit OK. That's it. 

Now you will be able to type more than thousand characters in a single cell! 


Applies to: 

All versions of Microsoft Excel. 


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Saturday, August 10, 2013

Playing with Filename Extensions!


Different Filename Extensions


I tried a lot but couldn't create an attractive image for this post. L But I can assure you this image has meaning. Or I can explain the image properly. J  And I'm little bit confused about how to start this post. Because this is somewhat unusual topic. 

Anyway, first I will try to give you a brief idea on filename extensions and then I will try to show you how can you play with these. Let's start . . . 


A filename extension is the identity of the file type. It tells you what the file is, What can you do with it and what you can't. Similarly, your operating system also use the filename extension to execute that file. A wrong filename extension could misdirect your system to treat that file properly. 

If you wanna play with the filename extensions you should have a basic knowledge about the file types. Otherwise you can't understand my point. So if you need more knowledge on file types then read the following post: 


Common File Types with Extensions



And before starting the task you must enable filename extensions from folder options. To show filename extensions follow the below procedure: 

Open Control Panel (Press Start + R > type Control > hit Enter) > Go to Folder Options > View > Unmark Hide Extensions for Known file types > OK


Folder options can also be found from the view menu of Windows Explorer (My Computer). You can enable it from anywhere as you like. 


Hope you're ready for today's special. I'd like to request you to have a look at the above image. There are 9 types of files in the image. But their name is same - Password. Actually all of them are same. And basically it is a document file which contains all of my passwords! 

As it is a document file you can only open it when its extension is .doc or .docx. Otherwise you can never use this file. 

By changing the filename extension you can restrict others to access your files. For example you have prepared an assignment. But your friend tries to copy it. And you can't hide the file in a safe place. But you can easily cheat him :) 

Your Assignment will look like - Assignment.doc 

If you wanna hide this, just change the name and extension. You can use different names or extensions as below: 

  • Asmt.exe : It will show your file as executable file
  • Asmt.img: It will show your file as burnable image file. 
  • Asmt.wmv: It will show your file as video file
  • Asmt.mp3: It will show your file as audio file

But none of the above file types will let others to use your file. Because only you know that this is a doc file. The file can only be used when you change the extension to .doc. Because Windows can't usually work with wrong file name extensions. 


And what happens if a file has no extension? This is more interesting. Nobody will be able to guess how to use it. Look at the image again. The first one has no extension. If I change the word Password, nobody will be able to guess what the file type could be! 


Never think that you can only hide files by changing extensions. There are many other things to play with filename extension. Anytime you can puzzle anybody with this tips. Suppose your friend has a favorite movie named Titanic.mkv or Titanic.mp4 or Titanic.flv.

If you change the name to Titanic.mp3 or Titanic.wma then he can only hear sound. And it will be opened by default audio player. He will not be able to see the video. 

And if you rename it by any other extension like .bat, .exe or .ini then neither audio nor video will be played! 



Sometimes you can change the file extension without any problem. Suppose if you change .jpg extension to .png then nothing will happen. Because both of them are image file. Similarly, when you change .flv by .mp4 a video can be played without any problem. 


At the very beginning I said, I don't know how to start this topic. But now I've to say, I don't know how to end! Don't know how much you get from this post. But I can assure you, just spend a single week on filename extension. Play with it. You will be the master . . . ! 


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